The Secret of Her Success

Dspite all the "dot-com" busts a few years ago, the Internet still represents the ultimate opportunity for some people to turn their initiative, a good idea, and a few bucks into a legitimate, profitable business.

One such person, Rosalind Gardner, took her interest in online dating services and turned it into a business that generated almost half a million dollars in revenue last year and should do even better this year.

The fact that she created this business without spending one dime on product development makes her story even more amazing.

Rosalind Gardner used to make her living as an air traffic controller, a job most people consider quite stressful.

After getting tired of swing-shift work, and though she had no product of her own to sell and needed to make money relatively quickly, Gardner decided to try her hand at selling on the Internet.

What she did next might seem simple, but it started an online venture that would make every dot-com refugee from 1999 drool with envy.
Gardner logged on to OneAndOnly.com, an online dating service, and signed up as an associate or "affiliate". She said they were paying "healthy" commissions to any webmaster who wanted to refer paying customers to them.

Commonly called "affiliate programs," this setup enables entrepreneurs to create a business promoting other people's businesses and bypass the entire product development and product testing phases.

In short, by selling through other people's affiliate programs, virtually anyone can set up a business online promoting almost any type of product or service.

Gardner created a website (101date.com), her storefront on the Internet.

Though she created her own website pages, she suggests that an effective way to get started even faster is to go to dollartemplates.com or 4templates.com, buy a website template for between $10-$30, and modify it to meet your needs.

"Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on website design," Gardner advises, "purchase an inexpensive website template for much less than the cost of dinner and a movie!"

Gardner also kept the content for her website simple, direct and effective. Though she wanted to appeal to the widest possible audience, she kept focused on her narrow "niche" of online dating.

She wrote a review of the dating service so her visitors could quickly understand the main benefits, pitfalls, special features, and other information to see if the service met their needs. If it did, and they clicked through her affiliate link to sign up, Gardner made a commission.

To drive traffic to her site, Gardner buys targeted, keyword-specific ads from google.com and overture.com which get displayed on the Web's most popular sites, including Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.

This type of advertising means she only spends money when interested people actively searching for dating information go to her website.

Gardner also offers a newsletter from her dating website in order to update her visitors when new dating services and products come available.

The side benefits of publishing the newsletter are many, including the fact that she can build trust with her subscribers by sending them valuable articles and information on a regular basis.

Instead of just referring them over to the merchant's site and losing them forever, Gardner captures them and makes them her customer first... and then hands them off to the merchant.

So what's the secret of her success?

Gardner's system works because:

~ she keeps it simple;

~ she doesn't get slowed down by creating the product

herself;

~ she adds her own unique value to the process with her

reviews and newsletter;

~ she only invests in performance-based advertising.

Further, her added step of going the extra mile to offer free updates, articles and tips to her growing list helps her business grow MUCH faster than affiliates who just hand- off to the merchant website.

By building her list, she can bring visitors back to her site or send them to other sites through her affiliate link without having to pay for them again.

So if the system is so simple, why don't more people do it this way?

My only guess is that maybe it's too simple! Often people want something complicated in order to feel like a "system" will work, but often the opposite proves true.

Simple = Powerful = It keeps working!

For more information about Gardner and the step-by-step process detailed in her new ebook, "The Super Affiliate Handbook - How I Made $436,797 Last Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online" log on to www.Affiliate-Handbook.com

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved - www.thenetreporter.com

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist (http://www.TheNetReporter.com) and is the author of numerous best-selling ebooks, information products and software programs.

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> "Turn Words Into Traffic"

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Edwards

Affiliate Marketers: Should You Promote that Product?

As a 'super affiliate', I set stiff criteria for how and when I choose to promote products, especially products available within the Internet and affiliate marketing niche.

First, I rarely participate in the ‘big’ product launches anymore, as many of those products (and their producers) have gone the way of the dodo bird.

Stephen Ducharme is only one example.

Do a search for his name today and in the top results are an article by Damon Zaharides titled “Stephen Ducharme Belly Flop” and a thread in Michael Green’s HowToCorp forum “Screw Stephen Ducharme Over”.

People were that mad at him for selling them a pack o’ lies.

Marketers who promoted his product had to do some serious back-pedaling to regain their subscribers’ trust.

However, breaking a trust is like breaking a porcelain container. You can glue it back together, but the cracks will always show and it may never again hold water.

Do you want to lose subscribers or your reputation as an honest broker?

I thought not.

To protect your reputation, and more importantly, do right by your customers, here are my top 6 criteria for choosing products to promote.

Reputable Merchant. If Yanik Silver or Anik Singal tells me that they have a new product available, I know my customers will be properly treated and respected. These merchants have built their reputations based on quality products and excellent customer service, i.e. sound business principles.

Likewise, there are merchants within your niche with whom you have worked that can be trusted without question.

If you do not know a merchant, research their reputation online. Review and test their sites for attractiveness, usability and customer service responsiveness. If you have any doubts regarding their reputation, do not promote the product.

Relevant High-Quality Product. Regardless of whether or not you know a merchant, review the product for quality and relevance. Will it benefit your subscribers in their work? Does it fulfill the promise made in the sales letter? Do all the features work?

If you are unable to review the product, tell your subscriber that is the case, and explain why you feel confident to recommend the product without review. Remind them that the product comes with a guarantee if they are not satisfied.

Reasonable Price. I hate the price gouging that goes on the Internet as much as anyone. If there is an existing product of similar quality available at a lower price, I do not recommend that you promote the new product. In fact, you may want to take the opportunity to do a comparative review ending with a recommendation for the lower-priced product.

Low-Hype Sales Tactics. Sales letters for good products do not scream ridiculous promises.

Regardless of merchant reputation or product quality, I recommend that you not promote products that make use of excessive hype or if the product name implies that users will achieve extraordinary results. There is a big difference between ‘How I Made X (Reasonable Sum) in One Year” and “Make X Million in X Minutes”.

Moreover, you do not want to make surfers more skeptical than they already are.

Limit Choice to Prevent Confusion. There are a million “How to Build an Online Business” books, courses and tutorials available, yet I choose to promote only a few.

Each of those that I promote is markedly different from the others in both price and content. One might be available only online at a nice low price, while the other is a comprehensive physical product that includes manuals, DVD’s and CD recordings.

Do not promote a new product simply because it is new. Stick to the tried and true to build your reputation as a consistent and dependable marketer.

High Commission. Finally, yet importantly, you need to determine whether the commission rate is acceptable.

Do not promote products for merchants who pay less than the going rate. For example, the standard commission rate for a conference seat is around 25%, while outstanding JV partners are offered between 33 and 50%. A merchant that pays 10% is just plain stingy. Do not reward greedy merchants. Work to become an outstanding JV partner for a merchant who respects your effort.

Use these strategies to guide your decisions every time you have the option to promote a new product. Your efforts will build and maintain your reputation as an ‘honest broker’ and frankly, nothing is more important to staying in business than your good reputation.

Author, speaker and consultant Rosalind Gardner is recognized worldwide as an affiliate marketing expert. Find out how you too can become a Super Affiliate at Rosalind's free site, http://netprofitstoday.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rosalind_Gardner

If I Can Do This... You Can Too!

On the cover of the Super Affiliate Handbook is a graphic that says "If I Can Do It, You Can TOO!" - meaning if I can succeed at affiliate marketing, you can too!

That is SO true, especially when I look back on events of the past week.

Let’s begin with the fact that I am NOT a geek. If something merely hints at being software - I run the other way or I break it.

Those seem to be my only options.

So, when I set up an update order process for the Handbook, I used Paypal, without bothering to check if my usual system, DLGuard, offered that option.

And because we needed to confirm original receipt numbers before sending download information, I elected to process orders manually.

So, Joel and I processed each order by hand.

Aargh. Time consuming, finnicky business.

Thank goodness for glucosamine with chondroitin which helps me avoid surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome.

NOT doing order processing, is in my humble opinion, still one of the best reasons to be an affiliate marketer!

Of course I killed the autoresponder message on my server just before we started, so everyone received useless truncated messages.

Then poor Joel (my virtual assistant) had a family emergency that took him away from home for a few days. But true to form, when Joel wasn’t on the road and had Internet access he was right back in there, processing orders. (Thanks Joel!)

That's another great benefit to doing business on the 'Net - you can do it from anywhere with Internet access, and there’s no shortage of that in the world. I even found a good connection in Agua Calientes, the little village that serves Machu Picchu a few years ago.

About a week after we started the upgrade project, it occurred to me that DLGuard does indeed offer a PayPal option. (Actually, DLGuard will process ClickBank, PayPal, 2Checkout, StormPay, eBay, PayDotCom, e-Gold, JVManager, EA script and other merchant account products.)

Cool.

But then, I managed to mess things up again by making an uncalled-for change to my PayPal account.

In a panic I emailed Sam Stephens, the DLGuard developer, with the Subject line "Waaaaaa!".

Sam is in Australia, so the time difference can slow the problem-solving process somewhat - especially if one fails to clearly express the problem, ie. "Waaaaaa!"

Sam however quickly deciphered my cryptic message, got us set up with DLGuard again and we were back in business.

This week I'm trying to break a new piece of polling software.

At the end of the day and despite the hassles (that I create for myself), Internet Marketing, and especially affiliate marketing still beat the heck out of working for a living.

Rosalind Gardner is the non-geek author of “The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online”. Learn more about her success (and foibles) at http://netprofitstoday.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rosalind_Gardner