Technology changes almost on a daily basis. Along with those technological changes, so do the methods of internet marketing have to keep up with the times.

Imagine if you currently were not using social media for marketing, surely your business would be lost amidst those trend-setting companies that use every new platform, forum, or device to put their name at the forefront.

How can you possibly stay on top of internet marketing trends when they change so rapidly? There are several methods, as outlined below.

Following Those Who Know

The easiest way to keep your finger on the pulse of the newest, most innovative, and most effective methods of using advancing technology for marketing is to find a good internet marketing blog written by a professional and follow it. There are lots of them out there and new ones being added daily, but if you can find a popular, well-established site, you are most likely to gain the best, most reliable information.

Outside of the blogosphere, you may also want to keep an eye on what’s happening at social media sites. Be sure to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ internet marketing gurus. Do a search for trending topics on Twitter that include the word ‘marketing’.

Google Alerts

Just in case your favorite blogger isn’t keeping up on the latest marketing trends, create Google alerts for the phrases “Google pagerank news”, “internet marketing news”, “internet marketing trends” or something similar. This will send a message straight to your email inbox that lists any new content referencing these exact words.

Attend Professional Conferences

For the serious internet marketer, it is definitely worthwhile to join an association or organisation that focuses on this topic. Paid memberships often allow you to receive the latest news and notice of upcoming changes. If you can afford to do so, attend a conference where you can ask questions and listen to the advice of professionals who have the inside track with the major search engines and software companies.

The Importance Of Keeping Up With Internet Marketing Trends

Consider this scenario: several years ago you owned a monetised website that used the process of posting duplicate content across the internet to build links to your pages. If you were not aware that Google was planning on blacklisting sites linked to duplicate content, you might have lost everything you’d worked so hard to achieve.

The same holds true today if you own a site that relies on affiliate marketing for income. Since Google made some important changes to its Adsense program in recent times, you could well be losing your stream of income right now. Without staying on top of news and trends, you are vulnerable to losing your entire business if it is based on an outdated model.

It is very difficult to find internet marketing success unless you stay abreast of all the changes that affect your efforts. If you want to work smarter instead of harder, the key is to follow internet marketing trends and blaze new trails to success.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

Will writing product reviews help you sell products online? It could. Many affiliate marketers are making money via reviewing products that pay them an affiliate commission when a product is purchased through their affiliate code. Here are some examples and some success tips:

Know The Product

One of the worst mistakes an affiliate marketer can make is to start promoting a product they know very little about. The potential problems that could happen include: being ineffective at selling it and / or getting numerous return requests if you do happen to sell any because they product didn’t live up to its promises.

By learning about the product you’re selling, you can sell something you know will be useful to your customers and write effective reviews about the product.

Writing Product Reviews – Use The Right Keywords

Keyword research is important. Not only will it help you rank well in the search engines but it can help you figure out what is the best approach to take. Some affiliate products are ultra competitive but perhaps there are some long tail keyword phrases you could capitalise upon.

When writing product reviews, one approach is to begin targeting people who are already ready interested in the product but want further information on it. The right keywords can help you get found by this target market.

Another approach is that you’re sharing your experience with a product to people with a problem that the product solves. The right keywords will help you get found by your potential demographic and your product review can speak to their motivators.

Answer Questions

A person considering a product purchase typically has questions they want answered in order for them to feel that it’s worth the risk to buy the item. By anticipating what those questions are and then addressing them, you’ll overcome objections to buying.

Use Social Media And Web 2.0 Pages

Social sites can help you promote your product reviews. In fact, some of them are suitable for writing your product review as well. Beyond setting up a blog, a landing page that re-directs people to a sales letter, or website to review a product, you can use free publishing sites such as Squidoo, HubPages, Info Barrel, eHow, Tumblr, MySpace, Blogger, some article directories, WordPress.com, and others to help you share your opinion about a product.

Note the editorial guidelines for the site you’re writing for. The product review can reside on that page or you could begin a page that redirects someone to your actual review. This can be a great way to get traffic from multiple places.

After creating your reviews, don’t forget to bookmark them on social tools and blog and microblog about them as well. If they’re very helpful they can also go viral and even be used on your email marketing list to share with your subscribers who may, in turn, buy from your affiliate link and tell their friends about the product, too.

Product reviews can definitely sway a person’s opinion in a specific direction and a lot of people use the web to help them make buying decisions. Writing reviews could definitely help you increase your affiliate marketing income. Study some product reviews in the niche you’re interested in to help you as well.

Most of all, before you even consider writing product reviews, find products you like and believe in. This will solidify your trusted advisor status if you’re marketing to your subscriber list and can get you not only a client today but a repeat client that doesn’t hesitate to take your advice again in the future.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

There are a number of affiliate marketing forums available online. Some are free and some offer private memberships. The common denominator here is that these forums are filled with people that are just like you – they are keen to start making money from affiliate marketing.

You can definitely benefit from visiting these forums. You can network, you can learn, and you can share information that can help you and others succeed. Whether you are a beginning internet marketer or are someone who has fired their boss and taken to the jet-setting webpreneur lifestyle, it never hurts to rub virtual elbows with others in your industry.

Here are some of the potential benefits of joining affiliate marketing forums:

1. SEO Knowledge

Get the lowdown on SEO. Search engine optimisation is a vital aspect of internet marketing and because there is no official set-in-stone rule book, getting a variety of opinions from others is going to be helpful. All affiliate marketing websites dedicate sections to learning about search engine optimisation and the more info you have on this topic, the better poised you’ll be for ensuring you get as much organic traffic to your sites as possible.

2. Avoid Scams

Sadly, the internet marketing world does have its share of scammers. Internet marketing communities share this type of information to help others avoid rip-off artists and bad deals. Affiliate networks that don’t pay, individual affiliate marketing programs with a high return rate, payment processors that are less than easy to deal with, and other important issues are discussed and you can avoid some mistakes others have made by staying up to date.

3. Get Advice

Get the Lowdown. Want to know if something is worthwhile? Ask. These forums have a community mentality and you can ask for advice and help on anything related to the internet marketing industry. Chances are that something you’re curious about has been covered by someone else who’s willing to save you time and frustration by sharing their knowledge.

Want to hear about new tools that others are using? Chances are that they’re talking about it on affiliate marketing forums and you could find something new that helps you extend your reach and touch new customers.

4. Learn IM Techniques

Some forums offer really detailed information on how to do things with step-by-step directions. You might get flowcharts, instructional videos, live webinars, ebooks and reports that can help you learn affiliate marketing in the easiest and fastest ways possible.

5. Affiliate Marketing Forums – Camaraderie

Who else understands the online entrepreneur’s lifestyle and challenges better than someone who does this for a living? Your spouse may listen with interest and empathy and your friends might try to understand what you do for a living but no one “gets it” like another affiliate marketer does.

Working for yourself can feel isolating and having a “tribe” to go on a virtual online water cooler for ideas, for empathy, even for a laugh, can help you get through the day and get through the rough patches that are inevitable when you are working hard toward your goals on your own.

6. Networking

Many joint ventures are born through membership groups. Want someone to bookmark a great article to get it to go viral? Want someone to proofread your sales letter for you and make suggestions? Want to exchange links on someone’s marketing list? Need to know how other people deal with a particular customer satisfaction issue? Affiliate marketing forums can be a great place to do that… saving you time and effort and giving you insight and wisdom.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

Can writing articles help you make money through affiliate marketing? You betcha, it can. There are several ways that article marketing can help you to promote affiliate products and make commissions. The great thing is, that once these articles are out there, they can pay off repeatedly.

Here are some tips to help you learn why this works and help you come up with a plan to get article marketing working for you:

Remember Keyword Optimisation

If you have affiliate products that you want to promote and sell, find out what keyword phrases people who may be interested in buying that product are using in their searches. By optimising your article for those phrases, you can get attention from search engines.

People looking for information on the topic you are writing about could read your article and then click through to your site where they may buy thus earning you an affiliate commission. The right keyword optimisation will help the site you’re linking to rank for desired keyword phrases – therefore bringing targeted traffic directly to your site as well as to the article you’ve written for someone else’s site.

Pique Interest

Articles submitted to directories, blogs, and social sites should pique the interest of the person reading the article. Try to provide enough information to pique that interest but leave a little bit to the imagination so that the reader will click the link in your resource box / byline to learn more. Then, the place they link to should work on compelling them to buy something.

Call To Action

A resource box or byline is generally allowed on an article that’s submitted to article directories like EzineArticles, Goarticles, ArticlesBase, and others. A combination of anchor text links and a call to action can help you get traffic to the site you link to, to the article you’ve written, and help you get search engine rankings for those words. Learn to craft a resource box on an article designed for article marketing and it could be profitable.

Follow Editorial Guidelines

Some article directories will accept anything you write. But most high traffic sites that are worth submitting to have editorial guidelines you need to follow. These guidelines help the site get traffic and gain favour with search engines so they want people to adhere to their standards. Learn about the standards of each site you submit to in order to maximise your chances of being approved and maybe even gaining front page exposure.

Article Marketing + Social Marketing

Article marketing combined with social marketing can make for a powerful and profitable combination. Use social media tools to get traffic to the articles you write and they could become quite profitable.

Allow Syndication

A great benefit of article marketing is that you typically make articles available to others if they are willing to keep the article and attribution (with links) intact. The more people that publish your article, the more SEO benefits and potential traffic you could get to your site. That traffic could translate to affiliate marketing profits.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

When deciding on which affiliate marketing programs to participate in, the decision shouldn’t be made lightly. By carefully weighing your options, whether planning to promote one major product or many different products, you’ll ensure that you’re making a choice that will be a profitable and enjoyable one.

Here are some things to consider when deciding upon which affiliate marketing programs are right for you and your internet business:

Affiliate Payments

Quite a few questions should come up when you look at the key piece of affiliate marketing that interests you – the “getting paid” part! Here are questions to ask before getting going:

• How much will you get paid per sale.
• How often will you get paid.
• How will you get paid your affiliate commissions.

Depending on where you live, the payment threshold, and other things related to the financials, this could impact whether or not a  particular affiliate program is right for you. Some affiliate marketing programs pay their affiliates the commission rate instantly. Others pay monthly.

Others pay once you meet a specific threshold and some are run by affiliate networks that have their own rules on top of the rules set by the publisher or manufacturer of the product you promote. Be sure you have a full understanding of the payment process and particulars so you reduce frustration and disappointment.

Usability / Value

A big mistake some internet marketers make is that they don’t carefully review the products they plan to sell. If you don’t know anything beyond the sales page, you are not going to be in a very good position to sell.

Do yourself a favour and buy the product before you consider selling it. This way you’ll have a full comprehension of why others might want to buy it. This can help you avoid spending your time on something that will result in zero sales or high return rates as well.

Sales Tools

What type of affiliate tools does the company offer to help promote the product? Will you get access to PLR articles, creatives such as banners and widgets, instructional guides and videos, and will you have access to an affiliate marketer’s resource site? Sometimes this isn’t necessary, depending on how complex the product is, but consider which tools are available to help you sell an affiliate product before you take the plunge. Some programs really support their members whereas others don’t and the support could help you sell more.

Affiliate Marketing Programs – Reputation

What do other people say about the product you’re thinking about selling? If it generally has good reviews, chances are that people will be interested in buying it and that you’ll have a low return rate. Take the time to look before you leap and it will be time well invested. If there are names behind that product that are searchable, be sure that those names bring up solid reviews as well.

Product Competition

A product that’s too competitive will be difficult to gain favour with the search engines for organic search engine optimisation. A product that’s really obscure will take a lot of time and effort to market. Trying to find something in the middle can require a fine balance. Before starting to promote something, look at how competitive the market is.

When you are choosing affiliate marketing programs to participate in, look at how much demand for the product there is and whether or not there is room for more people to market the product. If there are under-serviced keyword phrases with potential and the product isn’t one that’s past its prime, you might be in a good position to take action.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

One of the great things about using the internet for affiliate marketing is that there is more than one way to succeed. Some internet marketers choose a single method that helps them achieve success and others use a combination of approaches to help them make multiple streams of income.

Another great thing about affiliate marketing is that many of the approaches you can take can create income. Not only can they create a sale but they can generate passive streams of income that keep paying long after you’ve completed the task.

Unlike traditional bricks and mortar sales, spending time on something once in the realm of online sales could pay off time and again. You don’t have to memorise a sales pitch and go hoarse from repeating it, knocking on door after door every day.

Selling online doesn’t feel like doors slamming in your face. In fact, most successful affiliate marketing professionals will tell you that it doesn’t even feel like real selling. The web creates places where you can work once and reap benefits many times through methods of marketing, using tools that companies have created to help you do the selling.

Unlike working in a world where doors inexplicably slam and you don’t know why, the web allows an entrepreneur to measure various aspects of your approach which will help you figure out how to fine-tune your marketing strategies.

Here are some ways of making money from affiliate marketing …

Affiliate Marketing Via Blogging

Many people utilise free and paid blogs to help them sell products that will earn them affiliate commissions. There are many marketing techniques that can be used on blogs, including content links as well as widgets and banners that advertise affiliate products for sale. If you learn to blog correctly, it can be a great vehicle to not only make money online, but also to build a large target audience that will keep coming back to read your articles.

Pay Per Click

Pay per click advertising, or PPC, costs money but can be a very effective internet marketing strategy. You can bid on keyword phrases that generate advertisements and when people buy products you promote through those ads, you’ll earn a commission.

Article Marketing

By writing articles on topics and submitting them to high traffic article directories and then leading the reader to your sales page at the end, you can drive traffic to that page. The product creator’s sales page copywriting skills can convert that reader into a client and you can earn a commission from that.

Social Media Marketing

There are dozens and dozens of social sites crawling with traffic that could be interested in buying what you are selling.

Content Development

By creating informational websites, you can add ‘buy now’ buttons or direct traffic to a landing page that can convert traffic into customers. You can also create online stores selling physical products for a commission. You often don’t have to inventory the product or process orders as you are simply a virtual storefront and products are dropshipped to your customers.

Email Marketing

By building an email marketing list, you can have people subscribe to receive messages from you. This permission-based marketing method is advanced but has made many internet marketers quite wealthy as they gain trusted advisor status among their subscribers who may follow product recommendations.

This list isn’t exhaustive but as you can see, there are many ways you can sell affiliate products that could earn you a commission online. Once you’ve decided on which product(s) you want to sell, you can tackle any or all of the above approaches to put your computer to work and start making money from affiliate marketing.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

Every internet marketing guru was a newbie at some point. When you are starting out, deciding on the best way to learn internet marketing can be difficult, especially when you find yourself wading through uncharted territory.

You don’t want to put the cart before the horse and you don’t want to miss out on opportunities either. Where should you start? Learn… Learn before you start, learn as you go, and continue to absorb as much information as you can.

Every industry guru, no matter the industry, has a passion for staying knowledgeable. Internet marketing is a fast-paced world and those who want to succeed in it need to be on the edge of their seat at all times.

The answer to how to approach learning is going to vary depending on who you talk to. Asking the question in an open forum will often start a debate because every successful entrepreneur’s journey will have varied from others who’ve taken a similar path.

Some Basic Ideas To Learn Internet Marketing

• Learn internet marketing in general. The only way to decide if this is something you should pursue is to sop up all the info you can find on it. Learn how it works, understand the pros and cons of the internet marketer lifestyle, be prepared to invest time, or money (preferably a little of the latter and a lot of the former). Take the time to find blogs and sites to read up on. You’ll find a lot of comprehensive resources. Don’t just stick to one. Get a second, third, and fourth opinion.

• Figure out what you’d like to sell, do you have your own product, or maybe you are interested in affiliate marketing. There are thousands of potential ideas for what you could sell on the internet and there’s no standard answer for what’s the best product for beginners to start with.

• Learn about search engines. Find out how search engines work so you can start to think about ways to appeal to them.

• Learn about search engine optimisation. Knowing how to build a website that search engines will index will help you get traffic that could buy from you. This will be a never-ending proposition, though, as SEO is not evergreen and you’ll want and need to keep up to date on the latest strategies, rules, and suggestions from gurus.

• Learn about paid search engine marketing options such as pay per click. You may or may not be ready to invest in this yet but learn about it.

• Listen to the experts. Find out what they do. Read about what they say you should do and read about what they say you shouldn’t do. Then get a second opinion, a third, and a fourth. Experts may have solid advice and the first expert you listen to might give you everything you need but learning all you can will help you to develop your own signature methods that could come from a fusion of several experts success methods.

• Read free reports, white papers, blogs, and internet marketing forums. You’ll get good advice, bad advice, and come up with a lot of good ideas.

If you really want to learn internet marketing, it won’t take long to learn enough to get started. The world of internet marketing is enticing and exciting and there are many opportunities to make money online, but those who are most successful tend to be those who are willing to dedicate the time to learn how others have succeeded.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

Quid pro quo, or reciprocity, is a concept that has long been used in business. It is much like the old “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” adage. Even competitors can agree to disagree long enough to effect good online promotion and SEO benefits for each other.

The same philosophy holds true for online businesses. Promotion and marketing are much more effective when they are multiplied across a group of partners.

Take these suggestions into account in order to use the power of quid pro quo for marketing your online venture and also to form part of your overall SEO schedule.

Link Sharing

Whether you are into affiliate marketing or marketing your own products, building links is one of the most effective SEO methods a website owner can undertake. While links that connect the pages on your website are crucial to good SEO, building incoming links from other sites is also vital.

One way to do this is by exchanging links with a related site, most often on the “links” page or on the blogroll list. The higher the page ranking and authority of the site you share a link with, the greater the benefit to you. This is a great method to use as a part of your blog linking strategy.

Blog Commenting

Perhaps one of the hardest things about getting a blog to gain high ranking in the search engines – especially for a new blog, is attracting comments to your posts. If you are having difficulty getting readers to leave a comment, consider soliciting other blog owners to do so in exchange for the same. Often just one blog comment gets the ball rolling and induces readers to start an online conversation.

The longer you keep at this, the quicker you will gain more subscribers. If possible, subscribe to the sites you comment on so that you can continue to participate in a discussion that you may start. This could bring people to your site.

Another benefit of blog commenting? If it is a dofollow blog, you get a valuable inbound link to your site. Try using the URL of a particular page you are trying to optimise (if the dofollow parameters will allow the particular URL extension you are utilising).

Testimonials

If you try a product and like it, consider letting the business owner know by posting a testimonial to its quality on your blog. This can be a great SEO boost in several ways. For one thing, it allows you to build an outbound link from your site to the address of the vendor’s site. Forward it to the vendor and you’ll also get a backlink when it is posted on their site.

Finally, the quid pro quo concept of marketing nearly always assures that you will receive the same in return, if at all possible. If it doesn’t occur naturally, go ahead and ask; you will be losing nothing if the other party refuses.

Reciprocity is a very valuable form of marketing. Even your competitors can become strong allies when you agree to cross post comments, testimonials, and share links. Quid pro quo is an excellent way to improve your SEO and to enhance your overall internet marketing strategy.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

Your internet marketing strategy should include both short and long term goals. The two will obviously differ based on need. For instance, your short term goals will be to get your website started and do everything possible to quickly make it profitable.

Once you’ve got it up and running and you are starting to make money online, then it is time to focus on those tasks which will improve profitability and increase your online presence through branding, advertising campaigns, and site design that deepens market reach.

The following are some goals that could be very appropriate for including in your long term internet marketing strategy.

Internet Marketing Strategy – Stay Educated

In order to keep up with ever-increasing technology, it is vital that you get, and stay, educated. Knowledge is power and that power is an essential part of internet marketing.

Consider Web 2.0 platforms. Several years ago, handheld devices such as PDAs and smart phones were rare. Today they are found in the hands of a large percentage of your potential customers. If you don’t know how to optimise your site to reach this market and make it easier for them to find you, then you are potentially missing out on a large number of sales.

Add the cost of internet marketing education and tutorials to your marketing budget and plan on attending and completing courses regularly.

Review Previous Internet Marketing Goals

You can’t go forward until you’ve looked back. Reviewing past successes and failures in internet marketing is the best way to determine where to go in the future.

For instance, did your last pay per click campaign result in increased sales? If so, use the elements of that success to design a new campaign that will be even more effective. If the reverse is true and advertising dollars were wasted, that is a good indication of what types of marketing you should not repeat.

It’s always a good idea to keep track of each marketing task. Was it completed? What did you do? Did it result in increased sales or  increased website traffic? A spreadsheet showing this information is a great tool for deciding what type of internet marketing tasks you should focus on for long-term results. If you don’t already have one, start one now and refer to it often.

Expand Market Penetration And Reach

There is always room to grow. When you become complacent about internet marketing, often you are leaving sales on the table. Even successful start-ups need constant revision and renewed focus to stay on top of competitors.

Use the information you’ve gained about past customers to prepare a profile of your market, then use that profile to determine ways you can more deeply penetrate the market. Expand your presence on the web by setting up additional social networking accounts, creating a Facebook fan page, starting an online forum or user’s group, etc.

Find events where you can meet prospective customers face to face. Use your existing contacts to gain referrals. These are all ways you can further penetrate the market.

The goals you set for your long-term internet marketing strategy are those which focus on steadily increasing online sales and growing your e-commerce business. If your company does not change and grow, rest assured that a competitor’s will and you could easily lose all that you’ve worked for.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010

Any time you are writing online content – a blog post, an article, a web page or a sales letter, it is important to consider how people read.

There are several factors that have been identified as being essential for inducing the greatest number of visitors to actually read all the text on your website or blog. Here is a brief overview of the most important.

How We Read Online

As human beings, we read a book far differently than we skim through online content – and that is a key factor; we tend to skim through the page before deciding whether or not we want to invest time reading every word all the way through to the end.

Few people want to read a book online; instead they are searching for information. They want to quickly and easily ascertain whether or not the pages of your website contain the data they are seeking. Don’t make this difficult or time consuming; when it comes down to it, most internet users are lazy. Besides, the internet is supposed to save time, not waste it wading through lots of long pieces of text.

Distractions, such as an incoming email or IM message offer distractions that also make it less likely a reader will finish a long article or post.

Online Content – Style And Design Elements

Text pieces need to include white space. It’s a simple fact that when faced with a page of tightly spaced text with small font and run-together paragraphs, people simply won’t read it. It could contain some truly valuable or really interesting content but your visitors will never know because they will make it all the way through.

Here are some effective ways to design text that gets read:

• Group the text into small paragraphs with appropriate spacing between each.
• Use a font size that is easy to read (i.e., larger than 10 point).
• Skip the fancy fonts and stick with a tried and true sans serif such as Verdana or Arial.
• Use bold phrases sprinkled throughout to grab attention.
• Bulleted lists provide an easy way to read through a large amount of information.
• Refrain from using too much punctuation; particularly exclamation points!
• Dark text against a light background is easiest on the eye.
• Break up the text with graphics and photos.
• Add links, which appear in a different colour than the overall text font.
• Use fewer words to get across the same amount of information in printed format.

General Content Writing Tips

Think of your audience as you write. Not everyone knows the jargon of your particular industry or will appreciate a vocabulary your English professor would be proud of. Use short sentences and simple words that can be understood by any reader.

Limit the length of the pieces to no more than 500 words and articles to around that same number, wherever possible. Web pages can have more text but be sure you utilise the tips above so that blocks and paragraphs are appropriately separated and incorporate sufficient white space.

It is easy to shorten a piece if you include hyperlinks to pages that more fully discuss a particular topic. This is also a great way to build inter-site links, always good for page ranking SEO.

If you want your website visitors to read your online content, ensure that you lay it out properly and think about ways to get them from the top to the bottom of the page.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010