2. You won’t make any money. Again you will reap what you sow. your key to success is through consistency and persistency. If you are willing to learn and accept failures from time to time, learn from your mistakes and apply that knowledge – the money will come. Don’t give up. There are lots of people who truly do make money this way.

3. Anyone can do this. If you tell your self there is nothing to this, you will set yourself up for guaranteed failure. A profession such as this takes a lot of discipline and most of all the willingness to learn. It takes a lot of hard work and an open mind. You have to be willing to embrace new ideas as they come and take this seriously.

4. Not everyone can do this. This is also not true. As long as you free your mind to scepticism such as these, you have taken your first step. While this profession takes time to figure out, it is not hard to figure out. Remember the only person stopping you is you!

5. It is too hard. Look within your self. There is an online business in you. What do you know? What do you like? What do you need that has not been created yet? Answers to these questions and questions like them are the beginnings of you having the ability to set yourself apart from the crowd.

6. It will be easy. It will get easier, but you will have to do loads of studying. Spend many hours brainstorming. You will spend many hours reading, writing, and learning what works and what doesn’t. It will get tedious and hard to stick to. Persevere, your reward is coming.

7. It will only require 2-3 hours a day. At some point you will be able to automate most of your efforts. In the beginning, long hours are not unheard of. I have spent many 18 hour days in front of my computer.

8. This is not a real job. Yeah right! You will come across many sceptics. Or worse than that, people who do not reveal scepticism but merely look at you funny. Believe me this is a real job. You will be just as exhausted from working and researching all day as you would sling 50 pound sacks of flour all day. When you are mentally exhausted you will be physically exhausted. You work hard; don’t allow the people who minimize your efforts get to you.

9. The only good reason to do this is for the money. That could not be further from the truth. There is a lot to gain; the money is a plus of course. Learning will always make you a better person. If you are happy with your self, everyone else will be to. You can’t beat the hours.

10. It takes years to learn online business. Not true. The best suggestion is to study hard. Read your newsletters and the articles in them. Listen to those who are already successful. They are already telling you what to do and how to do it. Now you just need to listen and learn.

These are the 8 important lessons I’ve learned regarding Ezine Advertising and Marketing Success: 

A common mistake many advertisers make is to attempt to do too much, or rather sell too much, in one ad. Sure you have lots of great products but you can’t sell them all in a few lines-at least not individually.  Instead focus on the benefit your customer can achieve from all your products and promote that! People are much more likely to click on a link that BENEFITS them than a link that promises to sell them something.

For example, “Help your child reach their maximum potential” instead of “Try our many reading, writing, math, shapes and colors programs”

More importantly, tell the customer “what your product or service is going to do for him.”

It is important that you identify your Unique Selling Proposition before you begin your advertising program. This will determine which Ezines (or markets) you target as well as what you should include in your ad copy. Who will be interested in your product and why? What benefits does your product offer them?

Don’t go for the sale in your ad! You are at a disadvantage because you can’t list all your products’ wonderful benefits in the space allowed. Also, there is only a small percentage of any Ezine audience that is ready to buy your product at the exact moment they view your ad. Yes, maybe they should be, but most people today live in the moment and if this isn’t the time they want to buy then they aren’t going to buy, end of story.

But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story.  If you go for the soft sell approach your target consumer is much more likely to click on your link and then you’ve got the chance to go for the hard sell-again and again!

Here’s an example. I’m selling a product called the Preschool Prep Power Pack. It’s an educational CD for preschoolers. Now I could go for the hard sell in my promotion and I would make some sales but a lot of people who really might be interested won’t even look at my site and product. However, I’ve chose to go the soft sell approach. Instead of selling my product in my ads, my ads offer two FREE items. I offer a free newsletter (Preschoolers Learn More) offering tips about preparing preschoolers for kindergarten. This is my target market for my product. The folks who subscribe also receive a free ABC-123 coloring book. Why wouldn’t the parent of a preschooler subscribe, right?

But what’s in it for me as a business person? A lot! Think about it. I now have the freely offered contact information for my target market. Now I can regularly email them information about my product. I’m confident they will buy eventually because my product provides a solution to something that concerns them-or they wouldn’t have subscribed in the first place!

Another common mistake is not giving your ad campaign enough time to work.

Studies show it takes prospects an average of seven exposures to your promotion before they take the bait. Even after they have clicked through to your site visitors may need to visit your site as many as three times before they buy from you. So make sure you keep that offer in front of them. That means it may well pay to take the long-term package versus a one-shot ad.

People run through their emails rapidly and delete things they wish they hadn’t. Make their wish come true! Give them a second, third, fourth chance. The formula is–when you’re sick and tired of it, the public is just beginning to hear it.

Just because you’ve bought ad space doesn’t mean you have to utilize every pixel or character-space. Short, punchy lines that do not use up every available space are more effective.  Think about the reader scanning down the page or screen. What will catch their eye and make them stop scanning and actually read?  White space is your friend so don’t squander it. Use it to set off your important message.

Make sure you apply the same principal to your urls and e-mail addresses as well. Nothing can make an ad look more cluttered than giant web addresses with a complicated string of numbers and letters. If you have to use an address like that (perhaps for your affiliate code, for example) then it might be wise to use a redirect. There are numerous free services out there (http://snipurl.com for example) although perhaps it might be a good idea to use a page from your own web site with a redirect programmed in

USE YOUR HEAD

Your headline is the most important part of your ad. This is usually the line that determines whether the skimming reader will stop or skip ahead.

Some of the proven headline formulas include:

1. Ask the reader a question: “Are you worried about filing your
tax return this year?”
2. Tell the reader how to do something: “How to buy a
car without getting a lemon.”
3. Provide a testimonial: “Big Al saved me $200 last month. Thanks, Cindy Lou from Paducah, Kentucky.”
4. Make a command. Turn your most important benefit into a commanding
headline. “Stop rushing through life.” “Make more money this month.” “Feel better about yourself.”
5. Important news makes a good headline. “Max Electronics just went international!”
6. Start the clock: “Buyers who act before midnight Tuesday will save an extra $50!”
7. Give the reader something free: “Free whatsit for the first 100 visitors!”

DON’T FORGET TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO!

It sounds almost ridiculous, but simply giving clear, specific directions about what you want the reader to do can increase the response to your ads.

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SET YOUR BUDGET

One of the most difficult things to decide for any business person is how much money to spend on promotion. There really is one simple way to determine the answer. How much is a customer worth to you? That tells you a great deal about how much you can afford to spend on advertising.

The simple formula to calculate the net worth of a visitor is: Net Profit divided by Conversion Rate.

First, what is your net profit on an average sale?  Let’s say $10 to make it easy. (Hey, I’m an English professor, I need to keep it simple!)

Then consider what your conversion rate is for visitors to become customers.  Let’s say one visitor out of 50 becomes a customer. (This makes your conversion rate 50 as you need 50 customers to make a sale)

With this example, a visitor is worth $0.50 to you. ($10 divided by 50)

So if you spend $100 on an advertising campaign that draws in 1000 visitors then you made $400 on that campaign.

SET REALISTIC GOALS

This issue is really about control. Yes, if you could control things that you would have a high sell through but that isn’t always going to happen. In fact, for most advertisers that isn’t going to happen. However, if your goal is to capture customers then you are much more likely to match your goal or even exceed it. And in the end a customer is worth a lot more to you than a sale because a customer can represent many sales over years to come-sales that were fairly easy to achieve.

As frustrating as it may be, advertising is usually about long-term versus short-term benefits.  Your ad simply serves as a lure to draw people into your site or long-term promotion. Once you’ve pulled them in then you need to sell them. So it is not really fair to judge an ad campaign on simple sales.

The success of an ad campaign should be measured by one or two elements only-first, how many people followed up on your offer (click-through rate) and second, how many of those visitors were you able to convert into customers (conversion rate).

Over time you will be able to judge where the weak link in your chain of customer creation exists and work to fix it.

Low click-through rate? Then it is probably your offer. You are not giving readers enough incentive to follow through. What is in it for them to click on your offer? Remember you are selling benefits!

Low conversion rate? Then perhaps you are not attracting the right sort of visitor. Target your incentive (the free offer, for example) to match your target audience.

Hi – I have been working online for couple years now and I have seen so many things come and go already – sites that make promises and are just there to take your money – well I got so frustrated with all this that I decided to start my own traffic exchange.

Over the years I have collected Hummingbird figurines so when this site came along, it just seemed to have my name written all over it, so I purchased it in November 2008. Now being new to the TE (traffic exchange) world, it has been a challenge to build up the membership but as of this blog – i’m proud to say that we are at a few members short of 1200.

Now you are thinking that this not a lot of members – well I’m here to tell you that I did not have thousands of dollars to invest in the launch of this site but I did have the time. I have worked many long hours and recrutied these members one at a time – so I am proud of each and everyone. For you see, I run my TE different than most – I CARE if you get traffic, get referrals, get sells and am there to help my members.

There is a live chat on the site and is a great place to meet new people and make friends – you will often get to chat with me – I’m a real person behind this screen. As of today my members have been paid $344.55. Many either IM on Skype, IM on Yahoo, or email me thru support and I help them  – so if you are looking for someone that will be there for you and mentor you – then try Humminbird Hits.

So Why is Hummingbird Hits different??????

Hummingbird Hits offers manual/hover surfing, 3 membership levels, random bonus, top surfer awards daily, weekly and monthly, extra rewards for suggestions, ideas, referrals, advertising site, etc. Banner and Hotlinks are FREE as long as you have Active Sites. Come chat with us – our chat is shared with 25 different TEs.

Alot of people ask me how did I do it – well it was lot of hard work – lot of hours and practically no personal life lol.  But you see I believe in that you have to work hard to make to achieve your dreams.  I do have a BIG picture of what I would like to see happen here on the net and I keep taking ONE DAY at a time – it’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together – one little piece at a time and all of a sudden the BIG picture is done.

All I can say is not to give up – and there were times that I 2nd guess myself but I stayed focused and kept going and with baby steps we are getting there.

Remember – “It’s not what happens that really matters, it’s how you handle it will make all the difference.

So…………even on the bad day – you have to pick your hinder up and get thru it.

Since starting my own website and looking for places to advertise, I stumbled upon traffic exchanges.

Do they work?

Yes, a traffic exchange can be your best friend when trying to promote your website.

What is the purpose of a traffic exchange?

The key to traffic exchanges, (TE’s) is to build YOUR list and get people on YOUR list.

What is “branding”?

You want people to see YOU!  Over and over and over again (branding).  You want to have a page that will stand out to the surfer, make them want to take a second look!  Make them want to click on that page and find out more!

One way of accomplishing this “stand out” or “second look” is by experimenting with splash pages.  Splash Page Maker  is a program I use.  It allows you the creativity to easily make different splash pages so you can see what does and does not work.  (for those of you not familiar with the term ‘splash page’, just think of your website condensed onto one page – it’s an attention getter..splash pages also load much faster than a website on a traffic exchange.)

There are so many programs and ebooks being promoted, where do you start?

Two words ” Affiliate Funnel “.  Affiliate Funnel has many free resources for you to take advantage of. After becoming familiar with the site and information they offer I did upgrade in order to take advantage of the full benefit package.

Everyone can attend FREE seminars (free and upgraded members).  You can participate in these online seminars, just listen & learn, take notes, whatever you are comfortable with.  You will learn from experts the steps of creating an online income.

There is nothing quite as rewarding as implementing these steps and instructions and having it work!  Receiving an email informing you that you have a commission!!  Now, that’s an email worth reading.

One last thought……don’t try to do everything all at once!  Focus on one thing at a time, get it done…..then add another new thing, get it done…..before you know it, things begin to fall into place and you will begin to receive commission emails as well!

Don’t Give Up……To Your Success