Monday, January 25, 2010

PotPieGirl is Awesome

One of the hardest things for people just starting out in affiliate marketing is learning the ropes.  You probably have questions like
  • What do I do first? 
  • Where do I start? 
  • What the heck is affiliate marketing anyway? 
  • Am I really going to be able to make money, much less earn a full-time income, just using my computer?
I will start by saying this: I myself am not at the level of a full-time super affiliate's income, reeling in tons of cash every day.  I am not making enough to quit my regular job.  But I am earning enough to pay for my side expenses and buy extra Christmas/birthday gifts I couldn't afford before. :)

When I was first starting out, though, I had no idea where to look.  And that is the case with many people new to making money online, whether it's affiliate marketing, online data entry, or anything else.  The scammers know that, and they're out there to prey on the uneducated.

That's where people like PotPieGirl come in.

PotPieGirl's whole claim is being an internet home mom who went from building her first website, having no clue what she was doing, to a very successful, 6-figure-earning internet marketer.  She runs a blog of informative posts, articles, videos, tutorials, and a whole wealth of useful information.

Here's the thing about PotPieGirl though: she's the real thing.  She talks about her life, how she learned, what she learned, and how learning it was possible to make money online changed things for her.  She writes useful, quality information that can be applied to all facets of making money online.  She also has a free guide on how to make good Squidoo lenses - which, for anyone without money to invest in advertising as an affiliate, are a great way to build organic, quality traffic to your sites.

PotPieGirl tells you exactly how she did it in One Week Marketing, which is probably the single best resource you can invest in if you're new to affiliate marketing.  So if you want a place to go to learn the ropes, visit her website and get One Week Marketing.

Disclaimer: PotPieGirl's strategies are tailored towards people who have to make something from nothing (i.e. don't have capitol to invest in affiliate marketing ventures from the start).  If you don't fall into this category, OWM won't be the best use of your funds.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Review of Maverick Money Makers

Straight up and simple review of the Maverick Money Makers system by Mack Michaels

Maverick Money Makers is a membership site/ecourse that teaches you how to make money online using websites.  They teach you how to promote various products (affiliate marketing), which means eventually you will be paying promotion costs.  Initially these are not much, but they will add up.  You can, however, also do free promotion methods like blogging and article marketing; it will just take more time to see your efforts pay off.

Here are the pros and cons of Maverick Money Makers.

Pros: 
  • Fast response team
  • Live phone support 
  • Tutorials on Adwords, classifieds, CPA vs. CPC affiliating, etc.
  • Hundreds of different tutorials; many of them are videos
  • Mindset Coaching audio files from successful marketers such as Mark Victor Hansen and Anthony Robbins
  • All ebooks and marketing materials are provided to you after you sign up
  • Refund time of 60 days if you aren't happy with the product

Cons:
  • Costs $97 to  sign up and $97 per month recurring 
  • Initial expenses necessary like domain name purchasing ($5-$15)
  • The cost of staying in the program is high, though most affiliate education programs like this charge a lot


Is it right for you? 

If you are serious about getting into making money online and want a good, solid program that will teach you how, Maverick Money Makers delivers.  Everything you need from the very basic starting tutorials to the actual websites and ebooks to promote is given to you in the $97 membership fee.  This system is essentially like an online degree program for affiliate marketing/online money making through websites.

Do not get Maverick Money Makers if you do not want to put work into making money online.  This program requires work to make it work.  The only way to get the full value of this course is to be prepared to invest at least 2-3 hours per day in website creation, promotion, and link-building. 

If you do want to read more about Maverick Money Makers, click here.

Monday, December 21, 2009

How Do I Choose an Affiliate Product to Promote?

The first step in your affiliate marketing career is to choose a product to promote. If the product you choose does not sell, you will not make money online. Here are some basic tips to choose an effective product you can promote in your affiliate marketing ventures.

First of all, you need to decide on a target market. Determining your target market will make it easier to decide what product you should promote. It is especially important to find a hungry market when finding affiliate products, because then you will have an easier time making sales. Registry cleaning for computers, console repair, home appliance repair, and other such common fixes are more likely to be successful in initial affiliate marketing ventures.

Secondly, you should sign up with some affiliate programs such as Clickbank.  Clickbank is an affiliate program that works with digital product vendors. It is very easy to get started promoting products here and that is why this is a good place to begin your affiliate marketing career. All you have to do to get started promoting products is to sign up, choose a category you are interested in promoting, and then set up a website, write articles, or use paid advertising to drive traffic to your website.

You can even have a free website through Google blogs, for example. Posting informative articles related to the product you're trying to promote will help your website rank higher in searches for the keywords around your website. Once you have earned some initial capitol throughout first few sales, you can invest in a domain name and hosting for a new website. This will allow you even more flexibility with your website.

Affiliate marketing is slightly more difficult to get into than other basic online money making resources, but if you treat it like a home business, you will very likely be successful.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Earning Cash and Making Money Online: Some Simple Ways

If you have a computer, you can make money on the internet.

That's a very simple concept, but many people fail at their attempts to make money online, whether because of lack of effort, resources, money, or just the right knowledge.  But it's actually very simple to make money online fast if you are willing to put work into it and can be patient enough to wait for the results of that work.

So what are some basic ways of making money online fast without needing to invest a lot of money?

1. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is quite simple to get started with, but rather difficult to do well.  Affiliate marketing is basically signing up with different retailers (digital products such as Clickbank.com, or real products through Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon.com, etc.) and then making websites, ads, and articles that link back to the retailers' sites.  When someone buys something through your affiliate link, you get a commission.

The trick to affiliate marketing is patience and hard work.  You have to pick a strategy and stick to it.  If you choose PPC (pay per click) marketing, you also need to be prepared to put money into your ads.  It also requires thorough research from the beginning.  This means knowing what keywords you need to rank for using Google Adwords Keyword Tracker, or the basic Wordtracker Keyword Tool.  Most of these are simple to use, and can be very helpful in showing you exactly what people in your niche are looking for.

2. Freelancing

Sites like Guru.com, Elance, and Getafreelancer.com are good starting points if you have a skill like writing, web design, SEO, or pretty much anything that can be used online.  People are always looking for freelancers to do dredgework for them, so sign up with a couple of these sites and start bidding.

These are really the main ways of making money online that are legitimate and reputable.  Surveys, get rich quick schemes, and the like are usually scammy and will either end up costing you money or just wasting your time.

The basic thing to remember is that making money online is a business.  Treat it like one, and you will reap greater rewards much faster.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Review of Maverick Coaching Cell Phone Cash

A lot of people are looking for ways to supplement and build a passive home income system.  There are tons of courses and ideas out there, many of which are scams, but there are also a lot of legitimate ones.  Maverick Coaching Cell Phone Cash is a program by the internet marketer Mack Michaels which teaches you how to create cell phone ads and then earn money from them.

The good


Basically, once you download Maverick Coaching, you are given a 90 day blueprint for creating and marketing cell phone ads.  The system walks you through each step from initial creation to how to place these ads where cell phone users will see them.

This course includes several short videos which show you exactly how to create the ads.  Some of the best features of cell phone ad creation:
  • Very easy to set up
  • Cost almost nothing to get set up (we're talking a matter of cents per ad)
  • Don't need a website to use them 
Maverick Coaching also includes 24/7 live phone support.  I called in to test this and they are very efficient and friendly, so I have no complaints on that front.

Since the program is still relatively new, there are not a lot of people using this technique to make money, so competition is still fairly limited.  Once it really gets rolling, I imagine many industrious home entrepreneurs will take advantage of cell phone ads, at which point it may get harder to use this system to make money online fast.

The bad

The main downside of this program is that once you complete one weekly segment, you are stuck waiting until the full week is up before you get access to the next one.  I am not sure why they set it up this way; the course should really be designed in such a way that you can go at your own pace.  I assume it was because Mack Michaels emphasizes how little time you have to put into the course to succeed, and he expects you only to be doing a couple hours' work every day.

Bottom line:

If you are looking for a primer to get started with cell phone ad creation, or if you just want a very simple and cheap way to get started earning cash and making money online fast, this program will definitely yield results.  It also requires very little work and effort to succeed.  However, some of your ads may not do as well, so you might not find yourself raking in huge amounts of cash initially.  But since this is still a fairly small niche, there isn't a lot of competition, and you don't have to worry about creating a website or paying domain fees or anything.