Tactics to Graduating from the Bottom Rung of the Internet Marketing Ladder

You should see another big improvement in your effectiveness and profitability as an affiliate marketer if you can increase the number of successful affiliate products that you promote.

Whilst you should understand that it is never going to be possible to pick 100% affiliate ‘winners’ (even ‘super-affiliates’ only get it right around 70% of the time), the better you become at choosing products that people really want to buy and which will, therefore be the most successful), the more profitable your affiliate marketing business will gradually become.

For example, using Clickbank.com as your point of reference once again, it is generally advisable to choose products with a gravity rating of between 20 and 100 points to promote, as at this level, the product has achieved some popularity, but not enough to make the market place too competitive.

Doing this, however, is unlikely to give you a significant competitive advantage, because it is pretty much what every other affiliate marketer who uses Clickbank will do.

A far more effective tool for finding out what big launch products are on the horizon is JV Notify Pro. Almost all the products that are featured on the site are going to come to Clickbank fairly soon, and, in general, most of the products that you see featured on this site are going to make a big impression on the market when they do.

For instance, this is definitely a weight loss related product that I would be keeping an eye on. And, in order to track the product so that you know when it arrives on Clickbank for the first time, you can keep an eye on the ‘New Products’ section of CB Engine, which tracks all Clickbank products.

As an AdSense advertiser…

As an AdSense advertiser, you generate your income by placing advertising materials on your pages, and you earn money every time someone clicks on one of those ads. As a newbie, you very probably simply placed AdSense ads on your pages and left it at that. However, what you should really be doing in order to maximize your AdSense earnings is ‘encouraging’ your visitors to click on your ads, rather than hoping that they will do so.

Before doing so, however, it is important to understand that Google have a clear set of guidelines (the AdSense Program Policies) about what they will and will not allow you to do in order to give your visitors this encouragement.

However, after taking these policies on board, let us have a look at some of the things that you can do in order to increase the number of people who click on your ads in a way that does not upset Google.

According to the program policies, you cannot add an image or graphic next to your advertising materials that is ‘misleading’. This is because it had become a relatively common tactic to use eye-catching but entirely unrelated images to attract a site visitors eyes to an AdSense block.

However, the clear implication of this is that, as long as you have a graphic or image that is not misleading, then you are acting within the AdSense regulations. And because what is and what is not misleading is a question of interpretation, you should try to be as creative as possible when adding graphics next to or above the advertising materials.

For example, if your site is health and weight loss related, then adding a picture of a attractive slim girl or a muscular guy to your site above your ads would seem to be related to the topic of your site. You can find plenty of such images for free here.

Another extremely effective tactic that you may wish to adopt is to make sure that when your visitor initially opens their web browser to show your site, all that they see are AdSense advertising materials. In other words, all of the content on your pages is ‘below the fold’ and cannot be seen unless or until the visitor scrolls down the page.

It is important that there are content materials featured somewhere on the pitch, and that the title or description that appears above your ads is not a misleading one. However, on the next page is a screenshot of a Dog Training related AdSense site that follows exactly this method which was first published online over a year ago which has never called me any problems (so far at least!).

Another thing that you should do when publishing AdSense sites is to limit the amount of advertising that you carry on the page. Whilst Google will allow you to feature three advertising blocks on each page, my testing has indicated that, in the vast majority of cases, you should include not more than a maximum of two ad blocks as a maximum.

In fact, what you’re doing if you include three other blocks is reducing your income, rather than increasing it. If three ad blocks feature 12 individual ads, then those are ads from the 12 advertisers who are willing to pay the most to Google, and, by extension, the ads shown in the bottom advertising block are the ones that will pay you the least.

Every time someone clicks on one of those ads, they are not clicking on one of the higher they add, and you are, therefore, effectively trading possible clicks on the ads that pay you most for clicks on those that pay very little.

For that reason, showing individual ads from four (or a maximum of eight) advertisers on each page will generate higher income levels. The final thing that you can try as an AdSense advertiser (and, remember, all of the results that you generate from these ‘tests’ must be tracked) is to leave your visitors guessing.

Leave your content materials unfinished, add an ‘elliipse’ (three dots at the end of the line of text) and then show AdSense advertising directly underneath. This could suggest to the reader that they have to click on the ad underneath in order to continue reading the article, and this will undoubtedly encourage some readers to click on these ads.

As a bum marketer…

If you have downloaded and read through the original bum marketing report, you will probably appreciate that there is a good deal of keyword research involved before you start writing your articles.

There is, however, an easier and quicker way of discovering what information people want or need, so that you can quickly establish what keyword terms you should be using for your articles. Go back to and click on the ‘Expert Author’ link that you will find at the top left-hand side of the EzineAticles homepage.

These people are all featured on the site for a reason, and that is because they are the people who have published most articles on the site. They themselves are making the effort to create all those articles because they are earning good money by doing so.

If, therefore, you have a look at some of their articles, and follow the links that are shown in the short biographies that they add to each article, you will see the products that they are promoting, the niches that they are promoting in and the keywords they are targeting.

Try to find the articles that have enjoyed the highest number of views, and also take a look at Google to assess what competition there is in the niches and for the products that they are promoting.

In effect, what you are doing here is reverse engineering, leveraging off their work because all of these expert authors have already done the initial research for you.

Similarly, you know that they are earning good money by creating the articles that they do, and therefore, that information is demonstrating how you can make more money from your article or bum marketing efforts extremely clearly.

Another important aspect of article or bum marketing is to make sure that your articles are written in the correct way, and far too many article writers get it wrong, which is somewhat surprising, as the formula is so simple.

Focus your article on specific problems. In other words, if you were writing articles for the weight loss market, rather than writing about losing weight in a general manner, you should focus articles on ‘losing belly fat’, ‘getting rid of your middle age spread’ and so on.

Describe the problem in as much detail as you can, and also emphasize and re-emphasize why what you’re writing about is such a significant problem. Explain why they have to do something about the problem as quickly as possible, and the consequences of not taking the necessary actions to deal with the problem.

Finally, stress that the product you’re promoting is the best solution for the problem that you know of, and that all they have to do is click on you link (make sure that you give an instruction) to get the answers that they need.

This formula for writing the most powerful and effective articles is, as you can see, remarkably simple. Highlight the problem, emphasize and reemphasize how serious it is, and then finally present your product as the ideal solution.

Start writing your articles in this manner, and you will see a significant improvement in the number of people who will follow your links to your site, thereby improving your mailing list signups and product sales.

Blog post summary:

· Whether you are trying to earn money online as an affiliate marketer, a bum marketer or an AdSense advertiser, there are steps that you can take that will elevate and professionalize your marketing efforts.

· Taking these steps will, in turn, increase both the short-term and longterm profitability of your business.

Conclusion

As someone who is currently a marketing newbie who is looking to move to the next level, you should by now have realized that it is not perhaps as difficult as you might have originally imagined.

There are, in effect, two essential elements that must come together in order to make that step up. Firstly, you must make sure that your own mental attitude is set for success. You must understand that internet marketing is a serious business, and must be treated as such. It is not a game or a hobby that you can play as and when it suits you.

Furthermore, you must have a clear idea of why you want to be successful as an marketer, because if you do not, then the whole thing is likely to collapse around your ears at the very first hint of failure.

Unfortunately, even the most successful internet marketers fail from time to time, and you must learn to do exactly as they do. When things go wrong, they simply dust themselves off, get back up and rejoin the fray with another brand new product or a revamped and improved version of the one that did not work so well last time.

Planning is extremely important as well, and if you can plan well ahead, it will inevitably make it easier to follow a long term strategy, rather than one that changes from day to day. Failing that, at least plan what needs to be done every day a day before, because otherwise, everything that you do will lack focus.

Knowing what you want to achieve, and focusing on that objective is vital too. Your internet marketing career is a little like a journey, and you would not consider setting off on a journey if you had absolutely no idea where you were going, would you? You would not set out on such a journey without a map or a least a planned route, and you should not approach your internet marketing efforts any differently.

Once you have mastered the mental side of stepping up to the next level, then you need the practical knowledge that will enable you to do so. Some of it has been detailed in this report, and by referring to the forum sites that have been recommended herein, you can find a great deal more specific information related to what ever method of online money making you are most interested in adopting.

In effect, the right attitude allied to improved sales techniques, tactics and strategies are the keys to graduating from the bottom rung of the internet marketing ladder.

After reading this far, you now know what you need to do, and you have also been introduced to the resources that will enable you to do what needs to be done.

Everything from here on in is up to you…!