Whether buying or selling a home, it is one of the largest financial events that happens only a few times within your life. That makes choosing a realtor just as important and a crucial decision that can add to the stressful event or make it smoother and easier. So, choose your realtor as carefully as you would choose your doctor or attorney.

The first step in choosing the RIGHT realtor is to ask your friends, neighbors, acquaintances and business associates for recommendations. Ask them why they liked the realtor, what kind of service he/she provided, and would they use him/her again? Do not consider recommendations of their relatives — it is doubtful that you are getting an accurate perspective on the realtor.

If you did not get several truly exemplary recommendations, then drive throughout your neighborhood and check the “for sale” signs, especially those with “Sold” stuck across them. Note the realtor names. Also, check out real estate, display and classified advertising in your newspaper and local neighborhood paper. Which realtors have the most listings? Which have the largest or most display ads with photos of the homes? Note the realtor names.

By now, you should have a good list of potential realtors. It is time to check them out. Attend at least one open house for each realtor you are considering. Observe them in action and judge their expertise. Are they professional — or do they come across as a “used car salesman”? How familiar is the realtor with the property he/she is selling? After you leave, make detailed notes of your observations and how you felt about the realtor.

If you only used the recommendations of others, now check the advertising in the newspaper and neighborhood media for the realtors in which you are interested. Do the drive through of your neighborhood to see how many sold signs these realtors have. Make notes of how visible these realtors are and their marketing efforts.

Next, choose your top three realtor selections. It is better if they are from different companies, ensuring they will work harder for your business. Call all three and set appointments. For sellers, make the appointment in your home and let them know you would like an estimate of your home’s market value. For buyers, let them know you would like them to determine how much you can afford to pay for a home. Be sure they know that you are meeting with two other realtors and will not make your decision until you have met with all three.

During each interview, take detailed notes on the realtors’ presentations. Note any thoughts you have. Ask the following questions, along with any you may have:

• For sellers —
o How will they sell your home? What are their marketing plans? Are they customized to your listing?
o How many years have they been a full-time realtor? In your area? You want someone with experience, who will be giving your listing his/her full attention.
o What is their sales record? This includes their production level, rating, closed rate, expired rate on listings, and average time listings have been on the market before selling within the last year.
o Are they single-proprietorship realtors, work as a team, or part of a company? What prominent company are they associated with, and what resources does the firm provide the realtor that helps him/her do a better job for you?
o What level of technology will they use to promote your listing — web sites, virtual tours, online photo galleries, and so on?
o What services do they provide from the time of listing your home to the end of the closing?
o What are their communication procedures with you from listing through closing?
o Do they provide working relationships with local inspectors, appraisers, and real estate attorneys?
o Will they help you “stage” you home for showing. This is a walk-through of the property, suggesting things that should be repaired, renovated or changed to improve your pricing for the home. It also includes things that would “show” the home better. For example, too much furniture adds a clutter affect, making rooms look smaller. The realtor may suggest storing some of your furniture until after the sale.
o How did they arrive at the results of their marketing analysis? Ask for the actual addresses of any homes they used for comparison.
• For buyers —
o What services do they provide from the time you contract with them through the closing?
o How many years have they been a full-time agent? In your area? You want someone with experience, who will give his/her full attention to finding you a home.
o Are they single-proprietorship realtors, work as a team, or part of a company? What prominent company are they associated with, and what resources does the firm provide the realtor that helps him/her do a better job for you?
o What are their communication procedures with you during your search for a home through closing?
o What level of technology and research methods will they use to locate potential homes for you to view?
o What is their production level and rating? How many satisfied buyers in the past 12 months?
o Do they provide working relationships with inspectors, appraisers, title search companies/attorneys, and real estate attorneys for contracting and the closing? Can they suggest mortgage lenders, if you need one?
o Do they network with other realtors in the area? Sometimes, such relationships may afford you a viewing before a property is “officially” listed, giving your first view.

Tell the realtors that you will make a decision and contact them in the next day or two.

After all interviews are completed, note the following:

• Who gave you the most usable information?
• For sellers, the market value for your home should be in similar ranges for all three realtors Note if someone is unusually high. They may be only trying to get your listing with the idea of talking your price down later. Also, drive by the homes they used for market value comparison. Which realtors compared apples to apples, and which compared apples to oranges?
• For buyers, your buying potential (what you can afford to pay for a new home) should be in the same range for all three realtors. If a realtor is much higher or lower than the others, note this. You may even call him/her to inquire about the difference and how they arrived at the amount?
• Who answered your questions with genuine sincerity?
• Who genuinely appeared most excited about your home and its sale?
• Who truly listened, and who did not?
• Which realtor seemed to be the best fit for you?

Choosing a poor realtor can turn an already stressful event into a nightmare with ramifications that you must live with for years to come. Choosing the right realtor can make the experience a dream come true and a totally satisfying event. Selling or buying a home is stressful enough. Be sure you do not choose a realtor that is going to add to that stress.

When BER-months enter our year, we are excited for the reason that this is the time where lots of occasion happens. We celebrate the Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. These are the event where we think of ways on how to reach out to our loved ones and special someone. Focusing on the event for the Halloween, this event happens on the month of November but yet we are busy announcing events and distributing invitations for the parties.

Creativity and artistry is what we perceive if we want something unique for our materials and if we want to grab the attention of our viewers. Well a good material to be used and be distributed for this event is the postcards. The postcards had been a good symbol that depicts a picture of different occasions. It can be mailed, designed, personalized or customized based on the event to happen.

The Halloween postcards are a perfect match that can be distributed for the Halloween event. It can serve as a best invitation for the Halloween parties, games and other events. Personalizing or customizing them will make a difference because it will work out to get the attention of your recipients, invade their emotions and feel the spirit of the affair.

Well in doing with our Halloween postcards we have to make them friendlier in order for us to get higher response. So here are some pointers on how to handle them.

•Choose for creative designs – since we are talking about Halloween, a scary design can be perfect match for your event. You can print out and make them personalized in preparation for the Halloween party or event. You can either pick for a design like a costume party design, Dracula design, witch design, tombstone design and the famous pumpkin designs.

•Make it fun – in printing Halloween postcards you need not to be serious about the designs you apply. You can choose for colors that will emphasize the highlight of the event.

•Make it outstanding and memorable – picking up for the unique designs will make your material stand out of the crowd. Make it memorable in a way that your recipients will be glad to receive one from you.

•Make your presence felt - in creating your postcards you have be friendly enough for you to get the attention of your target. Since these postcards can represent you, be sure that you are able to make friendlier design for them to remember you and make your presence felt though you are not around.

Designing your Halloween postcards for parties and event is easy only if you have the right material in you hands. Having an idea with processes and how handle them can be plus point if you stand out, however seeking for an online professional help is till the best thing to do.

So what are you waiting for go and make fun, prepare postcards prints for the Halloween event. Get in a hurry and get involved with the rush for Halloween postcards.

By the way before I ran out of words your Halloween postcards can also be used to market your sales. The only is difference is that these cards won’t be very obvious that you are marketing you business services and products.

Affiliate marketing has been in the Internet industry for quite sometime now and it is among the most popular tools used by many online entrepreneurs today. It is a great option for those who want to put up an online business quickly and cheaply. However, there is still a large number of the population who knows a little or even nothing about it. And most of the people who have just discovered this business usually assume that they can easily make big bucks out of it. Well, they’re definitely wrong.

To be successful in affiliate marketing business is not an easy task and it will never happen overnight. It’s just like an ongoing assignment where you need to find out and try various advertising strategies and tactics. This may even require you to sign-up with numerous affiliate programs just to determine which merchants performs well.

Another misconception that affiliates have ‘bout this kind of business is that they expect to gain more if they place about 20 affiliated banners on just one niche. Well it will not really work the way you think it would because once your site is flooded with too many banners, it will look like a link farm and visitors won’t be interested and won’t even bother clicking on any of those banners. So if you really want to promote several affiliate programs in your website, make sure that they jive with the theme and topic of the rest of the content on your niche. Bear in mind that three or four affiliated links in your site are enough, depending on the size of the web page.

There are also some who think that if they add affiliate materials to their site, they can receive sales right away. Maybe they just don’t know that affiliate marketing is all about advertising. If there’s no traffic coming to your site, how can you expect to get any sales? Remember that the more you advertise your affiliate link or the site where the affiliate links are placed, the more clickthru’s these links are likely to receive.

If you want to be involved or you’ve already joined an affiliate program, but you have the above misconceptions regarding affiliate marketing, then, you might need a mentor to help you figure out where to start and what to do in order to succeed.

In the dictionary, the word mentor is defined as a wise and trusted teacher or counselor. Usually, these persons are experts in the field they are into. They can give expert advice and guidance as well as supervision to another person. So when we say affiliate marketing mentors, they are experienced counselors that have made affiliate marketing their specialty. Affiliate marketing mentors can be those persons that have already been successful in affiliate marketing and are always willing to share their experienced-based knowledge from the viewpoint of both the affiliates and the web merchants. And that’s the reason why we come up with this page. It is aimed to give you the stuffs that affiliate mentors should possess and follow and why do they need these things.

When making money online the single most important question is, How do I drive lots of targeted traffic(people) to my website?

How to make more sales, how to create a winning product and all the technical aspects of online business are obviously important, but you can become an affiliate for ZERO cost, then simply work on driving lots of traffic to your affiliate website.

It doesn't matter what you're selling on your website, you must get people in front of your offer, quite simply, the more people see your offer (as long as it's a good offer), the more money you will make.

Pretty simple calculation and also an obvious one!

So, here we go, how do you create instant website traffic?

Search engines are a great way of bringing free traffic to your website, but it takes time and effort to rank highly in all the search engines, this doesn't mean that you should ignore the organic search engine way, it's just that there are much quicker ways to get traffic and lots of it to your website.

Enter Pay per Click advertising, or the system I use, GOOGLE ADWORDS.

The beauty of the Google pay per click system is that you can have people arriving at your web site in as little as 10 minutes!

Incredible! In 10 minutes and you can drive people to your offer and start earning money.

It literally takes minutes to set up your Google Adwords account. The bad news is, most marketers that choose pay per click are not exactly sure what they're doing, because of this they make silly, avoidable mistakes, lose money, then stop their campaigns never to return.

Well, their loss is your gain because there is no quicker way to market and if done properly, will make you very wealthy indeed!

With pay-per-click advertising you pay only for those visitors that click on your ad and come to your web site. Your ad may be seen by many but unless someone clicks on it you will not pay a penny, sounds good but this is also bad! If no one clicks on your ad, Google will see your ad as a bad ad, so when someone does finally click on the ad you will pay more than you did before because of a clever thing called, click-through-rate, or CTR.

A Few Reasons why Google AdWords is the Best ppc Option.

1. Google rewards the marketers with the best, most relevant ads, which means, if your ad looks like your website will provide answers to what people are looking for, people will click on your ad and when they do, Google will reward you for having a relevant ad. For an ad that converts (clicks/impressions percentage) exceptionally well (high click-through-rate (CTR)), your ad will get better ad placement as well as better pricing. How clever is that?

2. With Google AdWords, you can go target your prospects geographically down to countries, states and cities.

3. Google AdWords can have you a campaign up and running in 10 minutes delivering instant results. Yahoo can takes from 2 to 5 days while they manually sort and review marketers ads.

In the next Google Adwords article I'll share some great Pay Per Click secrets, secrets that some of the Awords experts wouldn't want me to share.

You don’t need to take on a second job in order to make some extra cash. In fact, you don’t have to even leave the house in some cases. Who couldn’t use a little extra money to pay for things that you really need? Read on and we’ll explore some nifty money earning methods that can help you gain better control over your time and your budget.

Go Consignment: Gently used clothing, books, household items and the like can be sold on consignment. Find a local consignment shop that has a great reputation and take your goods over to them. Policies vary, but you’ll earn as much as 60% of the selling price on your goods, with the remaining funds going to the shop.

Hold a Garage or Yard Sale: How is it that some of your neighbors can hold monthly garage or yard sales? Who has that much stuff to sell? Well, some people make money selling used goods from their homes as they buy and resell items they accumulate through other sales. You don’t have to be that aggressive, but chances are you can come up with enough excess stuff once a year to hold a sale. Price everything right and have a decent selection of items and you should clean up $150, $200, or more with every sale.

Take Surveys: Your local mall is a great place to earn quick cash. Survey companies rent space at the mall to conduct to consumer surveys with mall shoppers. In many cases you can simply walk into the office and ask if they are conducting a survey which you are eligible to participate in. Chances are they are, if not you can give them your contact information and have them call you for the next survey. Earn anywhere from a few dollars up to $50 for your time and effort. Some surveys can be completed online; however, beware of the many scam offers on the internet!

Teach a Class: You don’t need a college degree to teach a craft or to give voice lessons. Your local adult or community school is always looking for capable and qualified individuals to fill staff positions. Even if a class in your subject area isn’t currently being taught, submit a curriculum proposal to the administration for their consideration. Most classes are taught once per week with very little preparation time required on your part.

With a little thinking and a lot of ingenuity on your part, you can realize a little bit of extra income without a whole lot of hassles!

Making money online involves continuing education. I spend more time learning how to run and grow my online business than I ever spent studying in college. Making money online requires that you are willing to grow and learn. If you are not a person who likes change, than maybe an online business is not for you. It doesn’t matter if you are new to making money online or a veteran internet marketer; there is a certain amount of continuing education involved.

The internet is still very new. Making money online has only been acceptable for a very short time. I can remember a few years back when people were horrified to think about giving credit card information over the internet. Now there are very few businesses that don’t do some type of financial transactions over the internet.

Online businesses are growing exponentially. In order to compete in such a huge market, you need to continually keep educated on the new techniques to get your business noticed online. Can you imagine how small your business appears in the huge scope of the millions and billions of online businesses.

Learn all you can about article writing. This is probably one of the biggest keys to getting noticed online. If no one knows you are there, how can they find you? Don’t fall into the trap of PLR articles as a means of writing articles. This can only hurt your business! Learn how to write your own unique articles. Unique articles are what are going to make your business unique from the rest.

Go into forums related to your business niche and educate yourself on what is working in your business niche. Participate in the forum and you will find people who are more than willing to help you learn what is working for them. You can grow relationships with the top performers in your field. Growing relationships with other people in your field gets your business recognition. You will soon become a leader in your area of expertise and before long people will seek you out for advice. Your presence online will gain more respect and you will get more repeat business.

Learn how to write a great sales ad. You need to advertise your business to make money online. You don’t have to spend a lot of money advertising your business, but you do need to learn to advertise effectively. Blogging, classified ads, social networking, ezines, to name a few, are all places to advertise. Learn them!

It’s morning and John wakes up, same as he does everyday. He starts the computer and begins checking his email and reviewing his website’s stats. “ $15 in Adsense and 1 sale .. good, good… but still I’d wish those were $500 and 10 sales “. He closes the stats and goes to work in order to get the payment that helps him live a good life.

Mark is also waking up, making a cup of coffee and then sitting comfortably at his laptop. He opens his website’s stats and his heart starts beating a bit faster while he reads on the screen “ $399 in Adsense and 5 sales last night… good, but I WANT IT BETTER” “. He closes the stats, eats a quick breakfast and then sits back again at his laptop and starts working on his websites in order to improve the stats. He doesn’t need to go to work as his websites bring enough income to help him live very well.

Now the question is simple: who would you prefer to be? John or Mark? Do you like to go and work for your boss and help him make money so you can earn your living ? Or do you want to be your own boss and have your own business? Because yes, these days, having a good site IS a business. If your answer is “John” then you’d better stop reading this article and get to more serious things. But if instead you would prefer to be Mark then it may be useful to continue reading. Ok, ok but what does “having a good site” mean? I have a great design, I have great online support, great products and offers, great site functionality… but still I don’t get the expected income? If you ask yourself this than take 2 minutes to think about: “Who am I receiving money from? The design? The functionality of the site? No, what really brings the money is, in fact, the traffic, the people who visit the site and order the services/products or who simply click on the Google ads.”

Now that we found out that the traffic is what makes the webmaster happy, we should ask ourselves how we can get this traffic to our sites. Well, there are several methods of doing this, but nowadays, search engine optimization (SEO) is the method that brings the best targeted traffic. If you want to build a strong business which could provide you more than a decent income, than you should use SEO.

To succeed with a SEO campaign, one must follow three major steps: keywords analysis, on page SEO and off page SEO. The keywords analysis part has to be done in order to assure that you have picked the best keywords ( the ones that will get you the highest number of visitors in the shortest time ).

On page SEO is the step where changes are done directly on your site by modifying it’s files. You have to sort out the titles, metatags, images, text, page structure, internal linking, proper tags and much more things related to your site. In all this process you will use the keywords you found during the keywords analysis part. This will ensure you’ll have a well optimized site focused on those keywords.

Last but not least, off page SEO – considered by all the great SEO specialists out there the most important part of a SEO campaign – related to the external links you can point toward your site. As each link toward your site is considered “a vote” the more votes you have the more “powerful” your site will become.

If you do all these correctly then your site will end up in the tops of the search engines and start getting the best-targeted organic traffic that exists at the moment. So what are you waiting for? Go out there and start doing SEO…. Because SEO it’s the future.

You probably heard it - the fastest way to earn extra money online is to sell on Ebay. You can start right now, today, and in 3 days be paid online for items you sell. All you need is to register at the Ebay site, read their tutorial and get started selling items you have around the house.

Ebay is a 70 billion dollar a year industry giant, and they are dependent on entrepreneurs to make that business figure grow. Entrepreneurs mean people like me and you. In 2005, the number of people making money from working on Ebay increased by 68%. As Ebay researched, over 724,000 million people either make a full time or a supplemental income from working EBAY. And another 1.5 million say that Ebay gives them additional income throughout the year.

So there are many ways to get started on Ebay for an extra income. Lots of people make a few extra dollars while others are making a fortune. Ebay or any business you get into online or in a physical business location has the potential to make money. The great thing about online businesses is it usually costs a lot less to get started than opining a brick and mortar store. For instance, getting started selling on Ebay doesn't cost anything. You only pay fees when you run an Ebay auction ad. Lots of people succeed in business and a lot fail. Your success or failure will partially depend on how well you prepare, how much you study and how much energy you put into the project.

The main thing is to get a plan and work the plan. You should make it a weekly routine to research on Ebay which items are selling like crazy and think about the question whether you might sell them as well. Anyway gather up some income products from around your home, your relatives, garage sales, thrift stores, big lots or consignment shops. Invest a set amount, say $200. Make sure that you get items that are useful or entertaining and that provide a quick turn over. The way to do that is to think about your own buying habits. Would you purchase this item if you saw it advertised, does it appeal to a mass market, is it a niche product people might be willing to purchase? What you want are items that you can pick up for very little money and that you can put up on Ebay for a small price and, thereby, create an immediate cash flow. At first, you will want to return almost all your profits back into purchasing some more items to sell. You will do this until you have a comfortable amount of money invested in your business and then you will have set up your own profit stream.

To get your items ready to market what you need to do is to take a quality digital photo of the item from different angles. For smaller items, you should use a whiteboard backdrop to get the maximum amount of light with few reflections. For larger items, outside shots work well, just have the sun behind your back when taking the picture. You also need to write up a very good description of your item and do not try to hide any imperfections. Once more: it will be always helpful to research on Ebay, what others are doing and how they are doing. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, but don't just copy a good salesletter or listing, let it be an inspiration for you. Point out the usefulness and benefits of your item as well. A description that is fair and honest will result in much better comments received in Ebay feedback.

Google, sometimes referred to as the Big G, has once again proved to the world that it still is the dominant and greatly profitable leader in the Internet search market. Recent reports indicate profits are up 110% to $721m in the three months to June 2006. Much of these Google profits come from their clever and very successful advertising program called Google Adwords.

Google, essentially a search company, had gained market dominance through smart ranking technologies that provided the user with the most relevant search results ever possible to date. It’s simple user interface, coupled with smart algorithms combined with a snappy name and logo has made it the most used search engine today, putting itself years ahead from it’s closest rivals. A listing for a targeted search term in the first page or two of Google’s organic listing is every webmaster’s dream. This means huge success in terms of traffic, sales and hence money in the bank! But, unfortunately, it is not possible for every website to be listed on the first page or two. Google saw the potential for offering paid listings that will appear alongside organic results for a search term. In this way, a webmaster can still get his website onto the first page or two under sponsored listings but for a price. Google launched their pay-per-click program – an advertiser only pays when someone clicks their ad, called it Adwords and the rest, as they say, is history!

Google then followed up with a progam called Adsense which is linked to Adwords. Adsense is where any ordinary webmaster (called a publisher) can display relevant ads from Google’s advertisers on their site. When a user to that site clicks an ad, Google pays them a percentage of that click cost.

Google, by it’s very existence, has given webmasters a chance to earn money in ways that wouldn’t have been possible. Currently, people make cash out of Google by using Adwords and/or Adsense. Thousands of ordinary people are sharing in on Google’s success and profits, making for themselves nice checks every month in the process. Let’s see how.

Adwords

Adwords are used by off-line and online businesses alike to advertise their products or services. But, for ordinary people, that’s not where the money is. Thousands of people are combining the versatility of affiliate programs with the reach of Adwords, making themselves a lot of money in the process.

People search for products that they can promote and more people turn to www.clickbank.com for this. Clickbank, a large Internet company, acts as reseller, payment processor and affiliate commission payer all in one. It works like this. A publisher, wanting to sell his/her products signs up with Clickbank and enters Clickbank’s marketplace. Affiliates wanting to promote the publisher’s products, signs up with Clickbank first as an affiliate and obtains an ID which is used in a special link called a hop link.

The affiliate then markets the publisher’s products by way of advertising, especially on Google Adwords (but can be by any other means although Google Adwords produces best results) in an effort to drive traffic to the site of the publisher. If the referral results in a sale, Clickbank processes the transaction, takes a percentage of the sale, allocates the commission to the affiliate and the balance to the publisher. Clickbank pays affiliates and publishers every two weeks.

Are you constantly being told over and over and OVER again that your writing has to be professional in order to look good in front of others and gain the respects of your peers? That being logical and professional is the best way to sell? With internet marketing, this false!

Only when writing fictional stories were you allowed using emotions to captivate our readers. Most of use were led to believe that writing emotional or ‘unprofessional’ copy in our essays and reports is reserved for children or the ‘unsophisticated’.

They told us that the superior way to write anything is to state facts and back it up with logic and confusing language. Emotional writing is manipulative and insincere. Using that to sell is selfish and total garbage.

That’s what the academia society led you to believe, but I’m here to set you free. This kind of thinking is totally false if you want to be successful in internet marketing! A lot of people don’t see the good side of selling.

What if your information product saves marriages? Or what if your product helps people become financially free? Or what if people bought your product and their dog no longer pees and poops on your expensive carpet?

By using your reader’s emotions in your sales letter, you will much more likely motivate them into action than by using logic and professionalism alone. In that sense, ‘playing’ to people’s emotions is actually good for their well-being! Buy my product and I’ll give you strategies to financial freedom. You get the idea? Good.

You maybe looking good and gaining respect of your readers ‘Mr. Professional’, but you AIN’T gonna make no money! Professionalism and logic doesn’t bring out emotions. And it’s emotions that sell and make money.

Try out this test:

1. Go to any corporate building during lunch time and as soon as you see all the ‘professional’ workers leave for lunch, 2. Put out a dozen delicious doughnuts made by Krispy Kreme, chocolate chip ice cream, and cookies on the right side and on the left side, put a dozen healthy fruits and vegetables. 3. Guess which side most people will go for?

Logically, those professional workers should eat those healthful veggies! With all those B-vitamins and folic acid that will lengthen your life? How can they possibly resist?!?

But most of the time people will chose the fattening, artery clogging, fried doughnuts! The illogical emotion of satisfying your taste buds dominates your logical side of satisfying your personal health (for most people)!

Imagine back when you were reading those bland 500 page text books in high school that stacked fact after boring fact for you to memorize as if you were a robot? It was probably very professional but it probably bored you to tears also.

If that’s what you think sells, you are going to face big trouble with internet marketing. Emotional content will ‘get through’ to your customers and communicate more clearly how they will benefit.

Bottom line is if you want to improve people’s lives with your product and want to make money online, emotional content is dramatically more effective than pure logical content.

So go to a local university, find an English professor who absolutely loves reading boring confusing books like “The Odyssey Of Homer” and have him review your marketing messages.

If professor LOVED your messages and think that they are works of pure genius – that is a good indicator that your content is overly boring and professional. You must change your messages IMMEDIATELY before your customers exits your website and opts out of your list!

I base many of my articles and newsletters on my own day to day experiences in the world of Internet marketing. Things that have happened to me. Emails I have received. Interactions I have had with customers, subscribers and other Internet marketers.

The more I work online, the more it becomes apparent to me that some people just don't 'get it'. What don't they get? Well in my experience, many things but the 'thing' that someone didn't 'get' this week was the benefit of marketing an affiliate product which has a recurring income element to it.....

One of my membership websites, SimplyWholesale, has an affiliate program which allows anyone to link to the site and earn 50% of any sales generated by their visitors. Nothing special here - millions of websites offer a similar deal. In addition, because one of the payment options offered by SimplyWholesale is a monthly subscription, my affiliates can also earn 50% of future monthly subscription payments made by a member who they introduce to the site. Again, nothing special here - many membership websites have the same arrangement.

So what's the story?

Well, last week I received an email from an affiliate 'complaining' that he wasn't earning enough money from his customers who were only signing up for the monthly subscription option. (A monthly membership is £4.99 so his earnings would have been £2.50 on each one). Now, this individual had been referring, on average, one new member to the site per day and the vast majority were opting for the monthly membership. The odd one here and there was paying for a yearly membership which generated a higher commission but the majority, as I say, were paying monthly.

So everyday for the past couple of weeks, this guy has earned £2.50 from having a single banner on his website. Assuming this continues for the next two weeks, he will have earned at least £77.50 for the month. Actually it will be more than this due to the annual subscriptions but let's keep things simple :-)

Ok, £77.50 isn't a life-changing sum of money but let's move things forward a month or two (and this is the bit that the guy clearly hadn't thought of when he emailed me with his 'complaint').....

Month two, assuming the level of sales continues, he will earn another £77.50 BUT he will also see an income from the second monthly subscription payments made by the members he referred to the site in month one. It is fair to assume that some members may cancel their subscriptions but to date we have a pretty low cancellation rate. Let's work on the worse case scenario and say that 20% of his members cancel in month two - he will still earn over £60 from the renewals. Add that to the £77.50 from the new members and month two earnings are getting on for £140.

A lot of people are now getting into online businesses and online marketing either to supplement their “real world” income or for it to become their primary source of income. Why? Because online marketing just provides them a lot of benefits!

First, you can reach just about anybody in the world who has Internet access if you market your products online. That means a wider market for you, which can translate to larger profits. Second, setting up an online business requires only a fraction of the cost required to set up an actual business establishment, which means a lot of savings for the business owner.

Another aspect that has attracted a lot of people towards online marketing is the fact that one doesn’t have to have his own products to get started. In online marketing, one can start making a lot of money just by selling, or even by just trying to sell, other people’s products. And getting started with this kind of marketing strategy is actually quite easy. All that one needs to do is to set up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and after everything is settled, one can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products.

Incidentally, the most popular and the fastest growing method of selling other people’s products online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, in its simplest definition, is a relationship between an online merchant or retailer, who has products to sell, and his affiliates, who are willing to promote the merchant’s product on their website.

In a typical affiliate marketing set up, the merchant provides his affiliates with banners and text ads that links to his site. The affiliates will then get these ads posted on their website and they get paid whenever traffic or sales is directed to the merchant’s website. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other online merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee for the affiliate’s compensation.

Starting to make money online with affiliate marketing is relatively quick and easy. All that one has to do is to sign up as an affiliate for an online company that offers affiliate programs. An alternative method, and usually an easier one, is to sign up as a member of an affiliate network—a network that hosts a variety of affiliate programs for different online merchants or retailers. Signing up is usually free, although other companies and networks may require you to pay a particular fee. Such fees, however, are made as payment for additional services that the company may render, like providing you with tools and assistance to jumpstart your online business.

When you sign up with an affiliate marketing program, you are usually required to fill out a form containing information about yourself. Some affiliate programs may also require you to present the URL of your website and describe its contents. This will allow the retailers to verify that you actually have a website with contents that are relevant to their products. Some affiliate programs, however, won’t require you to have a website. After filling out the form and all, you are then allowed to choose the affiliate programs you want to promote.

In order to locate products that sell online, we need to understand what people already want to buy. Finding a good choice of idea or product is always accompanied by interfacing the demand for the product in the current market and the level of competition or market share that the product will be having in the long run.

“What should I sell? What products are hot selling? These are the questions most people are trying to find an answer in order for them to make the definite decision. And if we really want to know the answer to this question, our only choice is to do some research. There are all kinds of twists along the road that may lead you to think you have a high-demand idea. We must be able to understand and satisfy the need, wants and expectations of our customers on a certain product that they’re trying to buy. This three are called the basic needs or minimum requirements in a purchase. Needs are the basic reasons or the minimum requirements consumers are looking for in a product or service. They are called the qualifying or “gatekeeper” dimensions in a purchase. Wants are the determining dimensions among many choices. Expectations, on the other hand, are values or intangibles associated with a product or service. Expectations are actually part of “wants” but they become extremely important when products or services are not differentiated.

For example, in reading a logic book, university students look for the following: Relevant logic concepts use of simple language, easy to understand and affordable prices. These similar ideas can be applied to Internet Sales as well. After all, the Internet is just another place to sell products. The basic concept of demand is the same there as it is anywhere else, and has been all the time.

Now, the second thing that must be considered in finding “hot” products to sell are the level of competition or the market shares do your product will have. Market share or level of competition means the ratio of your brand sales versus the total market sales. 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.

Do you remember when everyone read the classified ads? You could buy or sell anything (legal) by placing an ad in the newspaper or the item-specific ad weeklies; of course you still can, but an even better option for most consumers and marketers these days is the online seek/find route.

Someone out there is looking for a new home but dreads the process of driving to, walking through, and weighing options while a sales agent breathes down the back of their shirt. The buyer prefers to be their own “finder” but may retain a realtor as the transaction agent, the one who handles the paperwork after finding a new home. Wouldn’t we all like to omit the middleman (or woman) as often as possible, or rather omit their fee? A prospective buyer goes online and looks for a home for sale by owner. That buyer may be in your hometown or on the opposite side of Earth.

Used- car salesman. That’s a term that evokes unpleasant images of a coarse loudmouth in a gaudy plaid sports coat, hawking lemons of various vintage. Our apologies to those professional auto salespersons out there; we know that many of you suffer daily because of that stereotype. A lot of us, male and female, enjoy a review of the auto classifieds; I personally always home in on the ones that indicate a car for sale by owner. Hoards of would-be car buyers search the online ads daily and nightly.

In the piney woods of a northern state where summer is a delight and winter is an endurance test, someone is looking for a change. Butterflies make them smile and snowdrifts send them into depression. Just for such a person is an ad that states “Time Share for Sale by Owner.” Equally anxious to escape the heat of the Deep South is someone who would love to partner with them on a home away from home, a man or woman who yearns to hop onto a snowmobile or strap on skis and cool off. Talk about making everyone happy…

His riding lawnmower blew its engine; the last time he tried to clean out the rain gutters on the eaves, he fell off the ladder, and when he was up there he also noted several loose singles. The fifteen-year guarantee on the roof is about to expire. Arthritis is gaining on him, making home and yard maintenance a real pain—literally. But I want a nice home of my own, he thinks. I don’t want to waste money pouring it down a rented rat hole. He is in the market for a condo; catch his interest and perhaps make a sale by listing your condo for sale by owner. His son works for a large sporting goods store in an affluent section of the city. Just as Dad is ready to move into a new home, his son is ready to move on and rid himself of the unreasonable dictator who is his boss, whose managerial style is causing so much stress that the son’s health is negatively affected. He is ready to become the boss and run his own business. He goes online to search for a business for sale by owner.