So you heard all the hype about striking it rich on the internet huh? Probably ran across a website or two telling you how you can make $50,000 next week and how you can "get rich quick" by becoming an affiliate marketer. Unfortunately, that's not realistic. It's crazy how many people still haven't learned that if it's too good to be true, it probably is.
Now for the good news. You really can earn a great living online and even get rich — just not as quick as we'd all like. If you want to make a living online you will need to learn a lot about internet marketing. There are many tools and services that you will need to get familiar with. So with that in mind I present you with...
Sorry for the cheesy sub-headline above, but as you learn more about marketing, you'll learn that cheese often sells. I will not go into great detail about each of these services below as that is not the scope of this post, I will however give a brief description of what the service is and why it's useful. And here we go.
JumpLaunch - You gotta have a place for your website to "live" and JumpLaunch has excellent service. I highly recommend them. Use coupon code "petersanchez" at checkout for 20% off :)
Now that your website is up and running, you gotta let the world know. There are many methods but in the internet marketing world, none are more rapid than PPC advertising.
Google Adwords - The big daddy of all PPC advertising. Highest volume, which usually means the best result but it also means it's the most expensive to master. Might be smart to start with Yahoo and MSN (see below) and work up to Google.Yahoo SM - Yahoo is the second in over all search volume. Their user interface is pretty limited but it's not difficult to get setup and running. Usually less expensive than Google as well.
MSN AdCenter - MSN AdCenter is the little brother to Google & Yahoo. While it's volume is much lower there still is a lot of potential here. Think more bang for your buck.
Facebook Ads - Facebook is a huge social network. It's recently launched PPC platform has excellent demographic targeting and is relatively inexpensive to run ads here.
In marketing, creating a "funnel" of sales is so important. Offering an upsell, affiliate offer or freebie is a huge way to keep someone as a customer. A huge number of your customers are likely to be repeat buyers as long as they were happy with the original product they purchased. So here are some tools used to keep and up sell your customers.
SmartJabber - Interactive and intelligent artificial chat agent. Gives the appearance of a live person helping the visitors to your website. Low monthly fee to use this tool. This really helps build a level of trust for your visitors. It literally pays for itself.AWeber - Email marketing is so important in the world of internet business. AWeber is an email list manager that lets you capture your customer's information for future use. It's totally opt-in so your users can remove themselves from your list at any time. With this, you can put any offer in front of your users via email, 24/7! This may be the most important "tool" in making a living online.
Affiliate networks are an excellent resource. Basically affiliate marketing works like so. You refer a person to company XYZ. If the person you referred makes a purchase with XYZ, you get a commission. Commissions can range form small to very large, depending on the product/offer. So say you sell a gardening book on your website and you want to recommend other books to them. Email them a list of books, using your affiliate offer link, and you create a triple win situation. Your customers are happy with the recommendation, company XYZ is happy for the sale and you are happy for the commission. Here are some of the affiliate networks I recommend.
Azoogle Ads - Great team, excellent affiliate managers.NeverBlu Ads - Very helpful staff. Excellent starting point for newbies.
Commission Junction - Very big market place. Offers for anything you can imagine! Good customer service.
LinkShare - The first affiliate network. Very big market place as well.
At some point, you are probably going to be charging your customers for either your product or service. Here are a few options you have in doing just that.
Paypal - You've probably already heard of this company. They are easy to use and very popular. I personally don't like some of their resolution policies.Google Checkout - Google's attempt at payment processing. I have used this service and highly recommend it. Their resolution policy is one of the best around! Fair to both merchant and buyer.
2Checkout - Popular payment processor. Low fees and website integration.
Power Pay - Power Pay is an authorize.net reseller. They will set you up with a merchant account so you can process credit cards from your own site. This is for the more hardcore but is definitely the correct way to go once you start bringing in a higher sales volume.
If you are selling digital products via your website (ie, ebooks, spreadsheets, etc.) than you will be smart to protect your digital goods. What these services do is guard your digital products and only allow paid customers to download the media.
Clickbank - This is more of a market place where you can list your product and they will handle the payment processing, downloads, returns, etc. for you. It does cost $49 (one time fee) to have your product listed in their market place. Largest of it's kind and worth the small one time fee.E-Junkie - Awesome tool. Cost starts at $5/mo which is the base plan, and probably more than enough to meet your needs. E-Junkie also has a shopping cart, affiliate management and multiple payment options. All are included with your plan and the best part, there are NO per sale fees!
PayDotCom - PayDotCom is similar to E-Junkie above but more expensive. Also includes other tools like a mailing list manager, etc.
Usually you can use outside services to handle your affiliates for you. In some cases you will need to run your own affiliate management software. In this situation you will need to deploy your own software that helps you manage your affiliates (payments, etc.) Here you go..
iDevAffiliate - The best software I have used for personally managing affiliates. I currently use this software on 2 sites and it does a great job of keeping the tedious task of affiliate management as simple as possible.
As you can see you have many options to look into and decide upon. Research and test to find out your best collection and then put it to use. It's like Bobby D said in Ronin, "I don't know.. It's a tool box. I use the best tool for the job!"
Bookmark this page as this resource list will be updated when I have more stuff to add.
Disclosure: Most, if not all, of the links I show here are affiliate links. I am affiliated with, or own, some of the companies listed above.