KitwanaAkil.com

By Jimmy D. Brown, SalesArmySecrets.com

What if there was a magic bottle that you could rub and a
traffic genie would pop out to beckon to your every
internet marketing command?

After the initial shock wore off, you’d be quite happy to
have it in your possession, right?

Well, in a manner of speaking, such a genie exists. She
exists in the form of an “affiliate manager”.

An “affiliate manager” is someone who oversees the
operations of an affiliate program in exchange for
compensation.

And, out of all the traffic “tools” on the market, the
affiliate manager is the one that you should be using daily
in your business if you own your own product.

Why?

The bottom line is: more traffic, which results in more
revenue for you.

But, specifically, there are 3 reasons why you need an
affiliate manager…

1. Recruiting.

Your affiliate manager can recruit new affiliates into your
program for you. Instead of you spending time trying to
find (and then convince!) affiliates to join your program,
your “affman” can do this for you while you focus on other
things.

2. Rewarding.

Everyone knows that simply getting people to join your
affiliate program is not enough. It takes a lot of effort
to get passive affiliates to become (and stay!) active. An
affiliate manager is responsible for motivating your team
to remain involved in your promotions.

3. Running.

Beyond getting affiliates into your program and making sure
they stay active, your affiliate manager can “run” as much
of your operations as you want her to. Here are just a few
things my affiliate manager (props to Nicole!) does…

* Creates training materials
* Write follow-up mailings
* Communicates with affiliates
* Answer affiliate support questions
* Monitors contests and incentive programs
* Posts to our blog
* Clerical stuff (creates rebrandable files, etc.)
* Circulates content (article directories, etc.)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Perhaps the best part of hiring an affiliate manager is the
fact that it doesn’t have to cost you a penny in out of
pocket expenses. That is, you can setup your agreement to
be performance-based: you pay the affiliate manager a
percentage of the overall revenue generated through her
efforts … the more revenue she brings in through the
affiliate program, the more she earns.

Now, the question is –

** Where do I find an affiliate manager? **

There are actually quite a few ways to find quality
(emphasis needs to be on “QUALITY!”) affiliate managers for
your program. Let me share just one…

One of the easiest ways to find an affiliate manager is to
visit your favorite affiliate marketing (or internet
marketing) forum and post a request asking for
recommendations or responses for your needs.

You can do this in two ways -

1. Post a PUBLIC Request.

That is, you post a message for everyone to see, with brief
details on the position you have available and that you are
seeking recommendations or interest to explore further.

2. Post a PRIVATE Request.

The other option is to identify those participants at the
forum who appear to have experience and/or knowledge in
affiliate marketing who might be good affiliate manager
material. Then, you would simply contact them privately to
see if there is interest in discussing your needs.

Running your own affiliate program is a tremendous traffic
generation tool, but it has a lot of parts. There are many
different activities that are involved in successfully
running an affiliate program, and hiring an affiliate
manager to oversee your operations is a great way to free
up your time to work on creating additional products and
other “creative” work.

A good affiliate manager can bring in affiliates, train and
motivate them, and run your operations for you. Her efforts
bring in the traffic; your efforts turn the traffic into
orders.

It’s the closest thing to a traffic genie in a bottle that
you’ll find. Rubbing is optional. Using this strategy
isn’t.

———–
Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Sales Army Secrets, full of
meaty details on ways to find affiliate managers, how to
structure your agreement with them and tasks to have them
handle. Details at SalesArmySecrets.com

By Jimmy D. Brown

I want you to add a new word to your business vocabulary -

The word is “specialization”.

A new age has dawned in information marketing. And it’s the age of “specialization”.

Before I explain how this will help you create information products that sell like crazy, let me give you a very brief history lesson.

(I promise, this won’t hurt a bit.

Information products online have evolved since I logged onto the Internet back in 1999…

1) THE SIMPLE AGE.

Times were simple back when I first came online. And so were the information products. Way back when, information products weren’t readily available online like they are today. If you could find ANY information on the topic you were interested in, you grabbed it.

2) THE SYSTEMATIC AGE.

As more and more people learned how to create and market information products online, a new era emerged: the “systematic” era. This was a time when huge information products were created with hundreds of pages. The idea was to create comprehensive courses on a particular topic.

3) THE SEPARATION AGE.

As “internet marketing” and other business-related markets became inundated with product offerings, the birth and rapid growth of “niche marketing” occurred. People began separating themselves from the crowd and focused on “tiny niche topics” of interest.

4) THE SPECIALIZATION AGE.

Again competition came - even in these small niches. While there is still money to be made by focusing on these tiny, untapped markets — the well is drying up at a fast rate. Now enters a new age … the “specialization” age of information marketing.

Which brings us to the lesson -

There is a LOT of money to be made by creating small, 7-15 page reports
on PRECISE topics.

Most consumers would rather NOT sift through 100 pages of information to find out how to do something they are interested in, nor would they like to pay for 100 pages of information when they only need chapter 3.

With more and more products available on the market, consumers are getting pickier and pickier. They want what they want and only what they want.

Perhaps the biggest untapped information gold mine lies in this concept of creating small reports on precise topics.

* 17 Ways to Find New Affiliates Using Google.com

* How To Walk Off 7 Pounds in 7 Days

* 3 Ways To Get Your Next Vacation Free Of Charge

* The 15-Minute Guide To Stalling A Divorce

* Top 7 Ideas For Starting A Homeschool Support Group

Specialized information.

7-15 page reports that sell anywhere from $10-$100, depending upon the information.

And the benefits of writing these small reports are staggering -

1. You can write a small report in just a few hours of one day.

2. The profit per page ratio is astounding - 10 pages for $10 is a dollar per page per customer.

3. Small reports are MUCH easier to write than full-length courses.

4. There is a never-ending supply of topics for small reports.

5. You maximize the lifetime value of your customer. In other words, you can sell report after report to the SAME customer.

6. A series or collection of your small reports can be bundled into premium-priced courses over time.

7. When “hot topics” emerge (almost daily!) you can quickly crank out a small report to strike while the iron is hot.

8. When other marketers are seeing success with their products, you can create a complementary report to offer for sale as a supplement.

9. Many people can’t afford to buy (or refuse to buy) high-priced courses - but virtually anyone can whip out $10-$15.

The list could go on and on.

I’ve been creating small reports for a long time. In fact, I make over $15,000 in PROFIT every month from just ONE of my sites.

I know this works.

And not just for me.

I had a customer recently email me to let me know he sold 420 copies of his VERY FIRST small report, during its first month.

So, what I want to convince you to do is this -

***TRY IT FOR YOURSELF****

Create a small 7-15 page report and begin selling it online and see what kind of results you see.

A new information age has dawned - the age of specialization!

Create your own “special” reports and get your piece of the pie.

Do you have an idea for a great Small Report, but need some help? Check out “How To Improve Your Information W.R.I.T.I.N.G.™” by clicking here . You’ll learn useful tips to help you in the writing process – so you’ll be able to create information products faster, easier and, ultimately, better — and that’s more money in the bank.

By Jimmy D. Brown

My wife laughs every time she sees me doing it.

At least once or twice every week, I’ll be at my desk (or at the dining room table) with my Franklin Covey planner open and a stack of laminated checklists in hand.

“What are you doing, honey?” she calls, already knowing the answer.

“I’m planning”, I reply with a smile.

She laughs and I get back to work.

She laughs because she swears I spend half of my time “planning”. But, if you ask me how I’m able to get as much work done as I do in only 3 hours a day, I’ll point to a black Franklin Covey planner with about a dozen laminated checklists inside.

Building an Internet business is easy. Seriously. I’m not saying that it’s not complicated, because it is. I’m just saying that it’s easy to accomplish if you just have a system in place.

There’s very little in this world that can’t be accomplished with the right set of action steps in front of you.

Today, I’m going to give you such a system for building your Internet business. There are only 4 steps…

1. Decide What You Want To Do. Do you want to run an eBay(R) business? Be an affiliate marketer? Buy and sell reprint rights? Get involved in niche marketing? While all of those things will likely find their way into your plan in time, you gotta begin with one thing at a time.

My recommendation: Choose a “broad” topic you are interested in and begin building a list of folks interested in that topic.

2. Determine A Weekly Action Plan. After you decide what you want to do, it’s time to determine how to get it done. What I do is this: I create a weekly set of action steps. That is, I have a set of things I do on Monday, on Tuesday, and so forth. Decide how many hours (as little as ONE) you want to work each day and schedule yourself a reasonable amount of things to get done in that time frame. Repeat this process week after week.

My recommendation: Begin writing ezine articles to promote your list … and affiliate programs. It’s the easiest way to get free traffic and build your list at the same time.

3. Devote Yourself To Staying On Schedule. The important thing here is to stick to it. The easiest way that I know of to make certain you develop discipline in your schedule is to NOT set unrealistic expectations. Give yourself ample time to do each day’s action step - don’t overschedule. Look for progress along the way to celebrate. Reward yourself when you’ve reached a milestone. And, remember, you’re GROWING a business. Just like physical growth, it takes time … it WILL happen if you remain committed.

My recommendation: Weave in simple activities related to the following categories - List building (ezine articles), product creation(conduct interviews or hire ghostwriters), site development (making your site convert more visitors into buyers),and education (continuing to learn new ways to grow your business).

And for more ideas on how to work more effectively and deliver your planned projects, read through the resources mentioned at http://www.topreports.com/effectiveness/

4. Develop Additional Shortcuts. As you get better and better at working with your lists, creating products and tweaking your site, you’ll want to continue to improve your business with new ideas, strategies, tools, and resources. The key is simple: never stop learning!

My recommendation: Visit forums. Read articles. Download reports. Identify sites and resources that CONTRIBUTE to your success in educating you. You want faster results, bigger increases, automated processes, and other ways to get more accomplished and more profit, with less work involved.

Everything depends on your developing a plan and sticking to it.

And that is the REAL secret to building a high-profit Internet business!

Believe it or not, there is a tremendous “operations manual” that you can download right here at SR Zone to help you create a plan that works for YOU. Check out “Homepreneur Habits: How To Run A Successful Home Business “ by clicking here . You’ll learn all the tools you need, how to setup your work space and how to create a day-by-day schedule of recommended activities to start and grow your business.

By Jimmy D. Brown

photo credit: websuccessdiva

Writing ezine articles is one of the best business-building activities you’ll ever invest time in on the Internet. They can be used in dozens of different ways to generate web site traffic, build lists, brand your name, earn affiliate commissions and produce sales of your products and services.

They are, unquestionably, a vital part of any successful Internet marketing campaign.

By now - if you’ve read anything in the member’s area - you know I’m a big believer in writing ezine articles. And you know that I’ve devoted many of the lessons in the member’s area toward teaching you how to write, distribute and market with them.

Yet there still remains a lingering question -

WHAT should I write about in my ezine articles?

I want to share with you some brainstorming ideas that will allow you to easily come up with a couple dozen (or more) hot ideas for your upcoming ezine articles. I’m going to briefly share seven (7) fill-in-the-blank article starters along with a brief explanation to help you get started writing attention-grabbing content.

When you’re ready to write your next ezine article, consider one of these not-yet-overused formulas…

01. What To Do When [Enter Problem Here]. The idea with this article is to offer a solution to an existing problem by matter-of-factly addressing the issue being discussed in the article. “What To Do When You Need To Lose That Last 5 Pounds” points out a problem many dieters face and hints that the article will reveal a method for overcoming this barrier. This article’s pointed style makes it a sure read.

02. Can [Enter Solution Here] Help [Enter Problem Here]? Similar to number one above, this article poses a question while emphasizing both the problem and potential solution. What really works here is to ask a “curiosity-building” question by providing a solution that doesn’t seem to fit with the problem. For example: If you’re trying to re-grow hair on your balding head, could you resist reading, “Can Cheerios Help Thicken Your Hair?” I don’t think so.

03. Should You [Enter Activity Here]? (Take This Quiz). People love quizzes. They especially love to see how they measure up in some area that they are particularly interested in. That combination makes this another ezine article that gets a lot of views. “Should You Quit Your Job And Start An Internet Business? Take This Quiz!” is going to attract every dissatisfied, looking-for-greener-pastures, internet marketing wannabe on the block.

04. 7 “Must Ask Questions” for [Enter Activity Here]. This is a perfect article for the entry-level beginner in any particular field. “7 ‘Must-Ask’ Questions for First-Time Homeschoolers’ When Choosing Curriculum” is just about a guaranteed read for all new homeschooling moms and dads who don’t want to blow it for their kids. (Note: The “number” of must-ask questions can be whatever you choose.)

05. 3 [Enter Topical Adjective Here] Lessons from [Enter Pop Culture Reference]. By using references to popular culture events, characters, television shows, news stories and trends, you’ll be able to get some cheap mileage from existing “hot buttons” of the general public. I recentl wrote an article entitled, “3 Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Lessons From the Academy Awards” that garnered a lot of interest. Guess when I released it? Yep, a week before the big awards show.

06. Mastering [Enter Topic Here]: How to [Enter Tutorial Statement Here] Part 1. This is a superb article idea for a series of related tutorials. The word “master” is a bit overused at times in marketing circles, but it means to “become an expert” at something or to “achieve dominance” over something. Who wouldn’t want to “master” their activity of interest? That’s why “Mastering Weight Loss: How To Shed 12-15 Pounds in 30 Days, Part 1″ and other articles in its mold make for much-read content.

07. What Kind of [Enter Desirable Object Here] Is Best For YOU? We all want what’s “best” for us, don’t we? “What Kind Of Internet Business Is Best For You?” indicates there is something revealed in the article that will allow me to determine which of the options available to me is best suited for me. This is a really solid article to point others towards additional resources (such as special reports, mini-courses, etc.) where they can get specific information about which of the “options” mentioned in the article is most interesting and compatible with them.

So, there you have some great ideas to get you started on your next ezine article.

You know you’re going to write ezine articles, so would you like to get a LOT of completely free traffic with them? Check out “How To Get Free Traffic With Ezine Articles” by clicking here . You’ll learn a powerful (but easy) way to get a lot of visitors to your website by using your ezine articles in a special way … all at no cost to you.