August 2010 Network Solutions® Affiliate Coupons

Happy Summer! We have one new coupon for August plus we’re extending a few of our most popular coupons! Please see below for more details.

NEW Coupon – valid through 8/15/2010

Extended Coupons – valid through 8/31/2010

Coupon codes are valid for online purchases on new, non-renewal products only.

Looking to stack your claim of Internet “RICHES” by starting up a online business of your own?

Aren’t we all.

I remember when I first got started online… I didn’t have a clue where to start, how to start, let alone, how to market my business online.

It was so overwhelming because everytime I typed in the keywords “Internet Marketing” into a search engine I would literally receive hundreds of thousands of results about “How to market your business on the Internet”.

Where do you start when your getting that many results?

And… more importantly, who do you believe when you start going through them?

I’m sure some of you experienced the same feelings and thoughts I did when you first got started and/or are feeling right now if you are thinking of setting up shop online.

It’s Very easy to get caught up in all the HYPE on the Internet about how easy it is to Make Money online, but, the truth of the matter is, it’s not as easy as you think simply because you First have to earn the trust of your potential customer through the words you speak, and more importantly, you have to know how to reach them via the Internet.

This is where alot of newbie Start-Ups fail because they get so caught up in all the HYPE on how to promote there business online that they end up suffering from what is called… “Information Overload” and end up pulling the plug and never looking back.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Don’t give up so easily on your dream of being independent.

There are many ways to promote your business online. Some are FREE and some are not.

There’s Pay-Per-Click search engines, Permission Email Marketing, RSS, Banners, Viral Marketing, MLM, Traffic Exchanges, Search Engine’s, Blogs and much more.

This can at first seem Very overwhelming for someone new to the Internet and Internet marketing.

I know from experience.

Now, with that said, for the remainder of this article I want to focus on HOW you should approach marketing your business via the Internet so this doesn’t happen to you.

It’s really not that difficult if you take your time and not jump into every marketing tactic available that’s being thrown your way or cluttering up your Inbox.

Your first step should be to get your website up and ready to take orders.(The most important step)

Your next step is to pick ONE marketing strategy that you think will drive the Most targeted traffic to your website and MASTER IT!

I’m going to say that again…

“first, get your website up and ready to take orders, then pick ONE marketing strategy that you think will drive the MOST targeted traffic to your website and… MASTER IT!”

Did you get that?

I hope so.

By doing this ONE step, by mastering ONE technique before moving on to the next, it will save you from suffering from what I and many others did when they first got started…

Which was… “Information Overload”.

(Note: To clarify what I mean by “Information Overload”, I mean… having to know everything and anything about Internet marketing and online business.)

By just mastering ONE technique first and testing its results, you will grow your Internet business much Faster and with less confusion and time wasted.

I’ve been marketing my online business by this one principal for quite some time now with great results.

It works for me, so… maybe it’ll work for you.

Some Internet Marketing opportunities are very close to being “set and forget.” The Underachiever strategy for marketing information products, promoted by Frank Kern and Ed Dale, is a case in point. Once an information product is written, the selling web site is up with all payment issues handled by a 3rd party, and pay-per-click ads are bringing traffic, there is relatively little to do. Similarly, anyone building quick-and-dirty web sites for Adsense income has a similar opportunity. In contrast to content-rich theme sites that may be lovingly nurtured and grown over weeks, months or even years, these sites can be created in hours (sometimes minutes!), “activated” as far as the search engines go within a few days after very little work, then effectively abandoned … to gain traffic momentum over the months with the free search engines.

But many other opportunities demand a serious commitment of time – at least, unless you are prepared to outsource much of the work.

For example, while eBay does not have to be this way, many people selling on eBay end up in a situation where all the tasks involved in operating the business represent a commitment equivalent to a full-time job. What sounds easy on first glance can involve researching opportunities or products, finding sources or products,  even making your own products (information products sold on CD’s, for example), taking or finding photographs, finding or writing product descriptions, putting the final ad together, placing the ads, answering bidders’ questions, packing, shipping, dealing with returns, dealing with payment problems, and so on. It’s still Internet Marketing, of course, and potentially very lucrative, but this can become hard work.

Other types of Internet Marketing opportunities demand you go back regularly to update websites to reflect changes in product or technology so that your sites are always current. This is a common problem with some affiliate marketing sites where there are many links to individual pages on merchants’ sites; while these might offer better conversion rates than links to the merchant’s home pages, these links need to be constantly checked and updated because merchants have a habit of changing products (or even just the specific web pages on which a product is offered).

Some opportunities call on you to respond quickly and consistently to questions from prospects and customers. These might be questions asked by people considering buying your product – in which case you certainly don’t want to make them wait; or, questions by frustrated people having problems downloading a product they just bought from you. The longer the wait, the higher the frustration. Then there are issues of refunds, questions about billing, and many more situations (sometimes just plain dumb questions) that demand the personal touch – at least, until you are large enough or confident enough to hire others to handle the administrative side of the business.

One of the most effective Internet Marketing strategies is, of course, to maintain a list of people interested in your product or the topic in which you are a specialist. For many marketers, this list IS the holy grail; everything else is just a means to build it. That’s because a good list can be like gold; a captive audience of people who already know and trust you. But there’s no question, it can take a serious commitment of time and effort to maintain and service such a list effectively. Now, if all you do is e-mail to them occasionally with a half-dozen lines and an offer to buy some affiliate product from you, that’s one thing; sure, the commitment is minimal, but in return you can expect a high drop-out rate and poor conversions. But if you put together a valuable and interesting newsletter with good formatting, grammar, spelling and content, one designed to develop a solid and lasting relationship with the people on your list, you’re not talking about just a few minutes a week. If you want the most effective use of a list, this demands consistency of timing, too. So you not only have to commit time and brainpower, you have deadlines to meet, too.

One of the issues that had me kicking myself initially was my shotgun approach to building Adsense sites – I built sites that had very little to do with each other. All the Internet marketing experts agreed that if all I was doing was slapping Adsense on those sites, and not collecting Opt-in e-mail addresses, then I was throwing away an income far larger than the one I was making. But there was simply no way I could afford to maintain and effectively service a list for every site if I was to do it justice in terms of establishing a value-based relationship with the people on the lists. Sure, I could have thrown something together, and I know some marketers do exactly that, but that’s not really my style. An anonymous site is one thing, but an e-mail from me, with my name on it, has to represent something of value.

Still on a personal level, I suppose I should also be happy that, for once, my daughter is actually listening to me! Now she’s into Internet Marketing and building her own sites, she is sticking to a common theme for a whole group of different sites. This means that a carefully written single newsletter can be applied to everybody on the List developed from ALL the sites in a group, because it’s relevant and valuable content to every site in the group. There are also valuable SEO advantages from having a group of sites ( a mini-net) on a common theme, of course; the extra traffic means more visitors, which means a bigger List, … without requiring any increase in time committed to the newsletter. When the Affiliate-based income from the List dwarfs the Adsense income, this Internet marketing strategy is the key to some serious coin.

So, what’s the secret to internet marketing and making money online? Well, let me tell you, there is no secret. What there is though is information overload. There are tons of strategies for various types of internet marketing techniques and what works great for one business, might not work at all for another.

So, rather than trying to “master the art” of internet marketing, it is best to get a quick overview of internet marketing techniques, decide which one (or two) you want to try first, gain the knowledge and skill you need to pull off the technique, and see how it works. Of course you need to do some research to identify your target market and create a marketing plan, but your internet marketing plan doesn’t have to be extensive and doesn’t have to be set in stone from day one. You can review your stats, see what is working and what isn’t, and tweak your internet marketing campaign as you go along to strengthen it and make it more effective.

When you get started in internet marketing, it is good to have an understanding of various types of internet marketing techniques, but the primary ones to concentrate on in the beginning are search engine marketing and pay-per-click search engine marketing. On average, over 80% of the traffic that comes to a website finds the website through the search engines, so search engine listings are vital to internet marketing.

Search engine marketing consists primarily of optimizing your website using targeted keywords, filling it with relevant content, building relevant incoming links, and submitting the site to the search engines. With pay-per-click search engine marketing, the process of internet marketing through the search engines is simplified a bit because you bid on keywords that will provide results for your particular website and your search engine rank is based primarily on your bid rather than relying solely on site optimization which can be quite challenging.

Rather than focusing on a variety of internet marketing techniques at once, you’ll find it is much more effective to pursue internet marketing options one at a time. After perfecting one strategy, you can move on to the next, continually strengthening your internet marketing efforts.

If the tld is not already taken, if they have the technical capability to mange the tld, and they have the desire to market domain names on that tld, then let them do so.

It should be similar to the registering of a domain name, except on a higher level, with the added technical requirements. ICANN should be sort of an uber-registry for tlds.

It would be ludicrous for a domain name restrar like go daddy or enom to ask you for a business plan, or a non-refundable application fee, before allowing you to register a domain name. It would be ridiculous for a registrar to have “rounds” of domain name releases of names “they chose” in advance.

Okay, this month, go daddy will be allocating cheaperwebhosting.com, doggrommingmadeeasy.net, and virtualinternetwebnetwork.net. We will be taking applications and public comment during the month of february. We will then spend another month reviewing the applicants business plans to decide who we will allocate the domain name to. If you are not approved to manage the domain name you apply for, your application fee will be held by go daddy until further notice.

Some people will say that is not a good analogy, but it is a perfect analogy. Here is why. If info.com was still available and I registered it. I could then start selling subdomains like car.info.com, computer.info.com, icann.info.com or any other subdomain someone wished to purchase from me. The subdomain is one dot removed from the domain name the same as the domain name is one dot removed from the tld.

There is no longer any reason to believe ICANN is doing anything other than restricting free enterprise and free trade by not opening up the market for tlds. It is no longer acceptable that ICANN should be the one to decide which tlds will or will not be created nor is it acceptable that ICANN gets to choose who can or cannot run a tld.

Do you present a businesss plan to the city you live in before they allow you a business license? No.

Does the city ask you to prove you are financially stable before issuing you a business license? No, as long as you pay the registration fee.

If you apply for a business license to open a clothing store, does the city ask how you will run your clothing store or if you have the necessary expertise to run a clothing store? No.

Does the city think you will hurt them economically if your clothing store goes out of business? No, it’s none of their business.

Is the city concerned that there may not enough demand for yet another clothing store? No, again none of their business.

ICANN not allowing me, or anyone else in the world, to create a tld of our choice in any language we choose, is a blatant violation of our rights. In many countries, America among them, the right to free enterprise still exists. ICANN is denying me that right as an American citizen and doing so when even their own organization exists under American law.

There are no needs for auctions or rounds or anything else. If you want to run a tld, then you register it and start selling domain names. If you fail, you fail, just as in any other business venture you take on.

Artificially restricting namespace to make a few business IP interests happy has to stop.

Taking the time to set goals is only part of the process of goal setting, and many people often overlook the other part, creating a plan!

Without a plan your goals remain incomplete. It’s like having a destination but without a map. Your goals tell you where you want to go in life, and your plan tells you how to get there.

A goal plan is simply a list of scheduled activities that you will do sometime in the future. These may include activities done over a series of days, weeks, months or even years depending on the type of goal you set for yourself.

Your plan does not have to be completed perfectly the first time. Usually you will find that your first attempt at creating a goal plan will be vague and incomplete. Don’t worry this is ok. Plans should be flexible and so are likely to be constantly updated as you move towards completing your primary goal.

In your plan you should therefore create a series of steps, you think you need in order to accomplish that goal. So think of it like baking a cake. Your ultimate goal is to make a cake (and eat it!), but the ingredients and the things you do with those ingredients are your plan. Once you complete the plan, you complete your goal.

Creating a goal plan is frequently overlooked, and many people discipline themselves to write their goals every day but create no plan! So make sure you take the time to decide where you want to go (your goals) and then create a plan that will tell you how to get there!

In addition to your goal plan it is also a good idea to use visualization to help clarify in your mind exactly what you want to achieve. This can simply involve thinking about your goals, and imaging them as completed when you go to bed. You can do this for about 10 minutes (or longer if you want) before you fall to sleep, and you will be surprised at what a difference it makes in achieving your goals. One of the main reasons visualization before sleep is so effective, is that it provides easy access to the subconscious mind. Thereby allowing you to program your goals into your mind, increasing the likelihood you will accomplish them.

So how do I find products in high demand with little competition? This is the question I hear most often from people trying to profit from selling products online. Well the truth is your only choice is to do some research. There are all kinds of twists and turns along the way that may lead you to think you have a high-demand product or idea. We must be able to comprehend and satisfy the need, wants and expectations of our customers on a certain product that they’re trying to buy. Those three things are the necessities in a purchase. Needs are the basic reasons or the minimum requirements consumers are looking for in a product or service. Wants are the determining dimensions among many choices. Expectations, on the other hand, are values or intangibles related with a product or service. Expectations are actually part of wants but they become extremely important when products or services are not differentiated.

The next step is finding the level of competition for your new found product or service. While companies would naturally define its target competitors, it is actually the consumers who ultimately decide the competitive frame, or the list related products or services that consumers consider when exercising their purchasing power. We must therefore choose the market segment where we can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role. Because the overriding objective of getting into this business is not just to satisfy the needs and wants of our customers but to do so profitably better than his competition. Otherwise, our competition will end up satisfying the customers better than our own interest.

Third factor to be considered in finding hot selling products is finding out the general interest level about the product. General interest in a product helps us to gauge where our demand and competition numbers fall into the big picture. Simply saying, if there isn’t much demand for the product, and there isn’t much competition, it would seem that it might not be good a good put up for sale. But the research doesn’t stop here; there is one last thing to be considered to exactly find the hot selling products that you’ve been looking for. We must also learn how others are advertising those products. If there are a good number of them doing so, it may mean that it’s a good product to get into. Coming to the last phase of the process is analyzing and evaluating all the information that has been collected. We have to look at all of the data we have collected on demand, competition, and advertising, and make decision as how they all balance out.

And here are several factors or aspects that must be measured: (a) not enough demand means not enough people are going to buy (b) too much competition means not enough of a profit to go around (c) too much advertising drives up the price of pay per click ads, and competition as well (d) not enough general interest, combined with low demand, means there may not be a good market even if there is competition trying to make the sales.

Most products have an affiliate program, and some even pay you as much as 75%! All you have to do is find the ones that pay the most, sign up, drive traffic to that site through your affiliate link and you’re all set right?

Wrong! Let’s back up a minute.

It’s great to choose an affiliate program that pays a high percentage, but that’s not most important. It’s most important to find a quality affiliate program that meets certain criteria.

First, you want to make sure the product is a proven seller. You don’t want to waste your time and money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t convert. Find one with a good conversion rate.

Second, make sure the site you become an affiliate for protects his affiliates, and has your best interest at heart. Look for one that provides banners, e-mails, and other tools you can use to promote the site. Also, make sure that there is only one payment option. As an affiliate marketer, you need to be sure that you will get credit for your referral. If there is more than one payment method, you can get shortchanged.

Third, do not choose an affiliate program that promotes an e-mail course. Nothing angers me more than becoming an affiliate to a site that’s first goal is to capture e-mail addresses, and then tries to make the sale second. As an affiliate marketer, you need to capture e-mail addresses, then to convert that prospect into a sale. Stick with affiliate programs that aren’t focused on capturing leads because it’s simply not in your best interest. Build your own list, not someone else’s.

Affiliate marketing can be an absolute goldmine, but if you choose the wrong affiliate programs you will only be wasting your money.

Another quick note: Don’t let anyone tell you a particular Niche is too saturated. Unless you have deep pockets you should stay away from industries like credit repair, gambling, insurance, etc. However, you can even succeed in those if you are inventive enough. Try out new methods of generating leads. Be creative.

Who knows, you may even surprise yourself.

The most common reason that people do not get started in affiliate marketing is because they are not aware of what it entails.  They are afraid to give it a shot because they simply think that it will be a waste of time.  The good thing is that affiliate marketing is not hard to understand.  The basic definition is that affiliate marketing is a method of promoting websites in a way that affiliates are rewarded for sending visitors or customers to other sites.  As far as affiliate marketing is concerned, compensation varies depending on the type of program that you are involved with.  In some cases you will get paid or have to pay for each visitor that you send or receive.  In other cases, compensation is based purely on customers buying products or services.

If you are looking for a way to promote your home business, affiliate marketing can help.  What you will do is find affiliates that are willing to promote your site to others for you.  The good thing about this is that you do not have to pay them unless they meet the specifications that are set forth; this usually includes pay per click, or pay per sale.  This means that you will get a lot of promotion without having to do any work on your own.  Most people prefer pay per sale programs because they will never have to pay out any money unless they get a sale.

On the other side of things, there are many people that make a living by affiliate marketing.  The way this is done is by getting involved with as many programs as possible.  You can then set up different websites that will drive traffic to your affiliate’s sites.  When this happens, you will get paid!

Affiliate marketing for a home internet business is a great way to get promotion.  You do not be one of those people that overlook this option because it sounds too complicated.  Affiliate marketing is worth a shot.  Who knows, it may be all you need to take your earnings to the next level!

Before we get to the steps, I want you to ask yourself a question. What do you hope to accomplish with affiliate marketing? This is an easier question to answer than it might seem. There are really only two basic choices here.

The first is what I call the “quick buck” choice. In other words, you want to make a few dollars quickly, and you are not interested in building a business. If this is you, all you need to do is learn how to write exceptionally good ads, and then use them to promote your affiliate product. Many people will say I am wrong, but there is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as you are honestly not trying to build a long term business this way.

On the other hand, if you are looking to build a business with income potential for the long term, then you will have a longer road ahead of you. It will take you longer before you see any profit from your efforts, but it will be worth it when you are able to take a day off, or even a week off, and still have sales in your absence.

These steps should be followed in order. If you try to go out of sequence, you will not get the results you are after.

1. Pick a Market

Why pick a market and not pick a product? Because you will eventually want to add additional products into your pipeline. You should pick a market that interests you, and maybe something you already know something about. Don’t forget that you are building for the long term.

2. Pick a Product

Once you have your market chosen, you should pick just one product to begin with. It will be very tempting to try to add all kinds of related products at first, but don’t. Having just one product will help you focus on the important tasks. You will want to pick a product that converts well. What this means is that the product sells to a high percentage of visitors. This will help keep your cost per visitor down and increase your profits.

3. Build a follow-up series

Also called an autoresponder series, you should build one based on the topic and the contents of the product you are promoting. If it is a physical product you are promoting, you will have to create or locate content that is directly related to the product. As an example, if you are selling golf clubs, you could create a series about how to buy golf clubs that fit, or the benefits of custom clubs, or even something about the club preferences of famous professional golfers. Be as creative as you can, and do not stray off topic. It has been said that most sales are not made in the initial contact, they are made on the seventh. If you are not following up with your prospects, the bottom line is you are losing sales.

4. Build an email capture page

This is where you will capture information about your prospects so you can send your follow-up series. If you are building a business, having your own web site is a necessity, if only because you will control the content, and be able to capture email addresses for yourself. You might be able to get by for a while without this, but it just isn’t worth it.

5. Drive traffic to your squeeze page

Until you are finished with step four, you shouldn’t even think about traffic techniques. If you don’t have anywhere to send the traffic, why worry about how to generate it in the first place. Depending on the traffic generation techniques you choose, it may take some time for you to start seeing sales in your program. You should spend this time developing one or two streams of traffic, and refining these techniques to help you drive more traffic with less effort.

6. Find additional related products

Once your business is making some money, it is time to start adding to your list of products. I don’t mean you should go out and sign up for every affiliate program that is even remotely related. What I do mean is that you should carefully choose an additional product or two, and add them into your pipeline. Because you have been building a list of qualified prospects, you will be able to market these new products to them. This is the really long term money maker for your business. As long as you continue to recommend good products to your customer list, you can continue to make money off of them, even the ones who have already bought your last product recommendation.

So these six steps are all you need to go from nothing to having a profitable business selling other peoples products. It can be easy to loose focus if you are not seeing immediate results, so keep your sights on the end goal of having a profitable business. You may also find it hard finding your initial market and product. Take your time and choose the best product you can. If the product you choose to promote is not good, your prospects will not continue to listen to your recommendations.