Social And Business Networking: A Fundamental Requirement For Internet Marketing Success

Internet Marketing Success Takes Time and Determination

Regardless of thousands of instant money making proposals and offers you may receive on the internet, I am prepared to put my head on a block that it is not possible. Internet marketing success comes with time, research, acquiring skills and knowledge, perseverance and determination.

For people like me who want to embark on a road of affiliate marketing, the confusion with all the junk and rip-offs thrown at you, and with all the processes and techniques to implement can be so overwhelming that you take on the hit-and-run approach or simply throw in the towel.

It took me several months to sort the wheat from the chaff and to get process and structure into my activities. Focus, structure and process are vitally important or you will get swept away by a tide of confusing and haphazard affiliations and activities.

For anyone serious about earning online: It is all about Internet Marketing and Internet marketing requires knowledge, skills and tools. Get training first! There are some excellent online courses and learning sites available requiring a nominal expense, which must be regarded as an investment rather than an expense. I owe the jump-start to my success, as far as fundaments knowledge and skills go, to the Profit Lance Course. It is excellent with a treasure trove of online resources, tools and training modules. Ideal for beginners.

Once you have mastered the initial and fundamental essentials, subscribing to membership sites offering more advanced training and resources, with tools to tap into as they are required, is as important. Learning to earn online is a progressive and never-ending process. Membership sites can provide peer support, guidance and a wealth of resources, as well as opportunities to enter into joint ventures with other Internet marketers.

The training resources I referred to above will also teach you about the importance of NETWORKING , or interacting with people to be successful. Networking online with other people so that you can become known and trusted.

Regardless of your knowledge and skills, get people to know about you!

You might have heard this before: The Money Is In The List. That’s true, but not any list! It must be a list of people YOU have established a rapport with, people who know about your online identity, people who trust you sufficiently to receive information from you about whatever you want to inform them about. So, fundamental to your success, even if you have the greatest products/services to sell, is networking with people, getting them to know about you.

The Money is In The List You Have Built!

So, unless you want to bankrupt yourself with pay-per-click advertising with the hope that one in a hundred visitors to your site will buy from you, start networking. (That’s correct, you cannot expect to get a conversion at a rate of more that 1:100 and unless you are a Google PPC expert you will can pay between 50c and $2 per click.

You can network with people for free and get them to know you and build up a list of top quality leads. People who know about you, people who are keen to listen to you and who have an interest in what you are promoting. Then you can email them with peace of mind and without having to worry about spamming people.

Network and List Building Sites

The largest and oldest business and social networking site in the world is available to you with free membership. Direct Matches has hundreds of thousands of members where you can be matched with people who are interested in YOU and what you have to offer. Direct Matches is huge and reputable and established in 1994. If you click on the link above, you will see my picture welcoming you to the site!

I am also mesmerized by a new and very FRESH site allowing you free advertising on the site and generating free business leads opportunities. I’s called Orange Leads and they have alive chat room where you can get known AND publish your website with a “shameless” add while you are in live chat with others looking for business opportunities. This is an awesome site and you will know what I’m talking about just by visiting the site.

That’s it for today!

To your networking success!

Orange Leads. Unlimited Free Business Opportunity Leads and Advertisements.

Direct Matches Direct Matches Direct Matches

Online Advertising

Choosing An Affiliate Network: Essential Selection Criteria

The Profusion (and Confusion) of Affiliate Marketing Opportunities on the Internet

About three months ago, as I started exploring Internet marketing opportunities, my first experiences can be best described as total confusion and getting completely lost in a very murky labyrinth of hundreds of big-money-from-home opportunities flaunted on the Internet.

Along with the confusion and exacerbating my disillusionment, came the shocking realisation that many of these “quick-rich” affiliate marketing opportunities were  scams  and rip-offs

In my quest to find Internet related opportunities to earn a living, I have been conned more than once and have also lost money in the process of buying in on some of these “opportunities” in the belief that that the sweet sales talk in which these “products” are wrapped, couldn’t possibly all be lies! It must be due to my nature, which perhaps is somewhat gullible, but more trusting the innate goodness (also implying honesty) of humankind.

After my three months sojourn of exploring Internet marketing opportunities I am a wiser, less gullible person. Still believing in the goodness of my fellow human beings, I am now more wary of the vulnerability of human nature, particularly when it comes to the temptation of greed.

To cut my somewhat lengthy introduction short, I have extensively read and studied and researched Internet marketing opportunities, strategies and techniques to the present point where I can say I am marketing and succeeding in Internet marketing. My home business is working and it is growing. I am no guru, not by a long shot, but I know the essential basics about Internet marketing, affiliate marketing and, alas, network or multi-level marketing.

Network Marketing: The Internet’s Cinderella

Network marketing is frowned upon by many and spit on by some Internet marketers and even avoided by some Internet directories and because of this, I initially shied away from network marketing opportunities. “They are pyramid schemes”, I thought. I thought multi-level or network marketing was a typical example of a scam scheme, an Internet rip-off. I avoided familiarizing myself with some affiliate network marketing opportunities because I was under the impression it is about enrolling people into the scheme without a product/service or a dubious product or service and that it was all about building layers of people joining and earning commissions from their enrolments rather than from earning revenue from the sales of the company’s product and/or service. To me this was like contributing towards blowing up a bubble and because the network had nothing to sustain it, the bubble was bound to burst or, at least, deflate, sooner or later.

These would indeed be pyramid schemes and it is because of illegal pyramid schemes and dodgy network marketing companies with dodgy products or services that network marketing got its bad name.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water!

It was only later that I discovered (out of curiosity about people’s testimonies about the leveraged income possibilities with network marketing) that network marketing opportunities offered by reputable companies with real, substantive and marketable products and services offer the enhanced income generating opportunities for an affiliate Internet marketer.

The reason network marketing offers increased income earning potential over regular affiliate marketing opportunities is because of the network or down-line of people enrolling under you through whose sales you will also earn commission.

The implication of this multi-level income generating model is that once your down-line is firmly established and successful, your business goes onto auto-pilot and your income becomes passive income, like the passive income from an investment. Hence, a carefully selected network marketing enrolment offers an income opportunity into retirement.

Essential Selection Criteria for Choosing an Affiliate Network

1. The company whose affiliate network you consider to join must have credibility and reputability. Don’t rely solely on their sales pitches and other promotional material, Google the company and search for them in forums and blogs on network marketing.
2. Don’t join before you have established exactly what the products and/or services are. If there is vagueness about what they expect you to market, be skeptical. To me total openness and transparency about the products and services is an essential prerequisite for affiliating myself. If you cannot establish this beforehand, chances are good the network marketing is more about building the network than centring on the marketing of the product. When the incentives for recruitment are greater than for product sales, again, be very skeptical.
3. Establish the appetite in the market for the products and services offered. How has the product been selling? Are their clear signs of growth? Is there a demand, preferably internationally, for what they are offering?
4. Can you identify with the products/services for sale? If not, how would you succeed in marketing these offerings enthusiastically and honestly?
5. Determine the level of support, the availability of promotional tools and process guidance you could expect from the company and your up-line.
6. Transparency about your marketing efforts. For example, would you be able to track visits and conversions to your unique affiliate website/s?
   

A Last Word: Assessing Affiliate Networks Calls for Greater Scrutiny than would be in the case of linear affiliate marketing products due to the potential pit-falls of multi-level marketing as I have alluded to earlier on in this article. The negativity with which network marketing is viewed by some in the Internet marketing community and broader society are compelling enough reasons not to compromise any of the criteria I have listed and to go for only the top-notch companies, like a Top 50 Inc500 Listed Company

If you make the right choice, to combine Internet marketing with network marketing presents you with a very powerful affiliate marketing opportunity!