Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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Affiliate Marketing Myths — Myth 2: It’s Best to Start with a Crash Course

Filed Under Guest Writer, Marketing, Successful Blog | 3 Comments

In this time of a down economy, who couldn’t do with another income stream? Those of who’ve been online for a few weeks or longer, realize that not every offer of income potential is quite what it seems to be.

James Nardell and his team at Shopster have been writing a series on myths bloggers have about affiliate marketing. This is the second in that series to help us all avoid some potholes on the information highway. (Does anyone still call it that?)

Myth 2: It’s Best to Start Affiliate Marketing with a Crash Course
A Guest Post by Raymond Lau

Is a crash course from a leading affiliate the best way to ramp up fast on affiliate marketing techniques?

Sort of. When looking for a crash course in affiliate marketing, the key words are “buyer beware”. While it is entirely possible to learn good fundamentals from a beginner’s course, there are many resources out there that are either misleading, out of date, or entirely loony.

A misleading technique is one that worked for someone, once, under circumstances they either cannot reproduce or cannot adequately expand. Avoiding this is as simple as doing your homework: look back at the history of the technique itself, and who is presenting it. The best business is built upon a stable foundation that can adapt to changes in the market. Learning the processes and habits of a fluke will only lead to troubles down the road.

An out-of-date technique is just as useless to you when starting out. Changes in affiliate marketing happen all the time, and as a beginner you simply cannot afford to start your business without a step ahead of the competition. Why even bother entering the race in the middle of the pack, where business winds down to the lowest bidder? Affiliate marketing is about innovation.

Of course, among the throngs of dead ends there are some shining examples of solid, easily-accessible courses from people who know what they’re doing. They’re not that hard to find (hah, they’d better not be!) and it takes virtually no time to get started with their guides.

Some are free, like the “Affiliate Masters” guide by Ken Evoy (http://aff-masters.sitesell.com/AffMasters.pdf) which thoroughly covers the potential beginning of your affiliate marketing life and provides a wealth of links to other solid resources.

Others, such as the Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook by James Martell, or Rosalind Gardner’s How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online, require an up-front investment but come with backup support and counseling by the authors themselves, allowing for a much more personal experience that may more thoroughly ingrain the fundamentals.

Whether you go for the free route or decide to pay for the information, there are three simple questions to ensure that what you’re learning will help you and your business:

1. Does it suit you? Look into the history of who is teaching and what they are saying. Make a judgment on whether or not what they’re teaching can be adapted to the markets you want to enter.

2. Is it stale? It’s one thing to learn a stable set of basics, and another entirely to clog your brain with dated information that has been reworked and improved upon since it first came out. Research the techniques offered to confirm they’re still relevant to today’s market.

3. What do you expect? Just because the course you’re taking promises to teach you the solid how-tos of affiliate marketing, don’t go in thinking you’ll get rich quick. By now you should know that “instant profit” is only made by people taking advantage of others who are looking for it.

–Resource box–
Raymond Lau is a marketing analyst for Shopster.com — a company that provides Web sellers with a dropship product source and e-Commerce storefront tools to build their online business. Shopster gives retailers and affiliates access to over 1 million products they can sell on auction sites or their own storefront. You can reach him at rlau@shopster.com.
_______________

Thanks, James and Raymond!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Like the Blog? Buy my eBook!

Beach Notes: Take Time

Filed Under Guest Writer, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 3 Comments

Beach Notes by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel


Friday saw me driving 600 kilometers (372 Miles) returning home after a great week of creative inspiration.

Instead of staying on the highway I took one of the byways and stopped to view a spectacular waterfall, lunch by a river under a jacaranda and take photos along the way.

Driving from A to B

usually focussed

on the time to arrive

does not allow

for meandering

along a country road.

Time to take in

the beauty of nature,

a field of daisies

a powerful waterfall

time to chat to locals

at the Fusspots Cafe.


Time to stop,

enjoy a view

take some photos

have a coffee

watch the passing parade.

Be in the moment.

-Suzie Cheel

Do you sometimes take time to be in the moment and maybe even take that fork in the road?

You can view photos from my meanderings at Take Time gallery.

Beach Notes: Beach Meditation

Filed Under Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

Beach Notes by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

Each morning this week after our walk and swim I have been meditating.
Today as I sat on a rock and looked out at the clear blue sea, to the horizon these words formed.


Meditating sitting on

the sun warmed rock

At the place I call paradise

My feet resting

on the warm white sand

Listening to the sound of the sea

I feel connected  to the earth

To my soul

To my very being

                  (C)  Suzie Cheel  

How do you find you way to reconnect?

Image: Suzie Cheel

Little Haikus

Filed Under Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

Beach Notes by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

paradise_by_suzie_cheel
glad you like what
I have been writing
— think I like these —
what Des calls
little Haikus
-Suzie Cheel

What’s your experience of writing with so few words?

Image: Suzie Cheel

Affiliate Marketing Myths — Myth 1: Affiliate Marketing Is Easy

Filed Under Guest Writer, Marketing, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Recently, I got to know James Nardell of Shopster. We spent quite some time discussing his business and how it works. It’s an interesting model, but I have no tangible products to sell. However, James and his team are a wealth of information about work with affiliates. So I asked if his team would write a series of blog posts on myths and misconceptions bloggers have about affiliate marketing and how it works. This is the first in that series.

Myth 1: Affiliate Marketing Is Easy
A Guest Post by Raymond Lau

First off, no business is easy. If it were easy and you could make good money doing it, everyone would be doing it. Any successful business requires two things: hard work and risk.

In the early days of search marketing, affiliate marketing was a relatively easy and low cost technique for generating revenue. It was cheaper to buy traffic and easier to optimize rankings in Google. There were fewer rules to follow and Google wasn’t in competition with affiliates. Advertisers weren’t adopting search marketing tactics whereas affiliates were giving it a whirl.

“Affiliate marketing has evolved and it’s difficult for newcomers to jump in without any capital and start making money,” says Chris Finken of OrangeSoda — a successful affiliate and search marketing company.

Times have changed for the affiliate marketer, but search engines are still the best way for people to find what they’re looking for online. For the affiliate, traffic-generation techniques have been focusing blogging. “Blogs remain a popular tool for affiliate marketing ‘on the cheap’ “, Finken says. Still, he warns about no- or low-cost Web publishing tools.

Affiliate marketers can’t just set up junk blogs, plug them with poorly written (or completely spammy) content and expect to start generating leads. Think about it¦ If that’s all that was required, no one would hire affiliate marketers. Companies could easily do that themselves.

Blogs are spider food. They are constantly updated with targeted content. They are exactly what search engines are looking for. If affiliate marketers spend the time writing decent blog posts, optimizing them for keywords, focusing on some SEO tactics, they can generate visitor traffic.

To make money, prospective affiliate marketers have to consider four things:

The bottom line:
Marketers want affiliates to innovate into new distribution points that they don’t know about or cannot access. That can take time, money, and hard work.

–Resource box–
Raymond Lau is a marketing analyst for Shopster.com — a company that provides Web sellers with a dropship product source and e-Commerce storefront tools to build their online business. Shopster gives retailers and affiliates access to over 1 million products they can sell on auction sites or their own storefront. You can reach him at rlau@shopster.com.
_______________

Thanks, James and Raymond!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Like the Blog? Buy my eBook!

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