There’s no diploma you can strive for to be in the Internet marketing industry. You have to learn as you go – on your own – soaking up information along the way.  The first thing you need to know is what it means to be an Internet marketer, because it isn’t always clear to everyone.

Let’s start with what Internet marketing is not.  It’s not being a con artist. It’s not being a spam king.  It doesn’t just mean selling on eBay or having your own website and products.

In reality, Internet marketers can pick and choose from a whole host of options available to help them make money.  Your opportunities are virtually endless, and include one or more of the following:

• Selling digital downloads (information products like eBooks)
• Promoting other people’s products for a commission (affiliate marketing)
• Selling on eBay or other auction sites
• Running a membership site
• Selling your online services (writing, graphics, etc.)
• Owning a website that sells dropshipped or wholesale items

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Being a newcomer to Internet marketing, you might be worried that you don’t have anything to sell.  That’s okay – most people don’t start out with anything, and you never have to stock a tangible inventory if you don’t want to.  That’s the beauty of Internet Marketing, flexibility, you are in control and you choose what and how you will run your online business.

Internet marketing creates no gender or age boundaries for you.  There are teenagers who have launched multi-million dollar companies as budding Internet marketers whose ideas sprung to life and catapulted them to instant success.

You don’t have to do anything unethical or shady to succeed at Internet marketing, and in fact, launching a respectable business with a solid reputation is the secret ingredient that will allow you to hatch an empire on the ‘net to fulfill all of your dreams and those of your family.  The sky is the limit!

To Your Abundance and Prosperity,

Jill Lillvis

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Traffic who doesn’t want more of it? It’s key to success in any online business. Without traffic, your business doesn’t exist. So how do you get more traffic? Here are a five simple but highly effective tips.

1. Write articles. By just writing one article a day and distributing it to a few article directories, you’ll start building a good amount of incoming links to your website.  People will read your articles and visit your site and the search engines will love the increase in incoming quality links.

2.  Advertise. Advertising on high ranking related websites is a great way to get exposure for your website as well as incoming links. Check to make sure that the website you’re advertising on does indeed get a large amount of traffic.

3.  Participate on forums. Forums are still a great way to gain incoming links and website visitors. More importantly, if you set yourself up as a trusted expert on the forums people will want to learn more about you and what you have to say.

4.  Use social networking. By building a large responsive following on Twitter and Facebook you can easily advertise your website for all to see. If people find your posts interesting they will want to know more about you and your business.

5.  Distribute a viral report. This is a fantastic way to gain publicity and visitors to your website. Write a free viral report on your topic and give it away for free.  Invite others to give it away too and you’ll soon have a viral tool making the rounds and bringing more visitors back to your website.

Driving traffic is key to your success and these easy tips are a great starting point. To learn more about affiliate marketing like a pro check out Super Affiliate Handbook.  I highly recommend this e-book for anyone serious about earning money through affiliate marketing.

To Your Abundance and Prosperity,

Jill Lillvis

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There are so many different types of affiliate programs out there to choose from.  It’s often difficult to know which are the best programs to promote.  Here are a few tips to help you find the best affiliate programs:

Life-time cookies – A really good affiliate program will offer life-time cookies.  Unfortunately, some shopping cart systems don’t allow the vendors this feature, which isn’t so great for you – the affiliate.  A life-time cookie means that you will get paid for referring a customer who makes a purchase through your affiliate link even if they buy at any point in the future.

Training and Customer Service – A good program will provide training tools and resources for their affiliates.  Ideally, they should have a member’s area where you can log in and grab promotional materials, your links and check your stats and commissions.

Good communication is also important.  If you email an affiliate program with a question and don’t hear back from them or hear back from them 2 weeks later, what will it be like if you ever have an issue with payments or other important question?  A good affiliate program will respond to your questions in a timely manner.  By the same token, a good affiliate will make sure they read all the provided materials provided on the website before contacting the program.

Sales Pages that Convert – Before promoting a specific product, have a look at their sales page.  Does it look like it will convert into sales?  If a sales page is sloppy, has grammar and spelling mistakes, or just looks unprofessional, you may not make too many sales – no matter how good the product is.

Now that you know some of the things you should look for in a good program, here are a few things you should be careful of!

Advertisements and Google Adsense – If you’re promoting an ebook and sending customers to a sales page, be weary of sales pages with Google ads or other types of advertisement on the sales page.  If you’re working hard to send traffic to that page, it’s not fair that your traffic will be used to make someone else money through ads (without you getting paid anything in return).

If you see a sales page with other ads on the page, I say stay away.  You work hard as an affiliate and you don’t want to waste your efforts on generating traffic to your affiliate program only to lose sales to the other ads on the affiliate webpage.

High Sales Minimum – Watch out for programs who ask you to sell a certain amount before being paid.  For example if the commissions on a $20 eBook are 10% (that’s $2 per sale) and they ask you to accumulate a minimum of $200 dollars in commissions before they send you payment, that’s a whole lot of books you need to sell before getting paid – 100 books to be exact.

Get some instant pay and direct pay affiliate programs to promote.  You get paid instantly and directly into your account and don’t have to meet any minimum requirements before you can be paid.  These type of affiliate programs should be simple to promote and offer a great product or service at a reasonable price.  There are several of these types of affiliate programs listed here that I have received many payments from.  These programs are affordable for everyone, pay you instantly and are easy to promote with all the resources and tools you need to be successful with them.

To Your Abundance and Prosperity,

Jill Lillvis

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Ever since the Internet first made an appearance, people have been looking for ways to earn money online. And why not? Earning online is a viable way to bring in extra money and in many cases can earn a decent full time living for those who know how to generate the right kind of business. The opportunities that await you in cyberspace are many and they can be profitable for those who take the time to learn all of the ins and outs of running a home business from their computer.

One method for earning income online is to become involved with affiliate marketing. This type of online marketing is comparable to revenue sharing whereby entrepreneurs work together to sell products and services and to lend each other a helping hand.  In the end everyone is happy. Businesses sell their products and make money while affiliates do the proper promotional work and make money.

A company online is essentially paying a commission to have customers referred to their business while the affiliate is in a public relations role. To become a part of an affiliate program is very easy. The key is to find the one that is most appropriate for you.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that companies need your services to sell theirs. Even if you are not a born salesperson you can find ways to hone your skills.  Becoming an affiliate for the first time is not expensive to do so it is a win-win situation for you and the risk is very minimal. This is in sharp contrast to a business started offline that can leave you penniless if it does not prove to be successful.

Affiliate marketing can make you prosperous and it can also be an enjoyable way to
network and meet new people. You do not have to quit your present job or put
your home business on hold while you work as an affiliate.

Should you give affiliate marketing a try? I did and I am reaping all of the benefits! Say
yes today to a fantastic opportunity online!

To Your Abundance and Prosperity,

Jill Lillvis

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Your Internet Home Based Business – Choosing The Right One

An Internet home based business could be your ticket to
financial freedom, but only if you choose the right business model. Millions of
people each year fail to launch a profitable home business, and among the top
reasons for failure is not choosing a strong model.

There are literally dozens of Internet home based business
models you can choose from when starting your new venture. And you are more
likely to succeed when you select a business model that reflects your personal
strengths and interests.

So the first thing you should do is spend a little time
looking into what kind of Internet home based business you might wish to start.
And you can do this easily by surfing the Web for a few hours and looking over
the numerous commercial sites you find.

You’ll see many people are selling physical products online.
Shopping cart sites and online auctions are just two examples of how this can
be done.

In addition to physical goods, many businesses are offering
digital products, like software and information. In many cases this is done
through a very simple, direct sales mini-site.

You’ll also find a number of intangible services such as
membership sites, coaching, consultation, and instruction on a wide range of
things. Sometimes physical products like books and CDs are part of these
coaching and instruction services.

A good Internet home based business can be built around
almost any concept. The Web has grown substantially in recent years, and with it
the potential opportunity has expanded exponentially.

With just a little research you’ll likely find a number of
unique business models. And you’ll probably find dozens upon dozens of spin-off
or copycat operations that also appear to be doing very well.

When starting your Internet home based business you don’t
necessarily need an idea that is 100% unique. If you have a breakthrough idea
that’s great, but you can often do just as well by tweaking or expanding an
existing business model.

On this note, one thing you might do as you review existing
business sites is ask yourself what could be changed or done differently to
create an entirely new model. Especially in the membership site and software
industry, this even applies to affiliate programs it’s not difficult to spot
one or two potential innovations that could literally take the marketplace by
storm.

Many million-dollar ideas (literally!) have been the result
of very minor changes to existing business models. So it’s not at all
unreasonable to think your Internet home based business could end up being a
homerun success with a little creative thinking.

You should also understand that you don’t necessarily have
to build your entire business from scratch. In fact there are several
legitimate business opportunities available online, from franchise deals and
licensing agreements to network marketing programs and affiliate programs or the
option of just buying an established business site from the current owner.

The critical point when deciding on the model for your
Internet home based business is that you choose something you will enjoy. This
may sound trivial but trust me it’s not!

Statistics prove that most successful entrepreneurs are
engaged in a business they love. This makes complete sense when you think about
it. Building a business that’s fun is a lot easier than building a venture you
have to work really hard at due to a lack of interest.

So whatever model you go with, be absolutely sure it’s
something you can have fun with. Otherwise you may as well stick with that
J-O-B you’re trying to get away from.

To Your Abundance and Prosperity,

Jill Lillvis

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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.

To Your Abundance and Prosperity,

Jill Lillvis

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