To Desire an Empire

There are a few tools that are absolutely essential to any true Internet Marketer. If you’re a complete newbie listen up…I never got the conveinence of someone telling me this when I was coming up.

Here’s my 10 must have’s:

1. Product to promote*
2. Keyword Research Tool*
3. Link Cloaker*
4. Website*
5. Hosting Account
6. Opt-in List/Auto-Responer
7. One-on-One Mentor for Advice*
8. Statistics Software*
9. Mass Promotional Tool
10. Paypal Account

If you are missing any one of these and telling yourself you can work around it…god bless you and good luck. (refer to the title of this post) I’m just going to explain the list in order. There is a method to my madness, I promise!

Product to Promote:
Without a product to promote you can’t make any money, period. So I made this first on the list. When I look for a product to promote there are certain qualities it must have to earn my endorsement. These qualities are; current refund rates, quality of the products sales page, price fairness, recurring payments (monthly), and most importantly popularity.

If I’m going to spend my valubale time promoting a product, what good would it do for that product to end up getting returned all the time? I’m not in this for the quick buck. I want multiple, solid income streams that can sustain the test of time. If the sales page is sloppily put together and message not clear, then I will have to work extra hard…I don’t like working hard. I like working smart!

I always try to stick with a product that once I sell it to a customer it will continually bring in money. What I mean is, most ebooks you sell them to a customer and then it’s over you have to find a new customer. Doesn’t it sound better to sell a product to a customer and then continually make a monthly income off that same customer!?!?!

You should all know why popularity is so important. If know one is buying that type of product then why would I waste my time trying to promote it? Why reinvent the wheel? If you want to go out there and bust your buns thats fine, but thats not for me. When you go fishing you look for the best bait right? Same thing with Internet marketing find out what the fish are biting on and then give it to them!

Keyword Research Tool:
In order to get your product in front of the masses you will often have to rely on search engines. Search engines work by people typing in keywords or phrases that correlate to the object they are searching about. In order for your ad, articles, website to come up within the top listings you will have to research keywords for search volume, competition, and build a list of similar keywords.

I use keyword research tools to find my niche markets. I do this after I have picked a product to promote but before I commit to promoting that product. There is no sense promoting a product if the keywords for it get little to no traffic or have to much competition. I want to find areas I can dominate not compete for scraps!

Link Cloaker:
As Web surfers become more knowledgeable of how affiliate programs work, more people will omit your affiliate ID or use someone else’s ID when ordering. Either way, you lose commissions you’re supposed to get. It also decreases the credibility of your content as they will now know that you are “paid” to say nice things about that product.

Website:
At first you may be able to get by without a website, but be real with yourself how many top gun Internet marketers have you seen without a website? You will eventually need one to make the big money, why not start now? Start with templates and just cut and paste in your own content…I do this still and I’m a professional web designer. It’s just easier and faster this way. Once you have your website you can fully customize what your viewers see and hear about the products you promote.

Hosting Account:
There are places where you can get a website hosted for free, but you are limited by that “hosts” rules. Get your own hosting account and upload your website to their server. Once you do this you’ll be free from showing someone elses adds, be able to handle an unlimited amount of viewers, and viewers will take you much more seriously. Do what the big dogs do, don’t try to re-invent the wheel.

Opt-in List/Auto-Responder:
I have to admit this is something I was missing for a long time. I know now that it should be the first thing you implement on to a webpage and should be on every web page you create. An auto-responder lets you automatically respond to viewers that sign up for your email list. Most auto-responders have form generators so you can quickly and easily build a little form that will store the name and email address for you.

You don’t need any programming knowledge at all when you use one of these services. They give you the code and they tell you where to copy/paste it in. If you are not building an opt-in list (list of names and email addresses) you are wasting crucial chances to obtain customers for life. Just do it! When you have built your list into the thousands you can get paid to rent that list out, or submit special offers to those customers every month and have customers for life at your disposal.

One-on-One Mentor for Advice:
Anyone who has learned how to ride a bike from a book please raise your hand! I know thats kind of extreme, but I use it to illustrate a point. The best way to learn something is to have someone available that can give you customized advice as you learn how to hold your self up. You need to find someone that has done what you want to do and then ask them how they did it ask them to guide you in exchange for your assitance or money. Even Donald Trump had many mentors growing up. It’s just simply the quickest, easiest way to learn.

Statistics Software:
Now once you have most everything setup and are ready to drive traffic to your web presence, you’ll need a way to track everything that those viewers do once they get their. You will want to know how many people per day are visiting your site, where they came from, and what they clicked on when they got their. This way you can change or tweak things to persuade more visitors to come check you out or click the links you want them to click. If you’re not tracking your results then there is no way you can know how to improve them.

Mass Promotional Tool:
With Myspace and all the other promotioal sites rising you will need a tool to mass advertise to the captive audience that these sites create. These tools let you add hundreds of friends or send out hundreds of messages (advertisements) every day. Once you purchase one of these tools you don’t have to ever pay for it again so it becomes virtually free advertising. We all know free advertising is a good thing. (when used right) Make sure you are only sending messages to your target audience…otherwise you are wasting time.

Paypal Account:
If you’re trying to make money using the Internet then you definetly need to have a Paypal account. It is the most widely used way to send and recieve money over the net. You can even set up recurring payments if you plan to offer a service that charges monthly. Make sure to get a premiere or business account so you can take advantage of all their great features. This is also a great way to send money to family should you ever need to.

Ok, well there you have it. These are ten things that every successful Internet marketer is using, including the why and how. To thine own self be true; if you are thinking you can find a loophole and be successful without having these tools you’ll only be hurting yourself. Below I have included the sources I use to fulfill these ten requirements. I have done all the research for you to find the best prices and best of breed solutions. You are more then welcome to go find your own solutions, but hey these are right here for you and only one click away.

* = Wealthy Affiliate 2.0 has all these features built inside for an easy one-stop solution at only $30 per month. All you need is to sign up 2 recruits yourself and you’ll make that back. (extremely easy) Learn More…

Aweber Auto-Responder Service… I know it’s a weird name but these guys are the leaders in this industry. Their customer service still blows me away. They have a very quick response time to any questions and you can contact them live at anytime. They also have a free “test drive.” So you can try before you buy. Take me There Now…

1and1 Hosting Service is my favorite host because when you sign up it’s only $30 for a whole year and you get 2 free domain names with it. Then each additional domain name should you ever need one is only $5.99 which is cheaper then even the great Godaddy.com. This company is fast on the rise and making Godaddy shiver in their boots. Learn More…

Paypal Merchant Services I already described what this is and it’s completely free to get your account. Do it Today

BadderAdder Myspace Promotional Software is the only of it’s kind that you can use for multiple accounts and also gets by Myspace’s CAPTCHA so that you don’t get detected as a promoter. Check out their video tutorials before you buy…

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