The particular home business system that I've been concerned about lately is affiliate marketing,  And I'm concerned about business newcomers starting affiliate markting and understanding that longterm success requires business know-how and planning.  This kind of marketingis a retail model that I employ, and one that I personally like as it seems to suit my personality.  I am not a terribly gregarious, social person, and I tend to prefer working alone or at least alone-ish, and this brand of direct marketing allows that.  So what is it?

Legitimate Affiliate Marketing

In my opinion, affiliate marketing is the collective body of practices and techniques that have to do with selling products of other people and businesses for a commission.   Because this is a commission based business, affiliate success depends on commission percentage and numbers of sales.

Legitimate affiliate marketing itself is simply a way of doing business, perhaps most closely related to direct marketing.  Direct marketing, of course, is the selling of products through done through direct mail, door-to-door, late-night t.v. infomercials, tabloid ads in the supplements to Sunday papers, and so forth.  So this is simply another form–highly effective–of retail selling.  The Internet has given direct marketers and affiliate marketer alike yet another means of reaching potential customers.

How you get numbers of sales is important  and the subject of never ending conversation and debate.  Basically, making money with  affiliate marketing is about the numbers, and ethical affiliate marketing practices–the only ones we are concerned about–are a give and take between getting the greatest numbers of visitors to your site pages and conversion.  Although affiliate marketing does not necessarily have to use the Internet, the Internet is an ideal tool because you have potential access to vast numbers of potential clients.

For better or worse, affiliate marketing has largely been co-opted by Internet marketing, which is the business sub-niche that specializes in selling information products about how to make money.  As a result, the field is frequently littered by bold, largely unsubtantiated claims that run the gamut of essentially harmless information to the most outrageous and flamboyant bullshit.  Honest marketers use hype to create excitement for a product but stay within ethical boundries of product representation.  Nevertheless, Internet marketing has created a sort of feeding frenzy in this area because of the potential for making money on the Internet with little upfront, start up cost.  One of the results of this furor has been the misrepresentation of affiliate marketing as a sort of get-rich-quick scheme, and it isn't.

My point is probably not clear, but what I want to convey is that success depends upon treating your marketing with respect and as a business, not just a set of techniques and procedures.  Yes, techniques and procedures are important, but without business planning you are not likely to be successful over the long haul.  Business planning gives you a measure of control and predictability over the future, whichh is why it is planning.  Done well, it will serve as a predictor for your success.

Here is some advice from the sba.gov:

The importance of a comprehensive, thoughtful business plan cannot be overemphasized. Much hinges on it: outside funding, credit from suppliers, management of your operation and finances, promotion and marketing of your business, and achievement of your goals and objectives.

This sounds just like conventional business.  And that is my point.  Although as a small, single person affiliate marketing business, you might not have to worry about credit from suppliers (but this could be a concern depending on the scope of your operation), affiliate marketing is still conventional business, and you need planning just as in any other business.

What are the most very basic elements of business planning?  Again, the sba.gov advises:

• What service or product does your business provide and what needs does it fill?
• Who are the potential customers for your product or service and why will they purchase it from you?
• How will you reach your potential customers?
• Where will you get the financial resources to start your business.

We do offer a video course on the fundamentals of affiliate marketing.  Feel free to visit our sales page here or here!

In my opinion, it is easier in some respects to get started because it really costs very little, if anything at all, to get started selling other peoples products.  In any business endeavor, it helps to have start-up capitol, and affiliate marketing (from here on out referred to as AF) is no different.  When you bring up a page on Yahoo! you see the power of money at work it those ads on yahoo.com.  Yes, all of those ads lead back to a "money page," and some affiliate marketer or marketing organization of paying top dollar prices for the Yahoo ad placement, and probably making top dollar in return, as well.

What I like about AF is that it is a sophistication tolerant business model.  Almost anyone at any level of sophistication and expertise can make money with a little effort.  However, to do AF consistently well enough to replace your income–and I think for most of us that means anywhere from between $30,000 to $100,000 a year–takes skill, and that means having the willingness and persistence to go through the learning curve.  Affiliate marketing is not easy in that respect.  You have to respect it, just as you generally have to respect any job or profession to do it well.

Now, on the subject of respect, for those of you seeking to replace your day job, let me ask you this:  Are you good at your day job?  Even if you don't like it, even if it is just a garbage suck of job, even if your manager is pig mutant of a human being, are you good at your job?  The reason I ask is that it is generally advisable to leave a job for another from a position of success.  That's not always possible as some working situations are a complete mess from the get go.  All right, enough said.  Regardless of whatever home business you start, be prepared to plan and have the persistence to see it through.

If you admit this, does that mean you are a cold, heartless bastard?  Mmm, maybe, but probably not.  Consider, even if you are building sites as a fund raising effort to feed starving children in the Sudan, if you don't understand that your sites are all about the money, how successful do you think those sites will be?  If you do understand the money issue, just think how many more children you'll feed because of it.  My point, here, is that hard nosed business logistics are not necessarily in conflict with ethical/moral standards.  The bigger point, though, is that if you and I are really in business, then we need to cut loose all the baggage that isn't about making the site as effective a money maker as it can be.

Understanding that your business, or website, is about making money can be liberating.  People who come to online business, Internet marketing, or ecommerce with a business background already know this.  Those of us who come to online business fresh, without any real business knowledge often take ages to have that epiphanal moment that what we are doing is business.  And business is business whether or not you are doing Internet marketing, ecommerce, or running an online site to promote your brick and morter retail store.

Along with understanding that it's all about the money, it is crucial to know what your business is.  I know this sound simplistic, but you'd be shocked to discover how many people supposedly in business don't really know what their business is.  As a result, they focus time and energy of directions that don't keep them solvent.  I'll say it again, you must know what your business is.  If you understand that, then you'll be able to align and target the many activities necessary to remaining solvent and making a profit.  In other words, you'll be able to focus and better ignore the many distractions that present themselves day in and day out.

Sticking to your business does not mean that you must do only one thing or that you must not diservisify your income streams.  Far from it. You can have as many business models and streams of income as you have time to manage and money to develop.   However, without a business plan to unify your diversified efforts, you'll remain a piker, an amateur.  Now matter what your success, you'll need a business plan to sustain and grow your income. 

Now, its possible that you might be one of those rare individuals who has a complete intuitive grasp of business logistics and planning.  However, if you've never seen a business plan before, you might want to check out examples at the Fed Small Business Administration website. This has great information.  And its free.  My advice, before you spend big bucks on lots of Internet marketing products, learn something about business. 

Many people coming to this site will be arriving after having been exposed to Internet marketing sales letters about how to make money online.  No matter how good those courses or people behind them, the one thing you can be sure of is that the successful people behind the sales letters understand business.  The one thing that most Internet and online home business products don't tell you about is business or the importance of understanding business basics.  With an understanding of business basics, you will be in much better position to know how to use the wealth of information that is particular to Internet marketing and making money online.

As for making money, if we leave money making gimmicks aside and focus on predictable income, then we are talking about following through on some sort of a business plan.  Anyone with the most basic concept of their business has a basic notion of marketing and the necessity of marketing whatever good or service you are selling.  And if you’ve done the research and determined that your goods and services really are in demand by a particular niche, then you know that it is only a matter of putting your goods/services in front of the target niche to make money.  Easy, right?  Well,  my point, here, is that this is a little like saying, that flying is easy.  All you have to do is get a cape and then fly.  So, you’ve got your products or services, and now all you have to do is market and then make money.

It is easy IF you already know how to do it.  Just as in flying after you get the cape, there is a missing ingredient needed in order to make it happen.  I think this is the spark of knowingness that occurs somewhere down the line after you have hurtled yourself off of the building top and crashed into the pavement the requisite number of times.  Unfortunately, there is no formulaic set number of times you have to hit the pavement before the spark ignites.

Now, I know that many of the people taking the time to read this blog–you, perhaps–are absolutely new and may not immediately grasp the importance of conducting your money making endeavors, whether they be online or off–as a business.  Keep in mind that behind every successful money making offer is business know-how.  The offer is merely the tip of the iceberg.  Beneath the tip is a significant amount of what might be termed "trade-craft" to make that offer successful.  This is why personal motivation is so important, because once you try to reel your fantasies of luxurious cruises and pina coladas on remote, pristine white sand beaches into the here and now, you hit the wall of self-doubt and the inertia of dealing with the "real" world of objects, people, and finances.  Lawyers, guns, and money, to borrow from Warren Zevon.

In my view, the purpose of personal business planning is to help you predict and soften your encounter with the so-called real world when you start taking action.  Very generally, and I mean really, really generally speaking, business planning comprises the research needed to determine what your business is and its relative chance for success, financial analysis, and the methods, procedures and techniques needed to pull it off.  If you are completely new, I can’t say strongly enough how important it is to take action.  However, don’t take action blindly.  You can take chances and even plan on losing a little money here and there in your research and development efforts.  But generally speaking (again), the more money at stake, the more important it is that you know what you are buying, that you do your research and planning to determine if the expenditure will be productive.

I suspect that many of you are also coming to this blog and to Internet business by way of Internet Marketing.  You have been reading sexy sales pages about courses and software designed to make you bundles of money right this instant.  Don’t get lost in the forest by fixating on a few trees.  No matter how good some of these products may be, none of them will do you or anyone else a bit of good without solid business planning behind them.  One very successful Internet marketer who has written extensively and articulately about this is Michael Campell.  I recommend two books that he used to sell and now gives away freely, Nothing but Net, and Clickin’ it Rich.  Of the two, read Nothing but Net first.  That is the one that lays out the importance of running your online activities as a business and outlines some of the fundamentals you need to have in place and what you need to do in order to get started.  It is also tantalizing motivation.

Time for me to hit the sack.  To your success!

Schedule Master Elite consists of three modules, or applications, as you’ll see in the demo video below.  It includes the,

• Person Minder

• Organization Minder

• Schedule Master

 

This simple scheduling program allows you to use the Person Minder and Organization minder independantly, but both applications are included in the Schedule Master and can be accessed from within the Schedule Master.  The software also allows you share files between the applications.  This will all be much easier to understand when you view the Preview and Intro videos.

The full instructional series is included in the download when you purchase.  However, the Preview and Intro will show you the software and you’ll see how the applications can be accessed from the the Schedule Master module. 

The Introduction will expand on the Preview, and give you a better idea of what it can do for you.

Introduction

As you’ve seen, some of the overall basic features include data entry for:

• Name

• Business name

• Location

• Appointment subject

• Start Date and End Date

• Recurrence pattern indicater

• Home address

• Work address

• Alternate address

• Home phone

• Work phone

• Cell phone

• Email address

• Website

• Facebook info

• Linkedin info

• Twitter info

• Description field for extended entries and other relevant information

• Event field to describe event

• Results field to record any notes as a follow-up to the event

The Person Minder includes data entry for,

• contact type

• key organization

• first, middle, and last name

• address

• phone

• fax

• email

• marital status

• gender info

• birthday

• family information

• notes and observations

• photo

• online info

 

The Person Minder also includes a,

• picture file gallery

• documents and files library

 

The Organization Minder includes the following features:

• Kind of organization

• organization status

• organization name

• address

• phone

• fax

• email

• organization profile

• products and services

• photo

• online info

• access to Person Minder

• access to picture file saver

• access to documents file saver

• files sharing between the Person Minder and Schedule Master

 

The Schedule Master application allows plenty of space to enter the following:

• Event Subject

• Event Type

• Event Address

• Phone

• Fax

• Recurrence Pattern

• Start date/time

• End date/time

• Notes and observations

• Person Minder

• Organization Minder

• Picture files

• Document files

• the scheduling of multiple events within the same time frame

Please be aware that this software works only with PCs.  This will work on Windows, Vista, and XP and requires installation of the current .NET, which is a free download from Microsoft.  If you are running Vista or XP, this should already be integrated into the operating system.  The download is about 36 MB.  Because the video(s) shows you in detail all aspects of the software, all sales are final.  However, if for some reason the software does not work or there should be some conflict with your currect system, I will refund your purchase immediately.  Your download will include our support email address and a toll free number to call in case of difficulties.

After payment, you will be immediately transferred to a secure download page for immediate download of the product.  You will also receive an email giving you the download link.  In the event that you are not immediately transferred to the download area, you will be presented with a button to click that will take you to the secure download area.

Only $7.95

Our appointment book software includes the following features:

• inclusion of an image/photo
• event type
• event subject
• event location
• start and end time
• note boxes for related key people and organizations
• parallel event scheduling
• unlimited entries

Introduction

Scheduling Appointments, Entering Data,
And How to Manipulate Your Information

Please be aware that this software works only with PCs.  This will work on Windows, Vista, and XP and requires installation of the current .NET, which is a free download from Microsoft.  If you are running Vista or XP, this should already be integrated into the operating system.  The download is about 36 MB.  Because the video shows you in detail  all aspects of the software, all sales are final.  However, if for some reason the software does not work or there should be some conflict with your currect system, I will refund your purchase immediately.  Your download will include our support email address and a toll free number to call in case of difficulties.

Download Here!

Here is our YouTube video explaining how it works.  This will give an inside look into the software.  I’ll include more details later.  If you like it, I’ve included a payment link at the bottom.

 For a full screen view, click the button next to "HQ" above. Press escape to return to this page.

Please be aware that this software works only with PCs.  This will work on Windows, Vista, and XP and requires installation of the current .NET, which is a free download from Microsoft.  If you are running Vista or XP, this should already be integrated into the operating system.  The download is about 36 MB.  Because the video shows you in detail  all aspects of the software, all sales are final.  However, if for some reason the software does not work or there should be some conflict with your currect system, I will refund your purchase immediately.  Your download will include our support email address and a toll free number to call in case of difficulties.

After payment, you will be immediately transferred to a secure download page for immediate download of the product.  You will also receive an email giving you the download link.  In the event that you are not immediately transferred to the download area, you will be presented with a button to click that will take you to the secure download area.

Only $2.99

As mentioned above, with affiliate marketing you are selling other peoples' products in exchange for a commission.  If you ask, "What sort of products?"  Almost every product available can be and is sold as an affiliate product.  Every product that you find in your grocery store from pasta, cheese, wine, and steaks, every product found in Walmart, Target, Best Buy , Home Depot, Lowes, can be sold as an affiliate product.  Browse through Amazon or eBay.  Every product you see is sold by affiliates of those two sites.  Take a hike through a Walgreen's or CVS.  Everything there can and is sold by affiliate marketers.  Digital products, or information products also sell very well as affiliate products.  Examples of information products would be e-books, downloadable videos, and audio recordings.  Software is another sort of digital product in which there is a thriving affiliate business.

You can see that this is a huge area.  For this reason, it is important to have some idea of a business plan in order to focus the direction of your marketing.  I would mention again that you do a little research into business planning so that you have a notion of how to implement this as a business as opposed to a gimmick or some random activity.

It is not necessary to rely on the Internet to do affiliate marketing.  You can do this effectively with offline advertising, but the Internet is gnerally so easily available and has so much easy access to traffic–that is, potential customers–that it would be a shame not to use it or be able to use it.  Even if you have no computer or Internet access yourself, most libraries do have such access and can serve as a jumping off point.  We're talking about really bootstrapping it, here.  Naturally, if you have your own computer and access to a broadband connection, so much the better.

The Internet is helpful not only in providing access to buyers, but in giving you access to affiliate programs.  To save you time, three of the biggest affiliate programs are run by Commission Junction, Pepperjam Network, and Linkshare.  There are hundreds of affilate products between those three companies.  Share a Sale is another affiliate resource.  Your job, then, is to research your products and create a portal by which means buyers can be directed to the sales page(s) of the company actually selling the products.

By portal, I mean the way in which you direct potential buyers to the seller.  This could be done by email, with links in the body of the mail.  I'm not talking about spam email, but email directed to people willing to receive your mail.  Normally this is done by developing a list of interested, potential customers who have given you permission to send them email in exchange for receiving a newsletter or in exchange for some product you may have offered.  Another sort of "portal" might be online classifieds that direct visitors either to your site or to the vendor's sales page.  Newspaper ads directing potential buyers to a website could also be considered a sort of porta.  Normally, in Internet marketing, a portal refers to a site that you have set up for the purpose of directing buyers to the vendor website. 

I know of one very successful business woman who does this by setting up Wordpress blogs devoted to a particular niche area, such as health care, education, or weight loss.  She populates the blogs with relevant posts, develops traffic of interested readers and potential buyers, and with sufficient traffic the blogs start earning income.  This is one example of a particular sort of portal, which works very well for this person's business model.  How you choose to direct buyers to a vendor site will have a lot to do with your own business model.

I'm not going to try and fool you into thinking you that you will make money with no effort.  Affiliate marketing requires skill to make money consistently, and you have to work it as a business to make a viable means of self-support. 

I've provided a low cost affiliate marketing course to show you the basics and to help you see how to focus your efforts.  The course includes 12 videos plus a 40 page report that expands upon the points in the videos and elaborates on how to build traffic to your sites.

One of the basic affilate marketing strategies relies on the following steps:

• product research (as described above)
• keyword research to develop ideas for site content
• building a portal site
• building auxiliary sites via squidoo, hubpages, blogspot, and so forth
• article publishing
• link development
• RSS feeds
• selected social bookmarking
• selected social news sites
• press releases 

The particular business plan I'm discussing here really relies on setting up a website (either free or your own domain) and then supporting it through a variety of methods.  Some of the standard techniques used to bring traffic and search engine recognition include the following (paraphrasing the above):  publishing 10 or 20 articles, building a number auxiliary sites, and announcing your content via social bookmarking.  This is an almost entierly Internet based approach in which you attempt to create a sort of funnel directing buyers to a vendor site.  You can supplement this by using offline promotion, such newspaper classifieds and even radio announcements.  How you choose to promote your portals will depend on your business model.

Personally, I really like the affiliate model simply because it is so easy to set up and for the vast, practically unlimited number of products.  It is also a model in which you can start making money within 30 days.  I don't want to mislead you into thinking that you'll be able to replace a day job or create a free standing second income in 30 days, but it is definitely possible, with a few hours of work a day, to see your first sales within 30 days.  I give affiliate marketing a big thumbs up as an income maker as it is relatively easy to get started and requires very little initial set-up other than access to an Internet connection.

If you seeking a truly simple, easy to use set of basic office tools, I may have the program for you.  Micro Office Tools Suite consists of a file saver application, word processor, and image editor.  If you need a simple, intuitive set of tools that you can use literally within minutes of installation, this program is for you.  It isn’t pretty, but it is s-i-m-p-l-e and intuitive to use!  And, newly updated v.2.02!

You can tell I’m enthusiastic about this.  The program ships with a set of video instructions.  The video instructions, are also published on YouTube, and you can view them below.  The updated v.2.02 package includes 5 to-the-point flash videos to help you get started.  The software is so intuitive, you may not even need them. 

File Saver Application

Photo Editor Application

Word Processing Application

Advanced File Editing

Color Selection Wizard

The videos pretty much tell everything you need to know.  However, here is a rundown of the basic features:

The Easy File Saver 

• This is the heart of the program–Save files within the wordprocessing program, the image editor and import them into the file saver!

• Import and save documents by categories you determine.  Save text, MS Word, PDF and any other document format in use.

• Save image files such as jpg, jpeg, gif, png, bitmap, tiff.  You determine your own categories.

• Search function for your categories and files.

The Super Simple Word Processor

• File, Edit, view, insert, format, table menu options
• Options to export documents as CSS or PDF
• PDF export allows you to create a password for your PDF document
• Save documents as plain text, unicode text, microsoft word, microsoft word 97-2003, rich text format, and hypertext (.html)
• Create simple web pages and sales pages by drafting them in word and then saving as .htm.
• flexible formatting options for font, text color, text color background, document background color,  styles, headings and footers, indentation and bullets, table insertion, images, tabs, text frames, hyperlinking, and more
• Save your documents to your hard drive and import them into the file saver applicaton

The Incredibly Easy to Use Photo Editor

This image editing software includes tools to manipulate the following values:

• Tuning

• Hue

• Color

• Rotate and Flip

• Scale

• Perspective

• Round corners

• Reflection

• Polaroid film effect

• Mail stamp effect

• Film strip effect

• Drop shadow effects

• Save images as png, jpg, gif, bmp

• Save your images to your hard drive and import into the file saver application.

• Save a draft of your edited image within the editor itself.

• Load images from your hard drive and save the edited version back into your files.

 Color Selection Wizard

• Easy to use color selection tool.
• Use predefined colors, or creat your own custom colors
• Save your color selections within the color chooser application

Please understand this is a large package.   The download is about 141 MB. 

Price is $7.95

Immediate money back guarantee if the product for some reason doesn’t work on your system, otherwise, all sales are final.  For PCs only, and may require .NET, which is a free download from microsoft.com.  If you are running XP Home/Professional or Vista, .NET should already be installed on your PC.

After payment, you will be immediately transferred to a secure download page for immediate download of the product.  You will also receive an email giving you the download link.  In the event that you are not immediately transferred to the download area, you will be presented with a button to click that will take you to the secure download area.

Only $7.95

Well, persisting in the face of advesity has everthing to do with making money online because starting an online business and then nurturing it to where it actually brings in income means that you have to carry on no matter how bad it gets. Success requires that you persist.  It helps to have a plan, but you’ve got to persist.

Now, earlier, I asked the question, "Do you like yourself well enough to succeed?"   Yes, I know, I have an wrote a post on this subject, perhaps a bit sententious, but I have got to bring it up again because it is important.  Do you like yourself well enough to believe in yourself enough that you can allow yourself to succeed?  Once you lock your sites on a goal, you can rest assured that obstacles will present themselves.  Everything under the sun can and may very well happen with the purpose that you give up.  In order to carry on, you will need the proper measure of self-belief.  I don’t know what the proper measure is, but whatever it is, you need it.

When you are discouraged and frustrated, your best weapon against true despair is your self-belief.  Yes, it helps to have at least one or two people who believe in you, but in the end it is self-belief that will carry you through.

As I develop this site, I will be publishing more and more information on how to start making money by developing your own online business, but you must want success badly enough that you make use of the tools.  Now, I suspect that because my site is about making money online that many of you want me to hand over the tricks that will bring in cash in the next 24 hourse.  Although I could probably show you a few gimmicks, that ’s really not what I’m about, and tricks and gimmicks by themselves do not constitute a business.

At bottom, you’ve got to have goal and be willing to take action.  Even if you no idea what you are doing, in my opinion you are making a good start.  The next step, of course, would be to learn something about business, and that would help you know how to make the best use of how you take action.  However, there are even more basic concepts undercutting business know-how:

• cultivation of right behavior
• cultivation of ethics, or understanding of right and wrong
• cultivation of personal health and hygiene
• development of your awareness and sense of other and your environment
• culitivation of your own sense of personal integrity

Granted, this is a tall order, but these traits are essential for any personal success.  You have got to have the discipline to be able to constently and reliably do the actions, or behaviors, necessary to implement a business plan.  You also have to have an understanding of right and wrong that is sufficiently devoloped to guide you through the invevitable ethical tangles and complexities you will or may already be encountering.  Your personal integrity is perhaps the most important thing you have.  Some would argue–me, for example–that this is more important than your immediate life.  That is for you to decide, but your strong personal integrity will allow you to hold your ground, stay the course, and earn the respect of others.

If you are reading this post, you may be very concerned and distracted  by the need and/or desire to make money right now.  And I have to ask you to take a breath and calm yourself.  Give yourself some space and distance.  Give yourself time and place to act.  Read and reread the 5 characteristics in the bulleted list above.