Online Business - Are You Taking The Difficult Road To Success?

A lot of people take the most difficult road to success
because they have no clear vision of the type of online
business they want to start, or the business they're
operating. Their only goal is to make money. There is
nothing wrong with that, however the problem is they don't know
how to make money.

So they follow the crowd, the majority of people on the
Internet who, themselves, aren't making any money.
What they fail to realize is that the people they are
marketing to know that their only goal is money.

This is reflected in the type of products they sell, which
are poor in quality, out-dated and oversold, and the way
they treat their customers.

The quickest way to failure in your online business is:

1) To offer low-quality products and services.

2) Not responding to your customers when they need
more information about your products and services.

3) Selling products that people don't want.

If you want to start an online business, or are already
operating an online business, the products you sell will
either make or break your business. This is what most
Internet marketers fail to understand.

Your goal in business is to produce a profit. And how do
you produce profits in your business? By offering top-quality products and services to a market that
demonstrates that it wants them, and has the money to
buy them.

Yet most people think only of the money they want to
make instead of focusing on two of the most important
factors impacting a business -- product and market.

These two factors are inter-connected because a product
must have a market for you to make money. One cannot
function without the other. Yet, most people approach
choosing a business and its product selection as an
afterthought.

No amount of marketing in the world is going to make you any money
if you are selling products that people don't want. It
makes no difference whether you've gotten the world's
greatest copywriter to write your sales letter. Your
marketing will never convince people to buy what they
don't want. And if nobody wants what you're selling, you
won't make any money.

This is the main reason why most Internet marketers or
online businesses are not making any money. They
haphazardly select a product, with little or no research
and forethought, often marketing a product that thousands
of other people are already selling or have oversold, and
which the majority of customers already own.

If you want to take the easy road to success with your
online business, if you want to make a lot of money
online, you must sell a product that is as unique from
others as possible.

That is why marketing your own products through your
business has always been the most profitable because
you are the only one marketing them, and you get to keep
all the profit. If you or a few marketers are the only ones
marketing a particular "hot" product to a hungry market,
you get to make huge sums of money. The reason is
there is very little competition.

You take the easy road to success in your online business
when you sell unique products and services to a "hot"
market that is willing to buy what you are selling - and
where you get to keep 100% of the profits.

Begin now to look for those products that are high-quality,
profit-generating, and only a few marketers are selling. If
you market them, you'll find that it is not so difficult at all to
make money with your online business.

Article Marketing For Affiliates

Article marketing is a great tool for fueling affiliate sales. Article marketing, also known as bum marketing, is submitting articles you've written to large online catalogs of articles called article directories.

At the end of each article, you get a spot to advertise yourself and your own promotions (in this case, as an affiliate). This area is known as the resource box. Typically, you'll have a few short lines to add some information about yourself and add some links.

As an article marketer, you can send traffic to your own website to capture the reader's contact information, or straight to your affiliate offers. A few of the bigger article directories don't allow you to send traffic straight to affiliate links, but most of the smaller ones currently do.

A benefit to sending traffic to your own website is the fact that you're getting the PageRank of the article directories, instead of passing it to the affiliate site. Plus, if you send traffic to an affiliate offer, you may regret it later if the affiliate offer is withdrawn.

Imagine having hundreds of links pointing to an affiliate link, and having that affiliate program shut down or change their terms? You'd either have to suck up the loss, or try to find all of those hundreds of articles and edit them to promote a new offer!

Also, if you send traffic to your own site, you're building your own business instead of just the business of the product owner. If you can get visitors to your site, you have the chance to get them to opt into your newsletter, and you also have the possibility that they'll bookmark your site and come back later.

Sending traffic straight to sponsors is fine to do if you're just starting out and you can't yet afford your own hosting or domain names. Although hosting and domains are relatively inexpensive, some people simply can't spare anything. If you're one of those people, you can send traffic to affiliate links for awhile, and then reinvest the profits to get hosting and domain names.

Some people only submit their articles to the major directories, claiming the other directories aren't worth submitting to. There is definitely one major player in the industry. If you don't know who it is just email me and I will be happy to tell you. But their standards can be quite high, and their rules are rather strict. They don't allow linking directly to affiliate links. In fact, they only allow you to link to a top-level domain. You can't even link to a blog you have hosted at Blogger.

Go Articles is another major player. But there are hundreds of smaller directories that have good PageRank that they can pass to your site. Even if you're promoting direct affiliate links, it's probably best to submit to as many directories as you can. The more exposure your articles get, the more chances you have to make a sale to your affiliate programs.

Super Selling Article Resource Box

Are you missing opportunities with your article resource box? If you haven't updated your bio box at the end of your article, you could be missing out - big time. With a massive outdated resource box or none at all, you are missing generous opportunities to market your product, service or yourself.

When you distribute your insightful articles to the A-list of article banks, directories, ezines and high traffic blogs your resource box at the end becomes your selling point. Yes, it's a soft sell. Nevertheless, it is a place to promote something related to your article. Don't miss your big opportunity to let your reader know about what you're promoting. Here are 7 tips to pump up your article resource box and prosper:

1. Update your resource box to embrace Web 2.0. Make it shorter and punchier. Grab attention first. Make your offer second. Talk about you last. Make sure your links are correct. You'll miss the mark if your link does not work. Be friendly and personable with your information. Not many will care about your stuffy title alone.

2. Include 2 hyperlinks or website URLs. Most article directories and ezines will allow an article writer to include at least 2 website URLs in their signature file or resource box. Use both; direct one to your offer and the other to the general website or sales page.

3. Offer a freebie in your article resource box. Put the first URL here and offer a free resource to your reader. Entice them with a powerful resource. Make it valuable, make it unique and make it yours. For example your online newsletter, a special report by auto responder that collects the emails for your lists. Remember the list is premium, so make it a goal to capture your reader's emails.

4. Create a call to action. Put your soft sell sales message in each article resource box. All resource boxes should be a call to action. Many newbie article marketers miss the mark with this one. They create a beautiful signature box with all the elements except a call-to-action. Don't leave this out; write a great article then you're your reader to action. Create it like a 30 second commercial.

5. Put your name and title on the last line. For example Mae Brown, article writing coach. If you are an expert or many year professional be sure to mention that. You should always include your title and experience in your resource box. But put your reader first.

6. Write your concept statement. If there's room, put your 1 line mission statement with a major benefit on line two. For example, "empowers professionals to realize their best dreams" or "helps home business professionals' work out their best dreams."

7. Insert keywords in your URLs. Stay conscious of using your article to leverage your position in the search engines. Find out the long tail keywords for your business or website and use them to direct traffic to your products and services.

8. Get ideas from others. After seeing how your favorite writer developed theirs, use your own words and craft your best resource box.

If you don't update your article resource box, the missed opportunities representing increased publicity, prospects and profits may continue to grow. So, take the secret tips above and write your resource box to promote. Persuade people to click the link to that free offer where your auto responder or your web site collects their email for future promotions. Do this every time you write an article and reap the rewards of every opportunity to sell yourself, your product or service.