How to Control Your Emotions in the Internet Marketplace

Take Control of Your Impulses

You are minding your own business when the email arrives. It is about the latest and greatest opportunity of the moment. The internet guru is about to launch the latest version of 2.0 and you can get it while it is available. Remember, this is a limited time offer open to a limited number of entrants. Miss this and you can wallow in failure.

You take the bait and head for the site. There is the video ready and waiting. Open it, hit play and soon you’re sucked in. Here he is, Mr. Guru, multi-millionaire, sharply dressed and very smooth. You swoon…he really makes sense; he knows exactly what you are going through. You are feeling that blast of momentum build. You say to yourself, this could be it… the ticket to riches and prosperity. No time to waste…let’s get it.

Sound familiar? Well, did you know that there is a center in your brain called the amygdala that controls your feelings of fear and impulse? It responds to stimuli in 12 milliseconds and fires up whenever something from an external cue such as a tragic event or daily occurrence sparks it into action. Something as innocent as a sales pitch can trigger it and have you doing things you might never have considered.

Well, welcome to the world of internet marketing. A market where selling never ceases and up selling and cross selling are the daily staple of the marketer.

So what can you do? There are a few things to keep in mind and some steps you can take to keep your emotions in check.

Reappraise

The concept of reappraising is actively used in the research of emotive decision making. One tactic is to reinterpret what you are hearing and seeing, to create a less emotional scenario that will challenge your impulse. Does the sales pitch really take care of your need to make money today, or is your urgency artificial because you know there is no easy money to be made?

Step outside of Yourself

Take the time to imagine someone else listening to the sales video or reading down the Web sales page and position yourself to give them advice on what they are hearing and reading. Is the sales pitch offering anything new that will change the condition of the person being solicited? What is the outcome that can be expected? Will it really change things for the better?

Control the cues

Letting the sales pitch dictate urgency and need can set off the amygdala and get you super motivated to make the buy decision. Distance yourself by literally turning down the audio or just taking some down time to let things settle. If the seller has a time clock running, as one I watched did, turn off your machine. Its amazing how time off and distance will change your outlook.

Tap into your emotions

As the sales pitch unfolds, ask yourself out loud, if this product will get you to your goal and keep you focused on your plan or if it is a diversion that will cost you time and money? Do you really need to follow the pack or are you better off sticking to your plan? Keeping your focus is the key to your success. You have to remain keenly aware of how outside stimuli can lead you astray. Spectacular deals coming in via email are among them.

The best thing to do in a lot of cases is to sleep on it. There is a reason why someone is selling and there has to be a much better reason for you to be buying, so take the time to figure it out.

If you can take these steps and apply them to the next “great opportunity” you should avoid the trap of buyers remorse and make your decision based on careful consideration of your planned goals and your business plan.

May your travels be prosperous.

PS. This article is based on Jason Zweig’s article “How to Control Your Fears in a Fearsome Market” that appeared in the WSJ. If you get a chance look it up and read it.

How to control your impulse in a huckstering market

I’m working on an article that will look at how you can overcome the emotional buzz that your brain sends out when reading a well crafted sales pitch. It appears that the fear center of the brain, the amygdala can respond to these unsettling stimuli in one 12 milliseconds or one 25th the time it takes to blink your eye. I read about this phenomenon in WSJ in Jason Zweig’s column. His article was about panic selling on Wall Street and Main Street. My article will be about panic buying on Digistreet. There are tactics and methods to overcome the hype and gross overselling that passes for business on the WEB. So stay tuned I’ll be posting the article tomorrow.

Blogging: How to make sense out of WordPress Options

When I first started out and was taking a tutorial on setting up online marketing, the subject of blogs came up. It was suggested that a blog was a very good tool for marketing and making yourself known on the WEB. The program suggested to start with was WordPress. I had never heard of WordPress so I went to the WordPress site to find out what it was all about.

This was all new to me so I followed instructions on the site and presto…I had my first blog set up in a few minutes. It wasn’t pretty and I had no idea what I was doing. The interface was new, the tabs were a mystery and the general functions available were a guessing game for me. That said, I forged ahead, wrote a post and then tried out different tabs and selections to see what would happen.

What I didn’t realize was that there are three varieties of WordPress, and you should know that upfront, so you can decide what works best for you. I learned of these 3 options later when I used another tutorial and set up another WordPress blog on a host site.

So what are those three options?

Option One

The first one I’ll mention is one that doesn’t concern the individual affiliate marketer but you should be aware of it. It’s called WordPress MU. MU stands for Multi-User and it allows you to run several hundreds to thousands of blogs on one domain. It really applies to corporations, groups, organizations or maybe super affiliate marketers that have their own servers and run a network of blogs. Until you reach that scale you needn’t know more than that about WordPress MU.

Option Two

The next option open to you is WordPress.com. This is the one I first used. It is hosted on WordPress servers and offers an easy to use template you can follow to start your first blog. You can choose your own user name to individualize your blog and it will get assigned to the WordPress domain. For example if you choose to go with your name to set up the blog your domain would look like http://www.yourname.WordPress.com. This assumes your choice was available.

Another point to remember is that on WordPress .com you are subject to the guidelines of your host. That means that commercial applications such as Google Adsense and other plug ins used to create revenue streams or optimize for search engine discovery are not available. The blogs are really designed for open and useful communication with out the volume of commercial and affiliate selling that takes place on other blog environments. This isn’t to say that you cannot create links to affiliate programs and place some banners but the WordPress.com blog is not the most optimum environment to run a marketing based business. The next option is best suited for that purpose.

Option Three

The third option is the one used by most affiliate marketers who set up their business on an independent hosted environment outside of the WordPress hosted site. Its called WordPress.Org and is software that is downloaded to your own Web server to run on your domain. It is often accessed through the Control Panel of the Web host you have selected to use in your business or blog. Some free hosting services may not offer the Control Panel feature so you have to follow what ever process they use for downloading blog software.

In the case of WordPress.org, the software offers greater flexibility that WordPress.com and allows you to download plugins that are not available to WordPress hosted blogs. For example, you can download Google Adsense ads mentioned earlier or Google Sitemap which allows search engines to find and index you more efficiently, so you can place better in search results. You can place html code to more effectively design web pages for commercial application in affiliate marketing campaigns. In short it offers more options and better capabilities for running a business than WordPress.com. It is the option that you will come to by default when setting up a blog from your host site. You will notice a different set of options such as a plug-in add on feature that is not available with WordPress.com. In short, this is the option you will find most suitable for affiliate marketing. It gives you more ways to create revenue streams for a business.

Conclusion

Depending on your objectives for blogging, these are the three options you can select from when considering WordPress. There is plenty of documentation to help you in the details of how to use the features and tools offered in each option. The point here is to make sure you are aware of what is available so you can make an intelligent decision.

With that in mind, good luck in your blogging and may your travels be prosperous.

Want to Suceed Online?

3 Steps you need to take to set up your affiliate business

For anyone starting out for the first time online, the question is where do I start and what are the key steps I need to take to succeed? Well there is no magic formula, but you will need time, determination and some investment dollars to get started. This is a real business that requires an attitude that you run it like a real business. Once you’ve made the decision to research and launch your product/service to your target market, what are some key steps you must make to move forward?

Set Up a Web Site Properly

Whether you design one yourself, get someone to design one for you or use a template provided by your host or blog provider, you need a place to do business. That place will be your Web site and domain you have registered and paid for.

To register a domain name you will need to go to a service that does just that. Names that come to mind are NameCheap, and GoDaddy but there are many more. Once you have a domain name, you need a place to put it and that’s when you go to a hosting site. Names here are Hostgator, Bluehost, again these are only two, but there are many more. Just make sure that you avoid the free sites. They are not as reliable as those that are fee based.

With your domain registered and hosting set, you will need to put up web pages for your product/service offering. One key tactic is to make sure that you use separate and unique web pages to sell and promote each product or service you are offering. That means registering a separate domain name for each item you are selling with a dedicated sales page outlining the details of benefits and solutions to problems for your customers. The reason for this is that you want your potential customer to focus on one thing only, your offering and the decision to buy.

You should always include product reviews and information that will let your customers get a good understanding of how the purchase will solve their problem. Testimonials of satisfied customers go a long way towards demonstrating to your prospects the benefits they will reap when they decide to buy. All of these items, product descriptions, product review and testimonials can be combined on your sales page, followed by a clear call to action.

On a separate page, you can offer articles that you have written that highlight the benefits and uses that your customers have received as a result of their purchase.

Make sure your copyrighting makes effective use of headlines that attract and entice the readers to want to learn more and continue with the final purchase decision.

Attract Customers: Offer Bonuses and Freebies

Offer bonuses and free reports to your potential customers. Carefully position the offerings where they cannot be missed, usually at the top of the page. You will need to follow up each offer with a well crafted email message from you. You will have received your potential customer’s name and email message from a sign-in form on your Web page. This entire system will be automated on an autoresponder service you have joined as part of your business set up process. Aweber and Getresponse are two that come to mind.

Common wisdom is that you need to contact a lead at least seven times before a buy decision is made. Your messages will be designed to address the need or problem that drove them to your Web page to begin with, so you should make sure the content of the message stays focused on your customer’s need.

Keep the “selling” out of the messages and concentrate on the benefits and satisfying outcome. Make your subject lines reflect how things will get better if they decide to buy. Avoid the use of the word “free,” many spam filters look for that word and push any content with it into the spam trash. Your goal is to make your potential customer anxious to get your product with a sense of urgency.

Quality not Quantity: Qualified Traffic

There is traffic and then there is qualified traffic. You want people who are targeted to really want your product or service because they see you as the solution to their problem. One way to attract targeted traffic is to write articles for publication in ezines or e-reports. You can publish in publications that focus on your target customers and who are more apt to respond to your offerings.

Get on a schedule and write at least 2 articles per week. They should be 300-600 words in length and be easy to read; no jargon or tech talk. If you can attract 100 targeted customers a day as a start, you will begin to build momentum. Over time with the cumulative effect of your articles, you will build to 1000 targeted hits a day. According to accepted practice, if 10% of those leads buy your offering, you will have 10 sales per day. That is a very good result and one that will lead to greater momentum moving forward.

Conclusion

What is outlined here are 3 practical steps that will get your business up and running. What it takes on your part is time, effort and some investment of your hard earned cash. Once you have achieved results for one product line, it simply takes repetition to try it out again with another one. At that point you are off and running.

Try these tips and your chances of success are very good indeed. May your travels be prosperous.

Blogging: How to make sense out of WordPress Options

When I first started out and was taking a tutorial on setting up online marketing, the subject of blogs came up.  It was suggested that a blog was a very good tool for marketing and making yourself known on the WEB.  The program suggested starting with WordPress.  I had never heard of WordPress so I went to the WordPress site to find out what it was all about.

This was all new to me so I followed instructions on the site and presto…I had my first blog set up in a few minutes.  It wasn’t pretty and I had no idea what I was doing.  The interface was new, the tabs were a mystery and the general functions available were a guessing game for me.  That said, I forged ahead, wrote a post and then tried out different tabs and selections to see what would happen.

What I didn’t realize was that there are three varieties of WordPress, and you should know that upfront, so you can decide what works best for you.  I learned of these 3 options later when I used another tutorial and set up another WordPress blog on a host site.

So what are those three options?

Option One

The first one I’ll mention is one that doesn’t concern the individual affiliate marketer but you should be aware of it.  It’s called WordPress MU. MU stands for Multi-User and it allows you to run several hundreds to thousands of blogs on one domain.  It really applies to corporations, groups, organizations or maybe super affiliate marketers that have their own servers and run a network of blogs.  Until you reach that scale you needn’t know more than that about WordPress MU.

Option Two

The next option open to you is WordPress.com.  This is the one I first used.  It is hosted on WordPress servers and offers an easy to use template you can follow to start your first blog.  You can choose your own user name to individualize your blog and it will get assigned to the WordPress domain. For example,  if you choose to go with your name to set up the blog, your domain would look like http://www.yourname.WordPress.com.  This assumes your choice was available.

Another point to remember is that on WordPress.com you are subject to the guidelines of your host.  That means that commercial applications such as Google Adsense and other plug ins used to create revenue streams or optimize for search engine discovery,  are not available.  The blogs are really designed for open and useful communication without the volume of commercial and affiliate selling that takes place on other blog environments. This isn’t to say that you cannot create links to affiliate programs and place some banners, but the WordPress.com blog is not the most optimum environment to run a marketing based business.  The next option is best suited for that purpose.

Option Three

The third option is the one used by most affiliate marketers who set up their business on an independent hosted environment outside of the WordPress hosted site. It’s called WordPress.Org and is software that is downloaded to your own Web server to run on your domain.  It is often accessed through the Control Panel of the Web host you have selected to use in your business or blog.  Some free hosting services may not offer the Control Panel feature so you have to follow what ever process they use for downloading blog software.

In the case of WordPress.org, the software offers greater flexibility that WordPress.com and allows you to download plugins that are not available to WordPress hosted blogs.  For example, you can download Google Adsense ads mentioned earlier or Google Sitemap which allows search engines to find and index you more efficiently so you can place better in search results.  You can place html code to more effectively design web pages for commercial application in affiliate marketing campaigns.  In short, it offers more options and better capabilities for running a business than WordPress.com.  It is the option that you will come to by default when setting up a blog from your host site. You will notice a different set of options such as a plug-in add on feature that is not available with WordPress.com.  In summary, this is the option you will find most suitable for affiliate marketing.  It gives you more ways to create revenue streams for a business.

Conclusion

Depending on your objectives for blogging, these are the three options you can select from when considering WordPress.  There is plenty of documentation to help you with the details of how to use the features and tools offered in each option.  The point here is to make sure you are aware of what is available so you can make an intelligent decision.

With that in mind, good luck in your blogging and may your travels be prosperous.

How to Start Your Online Home Business–DO NOTHING

Start by doing nothing!

So you have made the decision to start a home based business and are trying to figure out where to begin.

The first thing to do is nothing. That’s right, before you do anything don’t include or exclude anything. Get online and google your idea for a home based business and see where it leads. Don’t commit to anything, or sign up for anything just take the time to see what pops up.

What you will find are a lot of sites that promise the benefits of data entry or affiliate marketing with lengthy scrolling copy. Spend some time getting used to the different proposals and sales pitches. Pace yourself and take your time. This upfront activity is free and will give you some time to let things sink in. It is easy to overload on all this information so don’t try to do it all in one sitting.

After you get the feel for how these sites present, look for a forum that covers the area you are interested in, and see what people are saying about certain products or companies. Learn about what they see as legitimate sites with working programs and those that will sell a 40 page transcript with little value in helping you get set up.

What you will find over a couple of days of this kind of research is that potential programs and products will begin to stand out. That’s when you can select a particular site or program and look it over closely. Check out the offer. Does it have a money back guarantee? Does it offer a low cost trial period so you can see how it works? Do the testimonials fit what you are looking for? Is there a contact email or phone number so you can communicate with someone to ask questions?

Once you have done your research, and this can take a week or two, you are ready to make the leap and purchase. In my case I actually purchased four different programs and read through each one before implementing the one I thought worked best for me. Purchase programs that are well written, broken down into elements and are easy to follow over time. Remember, there are no quick systems. You need to give yourself the time to develop and grow your business.

If you follow these steps, you will minimize the risk of selecting something that cannot deliver on false promises. This should save you time and money. The key point is to pace yourself in the early stage until you feel you are familiar with the landscape. The idea is to avoid giving into the impulse buying mode. Your decision should be emotion free, based on what you have learned.

There you have it. Good luck and may your travels be prosperous.

Over the past 20 years Claude Pelanne has worked in a series of startup ventures including some of the first commercial webcasts. He is an internet marketer and serial entrepreneur. Get some tips on internet marketing at www.cpelanne.com or www.claudepelanne.com

Affiliate Starting Line: So What is Affiliate Marketing?

Launching an online business

You are thinking of starting your own online business and hear about Ebay and the internet and a thing called affiliate marketing. So what is that all about? What it means is that you can set yourself up to sell someone else’s product and get paid a commission. It is similar to a lot of offline jobs like real estate or mortgage sales where people get paid a commission for closing a deal; the difference is that you are selling on the internet. You are an online entrepreneur.

What do you do to become an affiliate marketer? You make the decision to take the plunge and then follow your interest or what you have a passion for or something you know really well.

When you have an idea of what you want to do, you will want to set up a web site or blog and then you will research and find products to promote on that site or blog. Each time you make a sale through your affiliate link, you will earn a portion of that sale. The commissions can vary from as low as 7% to a generous 100% on some programs.

When you select a product to sell, you will be given a code that identifies you as the sales rep for that transaction. The sales are tracked through your unique affiliate ID which is assigned to you. Your unique affiliate ID is tracked each time a sale is made through your link. In addition to tracking you should get access to an affiliate center that allows you to see all you affiliate sales and commissions. Furthermore any legitimate affiliate program will give you marketing tools to use on your site; things such as banners, giveaways, reports, and code to embed on your web pages that will help make the sale easier.

The major benefit of affiliate marketing is that you can be set up and ready to go with a matter of days and there is no need to spend time creating your own products or purchasing inventory. You are simply promoting other people’s products which means the vendor is actually responsible for order fulfillment and anything else related to the sale—you simply refer the sale to them and get paid for doing so.

For example if you have a love of Havanese, you can create a website around dog related topics and include tips, recipes, and reviews of all your favorite pet gadgets. You can then find affiliate programs online and promote some of those products on your website. You can find programs by doing a search under your chosen topic such as “Havanese” and adding the words “affiliate program” to that term.
You can also find affiliate programs at places like Clickbank, Paydotcom, CJ.com, Linkshare and other merchant sites.

Now you may think that with ease of entry, it is simple to start up instant profits. That is unfortunately not the case. A good affiliate marketer knows it takes time, effort and persistence to make sales grow.

Among the most important things to remember is that in order to succeed you must offer certain key benefits to your customers. The first is a clear understanding of their wants and needs for the product or service you are offering. What are the problems they are facing and what can you offer to overcome those problems. The answer lies in offering rich and relevant information on your website or blog to satisfy the need and solve the problems. How do you do all this? Take the time to do your market research and identify your target market.

Another point is that the customer experience has to be easy and timely; so make sure people find what they want with going through any hassle. If you want to link to other affiliate products make sure they complement your own offering.

A final point is to review the products you promote so that you can accurately describe all the features—good and bad. Your customers will appreciate the honest feedback and will be more likely to buy from you if you give them quality information and honest reviews.

Affiliate marketing can be a very rewarding and fulfilling business if you follow some basic steps in getting started. So take the time to do some research and follow your passion and you will join the ranks of the successful online marketer.

May your travels be prosperous?

What is Affiliate Marketing?

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing basically means selling other people’s products for a commission online.  Affiliate marketing is similar to offline sales where sales people earn a commission for selling a product; the difference is that all selling is conducted online.

As an affiliate marketer you will research and find products to promote on your website.  Each time you make a sale through your affiliate link you will earn a portion of that sale.  The commissions can vary from as low as 7% to a generous 50%.

The sales are tracked through your unique affiliate ID which is assigned to you at the time you sign up for a specific affiliate program.  Your unique affiliate ID is tracked and each time a sale is made through your link it is recorded.   A good affiliate program will give you plenty of tools for promoting their products as well as a comprehensive member’s area where you can track your affiliate sales and commissions.

Affiliate marketing is a good way to get started online.  You can be set up and ready to go within a few days and there is no need to spend any time creating your own products or purchasing inventory.  You are simply promoting other people’s products, which means the vendor is actually responsible for order fulfilment, customer service and anything else related to the sale – you simply refer the sale to them and get paid for doing so.

For example if you have a love of cooking, you can create a website around cooking related topics and include tips, recipes, and reviews of all your favorite cooking gadgets.  You can then find affiliate programs online and promote some of those products on your website.  You can find programs by doing a search under your chosen topic such as “cooking” and adding the words “affiliate program” to that term.
You can also find affiliate programs at places like CJ.com.

Although affiliate marketing is an easy way to get started online, there is a little more to it than just throwing up a few links and banners and waiting for the affiliate check to arrive.  A good affiliate marketer knows it takes time and effort to make sales.

A good way to do this is by providing quality information on your website and only linking to affiliate products where appropriate.  Another good tip is to review the products you promote so that you can accurately describe all the features - good and bad.  Your customers will appreciate honest feedback and will be more likely to buy from you if you give them good quality information and honest reviews.

How to Monetize Your Site

How to make sense out of Adsense

If you are just starting out in internet marketing, one of the ways to create a revenue stream or monetize your Web site is to display contextual ads from a number of advertising networks. By far the most prominent and popular with affiliates is Adsense, a program run by Google. If you haven’t enrolled yet and you are in Internet Marketing, make a point of reading this article and then go to Google and sign-up. It’s free and it is part of any affiliate marketers tool kit.

Before you do sign up, there are some things you need to know as you consider putting these ads on your site.

Page Content

First off, the Web page on which you want to place these ads should be theme based and rich in content. Google ads are based on the content of a page and the geographic location of the customer, so there has to be a way for the ad to relate directly to the information you are displaying. For example, if your site is about a breed of dogs, Adsense will place ads that directly bear on the care or business that relates to that breed of dogs and has some bearing on dog care and maintenance.

Make sure your content is focused and target one or two keywords or keyword phrases; that will ensure that the search engine will serve more relevant ads and increase the chance of clicks for which you get paid. That is how you monetize your site.

Ad Placement and Format Choice

Ad placement and choice of format are other factors to consider.

Ad placement is generally considered to be best where the ad can be seen by the customer. Conventional wisdom places them on the right side of a page, placed on white backgrounds and clearly separated to allow for easy reading. I have seen Adsense ads in the center right top of web sites. The best thing is to test where they are most effective depending on the design of your page and how the information is displayed.

Formats for ads have vertical or horizontal characteristics. The format you choose has more to do with site design and display of the specific Web page. Here again you can experiment to see which format looks better and gives the best results in click throughs.

Ad Placement

There are some rules of thumb to respect however when placing ads. For example, it is not a good idea to place Adsense on your homepage. This gives your visitor the chance to click away from your site before they have had a chance to look around and give you some business. So let your potential customers spend time finding the information you have for them before you hand them over to someone else.

If your page is a product endorsement page, you will not want Adsense for the very same reason. You want that lead to buy your product and not leave for someone else’s.

Informational pages are perfect for Adsense, just make sure you don’t overload with too many ads. Google allows for three ads per page. Anything more than that is just overselling and a turn off for the customer.

You also don’t want to put Adsense on social pages or pages used for interaction with others such as a forum. In many cases blog site rules don’t permit ads so be mindful of the agreement rules of your site host.

Remember that you are trying to establish a relationship with your customer and overloading on ads in every nook and cranny will work against that goal.

Conclusion

With all that said, effective use of Adsense can be a real source of income to supplement and add to the revenue for the affiliate marketer. So make a point of learning about the ways you can use Adsense to your advantage. It is very easy to set up.

The sign up takes only a few minutes and once you have registered the site on which you want to put the ads, Google will review and send confirmation with a clip code you will place on your Web pages. This code can be positioned wherever you want and within a short time thereafter, ads will start appearing.

Commission earnings are not disclosed by Google but estimates from experienced users put the rates at between 40 to 60% of Adwords rates and Adsense earnings. That’s not bad given you are not doing all the heavy lifting.

And there you have it! Once you have Adsense under you belt, you can take a look at other Ad services such as ValueClick, Affiliate Sensor and others to find new ways to monetize your site. With time, and some trial and experimentation, you will find new revenue streams awaiting you.

May your travel be prosperous.

Over the past 20 years Claude Pelanne has worked in a series of startup ventures including some of the first commercial webcasts. He is an internet marketer and serial entrepreneur. Get information on internet marketing atcpelanne or claudepelanne

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3 Key Steps in Finding a Profitable Market

How to target a market

If you are thinking of setting up an online business, one of the first things you need to think about is finding a profitable market in which to develop your business. You need to find your target market.

Profitability

How do you go about doing this? Look for a market with high profitability. You want to find a product or service for which there is high demand. High demand means good chances of high profitability. You also want to see high competitive activity or supply. Why? Because that means people are making money. It means there is a good chance you can position yourself to make a good profit if you plan your marketing wisely.

Categories and Keywords

Some typical areas of high demand and strong supply are categories such as internet marketing, stock, currency and index trading, health programs, weight loss and even gasoline efficiency for your daily commute. You can determine how these areas are doing by going on Google to find the dominant keywords for a particular product or service. Google Adwords is a great tool to use for this purpose. For example, look up affiliate marketing or currency trading and see the results you get. With the keywords from your research, you can then do a Google search to see what businesses pop up.

Check out the top sites both in the organic return down the middle of the page and on the top and right column where the paid sponsorships display the level of interest for paid leads. A presence of paid sponsors indicates that people are paying for ads and making money for the product or service you are researching. It also shows you what the competition is doing and what you need to incorporate in your own planning to get good results.

Marketplace Sites

Another option in evaluating the profitability of a product/service is to join Clickbank, Paydotcom, cj.com or any number of resell sites for product and services. With Clickbank, for example, pick a market category that fits your prospective product /service. There you will see the leaders in the category. You will also see the level of affiliate sales activity, the commission amounts being paid, information about the product and the contact information of the owner or originator of that product or service. This information will tell you, who is making money and what the business sector profitability is. With this information you can decide to rep a product or service or find something similar to resell or develop yourself.

Affiliate System

Once you have made your choice of a profitable market area, you want to find a specific product, preferably a digital product, that you can “front end” to get started. In this model you want to own resell rights and make your offering of affiliate resale rights at a very low cost, somewhere between $10 and $20. You offer your affiliates a commission of 75-100% for the delivery of leads to your web site.

This affiliate system will help you develop your customer base to which you can cross sell and up sell all sorts of related products/services and that is where you will make your income. These back end products can be cd’s, DVD’s and all sorts of software needed to carry an online business.

Part of the process of setting up your online business means you will need to register a domain name and sign up with a web hosting service. Your Web site will be the place for your presell, sales and order pages. You will also want to sign up with an autoresponder service to organize your email responses to your affiliates and customers.

Conclusion

When this early research and set up process is done, you will have a chosen a profitable market sector and you will have selected a list of products that you can front end and back end to grow your business. You will be ready to move to the next stage of your business development; working out a marketing plan to capture and grow your customer base and preparing the final stage of launching the actual business.

With careful research and preparation on the front end you will increase your chances of success when you are ready to make your move.

May your travels be prosperous.