As serious internet marketers all know traffic is the bedrock of our businesses. Without traffic nothing happens.

The problem is that we get pretty good at making websites, we do good research, we add appropriate offers for our readers and then it kinda stops.
What happens next?

Well, what should happen next is that hundreds, if not thousands, of folks should find your web pages and offers and some of those visitors should click on your ads or buy your offers.

Yup, that SHOULD happen.
But getting traffic to your websites is not so easy - and it is getting harder.

Every day there are more websites, every day more competing offers and every day more noise in the market place.

Well, what’s an internet marketer going to do?
Actually he does the same as he always did! He asks his friends for their help. He asks them to tell other people about his great website. He asks them to post articles on their blogs about his new offers. He might even ask his friends to say nice things about his articles on his websites and blogs.
This kind of activity has worked in every market since man invented money and markets.

But, I hear you say, ‘how do we find friends’ and maybe more particularly, given the global nature of our businesses ‘how do I find enough friends to make a difference?’

Well, I think I can offer some help here!
I have been working with friends in my business for quite a while. We work together to help each other to do the tasks that need to be done. I have a network of friends with over 1,500 members!
Yup, that’s right. Over 1,500 people all of whom are willing to work with me, and I with them, to get our pages noticed by search engines and real people.
To make a big noise every time we do something interesting.
To help me write content for my sites.
To tell social networking and bookmarking sites about what we are up to.

Well, as a person can always use a few more friends I’d like to suggest that you take a look at how I manage my network of friends. See how we work together to make our businesses stronger. Traffic Kahuna have re-opened the doors to accept another 200 members. Together we are making a big noise about our businesses and people all over the world really do notice when friends help friends to spread the word!

This is a cool opportunity for anyone who wants to get more people to visit their site and make more money from their business!
Join our network of traffic building friends!

I was thinking today, I had been reading an Internet Marketing forum, and I saw an offer. Basically it was another set of websites premade and full of content and the guy selling them was saying about how much money we would make from using these websites. He wasn’t charging little money we are looking at about $50 apiece, the plan was to sell 50 of each site.

It made me think, the guy who designed these sites and built them. Well, he has an interest he is enthusiastic about the sites and he claims the sites have done well in his care, and has earnt good money from them, a little strange, because they don’t have any Alexa rankings and negligable traffic. But who am I to know.
The people to whom he sells the sites - I think most of them are looking for a way to make money and are hoping that this thing will be the thing and that these sites will earn them some money.

Do we really need another website about acne?
Do we really need another website about affiliate marketing?
Does the world really need another cookie cutter site about some kind of aspect of health or beauty?
I don’t think so.

What the world needs is people who are enthusiastic about something. We need to be enthusiasts - then we can make acne or affilaite marketing come alive.
We need to concentrate on adding value, to giving something extra to the world not just another copy of something that somebody else has already made.
It may be that we start off with something that somebody else made, a template. We do that all the time, but it seems to me that success comes when we add value, not simply to copy and stamp out another copy.
Sometimes I wonder whether what I do and whether the small money I earn is because I am enthusiastic about what I do.
The world doesn’t really need another article directory, but some for reason we have something that works.
THe other websites that we used to build and sell work; I was and am an enthusuast about them. I researched and I designed the model. I experimented with them, and make them work.
So is the real truth, the real secret of what we need in order to succeed enthusiasm and added value?
To make something new to the world?
To add to the world not just to spread out what is already there?

Perhaps those who are successful in the longer term successful becasue they add value to the world?
I think that ultimately it’s because we are adding value that the enusiast can make yet another site about acne, becasue the enthusiasm brings some added value.

I think I know the answer. Anybody who talked to me about things in which I’m interested in the world of Internet marketing knows that I am an enthusiast about those things, but when I talk to other people often they seem jaded, they seem flat, and oftentimes they’re not doing so well.
When the same people find something at which they can be enthusiastic something where they can add value the picture changes. All of a sudden the start to earn money.

What are you guys think? Is it enough to just do more of the same. Or should we look for a new something, a new way of adding value of making the world a better place?

Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos is now in its 2rd month and so far nobody has ended their membership.

Having taken some surveys of what people would like to see as extra content we are now adding much more content. This has started with a series of videos on Social Marketing (some call it Web 2.0) and right now I am just adding a WordPress training course which teaches how to install WordPress and then goes on to show exactly how to make a membership site based upon WP. We even provide a specially modified plugin to make the job even easier.

Here is a brief listing of some the topics covered by our video training in just two months:
Press releases
List building
SEO
Internet marketing
How to install scripts on your hosting server
How to use Dreamweaver to build websites
How to use many social marketing sites
How to use and install WordPress

All covered with in depth video, much in two versions - for your PC viewing pleasure and for taking away on your iPod.
In addition we have a monthly ‘business in a box’ all ready for you to promote and start earning money and even a range of ebooks and software covering the major monthly topics.
Check out Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos to find out, from the basics, how to make a mint from your online business!

The title is not mine, but from a guy called Jason Potash. He and a couple of other folks run PortalFeeder (join when you get the chance) and TrafficKahuna (If you don’t join PF join TK when you get the chance!)

Anyway, a while back he was writing about geting started and how to do it - the title of his post heralded a REALLY useful post. You can read that post here: http://www.jasonpotash.com/blog/?p=5

He was writing about an aspect of the business that for anyone who has not yet made the leap of faith in themselves that working on one’s own business, full-time, is probably more important than any training, products, services, ebooks or personality cults.

Nope, I am not going to paraphrase the thing, here it is, in full: F-You To Suceed

Tell me what you think, please let me know how you agree or disagree with what he wrote.

I am an affiliate for Mass Automation who gave us AutoSocialPoster (ASP), RssBookmarker, Scuttleplus, WordPress Auto Installer, WP CLoner and many more. These internet marketing and blogging tools are all best in class and the price reflects this - they are not cheap giveaways.

My WordPress blogs use several of these tools to drive traffic and search engines and to help me to build better websites.

Well, for a few hours you can get any of Mass-Automation’s tools for a discount of 50%!

Anyone serious about blogging knows some or all of these great tools for WordPress bloggers, some of us would not do without them - I am one of them.

Matt, from Mass Automation has given me a coupon code to enable you take a massive 50% discount on AutoSocialPoster, half off Rss Bookmarker, WordPress Auto Installer and WP Cloner buy both for half price - a perfect pair of blog building and maintenance tools.

In order to get your discount on all products use this link: Mass-Automation
This link goes straight to RssBookmarker
Here for AutoSocialPoster

To get your discount follow these instructions:
This is a 50% discount coupon, available until 15th May 2008:

–Name of coupon: 24hpromo
–Products: applies to all our products
–Discount: 50%
–Validity: the coupon expires on 05/15/08.

Please note that the coupon needs to be entered twice: once in the shopping card and once again if paying in Google Checkout

This is a great offer and if you are serious about making money with your blogs you should be checking out these offers right now!

One of the hardest problems facing a new internet marketer is finding the route to profits. There are so many things that must be done in oreder for us to be successful. There are technical issues, marketing problems, product selection - so much that it is no wonder that most newcomers do not succeed in their new business.

The Little Automatic Moneymakers that we built for so many clients were a big help but there was something missing - the ‘from the ground up’ training in all the basic aspects of the business. That concerned me a lot. So I went out and designed a new product: Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos.

My new membership site offers training from the basics upward and most of the material is provided in the form of videos that can be downloaded to your own PC - I even include iPod versions for on the move learning.

Each month on Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos there will be at least four ‘over my shoulder’ video tutorial series providing an A to Z guide to internet marketing.

Add to that a ‘business in a box’ each and every month - a complete web based business complete with product, sales pages, website, graphics and a promotion video to use on any video sharing site - or your own web pages.

But that is not enough - every month there are a set of books and software concentrating upon a particular Internet Marketing theme - for this month we are concentrating upon SEO.

So, please, if you are interested in learning about internet marketing and you prefer to use video to help your learning then take a look at these internet marketing videos, it will be worth your while, I guarantee it!

I came across a presentation by a bloke called Eben Pagan the other day and forgot to mention it here.

Eben does a very good presentation about the concepts that go into writing an effective sales letter and also the reasons why we need one. I am not going to try to precis his 25 minute lecture. I urge you to watch it as it also covers a lot of well known, but often ignored ’secrets’ about selling.

http://www.gurumastermindblog.com/2008/03/a_new_technique_for_increasing.html

He also provides a link to a piece of free software that will serve to strongly increase the degree of commitment of your readers to you and your message. The link is given out in the video but may not be live for many more days.

Today I started work with this tool, the ‘Psychic Salesletter’.
It works well on several levels. It involves the user, which, as Readers Digest know, is key to raising committment.

It gathers user info for further communication.

It enables us to address the needs and concerns of our users

and

It gives us two bites of the cherry - two sales pages on which to place ‘Buy Now’ buttons!

A question that I am often asked is ‘how do I find keywords to use when building my blogs?’ The answer is not easy as there are many different keyword research techniques that can be followed.
As a start to an ongoing series of audio internet marketing tips I am featuring a short presentation on a method of researching keywords to use within your niches. I hope that you find this helpful.

I know some here are involved in, or want to become involved in doing work for hire - contracting and consulting. On a discussion board I posted about the topic of calculating the right money to charge for a job. here is that post, I hope you find it useful.

Re: How to determine hours for budgeting social networking

I was responding to a poster who was suggesting that consultants should charge based upon the number of hours in the week and then dividing by the hours worked. This is a simple method but flawed, the slightly edited post follows:

The danger of this approach is that one is starting out by undercharging!
Once one is undercharging it can be very hard to get the ‘right’ price for the job because one’s clients come to know how much output you get for so much dollar input.

One way to tackle this is to look at the job tasks and these are NOT just doing the work.
First concept to address is that of ‘billable hours’ these are the hours of work for which you charge the client and they are the only hours which will pay for you to live.

Consultants who get a utilisation rate (another concept - related to billable hours - the proportion of a week’s time that is used in billable hours) of over 80% are doing really good.
As a one man band you should allocate about 40% of your time to marketing and business building. Your utilisation rate is thus a max of 60% and you can manage in a ‘normal’ working week of 40 hours about 24 billable hours.

So, being really simplistic, if your income need is $5000 per month then you must charge $52 per hour. 5000/96 = 52
I have excluded vacations, sickness and inefficiency slack from this example, but they are easy to add into a real life calculation.

When starting out you will not be as effective as a more experienced hand and thus you will give a lower output per hour. If a ‘market rate’ for your work is $50/hour then you need to discount your rate by the factor that you estimate you are inefficient. So, of you are only 80% efficient then your hourly rate should be $40 per hour and you will be competitive with hands working at full efficiency and charging $50 per hour.
The task will cost the same whether you are hired or your more efficient competitor gets the job.
Now, as you get better you increase your internal hourly rate but the time taken goes down; net result is the same money for less work without having to change the prices that you charge your clients!

When you have the ‘internal’ hourly rate for the job you can start to give quotes based not upon time but upon objectives. So, if a client wants 500 links building and you know it’ll take you 20 hours then you can quote a price for the task and avoid hourly rates. This is more simple for the client and is less risky for them because they can measure a tangible - output as against an intangible - time taken.

This is why quoting for an objective achieved is seen as more professional by experienced buyers because it shows that you know your cost factors and efficiency and account for them yourself rather than leaving the prospect guessing.

I just read a post ’somewhere on the webs’ about a make money from blogging course being offered by Mark Joyner of Simpleology. He has launched a Simpleology blogging course and he has a neat and interesting twist.

I am sure the course costs money - I don’t know how much. There seems to be no link to a sales page.
But, if I blog about the course and include the text that follows my wn words then I get a free copy of the course package.
I am always keen to learn and as I’d like to help readers here to learn this seems an easy deal and I’d encourage any readers to follow my example. Nothing to lose and, after all, if the course is rubbish you can always delete the post, right?

Actually there was a secondary reason for going along with this idea. The stunt is a very cool illustration of the power of viral marketing. Mark Joyner puts out a product that is of interest to a niche group. He wants to reach as many members as possible of that group at as little cost sa possible. So, he gives away the product on the proviso that the ‘clients’ promote the product without even having seen it.
Of course, once in the Simpleology product funnel Mark Joyner can take his time in getting all his new ‘clients’ further down the funnel where we will be spending real money.
The old saying ‘using a sprat to catch a mackerel’ applies here, with a vengeance.

So, here is the text that I need to post and I look forward to seeing the course in the near future!

PS. It looks as though Google has indexed about 25,000 copies of Mark’s text. It’ll be interesting to see if I can get any kind of decent ranking for the search term Simpleology Blogging.