Affiliate Marketing Simplified – Start an Easy Online Business

So you want to start an easy online business.

By far the simpliest (and maybe the most inexpensive) way to go is affiliate marketing.

Need an explanation of affiliate marketing?

Here you go . . .

Start an Easy Online Business – Affiliate Marketing Simplified Aka Affiliate Marketing For Newbies

If you want to start an easy online business OR you have been struggling with the best way to start an easy online business, take a long hard look at affiliate marketing.

Why?
It is the quickest path to start an easy online business. You make commissions from the products you drive traffic to.

The Goal
Affiliate marketing is NOT selling a product; it’s pre-selling a product and then driving internet traffic to a vendor sell page through a web site or web-site like tool.

The Process
There are three pieces of the affiliate marketing process for each product you pick – Build, Create Traffic, and Maintain/Tweak as follows:

BUILD
Find a product (ClickBank, linkshare, commission junction) you are familiar with and can write about intelligently.

Pick several low competition keyword phrases related to the product.

Construct a web site or Squidoo lenses (Squidoo.com) around the keywords.

CREATE TRAFFIC
Write articles or create videos to drive traffic to the landing pages (some directories will not let use a direct link to a vendor) or to the vendor sell site.

Participate in forums and social networks (YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) to build traffic. Use your signature to link to your web site. If you blatantly promote an affiliate product, you will turn off or be thrown out of forums.

MAINTAIN/TWEAK
Check statistics to determine which articles are generating the most traffic and figure out why. If you need more traffic and ultimately clicks to the web site/ lenses or vendor sell page, write more targeted articles/videos.

This article presents an overview of the affiliate marketing process. You may need the “how-to” details. You can get them yourself online or use another method such as an Internet Marketing club or an affiliate marketing guru’s blueprint.

The How-To Details – Answer These Questions

Can you follow a simple affiliate marketing blueprint?

What IS a Squidoo Lens? And it costs absolutely nothing to build?

Back to Unemployee Status

Interesting – by an odd twist of fate, I managed to get a Technical Writing gig for a month.

Wow – it was great to work and get paid. Best job on earth – here’s what you need to do; now do it and let me know once in a while where you are, ’cause your deadline is 4-1.

But here’s the real news for this blog – the company I worked for froze jobs and released many contractors. At least in the state where I work (CT), business is lagging behind a few months. So, here’s this small business who’s just now reacting to the bad economy. And for the jobless, this is NOT good news. It just means that there’s a few more months of unemployment ahead while businesses catch up to the economic upturn (there is one underway, at least that’s the rumor).

And one more thought – in a recent phone call with a relative who’s about to lose his job in the banking industry, he relays a large piece of evidence about the law of attraction. The media is our own worst enemy. Bad economic news feeds a bad economy. Good economic news breeds a good economy.

So, let’s stop talking about unemployment and find a way to make money today!

Why Are So Many Americans Financially Dumb?

What does the title of this blog have to do with being an unemployee?

 

There is a connection – keep reading. It’s about responsibility. Who’s responsible for my current state of unemployment? Me. No one else.

 

It’s not the government’s fault or the bank executives’ fault for the global economic mess that caused this high rate of unemployment.

 

Where am I going with this responsibility theme. Here. With me and my fellow Americans. You know – the millions of financial dummies who ran up debt and bought way beyond their means.

 

So, if you refuse to look in the mirror for being an unemployee and chose to direct your anger elsewhere, look at consumers (and that should include you) for the main reason for the mess.

 

After all, who applied for the loans that went bad? Who ran up all that debt?

 

It all comes back to us average Americans. And that’s what hit me when I updated the following article originally written in 2004.

 

See what YOU think . . .

Why Are So Many Americans Financially Dumb?

Yeah, we are a nation of financial dummies. And yes, we can point fingers at the banks and the government for the current economic mess, but many people need to look in the mirror and take responsibility for their share of this fiasco.

Look at the evidence . . .   

 1.      Look at all the worthless get-rich schemes on the Net and TV. These ads exist BECAUSE people are buying.

 

2.      Watch the confused look on the cashier’s face when you hand over extra coins AFTER the register displays your change.

3.      Witness the people standing in line overnight for the privilege of “25% savings.” Aren’t they waiting to SPEND money?

 

Non-believer? Read These Statistics . . .

 

1.      According to fool.com, “68% PER CENT of graduating high school seniors surveyed by the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy FAILED a personal finance test.”

 

2.      The U.S. Public Interest Research Group states that “40 percent of college students are graduating with unmanageable levels of student loan debt, and half of those have an average credit card debt of $3000.”

 

3.      Near retirement age baby boomers have saved only 12% of what they think they will need for retirement.

 

Why Are Americans Financially Dumb?

 

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group attributes the debt issue to rising costs.

 

The deputy assistant secretary for financial education at the Treasury department testified before the House, ”The downstream, adult problems of rising bankruptcy rates, low savings rates and misuse of credit can all be traced upstream to how our schools FAIL TO adequately prepare children for their financial futures.”

 

So far, the reasons why we we’re financially dumb are because of rising costs and inadequate schooling. But clearly, these are not all the contributing factors…

 

There are other reasons, including the following:

 

1.      Math skills are declining. This is the author’s observation. It’s based on teaching high school math 30 years ago compared to teaching college-level math recently. Kids in the same area are less skilled than 30 years ago.

 

2.      Parents forget they are financial role models. They miss opportunities to develop their kids’ money smarts.

 

Consider a Solution You Can Control

 

Parents, consider this . . . your kids reflect your money habits, attitudes, and behavior.

 

What are YOU teaching your kids about money?

 

And one step before teaching your kids, what do you know about money?

 

Tips for Getting Out of the “Unemployee Rut”

A previous post defined the “unemployee rut.” This phenomenon occcurs after a few weeks of unsuccessful job hunting, couch potatoing, and generally feeling depressed.

Clearly, the situation requires diversionary efforts to relieve the boredom.

Here’s few simple activities that may help. The point is to take action so that your main objective - the job hunting game - eventually gets accomplished.

1) Walk out the door. Even if it’s 20 degrees outside, bundle up and walk (or run) for 15 minutes or so. You might think of something you missed in your resume.

2) Visualize. Turn off the PC, close your eyes, and visualize the perfect job –  where it will be, what you’ll be doing, how your co-workers will act, what you’ll get paid, etc. Do this one as often as possible. Focus on what you want, NOT what you don’t have.

3) Learn a language.  It can be fun and profitable – many job opportunities today (for example, customer service) require that you speak another language in addition to your native language).

4) Dust off the exercise equipment and use it!

5) Remember what hobbies you like and get re-involved. For example, if you’re an amateur photographer, take some pictures and post them on your Facebook account or sell them on the internet.

6) Clean up and paint the room that needs it the most. This could be a big project, so pace yourself!

7) Re-connect with the people in your social networks (Facebook, linkedin, myspace) – you never know who’ll connect you with your next job.

8) Read a book. Even if this sounds like a strange suggestion, reading a novel can take you to some other place for a while, and that can be a good thing!

These are just a few suggestions to change your routine. Job hunting can sometimes be as boring and fruitless as your former job may have been, so change up the activities as a diversion and to help you come up with new ideas.

Have a exciting day!

Top Tips for Finding “work at home” Jobs

Joining the ranks of the unemployed is truly a sobering experience. Unless your social networking produces miracles, you may be searching for a job for at least a few months.

Sooner or later during your job search, you may stumble on (or deliberately search for) a “work at/from home” job ad. Not surprising, these ads contain much of the same content. To get your attention, it promises large checks in the mail on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Pictures of the checks, elaborate homes, exotic vacation spots, and expensive cars clutter the ad. The ad usually claims that no selling is involved and if you pay out a small fee, you will reap huge rewards very quickly. Please note that the ad may NOT mention, even in summary format, how all of this will happen. Most of the time, you won’t know what product or service is involved. And also not surprising, there’s at least five “FREE gifts” to entice you to buy the product for sale in the ad.

Here’s the reality of these ads — if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. And from the lips of Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own,” “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Many of these ads have no substance, promise everything, and use greed as a major attraction. After you read a few of them, you wonder if these writers copied from the same letter and changed a few details to suit their own businesses. Do they think readers are that dumb?

And where do the testimonials come from? Where are the real names so that you can contact them? Can you really find “Mary D.” from Atlanta Georgia to ask her a few questions?

So what’s the message here? Here are a few summary thoughts as follows:

* If you do the research, most of the work at home opportunities do not deliver the promised results.

* Google “best work at home jobs” or a similar search term and sift through the reviews to find the legit ones.

* The ads associated with work at home opportunities assume the average reader is a partner in the “Dumb and Dumber” duo and will fall for the greed routine one more time. The writers of these ads need to find another angle.

* Make sure you can contact real people who have tried the work at home job.

* Make sure you know something about the product/service. For example, do you really want to be selling real estate or snake oil in this environment?

* If you decide to try one of these work at home jobs, check out the seller as best you can via the Better Business Bureau or searching for customers who may have tried the product/service. Note the often-offered “money-back guarantee” may not be legit.

Happy job-hunting!

Beware Craigslist Bogus Job Openings

Sooner or later, an umemployee hears about the alleged benefits of craigslist.org where you can look for jobs, sell items, post a resume, and advertise services in local cities.

About job searching on craigslist – I don’t know the percentages, but there appears to be a bogus job opening scam and it’s been around for a while.

Here’s how it goes -
1) You carefully respond to what looks like a legit job opening, spending about 10 – 15 minutes writing an email reply with the required opening statement and imbedded resume.
2) You receive an email (sometimes several) thanking you for your posting and explaining that the company you’re applying to has a new policy about job submissions. In short, your original 15 minutes is wasted and you must go through a series of customer ads to get to the “real” job submission button. You scroll through a whole mess of ads, wasting another 15 minutes.

Funny thing, though, there is no “real” job submission button and you are now the proud owner of a multitude of popup ads and Publisher Clearing House emails.

Lovely – you wasted half an hour you could have been searching the job sites that deliver results – company sites, monster, careerbuilder, and indeed.com.

So, in summary, you have no way of knowing which craigslist ads are bogus and which are legit.

But job hunting is a numbers game to get an interview, so if you’re going to use the Internet, use the generally accepted sites. And go to job fairs – early. And network with your employed friends, on the social network sites, and with the dentist, doctor, hair dresser, barber, and the supermarket deli person. Face it – it’s socially acceptable to be unemployed and looking for a job.

Happy job hunting – and remember to greet the postperson at the mail box – he/she broadcasts almost as effectively as a resume blast on the web!

New Unemployees – getting out of a rut

Today’s issue – getting out of the “unemployee” rut.

Getting into a boring routine happens slowly and gradually and it happens to the best of unemployees. You’re tired of looking for jobs, going to interviews for deadend jobs, watching endless TV shows, and bothering your friends who have jobs. You get out of bed (late sometimes), wear the same clothes every day, go showerless for days, munch constantly, and forget to comb your hair. And every week you have to fight the phone or Internet crowds to file for unemployment. Wonderful reminder of your situation! Whoops! This sounds a lot like depression!

And you very well may be depressed. Worrying about the lack of money, bored beyond tears, and facing another day of rejection perpetuates feeling of helplessness.

I won’t pretend to be a therapist, but I am an expert at being unemployed, so once you recognize the fact that you’re in a rut, think about this – do you want to get out of it and join the living? Face it – you may be rewarded for looking and sounding like a candidate for a mental institution. If you continually talk (or think) about how bad it is, it won’t get any better! This is NOT New Age psychobabble, but instead, the Law of Attraction – you longer you think and talk bad thoughts, the more bad thoughts you generate. Like the experts say, “It’s LAW.”

And forget about the “I am a victim” syndrome. Look in the mirror and ask, “Who took the job you lost?” and “Who picked the the industry that dumped thousands of people into the jobless ranks?”. YOU DID. “They” dumped the jobs because it’s makes business-sense to do so. “They” may have dumped you because you weren’t in a position that was making someone money. Yeah, maybe “they” came up with a bunch of lies about your performance to justify your layoff status.  So what – you know the truth. It’s not personal, it’s business.

The first step in getting out of a rut is to be AWARE of the fact that you’re in one.  You may not have realized it until now. Ask someone who knows your behavior very well and who will be honest.

 The next step is to WANT to re-enter the world of the living. Once you put out a few thoughts about wanting to feel better, they’ll multiply. Exponentially. And then the actions follow.

If you find you can’t come up with an action for you – think stress management. After all, you are stressed and even more than you may realize! What can you do to forget about being unemployed? Here’s a suggestion – find some relaxing music (YouTube has plenty) and zone out with some earphones. It’s welcome relief from the boredom!

More actions to come . . .

New Unemployees – your significant other

What will happen to the dynamics of your relationship with your significant other should you become an unemployee?

If you are both unemployees, it could be interesting. Either you will comtemplate murder within the first week, or you’ll get closer.  There’s really no in-between.

If you’re the only one unemployed, count on new expectations for running errands, preparing meals, household chores, yard work, shopping, waiting for repair personnel, yada, yada, yada. After all, the lucky one with the job is now the master, and you, the unemployee, are well, you’re no longer the master of your own destiny.

Keep looking for that perfect opportunity (spelled J  – O – B) to establish relationship equality!