EdwinDiaz.com

1 month to your own online business

Table of Contents

I ntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Y ou must bring something to the table… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

U nderstanding internet marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

T aking stock so far… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

I t has to be something that people need or want… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0

Y our initial market research… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2

Y ahoo! Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3

4 3 Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5

M ySpace Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7

Y ahoo! Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 8

I s there money being spent? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1

C an you attract visitors? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3

S ourcing a suitable product… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5

K eeping it simple… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 7

W rite your review… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3

I t all comes down to visitors… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6

F ind a forum… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6

S ocial sites for traffic and links… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8

B ecome a video star… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 9

A rticles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2

I t’s persistence that counts… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3

C onclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4

Introduction

In the 1990s, the nascent internet was commonly referred to as the

“information superhighway”, a phrase that was coined by Senator Al

Gore in 1978 according to most reports.

The funny thing is, even though it seems to be a very dated phrase to

modern ears, it is still essentially true. The vast majority of people still

use the internet as a source of information first and foremost, and this

in itself should be no surprise.

Although this is open to debate, there is probably not a library or

museum where there is more information available than there is on the

internet, and of course, the internet has the vast advantage over every

library and museum of being accessible at your fingertips - but there is

no doubt that the nature of the internet is changing, and doing so at a

pace that almost defies belief.

For example, while some brave and hardy souls had tried to publish

video materials on the internet previously, it was really only with the

advent of YouTube that video took off, and that is less than four years

ago as I write (YouTube was launched in February 2005).

Yet video is now such an integral part of the everyday internet

experience that it is hard to believe that there was a time BV (before

video), a time when the internet was all about providing information

only in written format accompanied by static images.

Another huge change that has become increasingly evident over the last

3 or 4 years is the boom in business that is being transacted solely

through the medium of the internet. From massive monolithic global

corporations like Google to people spending their evenings working

away in their back bedroom, there are now millions of companies and

individuals who are operating a business where they make money from

the internet.

This is not new. There were companies making money on the internet

back in the ‘information superhighway’ days, which helped to fuel the

.com boom and subsequent implosion at the end of the 90s.

But what is new and different is the fact that anyone who has an

internet connection and a computer can now start their own internet

marketing business quickly, easily and with very little capital outlay.

Indeed, it is the latter fact that is one of the primary attractions of

starting a business online, particularly in comparison to starting a ‘real

world’ business where you would need offices, computers, telephones

and staff.

All of this is before you even start talking about investing money in

inventory or stock, training costs and the like.

To start your own online business, all you need is a computer and a

connection.

Well, actually, that’s not strictly true…

You must bring something to the table…

While it is true that the only external resource that you need to start an

online business is a computer and a connection, you must have some

personal qualities as well, because without these them, it is going to be

a lot more difficult to achieve success - not necessarily impossible, but

definitely far more difficult.

The first thing that you have to bring to your business is an absolute

determination to succeed. From the very beginning, you have to be

completely, 100% determined that whatever you do is going to

succeed, without exception. You have to be willing to do whatever it

takes to achieve that success, even acknowledging that there will

sometimes be a ‘cost’ involved (e.g. less time with your family in the

early days).

You must also accept that there is work to be done.

If you have not already done so, when you start searching the net for

information about starting your own business, you will find that there is

a lot of nonsense flying about, and you have to learn to recognize it for

what it is.

There is no secret, magic formula that is somehow going to

mysteriously transform you from an individual who has no money in

your bank account to one with a million dollars, in six months or less.

That is called the lottery, not business, but you will undoubtedly see

products that make outrageous claims of this nature.

These products are successful because everybody is looking for the

secret shortcut to success that means they do not have to do any work.

Don’t fall for this garbage. There is no secret, there is no magic formula

– success is in direct proportion to the amount of effort you put in, end

of story.

You have to be organized and focused, and you have to have (and work

to) a plan. If a job needs doing, then in the early days at least, it is

down to you to get it done, and it won’t get done if you are

disorganized, lacking in focus or have no plan.

You have to be a little thick skinned too, because when you tell people

that you are trying to earn money on the internet, many of them (none

of whom have any idea what they are talking about) will mock you and

suggest that you are crazy. Ignore it, and bolster your spirits by

remembering that it is you who will have the last laugh!

The bottom line is, everything that you need to succeed in business in

the ‘bricks and mortar’ real world is needed to succeed online as well,

except for the cash to get your business up and running.

Understanding internet marketing

Most people come into online business or internet marketing with a

vaguely held idea that they somehow want to earn money on the net. It

is however necessary to have a slightly more developed idea of how

internet marketing works and where the money is to be made, if you

are to succeed.

Returning to our earlier concept, although it has changed beyond all

recognition over the past decade, the internet is still primarily about

providing information. Consequently, the basic idea behind internet

marketing is that you start a business that can provide the kind of

information people are looking for, and earn money in the process.

In its simplest form, this would involve nothing more than having an

information product that people want to buy, and selling it to them. In

the same way that your local storekeeper asks for money because you

have asked them for a loaf of bread, you can set up an internet

business where you sell information.

Alternatively, you can give information away for free, but do so in such

a way that you earn money on the ‘back end’ from advertising. In this

situation, you are not selling anything, but there is still money to be

made (albeit generally less than you would make from selling).

However, it is extremely important to note that this is internet

marketing we are talking about, with the key word being marketing.

One of the greatest advantages of selling or promoting on the internet

is that the net allows you to take your marketing message right into the

heart of everyone’s home, and allows you to do so at little or no cost.

Furthermore, because everything that happens on the internet is

trackable and traceable, it is possible to target your promotional and

marketing activities at exactly the people who best represent the

potential market for your product or service in a way that no other

advertising medium can.

For instance, if you were advertising Honda cars for sale on TV, you

would air your advertisements during programs that appealed to the

type of people whom your market research has indicated are most likely

to buy a Honda. However, you would have little idea of how many of

those potential Honda owners were watching the show, or how many

who were watching the show decided to stay to watch your advert.

If however you are advertising Honda cars on the net, it would be

extremely easy to make sure that your advertising materials were only

shown to people who were looking for information about Hondas.

There is one other major difference as well. While you will pay in

advance for advertising on TV with no idea how many people are going

to see your advert, if you use paid advertising online, it is possible to

pay only when people view your advert. Hence, advertising online is far

more cost-effective as well.

When just starting your new business there is actually no need to start

paying for advertising, because there are plenty of ways you can

promote your business for free.

However, the important thing to understand is that the success or

failure of your business rides on your grasping the central concept that

everything is about marketing.

Your shop window on the internet is going to be a website, and many

new online marketers make the mistake of believing that their website

is the #1 ‘make or break’ factor for their business. This is completely

wrong.

You can have the ugliest website imaginable, and as long as that

website is promoting or selling something that people really need or

want, you will be successful. On the other hand, you might be the proud

owner of the ‘Mona Lisa’ of websites, but if no-one is interested in your

product or service, or (even worse) if no-one knows about it, then you

will make no sales at all.

Your ability to market your business is the key to success, and there are

two aspects to this marketing ability.

Firstly, you have to be offering a product or service that people want or

need, and they have to want or need it enough to be willing to pay for

it.

Secondly and more importantly, you have to do everything you can to

get the message out about what it is you have to offer. If you do not do

so, you could give away Learjets for free and you’re never going to get

rid them because people don’t know that they are available.

Somewhere in the mix there, you have to have a website to promote

your business, but it is far less important how pretty or technically

advanced that site is. If the information that you are providing is what

people need and they know where to find it (i.e. on your site), then you

will be a success.

Taking stock so far…

Let me briefly summarize what we have so far, because from this point

on, the focus and the tone of this book is going to change.

What we have considered up to this point is the theory of why you can

make money online, and the theory of how you do so.

However, knowing every theory in the world is never to be any use to

you if you do not know how to put it into practice, and it is for this

reason that from here on, we are going to be strictly practical.

What I am going to do throughout the rest of this book is set out in

detail how to launch one particular type of internet business.

So, the first thing to say is that this is not the only kind of internet

business that you might start off with, because there are many different

approaches to getting involved in the online marketing community for

the first time.

Furthermore, while this particular business model has been extremely

successful for millions of beginner online marketers (or ‘newbies’, as

they are often referred to), the level of success that any particular

individual enjoys will depend upon their own efforts and level of

application.

From here on, I am going to focus on one business model that should

see you earning money fairly quickly. Moreover, it is a business model

where the amount of money that you earn should be in direct

proportion to the effort that you choose to put into marketing it.

It is also a business that is easily scalable.

You can follow the step-by-step guidelines throughout the rest of this

manual, set your business up for the first time, work on it until it is a

success and effectively running itself on autopilot, before moving on to

do the whole thing again.

In this way, from one simple business model, you can build a business

empire that can realistically bring in thousands of dollars a month from

a business that requires very little start-up capital (although once you

are generating a reasonable incoming cash flow, you can invest some of

that cash flow in tools and resources that will make the whole thing

even easier and more profitable).

It has to be something that people need or

want…

You are going to set up a business that supplies information to people,

and in order to make money by supplying information, it has to be

something that they need or want.

Note the order that those two words are presented in, need and want.

People are far more likely to be willing to pay for information that they

really need than for information that they merely want. Hence, it is

important to differentiate between the two different groups and their

requirements.

A simple example will illustrate this point perfectly.

If someone keeps a dog as a pet and they want to train it to do tricks,

or they want to learn how to groom it properly, then they probably fall

into the category of people who have ‘wants’. If, however, the dog

incessantly howls throughout the night so that they never get a wink of

sleep, they have a real ‘need’. They might want to teach the dog to

behave properly, but from their own point of view, they have a need to

do so for their own health, welfare and sanity!

People who have genuine needs are the people most likely to spend

money to try to find a solution to the problem that they have.

Moreover, they are likely to be willing to continue to spend until they

find that solution.

As an example, if someone suffers chronic back pain, they will buy

products that give them information about how to get rid of their pain.

If a particular product they buy does the trick, they will no longer keep

buying products of this nature, but if it doesn’t, they will.

Hence, the first step to setting up your business is finding the kind of

things that people need and are searching for on the internet.

This is not to say that you cannot sell information that people want,

because you can. However, it is far easier to sell information that

people need, and in the early days, you want to make things as easy as

possible.

Now, you may be wondering what kind of information you might supply

to people, and how are you going to ‘package’ this information in a way

that will make money for you.

The answer is simple. You aren’t, because other people have already

done the hard work for you.

People go online each and every day to find information about an

almost unbelievably wide and diverse range of topics and subject

matter. In effect, no matter what kind of information is available, there

are people looking for it, and although most of the time they want that

information for free, it is good enough, then they might be willing to

pay for it.

Consequently, in most areas where the net is a popular information

search tool, there are lots of products available for sale already.

However, almost none of these products is doing anything more than

scratching the surface of their intended target market.

As a result, there are thousands of companies and individuals who are

willing to pay other would-be online entrepreneurs commission to

promote their products or services, which is where you come in.

You do not have to source the information that you’re going to supply to

your prospects. You do not have to worry about spending countless

hours researching your subject, weeks compiling the results of your

research into a product, or building a fancy website.

You just need to find a suitable market to promote into, and then find a

product that matches the requirements of that market.

This is the first practical lesson.

You must always establish that there is a demand for any product that

you are either going to promote on behalf of someone else, or even

create yourself (a little further down the line) before you ever consider

getting involved.

However, the majority of ‘newbie’ marketers do things completely the

other way around. They find a product to promote or (far, far worse),

they spend weeks or months creating their own product without first

trying to establish whether there is a demand. Not surprisingly, most of

the time this approach is a recipe for failure, and clearly it is therefore

something you should never even contemplate doing.

You must always establish demand before finding or creating a suitable

product – no exceptions – always!

You know that you need to establish demand, but you do not know

what products other people have available that might satisfy that

demand.

For this reason, in these early stages, you need to create a shortlist of

perhaps half a dozen areas of demand in which it might be profitable to

work if there are suitable products available. The next stage is to

establish how you do this.

Your initial market research…

Before setting off on your market research journey, it might make

sense to take stock of your own situation, and what you already know.

By doing so, you might be surprised how easy it is to come up with

some ideas about the kind of information that people need.

For example, we have already mentioned people with back pain. Extend

this idea, and you come up with people who are suffering from arthritis,

people looking for information about gout diets, people with irritable

bowel syndrome and so on. None of these conditions is particularly lifethreatening,

but every one of them is a painful blight on the individual

sufferer’s life.

How about people who are suffering financial problems (debt is one of

the few growth industries at the moment!)? Would a person whose

house is just about to be taken from them qualify as someone who has

a desperate need?

I think that you could safely say that they would qualify.

I am not for a moment suggesting that you ‘prey’ on these poor

unfortunates – you should only work with what you’re comfortable with,

and you must be very confident that the information you provide to

these people is of value and will help them.

All you are doing at this stage is listing down ideas, and if you are not

personally comfortable with any idea you come up with, don’t go with it.

Ideas are not in short supply, so just keep researching until you find

something with which you are comfortable.

The World’s population is getting (much) fatter at an alarming rate. Do

you think that people who are seriously overweight have a psychological

or emotional pain caused by their seeming inability to do anything

about solving their weight problem?

Once again, the answer can only be in the affirmative.

Think about people who have just separated from their partner. If you

could provide them with information that helped them to get that

person to come back to them (assuming that that is what they wanted),

it is a foregone conclusion that it wouldn’t be that difficult to find a

hungry market.

What about people who don’t have a partner but want one? Online

dating is definitely a market where people who have a real need are to

be found!

Do parents ever have problems with their teenage children? Of course

they do – all the time! They need help, so here is another one to add to

your list.

After you have brainstormed for a while, you will probably already have

a list of potential markets to consider. Let’s expand that list a little

further by looking at some of the online resources that allow you to

discover the kind of information that people are looking for.

Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers is the internet’s #1 question and answer website, a

place where any Yahoo! member can post a question about almost any

topic under the sun and have that question answered by other Yahoo!

members.

The site is completely free to use, and is available to any registered

Yahoo! member. The quality of most of the answers that you will find on

the site is questionable at best, but the important thing for you is that

you can use this site to discover what kind of information people are

looking for.

There are several different ways to use the site to establish the kind of

things that people need to know. One option is to scroll a little way

down the homepage and to switch the ‘Answer Questions’ window to

show the most ‘Popular’ questions:

Alternatively, there is a list of categories down the left-hand side of the

page, and there are several of these categories (and sub-categories)

where an educated guess would indicate that people need information

rather more than want it. An example would be the ‘Health’ category,

but others such as ‘Education’ and ‘Family & Relationships’ can

sometimes turn up some very interesting ideas:

The ‘Personal Finance’ subcategory of the ‘Business & Finance’ category

throws up quite a few questions that would give you an indication of the

kind of information that people are desperately seeking:

43 Things

43Things is a site where people list the things that they want to

achieve, their objectives and desires. Consequently, it is another good

site for discovering what members of the site need or want.

On the homepage, you will see the ‘Need Inspiration’ tag cloud, within

which the entries that are largest and in bold are the most popular

categories in which objectives are listed.

People are concerned about ‘Money and wealth’ (more so now than ever

before), so you could dive straight into this particular category, or start

with the ‘Popular goals’ link:

Generally speaking, in order to obtain a generic overview before trying

to narrow things down, I would use the ‘Popular goals’ link:

‘Lose weight’ is always a popular subject, but I would imagine that very

few people would think that ‘stop procrastinating’ would be such a

major concern.

‘Get a tattoo’ might also be worth listing, because while it represents

more of a ‘want’ than a ‘need’, it is still a massively popular topic.

Wanting to ‘Fall in love’ and ‘Be happy’ would both be important

features of a stable relationship, hinting that relationships are another

pain area.

There are one or two extra topics from the ‘Money and wealth’ category

that would be worth adding to the list as well:

MySpace Groups

MySpace is one of the most popular social networking sites on the

internet, a place where millions of individuals come together to discuss

their interests, hobbies and desires. Within the site, many hundreds of

like-minded people have got together to form Groups that focus on their

particular area of interest, and so by investigating which groups are the

most popular, you can once again get a fairly clear idea of the kind of

information that is in demand:

On the group’s homepage, there is a comprehensive list of ‘Groups by

Category’.

By now, you should be getting a fairly good idea of the categories that

you should be investigating to establish the kind of information people

are looking for. However, there is one other consideration which I have

not mentioned previously, and this is the fact that even some extremely

popular categories are not really worth looking at, because there is no

money to be made.

For example, while there are a huge number of MySpace

‘Entertainment’ groups, there is generally little or no money to be made

in this particular area as far as online marketers are concerned. You will

see how to assess this a little later, but take it from me that this is not

a moneymaking category.

The money making categories to focus on are (once again) ‘Health,

Wellness, Fitness’ as well as ‘Business & Entrepreneurs’, ‘Computers &

Internet’, ‘Money & Investing’ as well as ‘Pets & Animals’. All of these

are categories where you will find needy people, as opposed to those in

other categories who simply have ‘wants’.

A little way down the ‘Health’ category groups list, you have people who

have come together to focus on autism, natural cures and yoga. While

the latter is probably more of a ‘want’, ‘autism’ is a definite need

(particularly for parents of autistic children), and for those who are

dedicated to living a natural lifestyle, using ‘natural cures’ is probably

also a ‘need’ subject:

Yahoo! Directory

The Yahoo! Directory is a listing of websites that have been submitted

by their owners to Yahoo! for listing in that directory. The most

important thing to understand about this directory is that a website that

is submitted to it is not automatically accepted.

Websites are only accepted if they meet Yahoo! quality standards,

meaning that the directory presents a snapshot of the highest quality

sites on the net. Webmasters will only go to the trouble of creating a

high-quality site if there is money to be made by doing so (almost all

sites are monetized in some way), and that indicates a thriving market.

Choosing from the category listing on the left-hand side of the page,

and again using the ‘Health’ category as an example:

By clicking on the main link, you will get a complete list of every healthrelated

sub-category:

Look through those that interest you and you will again find many

interesting subcategories that you had probably never thought of

before.

Note that you are looking for sub-categories here – trying to compete in

a broad, generic market at the levels we have been considering

previously is not going to work, simply because the competition is too

tough. For example, if you were trying to drive people to a ‘Health’

focused website, there are quite a lot of other web pages that feature

this single word:

Hence, you have to be looking for a small ‘piece’ or slice of the overall

health market where you would have a reasonable chance of making an

impression. Such a ‘piece’ of a large market is usually known as a

market niche.

As examples, we have already seen that ‘autism’ and ‘natural cures’

represent subcategories of the health market.

It would make for more sense to investigate these in greater detail,

rather than chasing a massive target that you have no chance of

hitting.

Is there money being spent?

You should now have a list of potential ideas around which you could

build your first online business. One of the final pieces of the research

jigsaw is to establish whether it is worth doing so by checking whether

there is any money being spent in any individual marketplace.

This is easy to do, and of course, costs nothing.

Take the phrase that is most appropriate to your subject (what is

known in online marketing terms as a keyword or a keyword phrase)

and run a standard Google search using that phrase. For example, if

you want to know whether people are spending money on products or

services that are related to autism, you would run a standard search

using this phrase:

On the Google search results page, you see advertising that is placed

there by Google. The more advertising there is, the more that would

indicate that it is a mark it where there is money to be made, because

otherwise, there would be no sense in companies or individuals

spending money on advertising.

The most expensive adverts are those shown at the top left hand side of

the screen, and there can never be more than three.

Down the right-hand side of the page, there can be a maximum of eight

adverts. In this particular example, you don’t have a perfect ‘full house’

because there are only two adverts at the top left hand side, but there

are still nevertheless plenty of organizations and companies who are

willing to spend money in this market.

Once you have established that there is money in the market, there is

one final thing that you need to confirm.

You need to know that should you choose to build a website based on

this particular topic (autism), that there are enough people searching

for information on the net to justify doing so.

Given that you have a list of potential site subject matter, if no-one

were searching for the kind of information you are thinking of offering,

you would move to the next potential subject on your list. However,

assuming that there are enough people searching, the final thing to do

is check the competition.

Can you attract visitors?

Checking whether there are enough people searching for information to

justify building a site is extreme simple. Open up the free Word Tracker

keyword research tool and type in your primary key word or phrase:

This indicates that there are just short of 10,000 people every day

searching for autism related information on the net. 10,000 searches

every day is a very healthy number, but you need to compare that to

the number of web pages that are already presenting appropriate

information:

10,000 searches a day becomes less impressive when there are already

18.5 million web pages indexed by Google that provide autism related

information.

In effect, there is no way you can compete at this level, so what you

need to do is establish whether there is a level at which you can

compete.

Go back to the Word Tracker keyword chart and check each phrase in

turn by running a standard Google search for each one. For example,

this phrase enjoys 161 searches every day, which is a very reasonable

number:

and by running a standard Google search, we can quickly established

that there are only 184 web pages that feature this page:

What you therefore have here is a term that is searched a reasonable

number of times every day, but very few web pages that are presenting

the appropriate information.

What this tells you is that if you use this particular phrase in your

promotional materials and on your website, Google would very quickly

find your webpage or your promotional materials, and as long as they

liked your site, it should feature fairly high on the search results page.

Consequently, the next time someone is searching for information about

the ‘physical characteristics of children with autism’, they would

probably find your page featured in the search results and visit your site

as a result.

I suggested that pulling visitors to your website is a crucial factor that

will dictate how successful your business is. Finding low competition

keyword phrases like this is one of the most effective ways of ensuring

that you receive the site traffic you need in order to sell whatever

product or service it is that you are promoting.

Run the same checking operation for every phrase produced by Word

Tracker, and note down those where there are more than 20 people

looking to information of the day, and less than 30,000 competing Web

pages.

By now, we have established that there are plenty of people looking for

information about autism, and there are search terms that you can use

to drive visitors to your website. The final thing you need to do is

confirm that there is a suitable product available that you can promote

into the autism market.

Sourcing a suitable product…

Finding a suitable product could not be easier.

Visit Clickbank.com and sign up for a free account. Having done this,

you can immediately promote any of the 10,000 products that are

offered through the site, without further application or approval. Click

the ‘Marketplace’ icon and type in the primary term that you want to

look for and hit the ‘Go’ button:

This action will produce a list of all the products that have been called

up by the keyword you have used. It is then simply a question of

choosing the product that you want to promote.

If you are operating in a very competitive market, you will probably be

offered dozens of different products to promote to your prospects.

When this happens, you should try to select a product that does not as

yet have such a level of popularity that it is already too well known in

the marketplace. You would do this by checking on the ‘grav’ (gravity)

figure underneath the product details to the far right as highlighted:

You are looking for a gravity figure of less than 100 points, so all of the

autism related products shown in the screenshot are acceptable. You

can see that the commission payable (to the far left of the green text

line) varies, but do not be tempted to promote a product simply

because of the commission payable.

Check the sales page of each product shown (from the ‘view pitch page’

link) to find the sales page that looks best to you. To a certain extent,

choosing the best product from the sales page is a matter of instinct

and gut reaction, so if you find one of the sales pitches stands out for

you, use it because if you like it, it is likely that your prospects will as

well.

Time for another quick summary.

You have found a market niche where there are plenty of people with a

real need looking for information. You have established that there are

low competition keyword phrases that you can use to drive visitors to

your site, and you have found a suitable product to recommend to

those visitors.

It is finally time to start building your site.

Keeping it simple…

There are many ways of building a website, some of which are far more

difficult and complex than others. While at some point in the future you

will want to move on from having a very basic site, that is the way you

should start, because by doing so, you can keep the site creation

process as simple as possible.

In this situation, simple means quick and that in turn means that you

can channel your efforts into promoting your business, which as I have

already pointed out is the key to your success.

Here is what you do.

Visit Squidoo and sign up for a new account. Squidoo is a very simple,

modular site building program that is a big favorite of Google. Using

Squidoo, the mini-site that you are about to create is known as a ‘lens’.

When you first log into your dashboard, you need to search for the

button that will allow you to create a lens:

This action will bring you to the first step of the lens creation process.

The screen will look something like this. As this lens is going to focus on

autism, that should be the subject:

On the next page, you want to do your own thing (it gives you a far

greater degree of control) so check the appropriate choice and go to the

next stage:

On this next page, you have to choose a title for your lens.

It will automatically use the ‘my lens is about’ information from the first

page, but you should change this to reflect one of the primary keyword

phrases that you found earlier using Word Tracker, in this case ‘services

for teenagers with autism’:

On the next page, including three more key phrases that are

appropriate to your subject, insert the captcha code and that is the lens

ready to go:

That is it - the lens creation process is completed. All you now need to

do is to populate your lens with content, the information that the

targeted visitors who you bring to your website are going to be

interested in reading and watching.

In the next screenshot, you can see what the lens creation page looks

like. On the left hand side, you will note the main text area under the

heading ‘Introduction, Contents and Discovery Tool’. This is where you

are going to publish the information with which you are going to

promote the autism related product that you discovered earlier at

Clickbank.

The way you you are going to do this is to write a review of the product

itself, which you will then add to this area of the site before publishing.

The reason that you do this is that this particular module of the site

always appears at the top of the page, which is where you want your

review to be every time a new visitor comes to your site.

Consequently, all of the other modules that you can add to your site

(which highlighted in the right-hand side column) should be placed

underneath this main product review:

In terms of the modules that you should add to your site, I have

indicated the modules that I would use with a red check mark. By doing

so, you can ensure that your site offers your visitors something of a

multimedia experience, with video, information from eBay and

Wikipedia, and so on.

Note that below the list of ‘quick start’ modules, there is a link to

‘Browse all modules’. Take a look here as well, because there are many

more modules that you can add to your site in order to make it more

attractive and informative.

Because you have added a ‘Guestbook’ module, you are offering any

visitor who comes to your site the opportunity of leaving their

comments. The more comments you have, the more popular your lens

will become within the Squidoo community, and that equates to more

visitors.

In other words, you have built a site that targeted visitors will find

interesting, and that is the key to making sure that they stick around,

read what you have to say, and hopefully follow your link from the

product review to the sales page of the autism product you are

promoting. When they do so, if they buy, you get paid.

You will also note that I have added the ‘Text with BIG picture’ module.

This is something you should do (you can use the plain text module if

you want) because having nothing more than your review on your site

looks a little ‘spammy’ and unprofessional. If however you have

additional text modules, this means that you can additional articles

about your subject matter to your site, once again enhancing the

experience of the visitor.

If you have the time, knowledge and inclination, it is best if you can

write these articles yourself. However, there is nothing to stop you

using other people’s articles from a major article directory site like

EzineArticles as your content materials.

Visit the site and search for articles about your chosen subject:

Find some articles that you would like to republish on your own site,

and look for the ‘Ezine Publisher’ link to the right of the article title:

From here, you can download the article and then republish it on your

lens in its entirety, including (most importantly) the original author

details and link. You could do this with as many articles as you want, so

this would be a very quick and easy way of populating your site with

content if you don’t have the time or the inclination to write your own

materials.

If the only reason that you are not going to write your own materials is

because you do not know the subject or topic particularly well, all you

need to do is read a few EzineArticles articles and then rewrite them in

your own words. The articles text is copyrighted, but the ideas and

concepts behind them are not.

Write your review…

Although it is possible that you would be able to write a more accurate

and informative review if you were to buy a product that you are

promoting yourself, it is not absolutely necessary to do so.

There are two ways that you can collect sufficient information to create

your own review.

First, go through the Clickbank sales page and note down all of the

major benefits. Remember that potential customers are only interested

in what the product can do for them, so they want to know about

benefits, not features. Generally speaking, you can usually find enough

information on the sales page to write a reasonably good product

review without doing anything else.

However, you might also want to search to see whether anybody else

has already written a review, because that will make your job

considerably easier. You do this by searching Google for ‘product name

+ review’ (or ‘reviews’), so if you are promoting a product called

ABC123, your search would be for ‘ABC123 review’.

Between the sales page and other people’s reviews, you should have

enough materials to write your own. Don’t make your review too

gushingly complimentary about the product – add a couple of negatives

to make the review appear more objective and unbiased.

However, in the final analysis, you should recommend it. When you do,

make sure that you include a clear call to action (i.e. at the end of the

review article, make sure that you tell your visitor that the product is

highly recommended and that they must get their own copy), and tell

them to click your link which must also be included.

Incidentally, you should not make it too obvious that your link goes to a

product that you are promoting as an affiliate – something as innocuous

as this would work far more effectively:

The HTML code that you would need to create a link like this (using a

standard Clickbank style ‘hoplink’ which you should replace with your

own) would be coded in this way:

<a href="

http://yourCBnickname.aut1sm.hop.clickbank.net/"><strong>HERE</s

trong></a>

Copy and paste this code at the bottom of your review page, add

content from EzineArticles to several text units, add a few videos and

materials on eBay, and the site should be fully ready to go.

However, don’t stop there.

Come back every couple of days and add a new article (preferably one

that you have written yourself), use the RSS feed module to keep your

lens regularly updated and generally keep the site growing.

Google in particular loves Squidoo lenses, especially those where there

is a regular supply of fresh, new (and ideally unique) content that you

add, so keep Google happy and they will send traffic to your site.

However, this is not enough traffic to make your business successful.

Consequently, traffic is the next (and perhaps most important) aspect

of building your business.

It all comes down to visitors…

There are lots of different ways that you can send visitors to your

webpage. Should you choose to use them, some of these strategies

involve spending money (paid advertising in other words), and others

would be free in monetary terms (they cost you time instead).

While using paid advertising is undoubtedly the quickest way of bringing

visitors to your site, it can also work out to be an extremely expensive

business. For this reason, I would strongly recommend that at this

stage, you use only free advertising and promotional resources.

At the same time, you need to start learning about the ins and outs of

paid advertising.

I would therefore recommend that you try to find a free copy of the

excellent AdWords guide published by a leading online marketing

expert, Brad Callen.

At the time of writing, you could download a copy here or here, but if it

is not available by the time you read this, try searching for ‘Google

AdWords made easy’. This is another good free AdWords guide as well.

Learn about paid advertising, but in the meantime, let’s start driving

visitors to your Squidoo lens using only free promotional resources.

Before we do, there is one final thing to mention. The more effort you

put into promoting your business, the more results (i.e. money) you will

get out. Remembering that this is your business - be prepared to use

every spare minute you have to promote it.

Find a forum…

Forums are websites where like-minded individuals come together to

discuss, debate and generally shoot the breeze about their common

interests. Consequently, no matter what market niche you are operating

in, if you can find a forum or noticeboard site that is focused on the

same thing your recently developed site is focused on, then you have

immediately found a group of people who are interested in what you

have to say.

The first and perhaps most effective way of finding forums in your niche

is to search Google using a search term something like ‘your subject +

forum(s)’. The beauty of using this strategy is that because the Google

search engine naturally sorts everything in order of popularity, you

would know that any forum site that appeared in the number one

Google slot is automatically the most popular forum in your niche.

Even if you think it unlikely that there will be a forum in your market

niche, the chances are that there are many more than you imagine:

Just a simple Google search of this nature will turn up many sites where

you can get involved with other people who are concerned about the

problem around which you have just created your site:

Every member of any relevant forum or noticeboards site that you can

find is a potential customer for your business, but do not be tempted to

dive straight into the deep end. You should take your time breaking

yourself into the forum gently, reading and learning from other people

before getting involved.

Nevertheless, you should start to get involved as quickly as you can,

because this is how you start building a status and reputation in your

niche. At the same time however, understand that within any forum

community, there are members who have little knowledge, and there

are members who are experts.

If you would not classify yourself as an expert, take a little time

watching what happens in the forum so that you can work out who the

experts are.

Once you are confident of your knowledge and your ability, start to get

actively involved. When people pose questions that you can answer, do

so. When you have questions, comments or suggestions of your own,

start your own thread, because this will elicit responses and reactions

from other members.

Becoming an active participant in the forums has two advantages, one

clear while the other is perhaps less so.

Many forum sites allow you to create what is called a signature file,

which is a short text description of and/or advertisement for your

business (but do not make it a blatant plug, because that will not be

accepted by most forums).

If you can use a signature file (I would recommend that you check

before joining any particular forum site), this allows you to attach a

short ‘info-ad’ to every posting that you make on that forum. Your

promotional message is in front of other forum members every time

you participate.

Perhaps even more importantly, however, participating in a forum

allows you to establish your expert status. The importance of this

should not be underestimated. If people believe that you are an expert

(however accurate that assessment may be), they will follow what you

say, and act upon your advice. Remembering that other forum

members are superbly well targeted prospects for your business, this is

an ideal situation to put yourself in.

So, find as many forum sites in your own niche as you can (also check

Big-boards.com and forum showcase), and pick no more than half a

dozen which are active and will allow you to add a signature file, before

beginning to get involved as soon as possible. It is unlikely that you will

see any immediate benefits, but it is equally likely that it should not

take very long before the results start to become apparent.

Social sites for traffic and links…

Over the past couple of years, social bookmarking sites have become

amongst the most popular sites on the net. Growing out of the original

idea that it would be helpful if people could store their bookmarks from

their computer externally so that they could access them from

anywhere, social bookmarking sites are now hugely popular and

represent extremely active communities.

The idea behind the social bookmarking site is very simple. When you

find some content – it does not matter what kind of content is - it could

be a video, and article, a news story or whatever – that you think is

worth reading, you bookmark it to the social site of which you are a

member. However, when you add this bookmark, it is public, so that

other members of the site can see it. You also have the ability to

recommend it to other site members whom you suspect will enjoy it,

from past experience.

If someone you pass this information on to in this way does indeed

enjoy the content, then they might pass it on to someone else, and so

the link is passed round, and everyone who enjoys it will ‘vote it up’.

If something you have published on your lens is of sufficient quality to

become hugely popular, then it may well end up on the homepage of

the site. If this is a leading social site, then you can expect to see a

deluge of visitors thousands strong within 24-48 hours. Although this

traffic is going to be temporary, if you can only retain a small proportion

of votes visitors as ‘regulars’, you have just given your business a

significant boost.

Even if you do not manage to land on the homepage in this way, every

piece of content that you successfully add to a social bookmarking site

will create a link from that site to yours.

This is extremely important, because Google pays a great deal of

attention to links when they are trying to assess how valuable your site

is for search engine ranking purposes. The more important your site

appears to be (judged by links), the better the search engine ranking of

your site will be.

The only disadvantage of promoting your lens by submitting it to the

major social bookmarking sites is that it is a time-consuming and

somewhat tedious task.

It makes sense to take advantage of the free social bookmarking

submission service offered by OnlyWire, that will submit your site

details to 27 of the major social bookmarking sites. All that you have to

do is log in to OnlyWire every time you add new information to your

lens so that you can send details of your new post every time you make

one.

This may send direct visitors to your site or it may not. Even if it

doesn’t, however, it will be instrumental in ensuring that your lens will

attain a high search results ranking, and that in itself guarantees

additional traffic.

Become a video star…

There can be little doubt that the most popular and probably the most

effective way of promoting your business on the internet at this

moment in time is by using video. You make a short video movie, post

it to the leading video network sites like YouTube, Google Video and so

on.

After that, you do whatever is necessary to encourage people to watch

your video, on the basis that after they have watched it, they will visit

your website to discover more of what you have to say.

Of course, there are many steps in this chain of causation, and the

whole thing can go wrong at any time. Let us therefore move through

the process one step at a time.

The first thing you need in order to market using videos is a video.

Creating this can be a simple or as difficult as you want it to be.

At the simplest end of the spectrum, do you have 8 or 10 digital images

that are related to your market niche stored on your computer? If you

do, then you have the basis of a video. If, on the other hand you don’t,

you can download the necessary images from a site like Stock XChng.

Next, open a free account with animoto.com, upload your images, add a

soundtrack and upload the whole thing to YouTube. It is a job that

should take no more than 30 minutes, start to finish.

Admittedly, it does not produce the most riveting video footage you will

ever see, but it is extremely quick and easy to do, and if you want to

get started with video marketing, this is as good a way as any to do so.

But while it is quick, using animoto is probably not the best way to

market your business using videos. Firstly, because they are a montage

of still images, they are not that engaging, and secondly, you can only

upload animoto videos to YouTube and there are hundreds of video

networking sites available.

If possible, it is far better to ‘film’ your own video materials, to edit

them, and then upload the finished video to a selection of the most