Internet marketing success requires two main skills more than any other – the ability to drive targeted traffic to your sites, blogs, squeeze pages and affiliate links and the knowledge of how to build huge opt-in lists fast.

Lets look at 7 powerful ways to drive targeted traffic and build opt-in lists…

• Article Marketing – Writing and submitting articles is one of the easiest free ways to start driving targeted prospects to your links – especially when that link leads to a squeeze page with a free PDF, audio or video with more information on the same topic. Stay within the guidelines of the article directory, provide great content and offer more information on the topic through the link in your Author’s Resource Box.
• Using Blogs – The first of the interactive web 2.0 technologies to gain wide appeal was blogging – and it remains one of the most powerful methods to drive traffic and build lists. Be sure your opt-in form appears on the blog itself, and use the articles you have at the directories as the bulk of your blog content. Be sure to use the appropriate blog plugins to maximize your SEO benefits, and to hook you up to traffic sources like Twitter, MyBlogLog and Technorati.
• Using Podcasts – A podcast is simply information presented in audio format, usually as an MP3. Since you already have those articles and your blog, now record an audio version of them and place them with the article on your blog using an audio plugin. Be sure to mention your URL in each recording, and check to see if the plugin you’re using is building a separate RSS feed for your podcasts – if it isn’t, create one manually and submit the RSS feed to iTunes, PodcastReady, Podcast Alley, etc. These directories are accessed by millions of users, and they don’t index articles or blogs, so audio is the only way to get your message to their users.
• Video Marketing – Like podcasts, videos are just one more media to present your information in. Whether you use live-action video or create screen-capture videos, you can repurpose the same info you have for your articles and podcasts by making them into videos and getting them out to YouTube, Viddler, etc. Make sure you have the link to your site within the video along with a call to action, and spell out your link in the description area that accompanies each video.
• Using Free Downloads – One of the most powerful ways to get people onto your opt-in list is through a squeeze page – a page offering an incentive to those who sign up. That incentive is usually a PDF report, an audio or a video that contain helpful information on the topic at hand – the topic targeted by your marketing efforts. And you already have the raw materials for the gift – your articles, podcasts and/or videos. Once again, compile the articles, audios or videos into a single download and build a page giving them away to those who opt to join your list. Use the social media sites like Twitter & Facebook, your blog, etc. to drive traffic to that gift and build your list.
• Using Teleseminars and Interviews – Are you an expert in your niche? If so, set up a teleseminar and spend an hour giving out valuable information to your audience. Require a signup to your list for entry to the call, and be sure to include a Q&A session at the end so people get the most from it. If you’re not an expert, arrange to interview someone who is and use that as your live call. Be sure to record the call either way, and offer the replay and/or download from a squeeze page for ongoing list-building from it. If a live teleseminar isn’t possible, do the interview by phone or Skype and record it, then offer the replay from the squeeze page. Another method is to grab an expert and ask a series of 5-10 questions, then break each question and answer down into a series of podcasts to use sequentially.
• Using Affiliate Programs – Do you have products of your own for sale online? If so, set up an affiliate program and spend some time each week recruiting new affiliates and joint venture partners to promote your products. Set up ‘affiliate funnels’ – automatic e-courses that go to the prospects your affiliates refer. The e-course should deliver strong content while pre-selling your product and be designed to lead the prospect to buy your product – and hopefully more than one. Be careful not to use affiliate links in your e-course, as you don’t want to overwrite the cookies for the referring affiliate. The better the e-course converts prospects to buyers the greater the affiliate commissions you’ll be paying out, and the harder your affiliates will be working to drive traffic to your squeeze page, thus making you more money and building your list that much faster.

These are the 7 most popular ways to drive traffic and build your lists, and you should be using and refining all seven on an ongoing basis to build your traffic, your lists and your branding all at once. The results mean more profits for you and an ever-expanding online business that can help you achieve your dream lifestyle!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet marketing coach, mentor, speaker and the creator of the PowerStart Marketing 4-week Internet Marketing Crash Course. To learn more about Doug or to book him to speak at your next event, contact him through his blog at http://DougChampigny.com.

Technorati Tags: building traffic, opt-in lists, building lists, targeted traffic, increase targeted traffic, build email list, free targeted traffic

How To Succeed In Internet Marketing By Mastering Just Two Major Skills

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com All Rights Reserved.

How difficult is it to make money online with your own work-at-home Internet marketing or affiliate marketing business? While no one will dispute it takes time, money and laser-like focused action, the plethora of tools, strategies and advice being passed around the Internet makes that a very hard question for newer marketers to answer when they first start to research the possibilities.

In truth, most successful online business owners can attribute the bulk of their success to two skills – building mailing lists and driving targeted traffic. Almost everything else you see is either refinements of one of these skills or tools to use to further one, or usually both, of these vital skills.

And this is true whether the person is competing directly in the Internet marketing field, the niche marketing areas or working strictly as an affiliate marketer promoting other people’s products. In fact they’re especially important in affiliate marketing, since the products, salespages and much of the promotional materials have already been provided by the merchant.

It’s important to recognize the symbiotic nature of this pair of activities too – you have to drive targeted traffic to your mailing lists’ opt-in forms, and your resultant list is often the fastest way to drive targeted traffic to your sites, blogs, salespages and affiliate links.

Set your pages with those opt-in forms, called ’squeeze pages’, up first, writing or buying a small report or video to use as an incentive to get people to join your list. Once those are in place, start driving targeted traffic to those pages via every means available – blog posts, podcasts, videos, Web 2.0 sites like WikiDot, Google knol, Squidoo and HubPages, submitting articles to the biggest directories, offering guest posts to blogs within your niche, blog commenting, social sites like Twitter and FaceBook and the whole realm of available promotional methods.

This trickle of traffic, if promoted correctly, will build to a stream, then to a torrent of signups for you, getting your list started. Once it’s around 1,000 or more subscribers, start doing some e-zine swaps (also called ad swaps) with other marketers within the niche. Put simply, you send out to your list offering them the other person’s enticement while they do the same for you.

Done right, and done consistently, this process will build both of these skills quickly, giving you control of the two biggest weapons in your Internet marketing arsenal – list-building and traffic generation. Once you have a firm handle on both, then you can consider everything else. But stay focused on just those two til you master them and you’ll be well on your way to your own successful Internet marketing business!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet marketing coach, mentor & speaker and the creator of the PowerStart Marketing 4-week Internet Marketing Crash Course. To learn more about Doug or to book him to speak at your next event, contact him through his blog at http://DougChampigny.com.

Technorati Tags: list building, traffic generation, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, targeted traffic, ad swaps

Internet Marketing 4-Week Crash Course From PowerStart Marketing

© Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com. All Rights Reserved.

Internet marketing is a great industry to be in – you have your own work-at-home business, you set your own schedule, plan your own promotions and make a really great income!

Well, that’s true if you successful at it, at least…

But most people dreaming about getting into the business don’t get to that point. For them, it’s a nasty struggle against unfamiliar terms and technology, conflicting advice from all different sources and a lack of visible results to keep them motivated. They buy resource after resource, pay for program after program, following promises that they can ‘get rich quick’ on the Internet… All of which leads them to give up on their dream of an online business, feeling used and abused and wondering if it’s all really a scam.

The truth is three-fold… One, most people aren’t geared to stay focused for long periods of time and don’t have the motivation to put in the time it takes to succeed when they’re still employed full-time outside the house. Two, most of us, myself included, need to see some sort of progress from our efforts or our motivation is on a downhill slope until eventually we abandon the current project.

Third, and possibly most important, there are a number of different paths to success in Internet marketing and listening to too many people just confuses the road ahead. Even when you weed out the copycat marketers and find those who are truly successful, you’ll find we all do things slightly differently.

The good news is that there’s a fairly simple solution for most people to start an online business – find a truly successful mentor and follow their advice exactly until you’ve reached a level of proficiency yourself. Once that lofty goal has been reached you’ll be able to chart your own path from there – you won’t get everything right, but with practice you should get more right than wrong and be on your way.

Introducing The PowerStart 2010 Internet Marketing Crash Course!

And it’s towards that end that I introduce my latest venture – PowerStart Marketing and the 4-Week Internet Marketing PowerStart course. You read that right – it’s a FOUR WEEK crash course in setting up your online business from scratch! No more wasting time, no more months of trying and failing to see any progress…

The format is an easy one – four weekly teleseminars where I’ll discuss what’s ahead for that week and field all your questions. Then I’ll give you a series of tasks to do that week – and I’ll include complete step-by-step videos to show you exactly how to do them! Yes, you’ll have to put in the time and effort to keep up, but you’ll know exactly what you need to do and how to do it.

And talk about moving forward and seeing visible results! The first week you’ll install your blog, configure it with the best plugins and hook it up to some of the Web 2.0 sites – then you’ll set up our autoresponders to handle both e-courses and an e-zine. Week Two you’ll get your first products online using MRR and PLR resources and hook them up to PayPal so you can take payments, Week three you’ll learn how to use articles, podcasts and videos to further your cause by driving in traffic, and in Week Four you’ll learn how to choose the right affiliate programs and then promote them successfully.

After the four weeks – just one short month – you can have your own online business started and running, have products online to sell, can be building your lists and starting to bring traffic to your site. Even more importantly, you’ll know how to do each part yourself, and how to repeat it whenever you like to attack a new market – or just use the skills to keep building the one operation – the choice is yours!

The first course starts Monday, Feb 1st and runs for four weeks – sign up for the PowerStart 2010 4-Week Internet Marketing Course now and have YOUR business online and on track by March 1st!

Technorati Tags: learn internet marketing, start internet marketing, starting a business online, internet marketing training, coaching, mentoring, starting an online business, work-at-home business

Live Internet marketing events are a growing and vital part of our industry these days, with more and more of them popping up every day. Unfortunately some of the best have met their demise after years of operation, in large part due to the global recession and people’s reservations about flying. Equally unfortunately, this resulted in a drop in high-quality content-based events, while the ‘pitchfests’ – events that really do nothing but sell you into high-priced programs, have been fine since they grab so much cash from almost every participant.

Yet great live Internet marketing seminars and conferences are a powerful and necessary tool both for individual marketers and for the growth of Internet marketing itself. Fortunately some of the best seminars are continuing – their operators have come up with unique twists to allow them to continue in spite of economic hardships. Ken McArthur, for instance, is the man behind the JV Alert Live seminars, one of the best-known and most-loved on the circuit. This year, Ken created smaller events in a great many more communities, making it that much easier for marketers to attend the events. No matter how Ken organizes his events, you can rest assured you’ll get great value in both knowledge gained and networking – Ken simply wouldn’t let you down, no matter what it takes for him to deliver. It’s just not in him to let people down, which is part of what’s earned him the reputation as ‘the nicest guy in the biz’.

Another great live Internet marketing events pro is Mark Hendricks. Mark has restructured his Internet Super Stars Conference to make sure EVERY attendee gets a lot more out of it – possibly even more than at any other seminar in the past, no matter who was presenting it. I’m proud to be included as one of the speakers at this event, not the least because it may just set a new standard for live Internet marketing events worldwide!

Sounds hypie, I know – but stay with me a minute here….

Mark has taken a look at the feedback he gets from all different events, and found the majority of complaints about any live event falls into one of two categories:

A) The Event Is A Pitchfest: This type of event delivers no useful content, or very little. Every speaker comes up, tells you their ‘rags-to-riches’ story and names the method they used to make their fame & fortune – and that’s it. If you want anything more, you have to ‘buy these books, those courses and sign up for this mentoring program – Where’s your pen? Sign here, press hard, you’re making three copies… oh, and who’s your mortgage broker?’
Solution: No problem, Mark’s events have NEVER been like those – and never will be. Like Ken, Mark is very protective of his reputation as a straight-shooter.

B) The Information Goes Over People’s Heads: Even been to an event, or even a class in school or college, where the info just wasn’t sinking in that day? Maybe it was too advanced, maybe you got lucky the night before and are daydreaming, or maybe it was just a disconnect with the way the information was presented. Whatever the case, when it was over your first response was probably ‘Uh, What?’… This is especially true of newbies in Internet marketing, who often get confused by all the acronyms and labels specific to this industry, terms they’ve never run into before.
Solution: Mark has come up with the perfect solution here… Realizing a lot of people only learn through hands-on experience, he’s solved that one too. Each presenter at the seminar is going to do both their presentation and a Q & A session – so really you’re getting more of a workshop than a speech! And the presenters are hanging out all weekend, so you have plenty of time to seek out any information you need to really grasp EVERYTHING. Don’t be afraid to come up and introduce yourself, ask us questions or just network & hang out with us!

The only downside? The Internet Super Stars Conference is in just two weeks – January 15-17th, 2010. To take part in this historic event you have to act NOW! Mark has arranged a really good rate for your hotel – just $109US a night – so be sure to read the info carefully on just how to get this rate, ok?

For full info and to book your seat at this event, see all the info on the Internet Super Stars Conference site.

POWER TIP: If you can’t make the convention, head over to the page anyway and sign up for a free membership – that gives you access to the recordings of all the pre-event seminars we’ve been holding. Not as good as being at the event live, but still a ton of great helpful information for free!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet Marketing mentor and speaker and a recognized super-affiliate who has been online full-time since 1996. Be sure to visit his DougChampigny.com Internet Marketing Blog, his Captain-Affiliate.com Affiliate Training Blog and to follow Doug on Twitter!

Technorati Tags: live internet marketing events, Mark Hendricks, Internet Super Stars Conference, Mark Hendricks events, ISSC, Internet marketing

For my last post here in 2009, I want to go beyond Internet marketing and delve into something that can make every part of your life better in 2010 – your attitude towards business, success, people and life itself!

How often have you heard someone say “Must be nice to be rich’, ‘That’s easy for him to say, with all his money’, ‘It’s easy for her – she’s famous’ or ‘If I had his money, I’d…’ You’ve probably used one or more of these, or something similar, within just this last year, haven’t you?

Whether you realize it or not, you’re not belittling them – you’re putting yourself down and re-enforcing a negative self-image of yourself. Look over those quotes again – can you see that they create an ‘us vs. them’ scenario with you on the losing end? It’s in small, subtle ways like those that we sabotage ourselves all too often – but we CAN fix that with a simple attitude change.

Let go of limits, forget circumstances and just envision your life as you wish it was right now. How would you spend your day? Would you work, run our own business, wheel and deal, or be enjoying retirement? What would you be doing to help others? What would the effects be from your wealth and power – on you, your friends and society in general?

Now hang on to that image of yourself – it’s not a fairytale version of you, it’s the as-yet unrealized reality of you.

Suddenly ‘must be nice…’ becomes ‘it’ll be so nice when…’ and ‘if I had his money’ becomes ‘when I have that much I’ll…’

Most importantly, hang on to your answers to those last two questions – THAT’S where true, lasting motivation can be derived to help you realize your desired self – because it’s a tough haul to get to those lofty levels and you probably won’t stick it out just for yourself – we’re all just too good at settling for less. It’s those we can help and the wrongs we can right that we won’t give up on, that will help us stick with it through thick and thin.

Well, the ball’s about to drop to kick off the new decade here, so I wish you nothing but Health, Wealth and Prosperity throughout it… Now go after them with gusto!

PowerStart 2010: Little Steps To Big Internet Marketing Profits

©2009 Doug Champigny, DougChampigny.com. All Rights Reserved.

Internet marketing has evolved into quite the beast, hasn’t it? Blogging, salespages, squeeze pages, OTO’s, download pages, contact desks, PLR, web 2.0, social networking, teleseminars, webinars, podcasts, videos, e-courses, e-zines, affiliate programs, interviews, seminars, conferences, masterminds, cruises, bootcamps, joint ventures, membership sites, mentoring, coaching… All a part of Internet marketing as we head into the new decade. And that doesn’t include the higher-end strategies like telemarketing, direct mail & postcard marketing, advertising, infomercials and other offline tie-ins.

As professionals, the small group of us who have been working online full-time since the mid-nineties often marvel at the changes and wonder why we never seem to get everything done that we had planned to… Well no wonder – just go back and re-read that list! Without an ever-expanding staff or team of outsourcers and virtual assistants (and the related overhead), no one can even try to keep up with it all… We have to pick and choose what we think is the best use of our time and money based on our individual Internet marketing business and our overall online presence.

But stop and think for a moment about the poor newbie just starting into the industry… We’ve learned each new technology or strategy one by one as they came along, adding to our empirical knowledge of the beast. And watching our industry grow, nurturing it along from it’s first few wobbly steps and through it’s infancy has been a logical, if somewhat trial-and-error, process for us all, with each new piece either fitting into a slot in our existing operations or replacing a worn-out strategy (remember FFA pages? LOL)

To those first dipping their toes into the murky waters of Internet marketing today, the cacophony of options is deafening – and further amplified by the dozens or even hundreds of e-mails they receive all telling them they have to do this, that and the other thing – most contradicting each other and often even themselves! Worse yet, almost every one of those e-mails extols the ease of getting rich quickly with Internet marketing – a lie that simply sharpens the blade as the fear of failure hangs over them like the sword of Damocles. ‘Analysis paralysis’ sets in as they try to see how it all fits together and judge whom to follow, whom to trust and whom to disregard from the barrage of pitches they face daily.

Between the fear of failure, analysis paralysis and all the technologies and strategies, is it any wonder that 98.5% will never make money online, or that only about .5%, if that, will go on to earn a living from Internet marketing? Yet it certainly doesn’t have to be that way…

While our egos may not like to admit it, those of us at the top of the game know that none of what we do each day is rocket science. While we’re constantly refining our techniques and trying to uncover profitable new strategies, these are just degrees of advancement – the basic steps we take each day are not complex. The trick to helping more neophyte marketers succeed is to guide them as they learn the business the same way we did – one step at a time.

If you’re an internet marketing newbie, don’t try to digest it all at once – and don’t feel any pressure to make money fast online. It’s not the right milieu for you if you’re under the gun to raise your rent money or stave off foreclosure – spend your time finding part-time work and dig yourself out of that hole, then turn to Internet marketing as a way to supplement your income or secure your future long-term instead.

Then as you foray into the fray, trial-and-error will be your steed, focus and action your weapons. Yes, you have a lot to learn, and you’re going to make mistakes both big and small. We all do. Live with it. You can minimize your mistakes, both in number and severity, by hiring a good mentor and following their advice to a ‘T’ until you’ve achieved a modicum of success online. Until then ignore conflicting advice – most pros will never intentionally mislead you but there are many paths to success online and trying to follow a number of different systems will overwhelm and confuse you. Just pick one proven path and walk it til you know the business better and have regular income coming in from it.

Start by setting up a blog, an e-zine and a squeeze page to get people onto your new list. Give yourself a week – two at most – to get that much done. Don’t do anything else til those are prepared – learn how to do them and get them completed. That is all you need to get your toe in the door, and it’ll help train you to take focused, concentrated action on the tasks at hand while blocking out the rest of the noise that’s part and parcel of the Internet marketing arena.

From that point forward learn to use the social media and web 2.0 sites to drive traffic to your blog and your squeeze page and you’ve set the wheels in motion… Whether you choose to start into affiliate marketing, resell rights marketing or creating your own products from that point on is up to you – consult your mentor on the best path based on your talents, goals and aspirations. But those first small steps – setting up your blog and starting your e-mail lists – will provide the solid foundation you need from this day forward – and do wonders for your confidence and pride in a job well done!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet Marketing mentor and speaker and a recognized super-affiliate who has been online full-time since 1996. Be sure to visit his DougChampigny.com Internet Marketing Blog, his Captain-Affiliate.com Affiliate Training Blog and to follow Doug on Twitter!

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing, start Internet marketing, Internet marketing advice, help for newbies, online success tips, making money online, mentoring

Aim For Empirical Success In Your Online Marketing

©2009 Doug Champigny, DougChampigny.com. All Rights Reserved.

Success in online marketing can mean great wealth and a lovely lifestyle your friends and acquaintances will envy, so it’s no wonder so many people are turning to Internet marketing as a path to their success. Unfortunately, most come into the business with misconceptions and improperly planned strategies…

First, understand that making a huge splash with one big JV launch is not success – it’s a one-night stand. If you don’t have your foundation in place, have focused just on the one product and now have to start over from scratch, you’re one more ’shooting star’ we’ve seen come and go so many times in this industry. And if you’re coming into Internet marketing thinking it’s a get-rich-quick scenario, you’d be better off spending your time chasing leprechauns to find their pot of gold – at least you’d get to see Ireland that way!

The truth is, in almost every case success online is the result of a continually-growing body of work – an increasing number of blog posts, web sites, publications, products, articles, podcasts, videos, etc., all adding to your branding, spreading your impact, defining you as an expert and providing links back to your current operations.

And the big joint venture launches I mentioned? It’s by interacting with others, both online and through live internet marketing events that you build your circle of contacts in this industry, and the more helpful, courteous and honest you are, the greater your circle of online friends becomes. With each successive launch you do you can have more friends promoting you and your products or services if along the way you’ve been helping others with their efforts and promoting their launches.

Start by attending live events and introducing yourself to the speakers during the breaks or at night after the day’s seminars. Let them know a bit about you, and ask what you can do to help them – what products could you promote as an affiliate, do they have any launches coming up, etc. Many of my current JV and adswap partners started just that way, approaching me at events I was speaking at or attending. Don’t ask them about promoting YOUR products – leave that til you’ve proven yourself helpful to them.

If you can’t get to the live events, join the affiliate program for some of the bigger names and promote their products heavily til you’re racking up sales for them – not only will you be making your affiliate commissions, but making a splash in their affiliate program is one of the fastest and surest ways of catching a guru’s attention! Use the same tools you’d use to promote your own best product – your e-zine, blog, podcasts, videos, Squidoo, HubPages, Google Knols, Twitter, etc. This certainly isn’t the time to scrimp on effort – when promoting anything for the big names you’re in a league with true pros, so be sure you give it your best shot if you hope to be noticed.

Here’s a simple exercise that will show you the power of building up an empirical body of work… Pick one day a week and make that your ‘new material’ day. Then, each week on that day write one new article relevant to the niche or topic you’re targeting with your main Internet marketing activities. When it’s done, record an audio version of it to use as a podcast, being sure to refer people to your main blog at the end of it. If you know how, create a video version as well, using the main text points from the article with the audio from the podcast. (If you don’t know how, open Windows Movie Maker or get Sony Vegas and start learning it now – it’s the way of the future online!)

Post them to your blog, then finish up the day by submitting the articles to the article directories, the podcasts to sites like iTunes and Podcast Alley, and the video to YouTube, Viddler, etc. Do yourself a favor and pick up a pro program or service to save time with the submissions – like the Easy PushButton Traffic service I mentioned here yesterday. Immediate results from this will be little or none – but over time you’ll see your traffic, and hopefully your sales, start to climb. A year from today you’ll have over 50 articles published across the net, podcasts and videos galore, and all of them branding you and pointing back to your main blog.

And that’s from just one day a week – maybe two days if you’re time or expertise is limited. Either way, that still leaves the other days for new product development, additional blog posts, getting products online, etc, and even on your new material days you’ll still be sending out your e-zine, so there’s no loss of revenue along the way as you build this body of work.

Yes, it takes effort, focus and perseverance to build up a body of work online – and that’s what separates the wheat from the chaff, as they say. In today’s vernacular, ‘you won’t get your bling if you don’t work the thing!’ If you’re serious about making money online with Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging or any other work-at-home activities, roll up your sleeves and put in the effort it takes to succeed – start building your own empirical success online today!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet Marketing mentor & speaker and a recognized super-affiliate who has been online full-time since 1996. Be sure to visit his DougChampigny.com Internet Marketing Blog, his Captain-Affiliate.com Affiliate Training Blog and to follow Doug on Twitter!

Technorati Tags: online marketing success, success online, marketing success, marketing online

PowerStart 2010: Your Internet Marketing Priorities

©2009 Doug Champigny, DougChampigny.com. All Rights Reserved.

Internet marketing can cure many of your financial woes and put you on the path to successfully running your own home-based business. It can give you the freedom and financial wherewithal to travel, to explore our passions, and to meet hundreds, if not thousands of new & exciting people. In short, it can take you to your own dream lifestyle!

Internet marketing can also drain you financially, waste hundreds or thousands of dollars, and leave you feeling like you’ve been ripped off, lied to and cheated at every turn online.

What’s the difference between these two scenarios? How do you become a victor instead of a victim?

Believe it or not, the answer just may lay in your own priorities – in just HOW you use your money and your time. As an obvious example, it was reported tonight that Hollywood just had it’s best weekend EVER in the theaters – more people paid to see a movie this weekend than at any time in history. Yet everyone is moaning constantly about how tight money is, how rough the economy is right now, and that they can never ‘get a break’. Yeah, right!

A victim spends an hour today telling friends how broke they are, then goes and blows $50 for tickets, drinks & food at the show. A victor would use that same 2 or 3 hours to write 2 or 3 articles, do a couple of podcasts or knock out a new promotional video, add them to their blog and then use a service like Easy Push Button Traffic to distribute them all over the web. And that same $50 would pay for their blog hosting & autoresponders for the whole month at Hosting4Marketers.com AND a whole month of Easy Push Button Traffic services, with a few bucks left over for a soda!

The next day the victim, now broke, stays home to watch TV and has nothing to show for the previous night except maybe a slightly wider butt. The victor, however, now has more content on the blog, hundreds of new backlinks to their site and/or affiliate links, and may even have made a few bucks and/or gotten a few extra signups for last night’s efforts. More importantly there’s still another 30 days or so of Hosting4Marketers.com and Easy PushButton Traffic left in the month, so any downtime can be turned into uptime by doing more articles, podcasts, videos – maybe even press releases. Or, since the hosting includes room for twelve or more sites, maybe adding products for sale, more list-building squeeze pages, etc.

Now, the victor may not be any brighter than the victim – but look at the difference their priorities made! Internet marketing isn’t rocket science, nor do you NEED to be a pioneer… There are many systems going that have worked over and over and should, most likely, continue to work for some time to come.

Nor does it need massive amounts of money to get started. For the most part, successfully launching an Internet marketing business requires you to invest SOME money and SOME time – and usually the more you put in of one, the less you need to put in of the other. While taking that to either extreme will take too much time or be overly expensive for most, a happy medium can easily be found…

Don’t start into Internet marketing if you have no outside form of income – there’s very little likelihood you’ll make enough to support yourself quick enough to stave off the wolves at the door. And even if you did, you’d need the income for that instead of being able to reinvest it in your new company’s growth. As a general rule, don’t even THINK about trading in your offline income to go full-time online until your online earnings have DOUBLED your salary for at least 3 months straight. I say doubled to allow for any sudden drop in earnings, and 3 consecutive months because we all have good and bad months – you want your AVERAGE month to be more than double.

Next, set yourself a monthly budget for your online spending that you can reasonably afford from your current earnings. You should aim for anywhere from $50 a week up, but be sure it’s not so much you’ll have trouble meeting your current commitments. DON’T be tempted to go over that set amount until you have earnings coming in from online to augment that budget unless you have a sudden influx of many from another source – a bonus, sale of stock, whatever. Once you get seriously involved in this business it’s easy to start spending uncontrollably, so having that limit firmly in mind before you start will be a big help to most prospective Internet marketers!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet Marketing mentor & speaker and a recognized super-affiliate who has been online full-time since 1996. Be sure to visit his DougChampigny.com Internet Marketing Blog, his Captain-Affiliate.com Affiliate Training Blog and to follow Doug on Twitter!

Related Posts:

Starting An Affiliate Marketing Business From Home

Protecting And Preparing Your Internet Marketing Business In Today’s Economy

Shut Up, Buck Up, Buckle Down and Get On With It!

How To Choose An Internet Marketing Mentor Or Coach

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing, start internet marketing, learn internet marketing, setting priorities

Focus On The New Decade For Internet Marketing Success!

©2009 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved.

As the new year beckons, the best advice I can offer to those involved with Internet marketing, or even thinking of getting involved with it or affiliate marketing, is to focus not on the new year, but on the new decade…

While a decade might seem like too big a concern to plan out now, if you don’t have a firm idea of where you want to be in 10 years you have no way of knowing whether you’re on track with your plans for the coming year.

What good is a seemingly successful year if it doesn’t lead toward your long-term goals? It simply leaves you with one less year to get to your destination, right?

There are a myriad of reasons one starts Internet marketing – the desire to own your own business, the need to increase your income, to help fund a hobby or pursuit and any number of others. But most online marketers, either at first or once they’ve had their first few online successes, realize it just might be their ticket to their own unique dream lifestyle, however they define such.

Knowing where you want to be in 10 years, vis-a-vis your lifestyle, business and aspirations, lets you then plan the steps needed to get there safely. If you want to be in a certain position 10 years from now, where do you need to be in one year to be on track? Planning your business activities on that basis not only gives you your goals for the coming year, but also ensures you keep the main prize in mind at all times, and that you’re proceeding safely towards that goal without doing anything in the meantime to limit yourself or prevent you from reaching your longer-term goals.

And as anyone over 35 or 40 can tell you, ten years is not a long time. It often seems like just yesterday that people were worried about the Y2K bug and were preparing the millennium celebrations – yet that was ten years ago now! The next ten will go by with the same speed – the question is where do you want to be by then?

Granted, no one can foresee the changes in technology or strategies that lie ahead in the Internet marketing industry, nor any other for that matter. And the experiences faced by North Americans in the last year shows us that one cannot count on the overall economy, either. But if you know where you’re headed in the long run, you can allow for such changes as you proceed, adapting and evolving as necessary to reach your own personal goals.

Obviously knowing your goals for your dream lifestyle and wishing they’ll happen is not enough – for success in Internet or affiliate marketing you need to know the technologies, strategies and procedures that are working currently, you need to stay abreast of changes in this rapidly-changing industry and you need to put in a lot of hard work to achieve your goals.

But if you lose track of that long-term destination, you’re rudderless in a sea of change, happy enough to be afloat each day, but never headed towards that distant shore. Don’t risk any more time, cash or effort than necessary to get to that prize – plan your new decade in general now, then evolve concrete plans for the new year that keep you on track and on time!

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing strategies, affiliate marketing strategies, business strategies, online business, marketing online, goal setting, reaching goals, setting goals

As we head into the next decade, the Internet marketing and affiliate marketing industries continue to grow exponentially. The last 10 years has seen both mature from a ‘wild west’ frontier of a few hundred of us groping in the dark to see how it could be more useful into a billion-dollar-plus-a-year industry with hundreds of thousands or even millions of people now looking to the Internet to make some or all of their income.

A quick search at Google, Yahoo! or Bing will show you some of the millions of pages, sites and blogs dedicated to Internet marketing and affiliate marketing, thousands of programs & other tools covering all aspects of both have popped up, and related membership sites abound…

All of which is great news for our industry, which is still really in it’s infancy. But it DOES make for a lot of learning to get up to speed and/or to stay current. Over the next three weeks to the start of 2010 I’ll be attempting to help clear that clutter a bit for you, bringing you some suggested resources to get you on, and keep you on, the right path with your online marketing.

Will they be the best resources and all-inclusive lists? No – no one can possibly evaluate every site in the biz, nor even the top few thousand. And exclusion from these lists doesn’t mean anything either – the choices are totally arbitrary, chosen by me personally from those I’ve found to be helpful or created for myself. And yes, where appropriate I’ll use my affiliate link to resources – I’m a marketer, remember? LOL But I do promise that no link will be included because of that – each will be given based on it’s merit as I see it.

So to get started today, here are 20 Internet marketing blogs and/or affiliate marketing blogs I suggest you keep an eye on in 2010. I’ve divided them into 3 categories (explained below) and ranked them by their current Google PageRank within each group. (I’ve included 2 of my blogs, hopefully based on merit, not personal bias.)

Group One:

• Blog: Internet Marketing
  • Blog Author: Doug Champigny
  • PageRank:* PR4
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Mike Paetzold Recommends
  • Blog Author: Mike Paetzold
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: WordPress Howto Spotter
  • Blog Author: Alex Sysoef
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Marketing Thoughts
  • Blog Author: Ken McArthur
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: The Internet Marketing University
  • Blog Author: Gina Gaudio-Graves
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Online Marketing Ideas & Techniques
  • Blog Author: Joel Osborne
  • PageRank:* PR2
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Training
  • Blog Author: Doug Champigny
  • PageRank:* PR2
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

• Blog: The Profit Shack
  • Blog Author: Shelby Carr
  • PageRank:* PR2
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: Yes
  • Sample Post

Group Two:

• Blog: Click Newz!
  • Blog Author: Lynn Terry
  • PageRank:* PR4
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Nicole On The Net
  • Blog Author: Nicole Dean
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Net Profits Today
  • Blog Author: Rosalind Gardner
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: Do Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

Group Three:

• Blog: ProBlogger
  • Blog Author: Darren Rowse
  • PageRank:* PR6
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: CopyBlogger
  • Blog Author: Brian Clark
  • PageRank:* PR6
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Entrepreneurs Journey
  • Blog Author: Yaro Starak
  • PageRank:* PR5
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: On Copywriting, Marketing & Life
  • Blog Author: Michel Fortin
  • PageRank:* PR5
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Marketing In A Minute
  • Blog Author: Marlon Sanders
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Mark Hendricks
  • Blog Author: Mark Hendricks
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Immortal Internet Marketing
  • Blog Author: Ross Goldberg
  • PageRank:* PR3
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: DTAlpha Talk Back
  • Blog Author: Stephen Pierce
  • PageRank:* PR2
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

• Blog: Internet Marketing Center
  • Blog Author: Jimmy D. Brown
  • PageRank:* PR2
  • Comment Status: No Follow
  • Comment Luv: No
  • Sample Post

How These Blogs Are Categorized

It is important to realize that the above groupings, and the order within each group, are NOT indicative of the importance of each blog to your Internet marketing or affiliate marketing success. No such ordering could be possible, as no one can predict what these Internet marketing bloggers will cover in 2010, and different information is of importance to each of us.

Instead, I’ve grouped them into a suggested ranking for leaving comments when you read each. Group 1 are blogs that give link love to your comment by disabling the NoFollow tag built into WordPress, plus some deep-linking love to your latest blog post’s permalink by enabling the CommentLuv plugin. Since these give the most in return for leaving your comments, I recommend commenting each time you read a new post on them.

Group 2 also has disabled their NoFollow tag to show you some love for commenting on their posts. The only thing that differentiates them from Group 1 is that they’re not (at the time of this post) using the CommentLuv plugin to also give a link to your latest post, but just linking to your blog’s home page. Commenting regularly on these blogs should be a part of your off-site SEO efforts too.

The bloggers in Group 3 also have great Internet marketing and/or affiliate marketing information to share with you, but at this point still have the NoFollow tag enabled, preventing your comments from helping in your SEO efforts. But just because you don’t get link love for search engine purposes doesn’t mean you won’t derive some targeted traffic from direct click-throughs, which you may well see from any of the blogs listed here. In general, when visiting these blogs I recommend commenting occasionally when a post is of particular use to you or leaves you with a question about the material covered.

A Few Caveats…

First up, recognize up front that this isn’t an exact science. For example, Google updates their PageRank as often as twice a day, bloggers may go off on a tangent or abandon their blogs, and no one can say for sure that these particular bloggers will always be the best source of information – I can only say these are the ones I count on for great info!

Similarly, exclusion from this list is by no means a comment on any other blog – there certainly are other great blogs I visit and comment on regularly. Bu then I have the time since I do this full time – since so many of my readers here are part-time Internet marketers and affiliate marketers, I’ve tried to provide a good representative selection while keeping it short enough the can easily visit each one at least once a week.

*About the Google PageRank shown for each site… As stated above, Google updates their PR rankings almost in realtime, so the listings shown are as of the date of this post, as reported by RealPageRank.com and will change often throughout the year, no doubt.

Google defines their PageRank Technology as follows:

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.

As such, it would seem that the link love from blogs with higher PR would benefit your SEO efforts more, although it’s also affected by factors like how many links are on the page, the relevance of that page’s content to your blog, etc. There are too many factors involved, just of those we know of, to try and formulate an exact listing, so only use PR as part of your own guidelines when considering your blog commenting strategies…

And finally, remember that every blogger on this list is a professional Internet marketer, affiliate marketer and/or blogger. You’re only hurting yourself if you try to post spam comments to try for the backlinks – not one of these blogs approves comments automatically, so your comment will be evaluated before being accepted or rejected – or marked as spam.

Besides, you’re hoping some of their readers will click through and visit your blog too, right? So make sure your comments are relevant and helpful – no other course of action will bring you traffic from people reading such professional blogs.

Start formulating your plans now to visit and read these 20 blogs regularly in 2010 – they’ll certainly add a LOT to our Internet marketing, affiliate marketing and blogging education!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing blogs, Internet marketing blogs, marketing blogs