3 Point Traffic Formula for Newbies

What if you learned how to explode your website traffic in 3 simple steps starting today?

The purpose of this article is to make sure that your website is flooded with traffic that you have always dreamed.

Here are 3 simple steps to get started driving all the traffic you can ever dream out of thin air...

Step 1 - Article Marketing Massive Traffic System.

Step 2 - Forum Marketing Traffic.

Step 3 - Search Engine Optimization.

The purpose of this article is to make sure that you receive a solid rush of traffic that will drive your sales counter screaming all day long.

Here are step by step details to get you started today...

Step 1 - Article Marketing Massive Traffic System.

Write 20 articles and get them ready for distribution.
Either you get it done or you can easily outsource the writing stuff hiring ghostwriters from elance or rentacoder.
Once you have your articles ready you can distribute them using article distribution service like article marketer for massive distribution.

This will drive backlinks to your site and thus massive traffic.

Here's how to drive traffic via forums...

Step 2 - Forum Marketing Traffic.

Search top 5 to 10 high traffic forums in your niche.
Setup your account out there and post quality answers to questions in your niche.
Post your signature file with a cool advert and people will rush to your site.

This is how you can drive instant traffic to your site using forums.

Can search engines swim you in massive flood of targeted traffic?...

Step 3 - Search Engine Optimization.

Create unique quality content in the form of articles.
Search related keywords and plug them all over your site.
Then publish these articles in your website or blog.

Get few backlinks to your site and search engines will drive huge traffic for your efforts.

Apply this system for multiple sites and you will have a traffic tsunami rushing to your site from search engines all day long.

All About Internet Marketing Tools

Who doesn't want inexpensive internet marketing tools? In this day and age when advertising your business online is the way to go, it's a must that you avail of internet marketing tools at the lowest cost possible. How can you avail of them? How can you make the most out of these low cost internet marketing tools?

These low cost internet marketing tools aim to better your website and promote them thoroughly. Read on to know more about them:

1. Software

There is software specializing in internet marketing. These programs are affordable internet marketing tools. They attract traffic, communicate your site to anyone online, harness and trim down your keywords, track your site visitors and create links to other sites. Of course, the phrase "low cost" emphasizes that you must not spend exorbitantly. Watch out for internet marketing tools that do nothing but suck your budget.

2. Website packages

Take note of low cost internet marketing tools that do the following: hosting and designing your site, getting your domain, offering technical help, configure and upload your files, campaigning for your traffic. These are available in website packages that you can avail of anytime. Choose a package caters to your site's needs.

3. Mailing lists

Notice that when you visit the Bulk Mail folder of your email, you read nothing but website promotions. That's email marketing? It boosts your business like no other. Don't worry about spamming. There's such a thing as "safe lists" that make your mails spam-free. This is so easy to obtain. Look for mailing lists for sale and let the fun of emailing begin.

4. Data Submitters

This is a money-saving internet marketing tool that works like magic. Have a data submitter of your own and amass tremendously huge hits!

5. E-books

Integrate an e-book in your site for people to download. At such a cheap price, you keep people clamoring for more and visiting your site in the process. That's one affordable internet marketing tool for you.

6. SEO tools

Internet marketing is not complete without the standard SEO tools. Search engines remain as the major powerhouse in marketing so never leave this part out. Generate traffic through this effective low cost internet marketing tool!
Here's a reminder: when you see the low cost internet marketing tool banners online, never get persuaded easily. Study the package deals; analyze the contents and benefits before deciding if you want one.

Ebay Requires Creativity And Initiative...

To make money on ebay requires creativity and initiative. For those who are creative one of the best mediums for developing and selling information products is video. Video offer some great advantages to ebay sellers.

Unlike the reading that is required of e-Books and e-Reports, video uses two of the viewer’s senses; both site and hearing. This increases the potential for higher comprehension of the information. Many find watching a video to be much more enjoyable than reading as well.

With a little extra work, the sense of touch can be added to video as well. This happens when there are demonstrations that are followed by exercises or hands-on work by the viewer. Again retention of the materials is increased when this is done.

make money on ebay by developing a video product that will draw viewers into the topic. Make the video interesting by adding a little humor, or by telling stories as the video unfolds. This doesn’t require a higher degree in film making. It does require a little imagination and creativity however. All of that makes the creation of the video fun for the seller as well.

Be sure that you read, understand and follow all of eBay’s rules and guidelines. Check them out before you start creating your video. That knowledge will ensure that after the work is completed you are ready to move forward and begin selling.

The good thing about a home business is that you are in charge of everything that happens. The bad thing is that there are many challenges associated with successfully starting and operating a home-based eBay business. Yet to make money on eBay, all of the challenges need to be faced head on. In fact, to make money on eBay all of the main challenges must to be successfully addressed.

One of the key challenges that many face as they begin to develop their home-based business is gaining an understanding and appreciation about the importance and proper use of time. Once a home based eBay business is up and running it often quickly becomes apparent that there will be a diminishing amount of time to get things done. To make money on eBay dictates that every moment of that available time must be used to its greatest advantage.

Start by carefully logging all appointments onto a schedule. Add blocks of time that you dedicate to the key steps required of your business, and you have moved one step toward making money on eBay. For example, you may find it best to schedule 30-minutes at the start of each day to answer eBay prospective buyer questions about auctions that are in progress. Next might come a scheduled block of time to list new items at auction. Finally, there might be a block of time to read about new ways to increase auction sales.

It is possible to make money on eBay by developing new and unique video products. You can share your hobbies or special knowledge and skills with a huge audience. Video products can be fun to produce and they can find a ready market.

Cash & PayPerClick Affiliate Programs

Have you ever wondered what exactly is up with affiliate? This informative report can give you an insight into everything you've ever wanted to know about affiliate.

Millions are paying to get a ride on the Information Super Highway everyday. Now, it is widely known that the Internet is an accessible resource of many income-generating activities. Whether you belong to a private sales company or you are just interested in internet marketing, PPC affiliate programs can be a powerful venue to make money from the Internet. A partnership with an affiliate merchant is a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate: sales are soaring because of exposure and traffic while the affiliate is earning good cash.

To make things much simpler: the affiliate merchant provides a strip of advertisement and pays you when someone clicks on the ad’s link. You can get a commission of $0.10 to $0.30 for every click, but it sometimes it can go higher depending on your merchant affiliate. Sometimes, merchants require a quota ($1.4 for every 1000 clicks). Plus, you can get discounts from your merchant affiliates if you happen to like their products too. You can just kick back and relax while your website is generating cash. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

What is PCC Affiliate Program ?

PPC means pay-per-click, wherein you get in partnership with an affiliate company that literally pays you for every click. There are actually two types of PCC affiliate programs – those who pay a commission based on the number of clicks and the other based on the sales. The pay-per-click scheme is much more popular than pay-per-lead because the affiliate gets paid by just clicking the ad, regardless of whether the visitor buys from the affiliate merchant or not. Plus the chances of a visitor purchasing something from the affiliate merchant are not really that high.

In choosing an affiliate program, read the fine print carefully – some pay-per-click programs get the ratio of the number of people who went to your site and the actual people who clicked on the ad. If you have a heavily targeted website, this can hurt your earnings.

How do I start ?

Of course, you need to have a website. Depending on your target audience, choose the best affiliate merchant that is most related to your topic. For example, your website is about Carpentry then you can search for affiliate programs that sell tools used in carpentry.

However, if you don’t have a website, that’s not a problem. You can put up a content site about absolutely anything under the sun like ‘Taking Care of Dogs’ or ‘Decorating your own Home.’ But wait, its not over yet. We are faced by a dilemma – on how to increase traffic! You first need to get internet surfers to see your website, then the ad.

How to Become A Clickbank Super Affiliate...

If you have even a passing interest in the topic of affiliate, then you should take a look at the following information. This enlightening article presents some of the latest news on the subject of affiliate.

When you think about affiliate, what do you think of first? Which aspects of affiliate are important, which are essential, and which ones can you take or leave? You be the judge.

Making money through affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding careers one could ever have. What’s good about this business is that anyone can join and make their way to success. Affiliate marketing has been known to be cost-efficient, assessable method of conveying long-term results. In fact, you can start even with a shoe string budget. And with affiliate marketing, you can have the benefit of working from home and enjoying the freedom and flexibility of working for yourself.

But there are also some people who failed in this kind of business. It could be because they lack knowledge and tactics. If you are a web site owner and you want to join in an affiliate marketing business, you should know where to get good affiliate programs.

Clickbank is an ideal place to start. Here, you can find one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the industry. You just need to visit their site, http://www.clickbank.com and secure a clickbank ID. From the Clickbank’s home page, proceed to “Earn Commissions” and look for the products and services that perfectly fit you and your site. These products are typically ranked according to their popularity.

Clickbank is one of the affiliate networks that serve as a 3rd party between the web merchants and the associated affiliates. It is responsible in providing the technology to deliver the merchant’s offers and campaigns. The affiliate network also do the job of collecting commission fees from the merchant and giving it to the affiliates involved in the program.

Clickbank provides you a large and increasing network of publishers or affiliates to tap into. To be more specific, clickbank has more than 100,000 affiliates who are experts in finding potential customers for your affiliate program. The reason why more and more affiliates are joining Clickbank is obvious – the process of gaining commissions in this network is absolutely fair and transparent.

For web merchants, joining Clickbank is so easy. You just need to sign up in their site for free and allow them to sell your products. Keep up a promotional web site that gives your potential customers detailed information about your offered product or services. At your website, you must also maintain a comprehensive technical support pages for your product. In return, Clickbank will promote and sell your product, give customer service for your product, allow their affiliates to pass on traffic to your web site, enable you to encourage new affiliates to advertise your web site, furnish real-time sales reporting for you and the affiliates and send you and all affiliates a paycheck twice a month.

If you’re a Clickbank affiliate wannabe, you surely won’t find it hard to be a part of this network. First, you are required to place their link on your website and if you don’t have a Clickbank account, you need to complete the Clickbank affiliate form and create your own account. Then, if you already have a Clickbank username, you are free to choose whatever marketing tools you want to use bring in more clicks and generate more sales. After selecting marketing tools, you can now get your affiliate link.

That’s how simple it is to join Clickbank. But being a Clickbank super affiliate is no minor achievement. It means you need to possess the ability to sell lots of affiliate products. You also need to have expertise in search engine optimization, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal linkage, link exchanges and other methods of promoting your merchant’s goods and services.

Among the secrets to become successful in affiliate marketing is to come up with good content based website and put your affiliate links in all your content. Your main purpose here is to give your visitors good quality content about the things they are interested in. Set aside the job of selling. It must be done by the sales letter page you are transferring them to.

Promote multiple affiliate programs in your website but don’t promote everything the world has to offer. Just choose the affiliate programs that fit your site and focus on it. Then, it is advisable to automate the whole process, giving you more time for other ventures. Yes, you’ve read it right! Automation is another key to become a super affiliate.

Of course, you have to spend more time in reading, learning and taking up the changes in affiliate marketing business. Through this, you’ll remain on top of the trends. If you are knowledgeable with online marketing, you’ll understand how important it is to stay up-to-date. In this kind of business, what worked and what was accepted few months ago may not work at present. So always see to it that you know what’s new in affiliate marketing everyday.

It’s really hard to be a Clickbank super affiliate, but you shouldn’t say NO to the thought of giving up. Bear in mind that in affiliate marketing business, you need to develop persistence, patience and knowledge. These traits will teach you to carry on no matter how tough the job is. Also, check your statistics. This will help you find out what is working and what is not. Make necessary changes if needed but do it one at a time and be patient.

Don’t forget that in affiliate marketing, everything won’t take place overnight. And it will not happen without blood, sweat and hefty time commitment. Again, just encompass patience, persistence and knowledge; then do above mentioned tactics. Before you recognize it, you will start gaining profits. Believe me, the fruits of all your efforts here in affiliate marketing will be way too sweet.

As your knowledge about affiliate continues to grow, you will begin to see how affiliate fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how something relates to the rest of the world is important too.

This article's coverage of the information is as complete as it can be today. But you should always leave open the possibility that future research could uncover new facts.

The New Facebook of Real Estate

OK, so your daughter came back from her first semester at university and set up a Facebook account for you. But now that you have it what are you going to do with it? Well, if you're a REALTOR, you could start by connecting with your family, friends and colleagues that also have profiles. And then you might want to try to use it to sell some real estate.

Social networking isn't just for kids. There are more than 60 million active users on Facebook alone with the over 25 age group being the fastest growing demographic this year. Everyone and their mom is on there now, literally. Not bad for a site built by a college student less than five years ago. Originally designed for university students at Harvard, the online tool has since expanded to include professionals, corporations and high school students. Charging ahead in a typical trail blazing style, REALTORS are learning through trial and error how to make this social networking site work for them.

Application: Cocktail Party
Evidence of the real estate industry's presence on Facebook can be seen in the handful of applications that have been developed strictly for Facebook REALTORS. Individuals and groups can use these mini-programs to advertise events, courses, seminars and invent excuses to throw real estate-related cocktail parties. Though encouraging, applications like these will never be able to compete with the fun times delivered by the likes of the "Scrabulous" or quiz applications which may explain why their use has not really taken off.

A better indicator of REALTOR involvement in the Facebook world might be the 500+ groups that categorize themselves as a "Business - Real Estate" group. A quick glance down the list reveals that it's a real hodge podge with everything from a group entitled: "accountants, real estate & finance peeps" weighing in at 1278 members, to a group called "I own real estate in BC and all I can afford to eat is mac and cheese." Certainly, if you hit on the right topic and make the right connections it's not hard to get people to join your group. Once formed, REALTOR groups can hook up with other groups and members can connect with financial professionals, buyers sellers, past and future clients.

But does all this virtual networking actually result in sales?
Yes and no. Just like anything, some virtual networking works, and some doesn't. The trick is to do what works and stay away from what doesn't. A quick survey will reveal that most of the real estate group bulletin boards and comment walls are overflowing with spam and self promotion. Is this likely to result in client conversion? Of course not. It will however, allow you connect with other folks in the field and that never hurts.

What Works?
It's well known that 80% of home buyers start their home search online. And why wouldn't they? These days, 80% of everything most people do is started online. Facebook profiles can now be spidered and you can make your profile visible to the world� if you wish. Please do. Allow yourself to be found. Invite new clients to look you up whenever you want them to get an idea of who you are. When you join a social networking site and present yourself as an ethical professional with a good reputation and knowledge of the industry, this will naturally build into sales over time. All you have to do is get out there and participate in the online culture.
Leave the hard sell at the login screen.

The key to success here is simple. If you want social networking to work for you, keep it fun, keep it real and stop selling. The heavy-handed hard sell simply doesn't work on the Internet. This is a medium where users can control the time spent on a site entirely independently of the site itself. It's not like TV where you've got 30 seconds to slam them with whatever product or idea you may have. Social networking works on a far more subtle level. Your internet presence is not a brochure either. An active profile is something much greater and potentially more powerful. It's a living testimonial that places you as a professional in a social context.
What Now?

With the above in mind, just get started. Over time, your comfort level and expertise with the medium will increase. Some ideas to get you started:

• Engage your audience by starting a group for "fans" ie: your mom and childhood friends who want to see you succeed. Get people to join you in a real estate related game.
• Join existing groups that interest you.
• If you join one of the big real estate groups, engage your collegues by opening a discussion. Start at least one fire on the message boards by asking an intelligent real estate question that people are compelled to answer.
• Don't blow hot air, post notes that clearly show your expertise.
• Some Realtors offer gift certificates and rebates for referrals that result in a closed sale, you may want to experiment with this.
• Include links to your blog and website
• Check your profile settings and make sure your profile can be indexed by search engines
• Make sure to tell people you are a REALTOR

Now go about your business: say hi to your mom, post pictures of your trip to Nunavit, share funny stories, shine like the star you really are.

How To Track Your Affiliate Sales & Traffic

In this article I'm going to explain how to track your ClickBank sales AND traffic. Don't worry if you don't promote any ClickBank products, the techniques outlined below can be used with any affiliate network that has a "Tracking ID" facility. Everything is also 100% free, I'm not trying to promote any tracking systems here!

Ok, let's get started. If you're not familiar with ClickBank's tracking ID system then you can read more about it here:

http://www.clickbank.com/hoplink_faq.html#hoplink_question_3The problem is you can only track sales, not clicks. Let's take a look at an example to demonstrate the problem, and the solution.

Let's say you have a webpage at this address:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html

On that page you're promoting a ClickBank affiliate URL:
http://yourid.publisherid.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=code1

You can see that "yourid" is your ClickBank affiliate ID, "publisherid" is the ID of the merchant you're promoting and "code1" is the tracking ID for this particular link. If 100 people click on that link and 3 of them buy the product, that's a conversion ratio of 3%. A conversion ratio is the percentage of people you send to an affiliate URL who then go on to buy the product.

In this case, the figure of 3% means that 3 out of every 100 visitors, on average, became customers.

3% isn't bad, but hang on a minute - ClickBank only tells you there were 3 sales for the tracking ID "code1". You don't know there were 100 clicks on the link, and without this figure you can't calculate the conversion ratio. What if 500 people had clicked on the link? The conversion ratio would be just 0.6% (i.e. 0.6% of the 500 visitors became customers). Ideally you should only promote websites that have a relatively high conversion ratio. If you're promoting two different ClickBank products for example, and one has a conversion ratio of 1% and the other 4%, you'd be better off focusing your attention on the second one and ditching the first. You'll only know this if you can calculate the conversion ratio. Luckily, this problem is easily solved with the use of a simple click-tracker PHP script. The script simply counts the number of times someone clicks on a link.

Don't worry if you've never used PHP before, there's nothing complicated about it. As long as you can upload files to your webspace you'll have no problem following these easy steps. It goes without saying that you also need PHP running on your server.

Go to PHPSuccessTools (see the resource box at the end of this article for the URL), click "mailing list" in the navigation bar at the top and subscribe, then check your email for the password. This will give you full access to all the scripts that are available. Click on "Free Scripts" in the navigation bar and then click on "Tagged Click Tracker".

Then fill out the form as follows:
"Password"You should always choose a random combination of letters and numbers for your passwords, but to keep things simple for this example enter "showstats" as the password.

"Destination URL"This is your ClickBank affiliate URL with a tracking ID appended to the end. It should look like this:http://yourid.publisherid.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=[TAG]Make sure you replace "yourid" with your ClickBank ID and "publisherid" with the ClickBank ID of the merchant you're promoting.

"Optional Expiration"Leave this box as it is, we don't want the link to expire.
"Name"Enter "go" for this.

You can leave all the other boxes as they are, unless you understand what they do. Now hit "Submit". Follow the instructions on the next page, where you'll be asked to save several files onto your computer and then upload them to your webspace and change the permissions. Upload them to the same folder as your index.html page (as this is the page we're going to edit in a few moments). If you've never changed file permissions before then don't worry, there's a simple guide at PHPSuccessTools (just click on "Guides" in the navigation bar at the top).
In this example we're assuming that you're linking to a ClickBank affiliate URL on your index page, so instead of linking directly to ClickBank, change the link on your "index.html" page to

this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/go.php?code1
Let's recap what we've done. We replaced the ClickBank affiliate link on your "index.html" page with a link that goes to the click-tracker script (called go.php). The click-tracker script, in turn, counts how many clicks the link gets and redirects the surfer to the actual ClickBank affiliate link.

Now we understand what's changed, lets see how it works. Note the tracking ID (code1) at the end of the click-tracker link:
http://www.yourdomain.com/go.php?code1
When somebody clicks on that link, the click-tracker looks at the destination URL (which you entered when the click-tracker was created) and replaces [TAG] with the tracking ID.

So in actual fact, the destination URL becomes:
http://yourid.publisherid.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=code1
Now all you have to do is view the statistics for this click-tracker and you'll be able to see how many clicks your link got.

The stats are available at this URL:
http://www.yourdomain.com/go.php?showstats
Now let's say that 100 people click on your new click-tracker link and 3 of them buy the product. By looking at your ClickBank stats you'll see that the tracking ID "code1" has produced 3 sales. If you look at your click-tracker stats you'll see that "code1" also generated 100 clicks. Use the two figures together and you can calculate the conversion ratio of 3%. In other words, 3% of the people you sent to the merchant actually bought the product.

The conversion ratio is important to know. There's no point sending traffic to a merchant that converts at 1%, when you could send that same traffic to a different merchant that converts at 3%. Assuming the commissions earned per sale are the same, you're better off with the second merchant. You'll only know this by testing different merchants and calculating the conversion ratio of each.

In fact there's no need to even calculate the conversion ratio manually - the click-tracker does it for you! Simply view the stats for the click-tracker and enter a "sales" figure for each tracking ID. The click-tracker then automatically generates the conversion ratio for each one.

To finish off this article, let's just quickly see how you'd track sales with more than one tracking ID. If you only have one link to your ClickBank affiliate URL then you won't need to do this, but what if you have two links to ClickBank, one on "index.html" and the other on your blog? Simply use the following URL on your blog where your ClickBank affiliate URL normally goes:
http://www.yourdomain.com/go.php?code2
Now when you view your click-tracker stats, just look for "code2" to see how many clicks this particular link received. Similarly, your ClickBank stats will show "code2" as the tracking ID for any sales that came from this link.

You are free to choose any tracking ID you want (you don't have to use "code1" and "code2"). Just make sure your IDs only contain alphanumeric characters (no spaces or symbols) and are 50 characters or less in length.

As I mentioned at the start of this article, you can use the above techniques with any affiliate network that has a tracking ID facility. When creating your click-tracker(s), simply enter your affiliate URL as the "Destination URL" and place [TAG] wherever the tracking ID should go.

If you're feeling adventurous, I recommend you make use of the hit-tracker script, also freely available at PHPSuccessTools. Place a separate hit-tracker on each page in your website that contains affiliate links and you'll be able to calculate the click-through ratio as well as the conversion ratio of those links.

Neil Cahill is a PHP programmer and part of the team at http://www.phpsuccesstools.com. You are free to reproduce this article providing no changes are made to the body text.

What Are The Benefits Of Becoming An Affiliate Marketer ?

Becoming an affiliate marketer can provide a steady stream of income. You simply join with other companies and place ads for them on your website. When your visitors click on their ad and buy something, you get a percentage of the sale. Again, promoting your website will bring in more visitors and more potential sales to you and your affiliates.

Multi-level payment plans allow affiliates to earn commission on sales, clicks, or leads from their sites as well as commission based on activity generated by affiliate sites they refer to the merchant site. Another form of payment is residual commission. Affiliates continue earning money after the original sale has been made. This is common in situations where customers pay monthly fees for merchant services.

The best affiliate programs pay at least 25% commission with some going as high as 50%. Payments should be made at least once a month although some affiliate programs pay quarterly or twice a year.

Affiliate programs are a great way to make a residual income. They allow you to take part in an established system that has already been tested and built up. All that is left to do is take control and build affiliates into your down line. Every sale these new affiliates make would result in a cut of commission to you, the original affiliate. This allows you to earn more commission by signing up others to do the work instead of having to sell more yourself. An affiliate program benefit�s the owner because they are having both marketing and sales handled for them by their affiliates.

The one thing about affiliate programs that scares people is its close resemblance to a pyramid scheme. Anyone who has been interested in working at home or building a business has surely heard of a pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme does involve recruiting people to sign up and making money off recruits, but the main difference, and the reason affiliate programs succeed where pyramid schemes fail, is that affiliate programs have an actual product to sell. If a program has a product to sell that is useful and something people would buy then they are an affiliate program not a pyramid scheme.

Affiliate programs are also very easy to get started in and most are completely free with no costs to get started. Most programs offer a website and plenty of help and advice on how to get the business going. A person gets help from the people in their up line, too. The biggest challenge, though, is marketing. No matter how much help a person gets, they still have to master marketing on their own.

A person can be quite successful with an affiliate program if they work hard, are consistent with their marketing actions, and are able to follow instructions. They are not a scam and are a true way to earn multiple streams of income.

A Successful Home Based Affiliate Business Takes Time And Effort, Luckily This Site Was Designed To Fast Track Your Profits As Your Learn..

Affiliate Internet Marketing Versus the Squeeze

A whole lot of people are feeling the squeeze. Everything from gas prices, utility bills (our local gas and electric hit us with a 70% increase), buying a home and other expenses are climbing through the roof while wages remain stagnant. The result is that even with two or more people in the household working, many families are living from check to check.

What about savings? In January, the U.S. Commerce Department reported the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, the lowest since the Great Depression of the 1930's. Martin Crusinger writing for the Associated Press said, "...not only did people spend all the money they earned but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases."
Since the job probably is not cutting it, you have to look at additional ways to make money. Affiliate internet marketing can fill the money void quite nicely.

Affiliate internet marketing is simply promoting someone else's product and getting paid for it without the overhead, products to stock or customer service hassles. The affiliate programs are usually free to join and anyone can make a healthy living online not just the experienced internet marketers.

You can get paid monthly, which is the usual standard, quarterly, one tier or two. One tier means direct referral. The affiliate merchant does not allow you to hire others to promote the product. Any commission paid to you is thru your efforts only.

With two tier programs not only can you sign up people to help you, (known as building a downline), but you also get paid a percentage of their sales in addition to your direct referrals. Some affiliate programs offer 3 tier payment plans or more. The point is anything above one is more money in your pocket.

Just starting out? Think of a product or service that interest you first and then see if there is a hot market for it. Ebay and Froogle are good places for this kind of research or just type some keywords into whatever search engine you use and hit enter. Is there a market? The internet is the biggest marketplace in the world so the odds are the answer is yes.

Get your own website. This is critical. It allows you to promote multiple affiliate programs and sign people up to your mailing list. Send visitors to your website first and then to the main affiliate page.

If you already have an online business, add affiliate marketing to your portfolio. Write a review of the product on your website or blog. You can also place an advertisement on your site.

Generally, text ads get better clickthroughs, however if one is not available then by all means use a banner. They may not have the appeal they use to but a good banner is still very effective.
Whether a newbie or experienced marketer, use ezine advertising.

This is a very powerful way of getting your affiliate program in front of a targeted audience. Also check the forums. There is a niche on just about everything so it stands the reason people are gathered someplace talking about it. Do not go in attempting to make a sale right away, instead be an active participant and use your signature to advertise your product or service.

Nowadays most people are just trying to stay one step ahead of the next bill. Affiliate internet marketing can go along way to changing that. Spend your time and energy in not only making money but building an online business. That is the best way to protect you and your family against the squeeze.

Daryl Campbell is an affiliate marketer and online business owner. It is easy to get lost in the jungle of internet marketing. So what do you do?

Get yourself an Internet Marketing Guide. Free tips, tools, resources, coaching, video and up to the minute news and information to help you get out of the jungle.

Get started now at Internet Marketing Guide

Intro to Beginner's Affiliate...

One of the basic tenets of any internet marketing program is that customers rarely buy on the first visit. As a matter of fact, it is commonly accepted that it takes seven contacts before a prospect turns into a paying customer. What this means is that you need to establish a relationship with your prospects and keep in touch by offering useful information or help as they make their decision to buy.

How do you do that? You do it by putting your prospects on a list and keeping in touch. The customer list or mailing list or whatever you want to call it list, is your ticket to sales and revenue.

Database List*

The creation and building of a list is an essential step in building your online affiliate business. Any affiliate online program you choose to join should have your list building in mind by offering you promotional tools and sales products designed to solve a problem or satisfy a need. If you have a list of a few hundred or a few thousand people you can communicate with, imagine the business you can draw if you have what they want.

Build a Relationship

Having a list is not all about constantly pitching a product or service. If there is anything irritating and certain to draw anger, it is the constant barrage of sales promotions many people feel assault them when looking on the web. It is far more important to build a relationship and draw a balance between giving away free information that can help your prospect and offering a paid product or service that meets a real need they may have.

To build a good relationship, a weekly newsletter or email can serve you well. By offering information with no strings attached you will build trust and confidence in your list members that you are a reliable and trustworthy resource. When they buy, they will buy with comfort and reassurance that you have their success in mind. In fact, you have their loyalty. That is the key to success to any affiliate online program.

Useful Information

What kind of information should you provide? How about valuable tips, case studies, interesting testimonials from real people, and stories from you own experience that can help them decide how to move forward? Once you start weaving stories and examples of success that they can relate to, you will have a dedicated pool of believers who will buy from you willingly and with confidence.

How do you build a List?

Begin with what your market research tells you and write a free special report. Design an eCourse or eBook to give away in return for your customer signing up for your newsletter. It will help build a list of names and email addresses. Create a newsletter sign up form on your Web site or Blog to grow your list. Promote the benefits your customers will get from getting the weekly information. Explain clearly what they will derive from the free reports and eBooks you will make available.

Once you have a good idea of what is driving your customer on your list, write articles about the subjects they will want to know about. Distribute those articles to Article Directories and in your author biography, include a back link to your Web site or Blog or to your newsletter sign up page.

You can also try posting in classified sites such as Craigslist or Adpost, to promote your free newsletter or Ebook.

Conclusion

These are some of the ways to build a list. Remember to use discretion and balance when contacting your list. People today are bombarded daily with SPAM and promotions so they are extremely sensitive to being sold and over sold.

If you take the time to get to know your customers, you will build a relationship that will get them to make the buy decision based on trust and confidence they have developed for you. That is the best path to prosperity you can hope to build.

Five steps To earning Money with Affiliate Internet Marketing

It is all about planning. Many people getting into affiliate marketing are thinking about making a fast buck. It is hard to fault them. Since the formation of CDNow almost thirteen years ago, affiliate marketing has exploded into a billion dollar per year industry. There are also the benefits including little to no overhead, residual income, getting paid for the work of your downline and not having to deal with any customer service problems.

But it is still a business and many people do not understand that a business requires planning. No matter how great the product or service, if you do not have any guidelines mapped out beforehand then you will probably wind up like ninety five percent of affiliate (and internet) marketers who do not make any money online.

Affiliate internet marketing is a lot of work, time, patience, mistakes, uncertainty and constant learning. The key is to create a plan and work it.

Where does it start?

1. Your Office
Whether working out of your garage, kitchen or bathroom (hey sometimes you do what you got to do), make sure your office is comfortable with proper lighting, ventilation and as little distraction as possible. It is hard to get any work done with the phone ringing every 15 minutes. If you have to, let the answering machine pick up. Set aside blocks of time where you concentrate on nothing but your affiliate marketing.

2. Learn and Keep Learning
Study the affiliate marketers who are making money. Visit affiliate marketing forums. While your overall goal is to become successful, you may from time to time have to change your strategies. Forums are a great place to get tips and ideas that you can adapt to your business. Also, many affiliate programs now offer conference rooms. This allows you to live chat with the product creators, as well as other affiliate marketers participating in the program.

Some conferences are just cheerleading sessions. They get you fired up to sell the product but do not give you any concrete ways to sell it. However, many merchants do provide solid support, answer any and all questions in real time and recommend affiliate marketing strategies to help you. If your merchant is scheduling conferences on a regular basis, take advantage of it.

3. Research Your Target Market
It is not enough just to know what is going on with your product or service. What are the new trends? Watch television. Read newspapers and magazines. Find out where the hot markets are popping up and how it affects your business. Do not just read affiliate news. Get as much information as possible on what is happening around the world and then apply it to your affiliate business.

4. Your own website
This is the command center for your affiliate marketing campaign. Yes you can promote different programs without one but this makes it more difficult and less profitable for you. Having your own website means you can capture the visitor information before you send them to the merchant. If they do not like the particular product you are selling at this time, you can always contact them about other offers or promotions later. The beauty is once you get their name and e-mail, you can contact them for as long as they remain on your opt in list. This is called backend and you can believe it is how many of the top affiliate marketers make their money. The money is in the list and the only way to do that is get your own website where people can sign up.

5. Do not kid yourself
We all want to be millionaires by the time the sun goes down or at least by early the next morning but that is not reality. Affiliate marketing is hard work so set a goal that you can achieve. How much realistic profit can you generate in a month? Start small. If you earned five hundred dollars last month, shoot for seventy hundred fifty next month. They may seem like baby steps but they can stop you from getting any false expectations which lead to discouragement and finally giving up all together. It may take awhile before you actually see any money so hang in there.

According to the AffStat 2007 report over eighty percent of affiliate programs offer revenue sharing. If you plan and treat your affiliate internet marketing like a business, then there is no reason why you cannot share in the profits.

Starting an Online Business is So Easy

There are few important things that you need to consider when starting an online business. You need to determine the type of business you want to be involved with. You have the choice of selling products or services as well as whether you want to sell your own product line or someone else's. The same can be true for service-related businesses. There are several companies offering services that you can resell and make a profit and if you find any of them useful, you may want to be involved.

You can also choose to sell a combination or products and services to take advantage of different aspects of the online shopping venture. While niche marketing and focusing on one product line has proven successful, so has being able to take advantage of different needs for different customer bases. Niche markets are more focused while a product mix reaches more of your targeted audience. You can also offer backend products, such as printer paper and ink to go with printers.

Working capital is a serious consideration in starting any internet business and probably the biggest expense will involve marketing your business. A good business plan can help you determine your target audience, which in turn will help determine where you will focus your marketing. This plan should be part of the overall business plan as without a specific market to target, you could end up simply throwing money into the wind and hoping it falls where it will do the most good.

Sustaining growth is another planning process and depending on your product line can be a viable exercise. Every business that sells merchandise should plan to offer products that are considered disposable. Items that customers will need to replenish or replace when used to gain the possibility of repeat business. Some businesses, such as home mortgages, are only able to sell to the same customer once, or maybe twice so they are constantly on the lookout for ways of generating more customers.

A business offering disposable items do not have to continually focus on new customers, rather good customer service and quality products can provide continued growth based on repeat shopping by the same customers. For example, if you sell digital cameras, it may be years between sales to the same customer. However, you can bolster your sales by also offering memory cards and printing services or supplies to bring in additional sales to existing customers.

How to BEGin earn Money...

Google AdSense Introducing

Google AdSense is the Google program where you can host pay-per-click ads on your Web site. When someone clicks an ad, you earn money. Simple as that.

Is it really as easy to make money with Google AdSense as many would lead you to believe? Now that I've become heavily involved with managing Google AdSense programs for my clients, I can see it's not all play and no work.

Unfortunately, a lot of people bought into the idea that there was a lot of easy money to be made and they are now finding out they aren't making nearly as much as they thought they would. Additionally, Google has a lot of prohibited practices when it comes to AdSense, and too many Webmasters are finding out they violated Google's policies after the fact - often because they never bothered to read the AdSense policies in the first place.

Webmasters must not only comply with AdSense policies, but their web sites must also comply with Google's webmaster policies.

Prerequisites for Making Money with AdSenseTo make money with Google AdSense you need plenty of traffic coming in to your site or there won't be anyone to click the ads. Web site promotion techniques, especially search engine optimization and article marketing will bring more traffic to your site. You also need to have content that will attract the ads with the highest Pay Per Click (PPC) rate that are relevant to that content.

Then, you need to lay out your web pages so the ads blend in with your Web site. Studies have revealed that people who visit sites that contain ads that use colors that are not in harmony with the actual Web site tend to develop "ad blindness".

Meaning no matter how much traffic comes into your site, chances are no one will click the ads because they'll be ignoring them. If no one clicks, you make nothing.

Dealing with Competitors.
If you offer products or services on you Web site, the first thing you'll notice when you begin hosting PPC ads is that many of the ads are coming from your competitors. Therefore, you'll want to put ads on pages that aren't earning you any money, or do like I did and not put ads on your site until you're so busy anyway you'd rather make a few dollars off of your competitors than to continue turning business away with nothing to show for it.

Google AdSense allows you to specify up to 200 URLs for sites you want to bar from placing ads on your pages. The problem is that most times you won't know the competitors are out there until their ads appear.

Google Money Making Ad OptionsGoogle offers three ways to make money from them:
Google AdSense for Content - A variety of size and shape ads for placing in your content are available. These can be text or image ads or both - you specify what you'll allow. Ad units are full ads. Link units are simply a strip of text links that your visitors might want to click. Google allows you to put up to 3 Ad Units and 1 Link unit on each page of your Web site, provided you follow its policies - both for AdSense and for Webmasters.

Google AdSense for Search - This places a search box on your Web site. When a user enters a term and conducts a search, a search results page opens, that hosts more pay-per-click ads. You can customize the color scheme of the search results page to harmonize with your web site.

Google Referrals - Here you make money by referring visitors to use a Google product, like AdSense, AdWords, the Google Toolbar and other Google software. Just like Google AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search, Google generates the code that you paste into the desired location on your web page.

You can choose from a wide variety of buttons and text links of different colors. As an example of how Google Referrals works, if someone goes to your site and clicks the link and signs up for an AdSense account, when that person earns a $100 from Google AdSense and receives a payout from Google, you'll also receive $100 for referring them.

This is a great idea to me, because you can be the world's worst Google AdSense advertiser, but if an ad dynamo happens to visit your site and uses your referral link, you can make money anyway!

Google AdSense Payments.
Google will not issue an AdSense payment until your earnings exceed $100. Unfortunately, there are loads of Google AdSense Forum entries about Web site operators who accumulated $90 or more in click through earnings only to get banned from Google and not get paid anything at all before they ever reached $100. This may be because Google doesn't take a close look to see if you're complying with their guidelines until it comes time to pay you. So yes, there's a lot more to the story than meets the eye.

Other Programs Besides AdSense.
Yahoo and MSN have similar programs, although those programs aren't as well-developed as Google AdSense and there aren't as many available advertisers to display ads on your site. The fundamentals for making money are the same. You still need plenty of traffic, you still need high-paying ads, and you still need to design your site to harmonize with the ads to get people to click.

PPC, what that's mean ?

The key to successful advertising is to find a method of conveying your information to as many people as possible while keeping your advertising costs to a minimum. Pay per click (PPC) advertising may be one of the easiest ways to generate traffic to your Website and score some decent profits from your search engine marketing campaign. Google AdWords is the most popular form of pay per click advertising for small businesses, partly because of Google's popularity, and partly because it allows you to control your expenses by setting daily maximums for each ad.

With PPC, you pay only when someone clicks your ad and visits your Website. Ads may be placed on search engine results pages (SERP) or on Websites that are identified as related to your targeted keywords.

How much you pay for each click depends on how much you're willing to bid for your selected keywords. The higher your bid, the better chance you'll have of getting your ad listed at the top of the ads displayed on the page. When managed skillfully, pay per click advertising can help you attract prospects to your Website and convert your prospects to paying customers.

Google Adwords is not only a pay per click advertising outlet, it's a powerful tool that can be used as an advertising template for your online ads. Additionally, as arguably the largest web-based global marketing network, Google is a good way to get exposure for your Website on the Internet.

You can get information about Google AdWords from just about every search engine results page Google displays by clicking the Advertising Programs link at the bottom of the page. By placing the highest bid on a keyword or keyword phrase you can get great page ranking when someone types your keyword into their browser for a Google search.

Google Adwords makes pay per click advertising easy to manage. You create an account, select potential keywords, write your ad and then place your bid per click and set your daily maximum for your targeted keywords. You decide if you want your ads to appear only on Google's search pages (Search Network) or on other Web sites (Content Network - Google AdSense) or both.

You can also use site targeting that allows you to select individual websites where your ads will appear, such as on this About Home Business website. Your ads are subject to Google's approval but the approval process and launching your ads happens very, very quickly.

There are plenty of sites that want to host your ads, too, because making money with Google AdSense has become a hot business of its own.

Google provides online tutorials that break up information in small, easy to understand parts, all of which you can access before you even create your Google AdWords PPC account. Google’s Adwords runs a little differently than standard pay per click (PPC) advertising programs. In addition to the amount you bid for your targeted keywords, other factors may be used to determine your ad's ranking, such as the quality score, which takes your agreed cost per click (CPC) and then multiplies it by a quality score factor, which is explained in the AdWords Pricing/Ranking tutorial.

Google allows you to specify your position preference. Using this option, you can specify the highest and lowest positions acceptable for your ad. Your ad not be displayed at all if it's not going to rank high enough. And, you can set different position preferences for each ad or ad group. Using Google AdWords tools, you can get a good idea of how many clicks you can expect for your ad and an idea of how much your online advertising campaign will cost. Stopping or pausing a pay per click campaign is also very easy and fast.

PPC can be an important part of your Internet marketing, and specifically, search engine marketing strategy. You can also take a reasonably priced online course to learn the ins and outs of pay per click marketing to improve your skills. Using a pay per click )PPC) campaign effectively can result in increased traffic to your website and increased sales for your business.
Google AdWords features a nice set of tools for managing your pay per click ad campaigns. Their online tutorials make it easy to understand, implement, and manage online advertising for your website.

Using Google AdWords is a great learning experience. Because of the easy to use tracking features, you can even learn from your mistakes by seeing which targeted keywords result in conversions and which do not.

What is Internet marketing ?

Depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the Internet and who try to sell you some form of "Internet marketing program".

Today, Internet marketing is evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of increasing sales - even if your business is done completely online, partly online, or completely offline.

The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company's overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company of course, but as a rule, Internet marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company's marketing mix. For some online businesses, it is the only form of marketing being practiced.

Internet Marketing Objectives Essentially, Internet marketing is using the Internet to do one or more of the following:

Communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services.
Conduct research as to the nature (demographics, preferences, and needs) of existing and potential customers.
Sell goods, services, or advertising space over the Internet.

Internet Marketing Components
Components of Internet marketing (also referred to as online marketing) may include:
A website, consisting of text, images and possibly audio and video elements used to convey the company's message, to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company's products and/or services.

The website may or may not include the ability to capture leads on potential customers or directly sell a product or service online. A website can be the offline equivalent of a brochure or a mail order catalog and is a great way to establish your business identity.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is marketing a website via search engines, either by improving the site's natural (organic) ranking through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads with search engines which are based on selected keywords and then displayed on search engine results pages when those keywords are used in a search, and/or on other websites whose content includes the keywords specified, pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listings in website directories. PFI listings are similar to offline yellow page listings.

Email marketing, which is a method of distributing information about a product or service or for soliciting feedback from customers about a product or service through Email. Email addresses of customers and prospective customers may be collected or purchased. Various methods are used, such as the regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company's product or services. Email marketing is essentially the online equivalent of direct mail marketing.
Banner advertising, which is the placement of ads on a website for a fee. Offline this would be similar to traditional advertising in newspapers or magazines.

Online promotion, including press release distribution, which involves placing a newsworthy story about a company, its website, its people, and/or its products/services with on online wire service, or blog (web log) activity, which is the act of posting comments, expressing opinions or making announcements in a discussion forum. Blog marketing can be accomplished in blogs either by hosting your own blog or by posting comments and/or URLs in other blogs related to your product or service.
Internet Marketing and Home Business.

Of all of the components of Internet marketing, prospective customers and clients expect a business to have a website. In fact, not having one could raise a red flag to a prospect. Online usage has become so pervasive today, many prospects might easily choose to do business with a company that they can get up-to-date information on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Even a business that only has very local customers, such as a single location restaurant or shoe store can benefit from having a Web site. And, those businesses whose customers are not restricted to a geographical area might have a difficult time finding an alternate method of attracting customers that offers the reasonably low expense and worldwide reach of a Web presence.

Because of the "virtual" nature of most home businesses, websites, if not an absolute necessity, can certainly provide benefits to a home business operator. Since most home-based businesses don't have a physical location, a website provides an inexpensive means for prospects to get to know what you do or what you sell and can even be a "storefront" for selling goods and services directly.

The Internet has greatly enabled home businesses to prosper because of the reasonably low cost to start and maintain a web presence. Therefore, Internet marketing should be part of your business plan and your marketing strategy.

Succsess Internet Marketing

Do you want a simple strategy to learn Internet marketing and greatly improve your odds of having a successful online business?
There really is a simple concept that most people never really follow. Even though they know it, they just don't get in in their head to do it.
So what is it you ask? The curiosity is building, so let me tell you this principle for successful Internet marketing.

The drum roll please.....
Modeling. Find a business that is already having the success you are looking for and model what they are doing.

Well there you have it. Not too complicated.
To succeed it's always a good idea to take what people have already had success with and apply it as your own Internet marketing strategy. Of course I'm not saying it's alright to copy a businesses sales materials, what they have on their website, products exactly. In fact that's just going to get you in a lot of hot water. I'm saying that ideas and techniques that stem from those ideas really can't be copyrighted and to take a proven idea and use it in your Internet marketing strategy would be the smart thing to do.

There's nothing wrong with imitating something that is already working. I mean it would be ridiculous if everyone started from scratch for everything they did. Don't reinvent the wheel, but rather take an already successful plan that you know has the best chance of success and even try to improve on it. There are so many examples that I could show you, but one that stands out for me are the many reality television shows that have modeled themselves after the popular show American Idol.

This show is so successful that we have seen many copy cats in the last 3 or 4 years. These are other shows on different networks with a different theme, but the same format. You watch these shows and they have all the ingredients of the hit show. For example, the 3 judge panel with one female and two males. They make sure they have an outspoken male judge with an English or Australian accent. Well, we could probably put them side by side and see they are pretty much the same, but again a different theme and title.

All of the networks have seen the outstanding success of this show and they also want to ride its success. They follow the successful plan with their own theme. They are not going to waste a lot of money on a plan that might flop.

So go ahead and find a type of business you want to build and look for those in your industry that are having the success you want. Then follow the plan they have already laid out for you. But of course never, I mean never copy someone's business word for word and get yourself into legal trouble. If you are ever in doubt, seek legal advice to stay out of trouble.
Let me give you some examples of modeling.

One example is to offer a bonus when you are selling your own product or even as an affiliate. If you observe that the person you are modeling does this and because of it he or she makes a lot of sales, then it would be great to also do it. In fact this is one of those Internet marketing tips that you should always implement in your Internet marketing strategy. Just make sure that it fits well with your main product and it is a quality bonus.

A second example is making sure you have superior customer service. If a top online business gets back to their customers within 24 hours then follow their lead. In fact if you can try to even improve on that to keep your prospects and customers very happy.

What about a prospect and customer list. Follow the lead of successful businesses and build the long term lifeline of your business. This needs to be on top of your priority list and take every opportunity to build a responsive list.

Take a proven successful business model and learn Internet marketing the right way by promoting a completely different product or service in another niche. You can always compete with the same people if you want to, but I would rather have the best opportunity and the least amount of competition.

Just think about all the people online that have no idea what they need to do to put it all together. If you can learn Internet marketing strategies and apply them in non-Internet marketing niches (bass fishing, scrap booking etc.) you can dominate a niche and have great success.

To sum things up, it's crucial that you find a successful business and learn Internet marketing from them. Don't reinvent the wheel, but rather take what others have already proven to work and apply it to make it work for you.

Internet Marketing on this week's

Forget the Computer Age or the Internet Age, centuries from now our current time will probably be referred to as the Google Age. This assumption is not exactly a great leap of faith; Google has quickly permeated into mainstream culture to become an underlying factor of everyday life, a tightly woven backdrop to our lives.
But never make the mistake of trying to define Google as just a search engine or you will miss the true calling of this little "Backrub", which was the original name used by its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996.
Google as we now know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros. After everything is said and done, it will more than likely refer to Google's net worth -- monetary or otherwise.

But forget search engine, for regardless of the founders' intentions or company's objectives, Google is and has always been the ultimate marketing machine. A massive marketing machine that is just now gearing up and aiming for more and more lofty heights. These heights seem to increase each day as Google quietly rolls out program after program.
All noble ambitions aside, Google is the perfect marketing machine. Google has no equals, and it is very close to getting a stranglehold on the real power behind all marketing, which is information.

Marketing is information. Information is marketing.

Great marketing is supplying the right information at the right time. Google more than any other entity on the web or in the world, for that matter, fulfills this criterion at its very core. Google is re-writing the book on how products are marketed.

Google now has over 60% of the search traffic in the U.S., with a staggering 7.3 billion monthly searches. In some countries Google's search share is 80% or more. (Source: comScore) Those webmasters who have number one keyword listings in all three of the major search engines will know Google is the only game worth playing because it delivers by far the most traffic.

While MSN and Yahoo! are still major players and are listed in the top 5 traffic sites on the web, what most people don't realize is that (unlike the other two) almost all of Google's traffic is search traffic. From a marketing perspective this is extremely important since search traffic can deliver the highest conversions (sales) mainly because it lets you capture the potential customer or client when they are in the right mindset to buy or to perform an action.
Obviously the key to successful marketing is finding the buyers and clients for your products and services. Google has forged itself as the ultimate "middleman" as more and more of the world's business is performed in cyberspace. And as everyone knows the "middleman" can reap huge profits and hold enormous power.

Google, within its Adsense program, now offers CPA or Cost Per Action where marketers can now receive larger returns for displaying Google's links on their webpages. As any professional marketer will tell you, you can get 10 times the revenue by promoting affiliate products rather than the Adsense code on your sites. But by adding CPA and other affiliate products within the Adsense program, Google has made it more attractive to serious online marketers.

Another step in that same direction is Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, which includes the massive online affiliate marketing network Performics. This means Google can now bring any customer full-circle from initial search to checkout.
This may have dire consequences for large, lucrative third-party affiliate networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare. Online marketing and ecommerce is growing at a blistering rate, and the company that controls the majority of these transactions will wield enormous power. Will make the Medici look like paupers.

Those marketers who have managed to acquire number one listings for their targeted keywords in Google's organic search are smiling all the way to the bank. Mainly because Google commands enormous trust with the surfing/buying public and this is demonstrated through higher conversion rates. Likewise, those who have mastered the Adsense and Adwords programs will know Google is an excellent source of online income.

Most of the complaints against Google stems from its PageRank system, which is supposed to be Google's version of online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your page or content. The higher the number of links, the higher your page will be ranked in Google's index or SERPs -- Search Engine Results Pages.

So far Google has played fair, giving even the smallest webmaster the opportunity to capture top Google listings if they produce superior or popular content to the surfer. Some would even argue Google's recent crackdown on sites offering paid-links can be seen as evening the playing field for the small webmaster or marketer who obviously doesn't have the economic clout or resources to buy their way to the top of Google's listings.

Keyword rankings may be the ultimate equalizer and determiner of online wealth. Those who can reach the top positions for their chosen profitable niche keywords will have companies and service providers lining up to do business with them. The fallout can prove extremely lucrative for both parties.

However, few marketers or webmasters forget who is really holding the cards; Google controls all steps along this marketing tunnel with its search listings, Adwords and Adsense programs. The only dark spot on the horizon could be monopoly issues, but Google probably has enough reservoirs of public goodwill and deep enough corporate pockets to squash any claims.

As Google's dominance in the search market becomes greater, Google will have control of all segments of the online marketplace. Why should Google stop there, why not go into Radio, TV... as the Internet gradually mutates into a billion+ interactive TV channel universe (as many believe it will) who do you think will be at control central offering you a nice free remote?
Then there is also Google's planned broadband 700 MHz bid; one can only speculate on Google's intentions. But Google must find a way to transmit its information at no cost to its users. Could it mean free wireless Internet for everyone on free Google boxes or gadgets of some form, usable and accessible anywhere in the world? Anything is possible because the stakes are so astronomical and the marketing revenue so vast, Google must get its information seamlessly and instantly to the end user at all costs.

One can only guess at the enormity of the marketing power Google will yield in coming years as the Internet slips out of its teen years. But it won't be just marketing, the influence of Google on all aspects of our lives will probably grow exponentially and that influence will be huge.

For the true power of Google is only just now beginning to be glimpsed; only as more and more of the Google pieces fall into place will we truly fathom what life will be like in the Google Age. Google's power, reverence and respect will no doubt be so enormous it may lead some to make comparisons to a higher power that has guided most of the life on this planet so far. Which could also lead one to muse, at least they got the first two letters correct.