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  1. How to invest now for future profits

    28.Feb.08, 23:46 EST
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    I've owned several businesses over the last 30 years, and I've learned what it takes to build a business that earns a profit. So, I understand that I have to invest work, time, and money now in order to get a future, larger return. It doesn't always work, but I've been successful more often than not.

    That said, I think it is unrealistic to expect someone with no knowledge of marketing, advertising, and building a business to "get" the SFI opportunity quickly. A great resource for these new business owners (or experienced business owners, for that matter) is Cashflow Quadrant, by Robert Kiyosaki. It helped me.

    When I read it a couple of years ago, I started understanding the huge differences between the left side of Kiyosaki's quadrant (employee and self-employed) and the right side of the quadrant (business owner and investor).

    Employees and self-employed people trade time for money on a more or less static ratio that only changes if they get a raise, charge more per hour or per project, or find a way to reduce expenses. If you work, you earn a certain amount, generally several dollars per hour.

    On the other hand, business owners and investors learn how to concentrate their efforts and money up front, receiving a larger return in the future as their investments are leveraged and compounded.

    For example, as the owner of a marketing business run almost entirely online, I'm earning money for things I did last week, last month, and even several years ago, because I invested the time, effort, and money over time in the past. As a result, today I have several income streams that provide 100% of my income, letting me work from a cabin in the mountains about 100 miles from the nearest traffic jam. I really do earn while I sleep!

    The patience required to keep building and looking for potential comes from my experience of building and owning past businesses and watching, over time, as my income from my marketing business continues to grow. Without that experience and an ever-changing mindset, I would have bailed out a long time ago because I didn't see the big picture and couldn't understand the potential.

    As SFI sponsors, our challenge is to find a way to pass along some of this knowledge and experience to our affiliates who have a dream of building a home business but lack the knowledge and skills to make it happen—joining SFI and promoting EyeEarn comes darn close.

    You also have to have faith and hope that your efforts will be rewarded. I decided that my marketing business won't fail. It has to succeed because that is the only outcome I will accept. That gives me the fortitude to weather problems and find ways around obstacles that would have otherwise defeated me several times over the last few years. In fact, I now earn more in one month than I did in my first two years, and it continues to grow. There are occasional downturns and some really horrible months now and then, but overall, the trend is upward.



    From: John Dilbeck
    NORTH CAROLINA, USA

  2. How to help your new affiliates get started right

    28.Feb.08, 23:43 EST
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    I have no secret to success, and I am willing to share my methods with anyone...One thing I have come to learn pretty quickly is that what you put in your welcome message can make a HUGE difference.

    My welcome message is short and sweet. I introduce myself as the new affiliate's sponsor, include a link to the SFI Getting Started page and, most importantly, my e-mail address, and ask the affiliate to contact me. I have found that about one in 20 will reply to me with an e-mail. Once the affiliate actually gets in touch, I don't mention anything about upgrading. Instead, I build a relationship with my affiliates by passing along various important links and working with them to get started right. I also occassionally offer a gift certificate as an incentive to take action.

    I feel that working with my affiliates and helping them get started is more important than worrying about whether they are going to upgrade. Once they get started and find out more about SFI, they see the benefits for themselves and often decide to upgrade on their own.

    If you are getting no repsonse from your current affiliates, you may want to change your stategies. Take a good look at your welcome message, change your priorities, and concentrate on helping your people get started. Also, join some advertising sites so you can offer your affiliates places to start advertising right away. Remember, many people who join have no experience with anything like SFI, and tips for ad resources, etc. will be very appreciated.


    From: Paula Suddaby
    BRIGG, UK

  3. FREE ADVERTISING STRATEGIES - PART 2

    26.Feb.08, 08:10 EST
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    WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

    In this lesson, we will discuss in more detail the process of finding effective places to place free ads. If you have not already done so, please read Lesson 23 first. Lesson 23 covers the preparations you need to make before placing fee ads.

    IT'S A CONTINUING PROCESS

    Recall from our last lesson that finding locations to place free ads is a continuing process. The Internet is not static. The Internet changes every day. Sites that may work for you for a while may lose their effectiveness. New sites with lots of potential are published all of the time. The more practice you have looking for sites, the more efficient you will become with the process. It is a fun and exciting process if you accept the challenge and apply a little creativity to it.

    ONE MORE TIME

    Let me also say this one more time (because it is so important). Do not just look for a list of sites that someone else is using. Like the blackberry bushes from the last lesson or a good fishing hole, a good free ad site only works when a few people use it at a time. Learn the process to find your own free advertising sites.

    In fact, I would suggest this: Go ahead and find all the lists of free ads sites you can find. Talk to everyone and get all their suggestions and add them to your list as well. Search for "free classifieds" on a major search engine and write down all the links that show up on the first three pages. Then use this list as a list of places NOT to place ads on at first! (You will eventually want to place ads on some of these sites, but make it a point to not do so at first.)

    Why do I make such an outrageous suggestion? Two reasons. First, I suggest this because it will save you a great deal of time in your searching process. If you see that you have found one of these recommended sites, move on. You are not there to be searching for the obvious. You are there to be searching for the hidden treasure. This will help to keep the process moving quickly for you. Secondly, I suggest this because it will save you frustration and maybe even save you from giving up on affiliate marketing altogether. Far too many people spend countless hours posting to these obvious and frequently listed free ad sites. Then, after those long hours of work, they become discouraged when the ads produce no results. They decide that affiliate marketing doesn't work and they quit. I don't want that to happen to you. I want you to post your first few ads on effective sites, so you will know that affiliate marketing does work. It will take a little more time to find these sites, but you will save that much time and more in the time spent posting ads.

    OK, OK, OK! SO WHAT IS THE PROCESS?

    The way most people approach the process is to use the Search Engines.

    If you are an advertiser, you have a product or service to sell or you are attempting to recruit people to your affiliate program. We will discuss the products or services later and focus now on recruiting affiliates.

    In SFI, the primary method of recruiting new affiliates is by offering free information. In the process of receiving that free information, the prospects are given an opportunity to sign up for the SFI affiliate program. The ads that you have available from SFI are good at presenting the free information in an attractive way. Your job is to get those ads in front of live humans beings--but not just any human beings. You will prefer to get your ad in front of those people who have a pre-existing interest in starting their own home-based business or joining a multi-tier affiliate program. You can use the Search Engines to find the Websites that these people may be visiting.

    Many affiliates, in searching for sites to place free ads, just search for "home-based business," "work at home," "work from home," or similar key phrases. This works to a certain extent. It is better to be a bit more creative, however. Try to think of search terms that are not quite as obvious, but are still likely to be used by your target market. Then, search for these phrases on the major search engines and look for places to place free ads.

    BEWARE OF THE BLACK HOLE

    Before we go any further, however, let me make this important point. The Internet can be a black hole that consumes all your time if you do not approach it with discipline. If you do not have a definite plan and stick to it relentlessly, you will soon be lost somewhere out in cyberspace, not even remembering what you were trying to do. When you search for ad sites, stay focused. Keep your objective constantly in mind. You are looking for Websites which allow free ads to be posted. Move through the results of your searches quickly and do not allow yourself to be distracted. Since you, yourself, are interested in the subject of home business and affiliate programs, it will be tempting to turn this time into browsing time. Don't do it. During this time you are not there to learn or to find new opportunities or to sign up for traffic generation programs. Save that for later. For now, you are looking for free ad sites--and that is all that you are doing.

    Only go through the first three or four pages of the results for any search. Move through the results quickly. Look first at the links on the site, not the content. Free ads are almost always in the form of classifieds or FFA (add your link) pages. If you don't see a "classifieds" link, a "list your program" link, a "post your URL" or similar link on a Website, move on quickly.

    It's OK to follow other links from these sites for your stated purpose of finding good free ad sites. (In fact, many of the good new sites may not have made it into the search engine rankings yet, but have been noticed and linked to Webmasters of some of the established sites.) The point is, if you do follow a link, do so for the purpose of evaluating the linked-to site as a free ad site. Look at the links on this site for "classifieds," etc. Do not get bogged down reading and evaluating new programs and products on these sites. If you do, you will lose focus on what you are trying to accomplish.

    FOLLOWING THE RULES

    A common obstacle is that many sites allow you to submit for "possible inclusion" and have very strict and sometimes complicated rules about the types of submissions they will accept. Let me give you an example.

    Using the search phrase "my own home business," I searched on Google. It didn't lead to anything promising until the third page where I encountered a link that led to a page with a "Submit Your Home Business" link. Problem was that right on the form it stated that you must own all the rights to the information that you were submitting and the Website you listed. Since I don't own all rights to the SFI furnished ads or the SFI Gateways, I could not have used this site if I did not have my own domain name and my own personally created ads for my own domain.

    Some of the sites get pretty tedious with their rules and restrictions. For each site, you have to make a judgment whether it is appropriate to post your ad there and whether it is even worth the trouble to read and learn their rules and fill out their complicated forms.

    It is a good idea to take notes as you go through the process. If a site looks like it might be promising but is too tedious in its rules and forms, jot down the URL and perhaps come back to it later. The point is to keep the process moving.

    Another obstacle is that many sites will allow you to add your URL, but require a reciprocal link in return. Many require a special button or banner be displayed on your site and in a certain way. If you are just using SFI Gateways, you cannot add links to your site. Even if you have your own Website, you could not use very many of these because you would not have room for all the buttons and banners at the places they required them to be placed on your site. You want to keep control over the design of your own site. You definitely do not want it cluttered with all these buttons and banners to other sites. So, these sites you must also pass over, just making a note that it might be worth coming back for a second look later.

    (Reciprocal links are a good idea, but they must be done in the right way. Only agree to reciprocal links when you can put the other site's link on your "Links" page--as opposed to your home page. Searching for reciprocal link sites is a different process from searching for free ad sites, though. Don't try to do both at the same time--other than making quick notes if you find something promising. Come back to it when you are searching for reciprocal link sites.)

    Here's a tip that will save you some time: Many of the classified sites are just front ends for a limited number of back-end classified databases. That is, there are a few companies that provide the opportunity for Webmasters to include classified ads on their Websites. The sites are customized by each Webmaster and look to be part of their own Website, but in fact they just tie into the classifieds database of the providing company. When you post to one of these sites, your ad will show up on all of them. So, there is no need to post on the other Websites that use the same database. To determine if this is the case, look for a "powered by" or similar graphic on the classified site. If you find one, you can see the ultimate database in which your classified will be posted. When you see this same "powered by" graphic on other sites, you do not need to post there also.

    Yet another catch to this process is that many sites limit the free listings to "non-commercial" ads. The notion is that if you are advertising a yard sale or trying to sell your old guitar online, it's OK to post for free. If you are an affiliate selling Internet Service or Cell Phones or recruiting other affiliates, it will be considered "commercial." You can often get around this problem if you have your own Website and advertise it as providing free information.

    COMING UP WITH SEARCH TERMS

    Now back to the task of coming up with Search terms to use to find effective free ad sites.

    A friend of mine recently decided to look for ways to work from home. Without my knowledge, she spent three days searching on the Internet for opportunities to work from home. When I found out about this, I inquired as to how often she had seen the SFI opportunity and what she thought of it. To my surprise, she said she had not seen a single SFI site!

    This clearly tells me that the Internet is NOT saturated with SFI affiliate advertisements. Indeed, us old-timers are slacking! Some affiliates, who keep looking in the same old places over and over again, believe that the opportunity is saturated. The Internet is bigger than we think it is. It is so vast that it truly boggles the mind to try to comprehend it. The Internet changes every day. There is still plenty of opportunity for the new SFI affiliate--as my friend's search proved.

    The task of coming up with search terms to use in searching for free ad sites is simply this: Put yourself in the shoes of someone like my friend. Try to figure out the terms she was using in the search engines. Then use those terms and find sites that allow free ads. Upon further questioning, my friend told me that, for the most part, she approached her search in this fashion: She used terms describing her office skills and looked for jobs or employment opportunities that would allow her to work from home. She had not really contemplated starting her own business or taking up affiliate marketing, but she was open to the idea.

    On this point, it is important that you not misrepresent what you have to offer, either by the wording of your ads or by the placement of your ads. Some people want a job where they will be paid for their time--and that is all they want. They are not interested in a business opportunity, even when there is no financial investment required. We should not slow these people down in their searches with our ads for business opportunities or affiliate programs by disguising our ads as job openings. That is neither ethical nor fair to these people looking for jobs. But, there are areas where these searches overlap and if your ad is honest about what you have to offer, it can be useful to you and to the people searching.

    Here's another angle. Many SFI affiliates think of SFI as a home business, which it is, of course. But that business is in large part an Internet affiliate program. People who are looking for profitable affiliate programs (who do not really even think of it as a "home business") would be great additions to your SFI team. They may be searching for affiliate programs offering specific products. They will include the product type in their search terms--along with such terms as "affiliate program" or "reseller" or "partner program." (For example, a search that I just performed for "nutritional supplements reseller programs" yielded a promising place to put a free link and took me less than ten minutes to find. )

    There are many other angles. Be creative! Put yourself in the shoes of people you want on your team who may be searching the Internet. Think of the search terms they may be using. Use those same terms to search for free ad sites.

    NOT JUST THE SEARCH ENGINES

    Lesson 3 of this course points out ways, other than the search engines, that people use to find sites on the Internet. For example, go to the very popular Websites and follow links from their pages that may lead you to relevant sites. Use this method of searching for free ad sites also.

    LEADING WITH THE PRODUCTS

    In addition to building your team of affiliates, your ultimate task is to sell products. This can also be done with free ads. In this case, you put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for the product that you have to sell. Or better yet, put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for information about products in this category. Come up with terms that they will be using on the search engines to search for information or products. Then, search those same terms looking for classifieds or other free ads sites to place your product specific ad. When you begin to make retail sales of the products, you know you are on your way to success.

    CONCLUSION

    Finding locations on which to place free ads is a continuing process. Nothing worthwhile is entirely easy, but it can be a fun and rewarding process if you apply a little creativity. Put yourself in the shoes of people you are trying to reach. Anticipate what they will search for on the search engines. Search with those same terms and look for sites that allow you to place free ads. Stay focused and keep the process moving. Keep notes of anything interesting you find that would be too time consuming now and come back to it later. Look at the links on sites for an indication whether they allow free advertising. Do not confuse free ads with reciprocal links--they are somewhat different animals. In coming up with search terms to use, be creative and use your imagination.

    WHAT'S COMING NEXT

    Stay tuned to upcoming lessons in the Internet Income Course for detailed discussions of timely and important topics in Internet Marketing.

    by George Little
    Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
    License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without written permission of the author.


    http://www.ezinfocenter.com/9917138/VNU

  4. FREE ADVERTISING STRATEGIES - PART 1

    26.Feb.08, 08:08 EST
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    WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

    In this lesson, we will cover the preparation required for placing free ads on the Internet. We touched on some of the free advertising strategies is Lessons 4 and 5 of this online course. In this lesson, we will take a more in-depth look. In our next lesson, we will discuss in more detail the process of finding effective places to advertise.

    FREE ADVERTISING DOES WORK

    People come to Affiliate Marketing from many different circumstances. While the fortunate have substantial money to invest in building their new business, some have no money to invest at all. (I recall one SFI affiliate from the SFI Discussion Board who was homeless. He would go to the public library to access the Internet everyday in order to work his SFI business.)
    As with all things, the more you have to invest, the easier and quicker it will be for you to build your business. But, affiliate marketing, especially with the SFI Marketing Group, can be done successfully without any financial investment, if you must approach it that way.

    Even if you do have money to invest in paid advertising, you should learn the ropes of free advertising. The learning experience is valuable and will help you be more efficient with paid advertising. Also, learning the ropes of free advertising will enable you to teach your team members who do not have money to invest in advertising.

    FOUR ELEMENTS OF AN ONLINE ADVERTISING STRATEGY

    Online advertising strategy involves four elements. You need an ad. You need a URL (Website address) or an e-mail address to which the ad will point. You need to be prepared for the posting process. And, you need a location to place the ad.

    PICKING YOUR AD

    SFI Affiliates can obtain approved ads from the Marketing Aids link on the SFI Resource Center site (http://www.sfimg.com). You should use only these approved ads if they are pointing directly to your SFI Gateways or if your ads mention SFI by name. If your ads are pointing to your own Website and do not mention SFI, you are free to create your own ads.

    POINTING YOUR AD

    With respect to the URL to which your ads will point, all SFI Affiliates are furnished several Gateway sites upon signing up for SFI. A few of the gateways are used to sign up new affiliates on your team. Others are for selling specific SFI products and services. For example, at the time of this writing, the "SIM" and "FREE" gateways are used to sign up new affiliates. The "GD" gateway is used to sell the domain name registration service. The "LD" gateway is used to sell SFI's long distance service. The "ISP" gateway is used to sell dial-up Internet access service. The "IAHBE" gateway is used to sell memberships to the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs. And there are others.

    If allowed at the location where you place your ads, your ads can point directly to these furnished gateway URLs. Many of the ad sites, however, ban the large affiliate programs such as SFI (due to sheer volume), and you will need to have your own Website or doorway page for the ad to point to. (You then put the gateway links are on your own site and people who respond to your ad can access them there.)

    The other possibility is to use an e-mail address in an ad, rather than have the ad point to a Website. Many people suggest that using an "autoresponder" e-mail as the pointer in your ad is the most effective way to go.

    You should not just use an ordinary e-mail address, however. Most of your responses to an e-mail address in an ad will be insincere. It is very common, when you use free advertising, to receive numerous e-mail responses to the effect of "I saw your add and see that you are interested in making extra income. I would like to talk to you about that." Such responses are nothing more than someone trying to get you to join their program. These e-mails, which are automatically generated, really are not interested in information about your program. Thus, your ad needs to point to a Website where the serious responders can sign up immediately or to an autoresponder that will automatically send them further e-mails pointing to your URL. Otherwise, you would have to work your way through all those e-mails to find those who are serious and then point them to your gateway manually.

    The argument for pointing to an autoresponding e-mail rather than a Website URL in your ad is based upon the fact that many people will not sign up on the first encounter with anything. People need time to mull it over in the back of their minds. Some studies suggest that it takes seven to 11 contacts before most people will commit to anything online. Setting up an autoresponder to send out seven to 12 messages over time increases the odds that someone will sign up.

    In my opinion, it is better to have your ad point to your own Website and then let the Website have a sign-up form for further contact--i.e. a newsletter or e-mail series--than to use an autoresponder in your ad. This reduces the odds of spam complaints and is a bit more professional manner of creating the additional contacts needed to achieve the signups. (I can't help but envision these autoresponding e-mails still triggering each other and still trying to convince each other to sign up for something long after the humans who set them up are dead and gone.) The more personal your communications, the more effective they will be.

    PREPARING FOR THE POSTING PROCESS

    Secondary E-Mail Address
    Whether your ad is designed to point to a URL or an e-mail address (autoresponder or not), all ad locations will require that you submit an e-mail address to the site host in order to post an ad. It is absolutely essential to obtain a secondary (often called "throwaway") e-mail address for this purpose. Posting ads will result in your e-mail getting farmed by the spammers and you will receive tons of spam. Do not expose your primary e-mail address to this! You can acquire e-mail accounts fairly easily these days from your ISP or from one of the free e-mail services, such as Yahoo! or Hotmail. You have to give an e-mail address to post ads anywhere, so create a new e-mail account just for this purpose.

    Physical Address And Phone Number
    Many sites also require you to give an address and phone number. Although these are "required fields" in the form to post the ad, many people get away with just typing "N/A" or similar text in these fields. There are ethical issues here that you will have to resolve for yourself. The ad posting service is being provided in exchange for your information. In a real sense, you become a lead for the host site. It would not be ethical to provide false information to acquire the service. Some people even set up secondary post office addresses and phone numbers (like the secondary e-mail) to avoid this ethical problem. Others do provide their primary contact information and deal with any resulting telemarketing or junk snail mail as it arrives.

    Tracking System
    Also essential is to set up a tracking system. Tracking is crucial. Without it, you do not know which sites are working and which are a waste of time. At a minimum, each ad you place should have a tracking code in it that exclusively identifies the location you placed the ad. With some tracking systems, you can also code for the specific ad used, the date and time you placed the ad, and other variables. SFI provides keycoding to track your ads. The keycode consists of numbers, which you choose and place, preceded by a period, after your SFI ID in the SFI gateway URL you use in the ad. You will need to set up your own system of matching keycodes with locations. Be sure to record a keycode for each ad you place. Start a list of keycodes and the corresponding ad locations and keep the list safe and handy.

    For each advertising campaign, you will need to pick the gateway or Website that will be the target of your ad. Then you will need to pick the ad you will be using. Then you are off to find some places to post the ad. For each place you post, remember to keycode the ad's URL and record the location of your ad on your keycode list.

    PREPARING YOURSELF FOR THE QUEST FOR AD SITES

    The big issue is where to place the ads.

    Do not think of this issue as being one of acquiring a list of Websites from someone or someplace and then placing your ads on those Websites. It doesn't work that way, and I will explain why in a moment. Instead, you must think of it as a process. While others can't tell you where to place the ads, they can teach you the process of finding sites on which to place your ads.

    Let me make an analogy. Let's say that you are in a group of 15 people who are going blackberry picking. The field that you go to has more than enough blackberries for everyone. But, the bushes are spread out over a large area and each has only a few blackberries on it. It would make sense for everyone to spread out with much distance between each person and each go from bush to bush in their area picking the blackberries. What would not make sense would be for everyone to stay clumped in a group and, as soon as anyone found a bush, all 15 try to pick from the same bush at the same time. Only the first two of three people would get any blackberries and the other 12 or so people would only serve to be in the way and to stomp down the nearby bushes before anyone could pick from them.

    In a way, many of the Websites that accept free ads and are effective are like those blackberry bushes. They have a limited capacity to produce results. They only work for anyone because everyone is not posting there. No matter how unselfish affiliates who have found effective advertising sites may be, it is not in anyone's interest to publish the site on a list somewhere for all to use. That usually only serves to kill the sites effectiveness for everyone.

    So, your task is to learn the process to use to continuously find new and effective advertising sites. Some sites, while very effective at first, have a limited audience and thus a limited capacity to produce results for your ad. You will likely need to move from site to site as the sites' capacities are exhausted.

    The Internet is vast and constantly changing. New sites crop up all the time to replace the old ones as they lose their effectiveness. Thus, the process of searching for places to place your ads is a continuing process. Fortunately, it is also a very interesting and exciting process.

    CONCLUSION

    Free online advertising can work for affiliate marketers provided they are properly prepared and approach the process in the right way. To be prepared, you need to have an effective ad, you need a target URL to which the ad will point, and you need to be prepared for the posting process. This includes having a secondary e-mail account and a tracking system in place. Finally, you need to understand the process of finding effective locations to place your ads.

    WHAT'S COMING NEXT

    In our next lesson, we will discuss in more detail the process of finding effective free ad sites. In the meantime, it would be helpful for you to review lesson seven of this course, which introduces you to some of the concepts we will be addressing.

    by George Little
    Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
    License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without written permission of the author.

  5. BLOG

    26.Feb.08, 08:00 EST
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    WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

    In this Lesson you will learn about "Blogs." You will learn what they are and how you can use them to promote your affiliate program.

    EVOLUTION IN PROGRESS

    The Internet is constantly changing. A decade ago, there were resources called "WAIS" and "Gopher." "WAIS" was a precursor to the search engines and "Gopher" was a precursor to the World Wide Web. To chat back then, you needed to be familiar with numerous complicated IRC commands that you typed in from a command line prompt. Now most chats take place from a Web-based format and are very simple to use. A decade from now, without doubt, the Internet will, likewise, be something very different from what it is today.

    There are certain enduring principles that apply to the Internet, however. The "prime directive" of the Internet, so to speak, is that it is an information and communication tool. It was originally designed by, and intended to be used by, the military and research scientists. They used it to exchange highly technical information. Because of the highly technical nature of the Internet and the information it was used to communicate, a tradition of informality and personal expression evolved to soften the cold technical feel of it. That tradition can still be very much felt in the Internet today.

    "Blogs" are, in a way, both a step forward and a step back from today's Internet. Blogs, while appearing to be the latest fad, really resurrect in modern form an older, more traditional way of using the Internet to exchange information with a personal touch. Blogs, which are replacing static Websites on an increasing basis, are, in my estimation, an important evolutionary step in the development of the Internet. Blogs provide current information from a particular perspective. Blogs provide information in a format that easily integrates with other information from other perspectives. Over time, the Internet will do a progressively more efficient job of integrating vast and diverse information and perspectives into a seamless whole--a universal consciousness, if you will. Blogs are a step in that direction.

    WHAT ARE BLOGS?

    "Blog" is short for "Web log." A "Web log" is a log that is kept and shared on the World Wide Web. A "log" in its simplest form is a record of events in chronological order. Think of a ship's captain sitting down in his captain's quarters each evening and recording the progress of the ship's voyage and the events which have affected that voyage. Each entry has a date followed by the events and progress since the last entry. That is a log. A "Web log" or "Blog" is similar. It records events and points to sources of information about those events. It is chronological, usually with the latest entries on top and prior entries below.

    Many Blogs are political. For example, when the United States recently sent military troops to Iraq, I followed the events on an hour-by-hour basis by frequently visiting two or three Blogs that dealt with the events in progress. I had my choice of Blogs written from a perspective that favored the military action to those that were highly critical of it. Those on one side of that issue thought that certain events and information were very important, while those on the other side of that issue thought other events and information were very important. The people publishing these Blogs were online full-time, scouring each news release and each source of information and summarizing it from their perspective on their Blog. From these Blogs, I was able to obtain an in-depth understanding of current events from all perspectives as they occurred. I could not have done this from television, radio, or even newspapers--at least not in such a timely and efficient manner.

    Blogs can be and have been used for many other subjects as well. Regardless of the subject, to be true to the nature of a Blog, the entries should be chronological and event oriented. They should contain links to each original source of the information that is being summarized. Within these parameters, however, Blogs can deal with any type of subject and express any perspective.

    CAN BLOGS BE USED IN E-COMMERCE?

    Blogs can also be used in e-commerce. An important characteristic of a Blog in this context is that Blogs, like discussion boards and chat rooms, bring visitors back to your site over and over again. Blogs, if done well, create an audience that will return repeatedly. Blogs help to create a relationship between you and the visitors to your Website.

    Repeat visitors who develop a relationship with you through your Website are exactly what you want in order to succeed in e-commerce.

    Blogs also tend to do well in search engine ranking because they are information driven. As we have said repeatedly in this course, search engines like Websites with unique and useful information. Blogs are a way to provide unique and useful information. By leading with this information, you can then offer your visitors opportunities, products, and services.

    MECHANICS OF PUBLISHING A BLOG

    While there are services available that will publish your Blog for you, Blogs are really quite simple to publish yourself. If you have your own Website, you can just add a page to your existing Website and use this page for your Blog. Simply format this page into a table or paragraphs with a date and caption line above each entry. Add new entries at the top of the page. That's really all there is to it.

    For example, Profitpropulsion.com RocketStart customers can use the dynamic page that is available in their template for a Blog, if they want. Any Web page that you can update can easily be made into a Blog.

    Blogs are more a matter of information than they are of design and formatting. Any page that has periodic entries of current information, with a date and caption line for each entry, is in fact a Blog.

    GETTING THE INFORMATION

    Publishing a Blog, however, will take an investment of time. What makes the Blog useful is that you are doing the research--finding the sources of information on your subject and summarizing them--so that your viewers can save time. You are also adding your unique perspective to the information. To keep visitors coming to your Blog, you will have to add entries often. You can get this information, especially news sources and announcement services--even other Blogs--on your particular subject by searching the Internet.

    It has been said that writing a book is just a matter of reading several other books and articles and then condensing that information and providing a new perspective. The same can be said for Blogs. There is so much information available today that few people have time to follow very many subjects with any depth. People prefer to find sources with whose perspective they identify and get their information on each subject from a limited number of sources. Visitors who share your perspective will be attracted to your Blog. The time you put in finding and summarizing the information will save your visitors time. You are providing them a service which saves them time and effort.

    USING BLOGS TO SELL

    Because you are providing a useful service to your visitors, they will develop trust in you. If you prove worthy of that trust, this relationship will build. A relationship of trust is the most important element in marketing. If your visitors trust the research and the summaries in your Blog, they will also trust your recommendations for opportunities, products, and services.

    Try to incorporate your affiliate links into the text of your Blog entries. It's OK to have banners and buttons in the margins of your Blog page, but the textual links in text of the entries, in context with the other information, are the ones that will really produce results. If your visitors are interested in the text of your Blog entries, that interest will flow over to your affiliate links.

    Do not force the affiliate links into your context. Opportunities will arise to place the links naturally into the flow of the content. Wait for these opportunities rather than forcing links in awkwardly. Your Blog will lose credibility if there are too many affiliate links or if they are forced into the content rather than flowing naturally from the content.

    It should be noted that Internet purists do not believe that Blogs should contain any commercial content or links. That is well and good, but it ignores the fact that the publisher is expending time and effort, as well as incurring costs, in publishing the Blog. It is important that the information remain objective--not just be commercial hyperbole--in order for the Blog to be trustworthy. If a Blog proves to be generally trustworthy, however, most Internet users will not object to appropriately placed affiliate links that naturally flow from the content of the entries.

    AN EXAMPLE

    Nutrition and health is a subject that interests many people worldwide. New studies about how various foods and chemicals affect our health are constantly being released. One thing I have noticed consistently is that you rarely see anyone attempt to integrate all these studies into a comprehensive common sense approach to diet, nutrition, and health. Instead, most writers and reporters just take the latest study and come up with recommendations based solely on the results of that one study.

    I remember Jimmy Buffet (a singer and songwriter whose hits include "Cheeseburger in Paradise") saying once that if he lived long enough, someone would come up with a study showing that cheeseburgers were good for you. A few years later, a study was indeed released showing that cheeseburgers did help somewhat to prevent certain rare types of cancers.

    The point is that there is no shortage of studies coming out and the results are often quite diverse and even sometimes contradictory. A Blog summarizing health and nutrition studies as they are released, as well as covering new diets and new nutrition products, would be an excellent tool to sell SFI's nutritional supplements. People frequenting such a Blog, being health conscious, would have an interest in these products.

    If an SFI affiliate were to publish such a Blog, he or she could become familiar with the ingredients in SFI's nutritional supplements. Each time a study came out referring to one of those ingredients, he or she could mention, in context of summarizing the study, that SFI's product contained that ingredient. This way, the affiliate could include in-context links to the sales page of these products. This could prove to be a very powerful selling technique.

    CONCLUSION

    The emergence of Blogs as a new form of Internet publishing is exciting for a number of reasons. Blogs, by providing a form of expression that easily integrates with other sources and other perspectives, marks an evolutionary step in the progress of the Internet. Blogs, when used properly, can be an effective e-commerce tool. Appropriately placed affiliate links, flowing from the context of the Blog entries, can be a powerful marketing tool.

    WHAT'S COMING NEXT

    Stay tuned to upcoming lessons in the Internet Income Course for detailed discussions of timely and important topics in Internet Marketing.

    by George Little
    Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
    License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without written permission of the author.