Carl Beliveau is an experienced affiliate marketer that has been active online since 2003. He’s the editor of OurWebOffers.com a web site that reviews online products and services for it visitors.
How to Identify a Winning Affiliate Product to Promote Online
November 21, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Affiliate marketing is not rocket science, it’s simply a recipe. But like in all recipes you need to use the right ingredients and follow the instruction.
When it comes to affiliate marketing the primary ingredient is the product or service you want to sell. Your website development and all you marketing efforts will be built around this product. So, it’s essential that you take the time to select it wisely.
You just have to do a simple search only to discover that there are thousands of products or service you can choose from. Variety is good thing when the products you want to promote are of equal quality. But it can become very confusing when a lot of the products offer no real benefits to your potential customer.
So, to identify a winning product, the secret is to analyze it, and look for the following:
1- Make sure the site is well organized and easy to navigate. Potential customers will only remain on a site for 30 seconds before they move to another one. This means that if the site doesn’t grab the attention is the first few seconds, the customer will walk away.
2- How many steps are there before customer are taken to the order now process. The idea is to make sure it will be easy for anyone to place an order.
3- Does the product you’re about to promote offers a strong money back-guarantee. This point alone is a must to build the confidence of any potential customer.
4- Do they offer you affiliates tools or tips to help you promote the product. I personally like to work with companies that offer tools to help me going. If they have tools in place it means they are serious about helping their affiliates succeed.
Taking the time to research and analyze products properly, will make your selling job much more easier.
How To Promote Affiliate Products On Google Adwords
November 20, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Google Adwords represents a great way to gain relevant ads into your website. The good thing about it is that it allows you to earn income even if you don’t have any products of your own. The best part? You don’t need to do any of the promotion as all of it is taken care of by Google itself.
How it works
You will firstly need to sign up for one or more affiliate programs and get the respective codes for these. The best option would be to work through a single banner or umbrella which will bring in plenty of affiliate programs all under a single roof. This way you can undertake on selling as many affiliate products as you can and start on the marketing efforts. The good thing about Adwords is that even if you have limited funds you can do well. It’s because Google enables you to plan out your budget and thus keep costs low as you want it. You just need to pay an initial amount which is fairly reasonable. Also, another great thing about Adwords is that you don’t need to do any promotion by yourself. Everything is done by Google. They have their own robust promotional package through which you can easily convince customers to buy your products online.
Getting started
You will need to register for a Google Adwords account. All you need to do is verify your own email ID in order to start churning out ads for the products. You will then receive a confirmation from Google saying your application has been accepted.
Diversification
With Google’s Adwords you will be able to diversify your market base very easily. You can try out different ads as per your interests. You can select ads as per the target market of choice. The ultimate objective of your affiliate program is to get people to click on your affiliate ad link. To do this, you need to ensure that the text on the link does not give away the fact that you’re redirecting clients to another site. You need to camouflage this as effectively as you can.
Budget constraints
With Google’s Adwords it is possible for you to set your initial pricing to as low as even 1 cent for each click. However, this might rob you of sales in the long term. Instead you could opt for pricing packages like 5 or 10 cents for each click. You can even mention the amount you can afford to pay out each day. You can even avail options to restrict your ads click throughs to just 3 per day. When you are starting out it is sensible to start out small. So initially a 2-5 dollar per day is good enough amount.
The implementation
Once you have decided on the pricing and made payment, Google will take over. It will place all of your ads on all relevant search engine results. It will also display these ads on sites which have Adsense. If anyone is searching for EBay, then too your ads will get displayed on the search engines online. The concept of placing your ads under relevant banners and platforms is to get access to warm markets which are already interested in your product. This in turn increases your chances at getting more click throughs and hence more sales.
Pitfalls to avoid
Many novice affiliate marketers have used Google Adwords only to realize that the commission they are earning is far lesser than the amount they have invested. This can be a de-motivating factor for many. Therefore, the best approach is to start out small and then do plenty of research and study as you go along. You also need to learn from the mistakes made by other affiliate marketers. That way you don’t have to reinvent the wheel again.
Visibility
One great thing about using Google’s Adwords to promote your affiliate products, is that it gives you great visibility. You can almost instantly get your affiliate links into Google’s first page. All this without even having your own website! But yes, it can be a little expensive in the beginning. However, like it has been mentioned earlier, it pays to be modest and start out small initially. Supplement your promotional efforts with lots of research.
Want to make serious income by advertising clickbank products through Google Adwords? Get a copy of Affiliate Elite software.
How to Choose the Best Affiliate Products to Make Money
November 20, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
When starting a new online affiliate business, there are two main mistakes that people make. And making either one of them can mean few if any profits. This in turn, leads to the marketer abandoning the business and claims that you can’t make money online. But nothing could be further from the truth. You can make money online using affiliate programs if you do it right.
One of the major mistakes that people make is in the selection of which products they promote. Many newbies will choose products based on the commission that they pay. They seek out products that pay 75% or more on each sale. In some cases, the reason that these products pay such a high percentage is the fact that they do not sell that often. This high percentage is an attempt to compensate affiliates for that shortcoming. The percentage payout is the last thing an affiliate should consider when choosing products. Never base your decision to sell a product based solely on the commission it pays.
Affiliate products should be selected based on the niche you participate in. If your website is about birds, you should sell (and advertise) nothing but bird related products. The reason for this is simple. Your site will naturally attract people who are interested in birds. And these visitors are obviously interested in bird related products. Your bird related products will sell quite well while that foreign exchange program that pays 75% will do nothing.
The other mistake that people make is in joining too many programs. They believe that if one program is good, ten is better. The problem with this is that fact that you spread your marketing efforts too thin. Trying to market ten different products at once is difficult even for a veteran marketer, it is impossible for someone just starting out. You are much better off starting out with one or two related products in your niche and marketing them effectively everyday. By doing this, you will slowly begin to make more and more money.
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Using Affiliate Products to Start Making Money Online
November 20, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Making money online with affiliate programs actually has very little to do with the affiliate products. After you’ve completed your research to determine which products you want to promote, your involvement with the product ends. From that point on it is all about traffic. To be successful using affiliate products, you need to focus on sending traffic to the merchant’s sale page. Period.
Most affiliate products convert at about 1 percent. That means for every 100 targeted visitors that see the product, only 1 will make a purchase. Many people try to diversify their Internet business by recommending eight or even ten different affiliate products.
Although this may sound like a good business strategy, it can make it very difficult to make money in the beginning, particularly if you only do this part time.
Over the past 7 days, I’ve sent a total of 848 visitors to the affiliate programs that I promote. Out of those 848 visitors, 7 of them made purchases. I’m able to do those kinds of numbers because I do this full time. If you are only working part time, you might only be able to get one tenth as much traffic.
If you are sending a total of 85 visitors a week split among 9 different affiliate programs, it might take you almost three months before you generate your first sale. Most people will give up long before that time and, as a result, they will never make money online.
If you are working this business part time, and you want to make money using affiliate products, use just one or two reasonably priced affiliate products. Focus all of your marketing efforts on these products. Using this strategy, you might expect to make your first sale in two to three weeks. But, in order to do this, you have to market aggressively. You should write articles, post on forums, use some form of outside advertising (even if it is free), and post ads on your site. Of course, this is not a complete list. But the point is, you need to use a variety of strategies to direct traffic to your merchants. By doing this, you can start making money online using affiliate products.
Do you want to learn how I make money? Get my new ebook and start making money online!
Home Business Internet Marketing – Use Social Media To Get Traffic
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
In your home business internet marketing efforts, there are many different methods that you can use for marketing your business. One of the methods that are becoming more popular every day is to use social media sites to drive traffic to your business. There are many different sites available that you can use but the one that you choose will depend on your marketing needs. So, you need to find a social media community that you can start getting involved in to build traffic and contacts for your business.
When looking for a social media community for marketing you want to take time to do your research about the different ones available. Some of the more popular social media sites as YouTube, MySpace and many others. You need to learn about the different sites that are available so that you can use the one that will help you the most with your home business internet marketing.
Now, when you find the social media community that you are going to use, you have to take time to learn how to use it effectively. You don’t want to just go in and start using it right away without knowing anything about it because if you do this then you won’t be using it as effectively as you could be.
So, take the time to find information about the social media sites and learn all you can. There are eBooks, reports, articles and many other ways to learn all you need to know about the different communities that you are going to be using. Don’t rush through the learning process because you have to know as much as you can if you are going to be successful with this type of home business internet marketing.
You have to learn how you can use a social media community to drive traffic to your business; how to build business relationships that will help you make money, plus how to build new friendships, which can also help you make money. These are all very important things to learn and if you don’t take the time to learn them then you will be wasting a lot of time trying to learn it without help that you could be using to effectively use the site for building your business.
So, remember that you need to learn all you can about the different social media sites before you use them. Use one social media community at a time and learn how to use it effectively to get traffic to your business before you add another one. This way you will be using it to your advantage.
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David Ogden is an established online marketer who specializes in practical website resources and advice.
The Best Ways of Advertising on the Internet
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
The internet has created a vast arena in which to do business. Of course, capturing relevant customers and playing an active part in the game is a very different challenge. Advertising on the internet can create a significant level of interest for your business, but you need to understand a little more about the formats before you look at placing campaigns.
Something which is still in its infancy in the grand scheme of things, advertising on the internet has been and will continue to be a growth sector in the advertising industry as consumers spend an increasing amount of their time online.
The web is already one of the world’s largest marketplaces and as any advertising or marketing professional can tell you, the way to reach consumers is to go to them. And that place is ever more likely to be the internet, making bringing advertising to the internet an essential to any business which hopes to remain competitive.
Not only consumers but businesses have moved much of their commercial activity to the online world, making this also a new area of growth for business to business marketing as well as business to consumer advertising. While advertising on the internet is still an emerging part of the marketing world, there are already a variety of means which advertisers can employ in their efforts to make headway with online consumers.
Advertising banners and text ads are the most well established form of advertising on the internet, with PPC, PPA and other forms of contextual advertising becoming a growing part of web based marketing efforts. The cost of advertising to the advertiser can be determined in several different ways, depending on the pricing model used.
There is the pay per click (PPC) model, which relies on gathering a large number of tricks to be useful to the advertiser and profitable for the seller of online ad space. Other advertising sellers prefer the CPM model, which involves a flat fee per 1,000 impressions something which works well for companies who have high levels of traffic selling advertising on the internet.
There is also the CPA or cost per action model; these actions could be clicks, impressions or anything else determined by the advertiser and the advertising seller. However, the most common action in this model is something which helps the advertiser to build their list such as an email-based subscription.
Adverts used in internet marketing campaigns involving newsletters, a popular choice in the field of B2B advertising on the internet are often priced this way. CPA advertising tends to be more expensive for the advertiser, but it does yield much more certain results and in the case of B2B advertising, the return on investment tends to be higher. Newsletters are a favored method for business to business campaigns because of the repeated contacts generally needed to close a sale and because for these sorts of applications, banner and text ads tend to be far less effective.
When using banner ads, the placement and design must be taken into account by both parties; different ads will benefit from different placement on the page; website owners selling advertising on the internet should have the behavior of their visitors analyzed to determine favorable placements. This helps the publisher do a better job of selling advertising, as well as making the decision an easier one for the advertiser.
There is always the option of pop-up ads to give advertisers increased visibility. At one time, this was a near-guarantee of an impression, but these are becoming less popular with the increasing sophistication of pop-up blockers. Advertisers and sellers of advertising on the internet have a lot of choices and as web technology grows, the opportunities for advertising are sure to grow alongside of it.
Andrew Long is an advertising sales consultant for websites and other media. He offers media companies a bespoke solution to selling advertising and making money from their websites and other media. This article about Advertising On The Internet can be used on a website as long as this resource box is added http://www.myadbase.com/cgi-bin/guide.cgi?page=advertising_on_the_internet
Boost Your Online Business With Effective Business Blogging
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
When you enter into an online business, there is not doubt that you have to set aside a budget for advertising. However, not all forms of advertising are necessarily going to cost you a boat load of money just to get started. If you are seeking a new and improved method of advertising your online business, looking into effective business blogging can bring you the revenue that you would normally spend for advertising.
Statistically speaking, business blogging is the fastest growing form of online advertising, and the key is that there aren’t any catchy words to toss out, no copy and paste data entry to deal with, and no fees for competing with the pay-per-click advertisers that make thousands off of your internet marketing efforts. Effective business blogging is as simple as you want to make it and often more effective than pay-per-click experiences. There are more effective business blogging campaigns out there (80,000 blogs that show up on the internet every twenty four hours and well over 50 blog enthusiasts) which means that you have a wide audience to cast a huge and authentic net.
Effective business blogging allows you the perfect opportunity to open up a dialog with your potential clients or business associates before they invest in your word. Developing trust and authentic relationships can take a little time, but once the trust had been established your business is likely to grow faster than you ever thought possible. Effective business blogging provides a forum for all parties to provide feedback and commentary to help you develop better business skills and offer the services or enhancements that will effectively help your business take off.
Effective business blogging also helps you develop a strong community of supporters. Bloggers are loyal people who tend to run toward their favorites and away from their least favorites, a simple human element that is alive and well in the blogging community. When you treat the blogging world with respect, the bloggers in return recommend your site, product, or services to others.
Effective business blogging means dropping the advertising campaigns. Blogs are the perfect backdrop to talk to potential clients or associates without selling them on your business. Give readers something of value to hold in their brains or their hearts and you will be fully aware of just how much buying power rests in the blogging community.
By combining the power of RRS feeds, keyword phrases, and effective business blogging all on one blog site, your business is placed in the most effective position to reap the benefits and financial rewards associated with the most effective business blogging. Test your blogs in several different venues and make sure that you educate yourself on the basics of effective business blogging. Unfortunately, one poor post can have a residual effect, but one good post is also likely to have a residual effect. Learn all that you can about the rules, as well as the unwritten rules, of effective business blogging in order to play on the same field as everyone else. This simple step can save you thousands in one costly error.
When you are ready to set up your own blog, follow the basic guidelines below in order to promote your business and receive the ultimate benefits of effective business blogging.
Start with interesting topics that allow you to integrate you blog design into your company. This isn’t that hard, just a little forethought (perhaps a template) and some creative help on the side if you choose can bring your new blog into the limelight faster. Always make sure you cover your legal ramifications and post disclaimers that refute your liability for content and the opinions of others and any harm that could come of inappropriate posts. This is a simple step that all effective business blogging should have just to make sure they don’t end up with a silly little legal hang up that can drive you under.
Always set the standard by posting your own terms of use and policies. You are permitted to set up basic limitations and offer content control. You also reserve the right to remove any offensive material.
Use your business blog as a forum, and don’t work too hard on the sales end of effective business blogging. Selling to your readers is an immediate turn off, as we are all bombarded with commercialism way too fast and hard these days.
Always update your business blog on a regular basis and research your new and improved content in order to keep your business blog interesting for your audience. Avoid bland talk about products and the superiority of your business.
If you have people who work for you, encourage or even mandate that all company employees use business blogging to enhance their own sector. For large companies, this can improve business morale and function and for small companies this can effectively help the business grow. Blog the first fifteen to twenty five posts prior to sending your effective business blog out into the marketing end. This makes it look more complete and offers readers a chance to integrate their thoughts on more than just one or two posts.
An effective business blog is not a set and leave it type of element. In fact, effective business blogging requires regular updates and attention in order to make it function well. Never believe that your blog will take care of itself or you will lose the ground you have already covered.
In the mean time, Good Luck on your journey to success…
OR if you would like to succeed immediately to create financial freedom working only 4 hours a week, check out www.secrets2internetfortunes.com
AND for a Limited Time, you will also receive a FREE copy of a limited number of the amazing 113 page eBook “Online Fortunes A Beginners Guide!” which is jam packed with so many ideas you can use to instantly create an automated income for life! That’s my GIFT to you as a way of saying thank you for reading my articles.
Terry Leslie is a very successful and world renowned authority figure in both on and off line marketing, and rapid business creation. A much sought after global speaker in the areas of internet marketing, business development, self-improvement and human peak potential training.
Selling Affiliate Products Using Articles
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
The main problem facing affiliate marketers is not the selling of the products, but the traffic to sell the products to. Anybody can put up a site, write some content place a few affiliate links and you are in business, or are you?
There are a multitude of would be internet entrepreneurs giving up daily after spending hundreds of dollars on all sorts of products, but two months down the line there is still not a penny to show for it.
With a return on investment of zero after two months of slogging along the idea of making money online seems to be a pipe dream, nothing more than unrealistic expectations, and at this point you either try something new, which again will cost money, or you just give up and remain content with your day job.
Fact is, there are ways and means for you to make money online. It just takes much more dedication and work to make it a reality and does not constitute only fifteen minutes of work per day. What you put in is what you will get out. If there were free rides we would all be rich by now.
Making money selling affiliate products using a method known as internet article marketing is a proven method of generating income online. Many have done it before and many more will do it in the future. It requires a structured and planned approach to your marketing efforts and you need to have the right information at your fingertips to succeed.
It does not happen overnight and you will not be filthy rich by the end of the week either, but you could have earned your first thousand dollars online after the first month provided of course you followed the correct methods that have proven to be successful.
Writing articles is not difficult and with a little effort and practice anyone can do it. Many articles are written for informational purposes only and do not require a structured approach. On the other hand when you are writing articles promoting the products you are selling the dynamics of the article changes. There are certain elements that you have to take into consideration before writing the article and it needs to keep the readers attention right to the end. That of course is where your resource box is and the link to the sales page of the affiliate product you are promoting.
Before doing anything the first thing you must do is to make sure which product you are going to promote. You make the decision based on a set of criteria that will ensue that you will not be wasting time.
The next step is to determine the keywords for the product; again this is based on a specific set of criteria. The reason for this is to ensure that your article will appear in the search engine results where your traffic will be generated from.
Once you have these elements in place it is time to write the article. You can just write the article, and generate a few sales if any, or construct your article taking all the little nuances and subtleties into account making the article great and getting the readers to click on your link.
So if you want to write to sell make sure you follow the right methods that have been proven to bring in sales form article marketing rather than waste your time over a few months experimenting. Get the right information and start your affiliate business today by writing articles that sell.
What Do Mean Your Online Business With Effective Business Blogging?
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
When you enter into an online business, there is not doubt that you have to set aside a budget for advertising. However, not all forms of advertising are necessarily going to cost you a boat load of money just to get started. If you are seeking a new and improved method of advertising your online business, looking into effective business blogging can bring you the revenue that you would normally spend for advertising.Statistically speaking, business blogging is the fastest growing form of online advertising, and the key is that there aren’t any catchy words to toss out, no copy and paste data entry to deal with, and no fees for competing with the pay-per-click advertisers that make thousands off of your internet marketing efforts. Effective business blogging is as simple as you want to make it and often more effective than pay-per-click experiences. There are more effective business blogging campaigns out there (80,000 blogs that show up on the internet every twenty four hours and well over 50 blog enthusiasts) which means that you have a wide audience to cast a huge and authentic net.Effective business blogging allows you the perfect opportunity to open up a dialog with your potential clients or business associates before they invest in your word. Developing trust and authentic relationships can take a little time, but once the trust had been established your business is likely to grow faster than you ever thought possible. Effective business blogging provides a forum for all parties to provide feedback and commentary to help you develop better business skills and offer the services or enhancements that will effectively help your business take off.Effective business blogging also helps you develop a strong community of supporters. Bloggers are loyal people who tend to run toward their favorites and away from their least favorites, a simple human element that is alive and well in the blogging community. When you treat the blogging world with respect, the bloggers in return recommend your site, product, or services to others.Effective business blogging means dropping the advertising campaigns. Blogs are the perfect backdrop to talk to potential clients or associates without selling them on your business. Give readers something of value to hold in their brains or their hearts and you will be fully aware of just how much buying power rests in the blogging community.By combining the power of RRS feeds, keyword phrases, and effective business blogging all on one blog site, your business is placed in the most effective position to reap the benefits and financial rewards associated with the most effective business blogging. Test your blogs in several different venues and make sure that you educate yourself on the basics of effective business blogging. Unfortunately, one poor post can have a residual effect, but one good post is also likely to have a residual effect. Learn all that you can about the rules, as well as the unwritten rules, of effective business blogging in order to play on the same field as everyone else. This simple step can save you thousands in one costly error.When you are ready to set up your own blog, follow the basic guidelines below in order to promote your business and receive the ultimate benefits of effective business blogging.Start with interesting topics that allow you to integrate you blog design into your company. This isn’t that hard, just a little forethought (perhaps a template) and some creative help on the side if you choose can bring your new blog into the limelight faster. Always make sure you cover your legal ramifications and post disclaimers that refute your liability for content and the opinions of others and any harm that could come of inappropriate posts. This is a simple step that all effective business blogging should have just to make sure they don’t end up with a silly little legal hang up that can drive you under.Always set the standard by posting your own terms of use and policies. You are permitted to set up basic limitations and offer content control. You also reserve the right to remove any offensive material. Use your business blog as a forum, and don’t work too hard on the sales end of effective business blogging. Selling to your readers is an immediate turn off, as we are all bombarded with commercialism way too fast and hard these days.Always update your business blog on a regular basis and research your new and improved content in order to keep your business blog interesting for your audience. Avoid bland talk about products and the superiority of your business.If you have people who work for you, encourage or even mandate that all company employees use business blogging to enhance their own sector. For large companies, this can improve business morale and function and for small companies this can effectively help the business grow. Blog the first fifteen to twenty five posts prior to sending your effective business blog out into the marketing end. This makes it look more complete and offers readers a chance to integrate their thoughts on more than just one or two posts.
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Social Media Marketing- the Top 10 Mistakes People Will Make in Social Media in 2009
November 18, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Here we go again!
Another year and another great possibility! With the election of Obama to the presidency, there is Hope and all are looking for a great future.
But I am sitting here thinking of all the folks in social Media that are going to be frustrated again in their social Media marketing efforts. wondering why they are not getting the traction or friends that they thought they should. And the main reason is that they continue to make the same mistakes in Social Media as last year.
Are YOU going to do that- I sure hope not. You may not have the power of a Robert Scoble, or the personality of a Gary Vanyerchuck, or the mind of a Chris Brogan, or the networking focus of a Mari Smith or Coach Deb micek. Or even the amazing writing talent of a Scott Monty.
At least not yet.
But you CAN accelerate your Social Media Success this year by avoiding these top 10 mistakes made by people in Social media in 2009.
Ok…what are they?
1) Lack of Consistent Visibility.
You cannot make a path and create a presence in Social Media, without CONSISTENTLY being SEEN and HEARD with your message. Ask Carrie Wilkerson. Or Timothy Carter. NOT going to happen. That is why that you MSUT create a Presence on the web DAILY- and be seen and heard as part of the community. A tree does not grow part time. It must be consistent in it’s efforts. It is the saem with your Social Media marketing.
2) Focusing too much on being heard.
LISTEN first- THEN talk. Social Media is about Listening to what is being said- by your prospects and customers- and social media in general. You would never enter a party or social event and immediately start yelling out what you wanted to talk about.
Neither should you in Social Media. LISTEN and then LEARN- and then Let your voice be heard- ONLY as a part of the existing conversation. Your time to start the conversation will come.
3) Taking, instead of GIVING to the Social Media Community.
Ahhhhh- lots of takers out in the Web 2,0 world. But NOT YOU. GIVE first. Give Value. Give Suggestions. Give Advice. Give ideas. Give Encouragement. Give News. Give New Possibilities. Give Words of Gratitude. But do NOT take relentlessly. You will be shunned and labeled as such.
If you REALLY want to create powerful influence- GIVE. How does that work?
GIVE = Gain Influence Very Easily. Give FIRST – and you will never come in Second.
4) Not Joining groups.
Groups are where you can have some of the greatest growth and learning. I belong to a ton of groups. Why? Because of 2 reasons: 1) I learn a lot from other people. 2) I CONNECT with the folks in the group.
Groups are a “secret weapon” that you should use on as many social sites as you can. They will not only Enlarge you- but also the possibilities that the group can bring to your life.
5) Not attending Events.
Events ROCK. And you should be attending at leat 1 event a week to do 2 things: 1) Become more Visible. 2) To learn from people that know things you do not.
Events are what i call the “Hidden University” of social Media. You can learn a LOT and grow a lot from events.
Look at the events that interest you. And pick on event that mildly interests you. And see if you can learn something even from that event. I have an event journal. and every event that i attend- i keep a log of what was said so i can review it later. You may want to do the same.
6) Not enough VALUE in what they are doing.
Value RULES in Social Media. And we train on what we call “Surprising Value.” This is the type of Value that is so great and unexpected that it surprises the person that discovers it. Put More Value in your POSTS. Put more Value in your PODCASTS. Put more Value in your Conversations. Put more Value in your Articles. Put More Value in your Recommendations. Put More Value in YOU and what you bring to the Social Media table.
Value RULES. And the one with the MOST value at the end of the day- reigns.
7) Joining Too Many Social Media sites.
There are about 3,600 Social Media sites. You need maybe 5-7. You read that right. You need 5-7 PRIMARY Social Sites. Then you need maybe 25-30, or even 50 Secondary sites for Link Building and traffic purposes. The main sites that you should be a part of- is up to you. My ‘Big 7″ are facebook, twitter, youtube, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Plaxo, and Wordpress- along with mashable. These are the CORE of my Social Media Marketing.
Do I belong to more? Heavens yes- a LOT more’ but have automated those through ping.fm and other social software.
Do NOT try and be seen on a hundred sites. Facebook alone can keep you busy with over 200 million people. The same with myspace, or friendster. Master ONE site while mastering social media and then another, and then another, until you have YOUR “Big 7.” And then automate the rest. 
Focusing too much on Monetizing Social Media.
Nothing wrong with monetization on the internet. We do it a LOT- and daily. But focusing too much on that in social media- is , well…not cool. People do not mind knowing about an offer, or new info product. But how about giving some VALUE first with it- then invite them to an event- and then at the end of the conference call or webinar-give them a chance to purchase your produst.
What do I see daily? Urls and messages SELLING SELLING SELLING! Whew- wish that would not happen so blatantly. It has gotten better, but if you have a great content rich info product- here is a novel idea: GIVE part of the info away FIRST’and let the person ASK you for the product if they like it.
Hmmm….that just might be an idea worth considering.
9) Thinking that You are Nobody and Social Media Success is for other people.
Ask Chris Brogan. Ask Scott Monty. Ask Alejandro Reyes. Ask Brian Solis. Ask Dave Taylor. Ask Shama Hyder. EVRYONE has a great possibility to becoming SOMEBODY in Social Media. THAT is the beauty of the culture. Everyone who contributes Value and Connection- is more than welcome to achieve whatever they want. Chris Brogan once had 10 readers of his blog. Now he has almost 40,000 people following him on twitter alone. Brian Clark of copyblogger fame once had 10 readers. So did Scoble. So did Monty. So did Shama. And the list is endless.
There is GREATNESS inside of you-and there is NO BETTER place than Social Media to unleash it upon the world. You ARE Somebody- and always have been. YOU are a Social Media Rockstar- in training!
10) Not Branding Yourself Strong Enough.
Branding is a tool that we all use in Social Media. It is WHO YOU ARE- and what people remember about you. It could be a phrase-”Just Do It (TM)”- or a slogan- “”We’ve Got You Covered.” Or even a questions- “Can You Hear me Now?” or just a Name-”Trump.”
You need to get a slogan or phrase that you can start wrapping in your messages. You need to get an image that speaks what you want the public to see and know. And you need to decide -what is the ONE THING I want people to think of FIRST- when they think of me and my company? THAT is the start of a good brand build. Do not be just another face in the web 2.0 world. Set yourself apart and above the fray with a brand that rocks. We teach what is called “Connection Branding” and we have saying:
“Do NOT just be known or remembered- become UNFORGETTABLE.” ™
THAT is what you need to do!
These are the top 10 mistakes people will make in Social Media in 2009. Yes, i Know there are others- but these are the ones that i see as the most prevalent in Social Media marketing.
blessings..doug firebaugh
Doug Firebaugh is one of theTop Social Media strategists, MLM, Network Marketing Home Business Trainers, Speakers and Authors in the world. Over a Million people a month read his training letter.He has helped over 10,000 people worldwide earn in excess of 50,000 a year. He wants to help you do the same. You can subscribe to his FR-ee training letter -which includes 3 FR-ee gifts just for subscribing at http://www.passionfire.com
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