• Many people in Asia are not comfortable writing in English.
• Writing is a tedious process because it is not usually a habit.
• It’s a tedious process to even generate good ideas for articles even if you can write.
• To submit completed articles is a barrier because you want maximum exposure, and submission is an administrative process that wastes time.
• Even if you do submit articles, you end up not really knowing which is the best category for you.
• There’s a gazillion different software that confuse rather than help leverage.

photo credit: Adam (adamjinj)

So how do you address this? Here’s my suggestion. First of all, you have to remember that article traffic can be done by you, but you don’t have to be the only person doing it yourself. Even if you’re proficient at writing, and you really want other people to do this so that you can automate the article marketing process.

Next, you need to hire people who are reliable. It’s a common sense question – how do I hire people to get this done for me without creating more work for myself? My suggestion is to split up the work. Instead of just hiring individuals, hire a team or company you can outsource to. This way, if there is any problem, it’s the company’s responsibility to ensure that the work of writing is completed.

Then it’s the process of submission. Get another group/team to submit your articles for you.

So, at this juncture, you probably think that it’s going to be hands off for you? Wrong. You should set up a checking system where another individual is hired to police the submissions and writing. If you can do this, it will definitely save you lots of time and effort while generating a huge amount of traffic.

I also know people who have bought submission tools for their team so that the team can be more efficient in submission work!

Why do I NOT recommend using the commercial approaches to article writing and submission? Well, because there are too many people who are using those services and I have no clue as to the quality no matter how many gurus recommend those services. Personally, I would rather set a private system for myself and let that be my own secret weapon, not need to share this with other people!

So, in summary, you need:

1. a team of writers
2. a team of submission grunge workers
3. a project manager to handle the tracking and supervision

Wow – isn’t that going to increase your costs?

Well, if you do this effectively, you will need to set a target in the first place. What is your goal? Is it to submit 100 articles in a month? Hmm.. here’s a calculation. You could do this at around $5 per article, meaning $500 a month.

So, you will need submission assistants, right? If you want to submit 100 articles to at least 10 article engines, that may cost you another $300-$500.

The question is how much does that bring you? Investing $1k is not a small sum, right? Well, how much traffic will it build? How fast can you opt-in your visitors? That’s the real question. After you’ve got subscribers, shouldn’t you think of the offers to bring to them? That means you really need an autoresponder system to handle that. You’ll also need a way to write your autoresponder sequence!

Wow, some more work? Well, the truth is you need to manage your business model. If the business model is not properly formed up, you will not be able to have any clarity on the business approach in the first place. Lack of clarity will cost you more money, and therefore you need to systemize your process, email writing and so on.

I hope this article will give you a starting point at least. Start drafting a basic business model surrounding article traffic, and use outsource talent to move toward your desired goals in internet marketing.

Geez… he’s actually a forum member! I’m not sure what he’s doing on the forum, but it’s a real honor to have a highly decorated master of hypnotherapy on our forums!!

Anyhow, as a master hypnotherapist, you might picture him as real scary-and-can-read-my-thoughts kind of person. As someone who’s learnt NLP over the last 13 years of my life, I can tell you that hypnosis is nothing scary, and extremely valuable.

Gil is a legend, and I don’t mind giving him this plug even though I have never personally met him or trained with him. It’s just that his name precedes him and if someone does something for 53 years of his life, it MUST be very much a passion.

Check out this website

http://www.Gil-Boyne.com

It’s true that I’d rather not reveal too much about the way I do copywriting, but you know, the most frustrating thing that I can see is people who are writing but can’t get their message across persuasively.

Copywriting is a survival skill. After all, if you can persuade someone, you can make that person buy. It’s about the way you use words. How you tweak the words to affect emotions. It’s a deliberate thing but if you learn it at first, it may seem to methodical. In reality, if you really believe in something a lot, you will already be convincing people about the benefits, and that is what sells – personability and benefits.

I learnt a lot from Yanik Silver, but I also learnt a lot from various other people. Dan Kennedy, if you may not have heard, is one of the most grumpy marketers in the world. Bill Glazer, who is a business partner with Dan, also is a pretty cool copywriter. Ted Nicholas, as far as I can see, has been one of the most instrumental people in the development of direct response copywriting.

These fathers of copywriting have one thing in common – they know the ins and outs of an individual’s desire to buy. And they have collectively sold probably in excess of US$20 Billion worth of product.

Want to learn this powerful skill?

One of the biggest focal points for me was to learn how to develop copywriting ability. I was pretty bad at it until I learnt that it was pretty much how I persudae people in speech. This led me to consider the various ways to maximize my ability to speak so that I could enhance my sales letters. I use it offline as well, and I think it’s a really great way to earn an income.

I cover quite a number of copywriting tactics in my book the Secrets Of Internet Millionaires, which is available from leading bookstores now. If you haven’t got a copy, grab one immediately! If we are lucky, we might actually run a Copywriting Mastermind session.

If you are interested at all in doing something like this and earning from it, you might want to plough through some of the best copywriters in the world:

John Carlton: www.Marketing-Rebel.com
Yanik Silver: www.SurefireMarketing.com
Ted Nicholas: www.TedNicholas.com
Dan Kennedy: www.DanKennedy.com

Your favorite motivational internet marketer cum network marketing supercoach, John Di Lemme, is doing it again. Not only is he giving away proceeds from his book 100% to charity now (if you support this, stay tuned), his event in March 2008 is ALREADY being opened.

I’d suggest that for some serious JV venturing, you ought to find yourself a place here.

http://blog.findyourwhy.com/

I’m still gathering the schedule for Yanik Silver’s Underground event, because they tend to have a clash (please, God…). If I can head down to Yanik’s event then to John’s event, that will be a real blast!

Anyone interested in the FYW Main Event? Drop a note in the comment box below. Because of what I know about John, I believe that your investment there is going to reap the returns simply by being there, not to mention the amazing people whom are already slated to speak there (hint – one of them is a published author whom I learnt a lot about wealth and managing money from). It’s not just internet marketing – it’s about your entire financial career and mindset.

Did I mention that the REAL Coach Carter is going to be there too? Heh…

In fact, together with Ewen Chia’s newbie cash machine, I think both have great complements to each other.

Let me explain.

As an affiliate, you really need to have a global view of what is available to you. Rosalind actually gives you a great guide to get an overview of the affiliate marketing landscape from her own experience. With good recommendations of what hot markets to have and what items to look for, you should actually read this and then just start and go do it.

Then, Ewen has a step-by-step affiliate process. It’s easy to follow if you just read it a couple of times. Of course, you have to have a web host and an autoresponder to start. Both will cost you no more than US$20 a month. That’s it! You can get started straight away.

Of course I will be really happy if you get a copy of my book, Secrets of Internet Millionaires, and use the overview of information there to boost your knowledge in the area of affiliate marketing too, particular areas like traffic and product creation. You can grab the physical copy at stores near you. The digital version will be out when it’s ready.

Especially where local marketing is concerned, I would recommend that you devise your own channel for marketing. In other words, create your own newspaper, create your own media, create your own whatever, and then generate value on it. For instance, you know that one offline media you can use is a CD. If you know how to create audio CD content, you can basically create one every month. Each month, leverage on the advertising real estate on your CD covers to generate wealth for yourself.

Of course, few people have actually thought about doing stuff like that.

Remember the ZO cards? They CREATED the media.

Another way to look at this is to buy ambient media. Ambient media refers to outdoor advertising like banners on lamp posts, stickers on the floor, etc. Now, I know many of you are thinking… wait a minute… that’s expensive.

Well, it’s your thinking that makes it expensive. In reality, creative ways to manage these ads can be done. What you have to do, as what Jay Abraham says, is to get the rights of distribution. Then you’re in business!

This itself is a $10 million opportunity for anyone who has a little bit of brain, and a lot of heart to take it on and get the business done.

(1) fills a need
(2) exceeds expectations
(3) produces results.

If your product is unable to do these things, you will have a crappy product and something that people will ask for a refund for. So do things right the first time around!

Next, once you have satisfied all the criteria for an excellent product, I want you to start looking at your website. Most people don’t look at websites and optimize the user experience. User experience will vary based on your purpose, so keep focusing on what you want your user to feel. They must have a sense of awe and pride in being on your website, based on the business model you have created. This will require tweaking and updating. People must feel that what you have has been made for them to use. That is what makes them come back over and over.

Finally, you must look at your marketing and traffic approaches. Kelvin Hui recently launched the Traffic Manuscript, which is something you ought to get yourself. It outlines strategy instead of tactics, which is important, even for an experienced internet marketer. Traffic also requires you to apply common sense knowledge about marketing. If your marketing is not working, you need a new strategy, not increased spending!

So, build your product first. If you don’t know how, the Internet Marketing Academy is coming soon, and you should register to take part in this as quickly as you can. At the end of IMA, you’ll have a product ready to be sold. What goes into the product is important – you have to have a great idea and benefit that can be communicated simply to your end buyer.

Next, you have to build a site that is convincing. That means adding functions to your site that make it positive for the user experience. Here’s a list of what people find useful on a site:

ease of navigation
clear instructions
less distractions
clean color scheme
user functionality
credibility devices
effective content (dependent on website purpose)

If you want to find out more about how to do this, again, I’d urge you to join the IMA. If you already have a concept and want someone else to do the development for you, contact me at www.InternetMarketingSingapore.com/custom.

Finally, start driving traffic based on the optimal channel you need to get all the traffic you want coming back over and over. Channel based traffic strategies are seldom talked about, but here are some ideas:

If you have a saturated channel, use a differentiated message
If you have a saturated channel, use a different channel
Use an underestimated channel
Use a synergistic combination of channels
Create your own channel
Borrow and launder someone’s channel (traffic laundering)

I know many of you have heard me talk about things like Joomla and Wordpress to death. I want to talk to you today about a different kind of website – a customized one, which I think everyone ought to have or at least develop.

I’ve been warned many times by my security administrator about the fact that Joomla has security loopholes that I should plug – because I’m using my own server. At the same time, I wish I could have a customized content management system that serves my needs. This was why, no matter how free Joomla was, I had to stop using it. You may have noticed that the main portal on www.InternetMarketingSingapore.com hasn’t been updated for a while.

Blame me for using technology.

So, I decided to create my own website and software. Cost me in excess of US$10k in total, but I can tell you the efficiency of my SEO efforts has been multiplied at least 4-5 times. Plus, with the customized platform, it will allow for a much broader exploration of internet marketing.

How do you construct something like this?

First, you have to play with website structure and functions.

I’m not technically trained, but I get around because I play with software a lot. I see functions and I see processes, put them together, and identify a simpler way to get the results that people want. Sometimes, software that I see in the market are far to complex to use, and I simplify the process.

It takes some time and money, of course. But think of using it to create your business model. I mean, forget affiliate marketing and adsense for a while. Think of selling stuff in the $300 – $500 range. Think of a $500 per month type of membership site, because you will stretch your thinking in a way that will really drive one out of the park.

You have to be acquainted with technology to do technology. So, learn from places like www.EMarketer.com or www.ClickZ.com.

I know these ideas are really abstract for now, but you have to understand the idea I have behind marketing is to create value. Developing excellent platforms with useful functionality turn me into an inventor. Now THAT’s going to make things exciting me – and I like to have fun at it!

Watch out for the latest trends, invent tools that solve a problem, then put those tools in the hands of competent people.

After a while of searching, I found this post, and what I did was I simply unchecked the Visual Editor mode. Now I can type, but let’s hope this post gets through!

It was a crazy year. A year on, let’s look at the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, in relation to the money made. Was it justifiable? Were there more scams than normal? Were the profits real?

Our intuition points to the fact that much of the money spent was definitely NOT worthwhile. More often than not, email is not checked, there are countless bytes of junked email simply because people who had subscribed or had an interest in internet marketing are now jaded. They have bought before and they will not buy again. They’re not even going to buy the idea that affiliate marketing, the most common and popular approach to making money online, is going to work.

But if each of these people are going to get jaded, where’s the money going to come from? Newbies! Now, tons of people claiming to teach newbies affiliate marketing are gate crashing on the industry, sending internet marketing further into the dismal abyss of scams, unfulfilled promises, and definitely no one is going to be able to make money with affiliate marketing.

Well, not unless they know the right sources, of course.

The most obvious solution is to get training, not a miracle. InternetMarketingSingapore.com was the site I created to spoil the market. It’s been said that some people come over to my site to scrape content in order to sell for profit. Now that’s totally wrong, but there’s little I can do. All I hope is anyone who is learning from my site can benefit and become part of the dream community of people who are working with each other by improving their expertise in marketing.

If you want to make money with affiliate marketing, invest your time wisely in internet marketing. Join interactive discussion on this site, particularly if you are very new. I have a warm community that doesn’t condone blatant advertising, and we work with each other, often on joint ventures.

Don’t just go into the cut-throat internet marketing arena. Focus on the arena that drives money and cash. Look, for instance at sites such as www.JacklynKer.com. She’s selected a personal development niche to explore. Look at www.DorisChua.com She’s selected organic food. How about www.TheJapaneseAreCrazy.com? That’s a comedy site! Whatever the case, you will always be able to generate far more creative ideas if you were to look at where money is. It’s not in the internet marketing area. It’s using internet marketing to make money elsewhere.

If you want new ideas about this, please read more on this site!