Can you succeed without buying expensive courses and products?

My front room is filled with products by the great American and Canadian gurus like Marlon Sanders, Yanik Silver, Mark Joyner, John Reese, Corey Rudl, Derek Gehl and Randy Charach

I also have high ticket internet marketing products and courses by British marketing experts like Andrew Reynolds, John Lisgo, John Harrison and Michael Green.

The upside of this is that I have at my fingertips all the information I need to learn how to make money on the net. Possessing all these products can only increase one’s confidence.

I know that I can be inspired and informed any time I have the energy and determination to take out a manual and study it or have an hour or so to watch a DVD on internet marketing.

The downside is that because so much is available, I have had trouble focusing on the advice of any one guru and several expensive courses are not even opened.

I don’t think I am alone in this. Some studies have shown that over 90% of people do not open the courses they buy. Of those, who do open the courses, the vast majority do not complete them.

It is only too easy to be distracted by the next best product being promoted heavily by expert marketers who know how to make the product they are currently promoting seem indispensable.

By the time large amounts of money have been spent on expensive courses and seminars, much less money is available to advertise the products you need to sell to make money on the net. Also, much less money is available to pay for hosting, web-designing and mentoring.

Fortunately there are some solutions to the problems described above.

Do not buy the next best product or course until you have made full use of the last one you bought. If we actually read and apply what we learn from an expensive course, we will be able to pay for the next expensive course without stretching our resources.

The net is crowded with the testimonials of those who have profited from the advice in the course they paid for because they took action and applied what they learned.

Another solution is to wait until the expensive course on offer has been around for a few months or even weeks. Usually a less expensive alternative will appear magically either from the original product creator or from other marketers who have created their own versions of the original.

For example, early in 2006, the talk was about a great product by Mike Filsaime. Mike is a highly respected internet marketing guru and many people have praised the power of this product. The original price of it was $997. The price has now increased to $1497.

However, part of the original product is now available at a much cheaper price and many marketers are describing this part as the heart of the product. If you can’t afford the whole product, buy a cheaper part of it.

More recently, Ewen Chia, has put a mega product on affiliate marketing on sale at a high price but already I have seen at least one alternative which claims to include some of the material to be found in the expensive product. The alternative is much cheaper.

Another solution is to follow the step by step advice of an experienced mentor. I am currently following the advice of a highly successful marketer and a very capable mentor. Already I have learned and achieved more than I have from all those expensive courses that I have not yet opened.

To sum up, make full use of the last product you bought before you buy anything else. Learn and apply what you learn. Wait until you can buy a cheaper alternative to the product or course you cannot afford. Follow the steps laid out by an experienced mentor.

This will help you focus on one course of action instead of flying like a butterfly from one attractive offer to another.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

If you doubt your own ability, you are obviously less likely to attempt the tasks that seem difficult or even impossible and yet are necessary for your success on the net.

Your family may view you as a kind of Jack in the Beanstalk i.e. someone who throws away their money on useless products and hopeless ventures in the same way that Jack bought an apparently useless bag of beans. They may frequently make comments like: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

Such early programming can stay in your subconscious for years and create debilitating doubts in your mind. It may be necessary to reprogram your subconscious mind with the kind of thinking promoted by those who teach affirmation and manifestation techniques and who believe in an abundant and friendly universe.

You may also doubt your own value. Do you really deserve to make money on the internet. You might be a Christian who has been told that you are a worthless sinner by the preacher.

You need to remind the preacher that even the prodigal son was welcomed back with abundance and that as a child of God you have only to ask your Heavenly Father for any good thing and you will receive it. Jesus’ promise: “Ask and you will receive,” is a powerful one.

You can also increase your confidence by taking action. Buy an ebook on how to make money on the net in thirty days and do what it says. Even if you do not make money in thirty days, you will learn something of value which may well help you make money a month or so later. If you just buy the ebook and do not even read it, your confidence will not grow.

I am currently following a course under the mentorship of a successful marketer and my confidence is already growing fast. Writing this article is part of one of her assignments.

Having a mentor who sets you deadlines and guides you with clear teaching is one of the quickest ways of increasing your confidence but be aware that not all mentors are equal. Some will take your money, provide some instruction which may be readily available elsewhere and then leave you to it.

Some will demand a chunk of your future profits. I have always turned down such mentoring offers because I did not want to have to figure out how much my success was the result of the mentor and how much was the result of my own efforts and increasing knowledge. Who needs that kind of hassle?

When you begin your internet marketing efforts and find out that results are not immediately forthcoming, you may well lose enthusiasm for the internet gold rush. Sudden problems may confront you just as you feel that you are making progress.

Your blog may be deleted for no apparent reason. Your web host may suddenly become unreliable and buyers may ask for refunds for no good reason. Your hard work may seem to be fruitless. Your enthusiasm may well begin to fade.

You can renew your enthusiasm by rereading the sales letters that inspired you originally and by steadily working to increase your internet skills. An hour a day spent learning html, for example, is probably well spent. It is not essential to do this but it will make you feel more at home on the net.

I try to spend two hours a week at least with my web designer. I learn by watching him work on my websites and by asking him lots of silly questions. This kind of face to face or face to computer support can increase your knowledge and revive your enthusiasm.

It was Winston Churchill who said that success is about maintaining your enthusiasm. Increase your confidence and maintain your enthusiasm and you may well make the most of the financial opportunities of the internet.

If you feel that you missed out on the California gold rush do not despair. A much bigger gold rush is currently available on the net today.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

For years I resisted having a mentor. Finally, after achieving not that much, I gave in and have employed two mentors. What are the main arguments for and against having a mentor in internet marketing?

A mentor can give you focus. Without a mentor who advises you about what to work on, you could spend years skipping from one promising course of action to another. I have done this both in network marketing and internet marketing. When success does not come soon, you move on to the next big thing and end up thinking that nothing works.

Thomas Edison, for one, knew the importance of focusing on one project at a time:

“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”

A mentor is usually a successful marketer who knows that what they are recommending to you does work. They are giving you a share in their own confidence and their own experience of success. They can lay out a step by step course for you because they have already been down the same path themselves and they know that there is gold at the end of this particular rainbow.

My current mentor even guarantees success. She will continue the mentoring until success is achieved. She can afford to do this because she already has a successful mentoring track record.

A mentor gives you company on what can be a lonely road. You might be working at home with little money and little street cred with your family who think you are wasting your time and any money you might have left.

The support of one other human being at least can be very important to you. Even your family will have more faith in you if they know that an expert is teaching you and that you are not just floundering around on your own.

A mentor knows who are the reliable experts that you may need. I spent years struggling with a web hosting company who were involved in their own internal wranglings and were far too busy fighting each other to give any attention to their customers at all.

When I joined them, a magazine had recommended them as being the first out of the top ten hosting companies at that time. I would now prefer to trust a mentor rather than a magazine!

A mentor will also be able to recommend a good web designer, a reliable autoresponder company and an efficient payment processor. I was badly let down by my first autoresponder company and lost an entire list of potential customers for no apparent reason.

The company would not reply to email enquiries. I think they had moved on to other projects which interested them more. A good mentor will be able to point you in the direction of solid people and companies you can trust

A mentor will already have experienced many of the frustrations and even disasters that cause many people to give up on their internet marketing dreams. They will be able to encourage you to keep going until you hit pay dirt.

What are the arguments against having a mentor?

If your mentor is a big name in internet marketing, they will usually be too busy to give you the mentoring themselves. They will hire a team of individuals to do the mentoring for them. These individuals may or may not have the same knowledge and experience as the big name guru.

Your mentor may do very little work on your behalf. They might just recommend some useful ebooks for you to read and then leave you to apply what you learn from the ebooks. You could do this yourself without paying the mentor as well and some mentors are very expensive.

Your mentor may fail to give you a game plan. They simply ask you to send in any questions you may have. As you do not know what you are doing anyway, your questions are unlikely to be useful ones.

Some mentors will not even bother to check up on what you are doing. They are too busy making money for themselves and see mentoring as a quick way to receive even more money from those who are too ignorant to know whether they are receiving expert guidance or not.

Your mentor may live in another country. You may have trouble understanding what they are saying because their accent confuses you or their phone line is not clear. They may hold teleseminars at inconvenient times like 4 a.m. when you need your sleep.

Your mentor may have different values from your own.They may take short cuts which you disagree with. They may be experts in niche markets which you are not remotely interested in. They may even demand a share in the profits you make from all your future work on the internet. Do not go there!

You are probably expecting me, with my record of disasters, to say I have gone there! You would be wrong! I had the wit to turn down one of these proposals and have probably saved myself considerable future litigation by doing so. Even the fools can become wise!

On the whole, I am in favour of mentoring. A good mentor can help you move on and learn and achieve much more than you would on your own. Even a bad mentor will come up with some useful guidance and give you enough motivation to get going and take some kind of action.

Choose your mentor carefully and be aware of the pitfalls described above. Good luck!

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

People trust people who do what they say they will do or who sell products which do what they claim to do. A year or so ago, I bought some software which claimed to be able to accelerate the submission of articles to ezine directories.

So far it has not only not done this; it has wasted my time and energy in trying to get it to even connect with the internet. The product developer has not wanted to know about the problems let alone solve them. Even though he is a well known internet guru, I am unlikely to buy from him again.

People do not trust people who are slow in doing what they say they will do unless they make them aware of possible delay from the start.

Last year, I bought a mega product from a well known super affiliate who promised he would refund a large part of his own commission if I bought the product through his link. I assumed the refund would arrive immediately after I had bought the product.

Instead, he later told all those who had bought from his link that they would have to wait for the refund until the original product developer was satisfied that no one would request a refund from him.

I had to wait several weeks or even months for my money which was badly needed to deal with other expenses. The money eventually came through.

I would not have minded waiting if the delay had been explained up front when I could have chosen whether to use his link and wait for my money or use someone else’s link and gain some other more immediate benefit.

People trust people who take their questions seriously. I have sent emails to internet gurus who answer the first question in your email and then ignore the rest.

They are clearly busy but they do not respect you enough to read the entire email and at least acknowledge the other problems you have expressed.

Some product sellers will not even bother to read your emails at all and those who, at least, answer one question are a step ahead of those who do not answer any.

Quite often product sellers claim that their email answers are being blocked by your email client. It is strange that their sales emails never seem to experience the same problems in getting through to you!

People like to be able to get in touch without queuing and without filling in forms which demand log in names and passwords and statements about priority.

Some elaborate support systems demand all this and then you have to wait for an email to tell you to go on line to read your answer.

You may even have to go through the whole password and username rigmarole with possibly a message ID number thrown in before you get an answer which could have been included in the email which alerted you that an answer was now available!

These support systems seem to be more for the benefit of the seller than the buyer. They allow the seller to plausibly appear to be dealing with your problem when in fact they are dealing with their own problem of being ultra busy!

Again, lack of respect for the customer is the impression given whether it is intended or not and a seller’s lack of respect, whether perceived or real, does not lead to trust on the customer’s part.

People are suspicious of those who put up barriers to direct communication even if there is a good reason for the barriers.

Testimonials lead to trust. If you do not yet have any genuine testimonials you could lower the price of the product and ask the customers who buy at this low price to send you a testimonial if they genuinely like the product.

You could explain why you have lowered the price and make sure you promise a refund if they are not completely happy with it.

Do not overcharge for a product. I had an email ad from a seller saying how great her product was and how astonishingly cheap the price was at $97. I already knew or soon found out that the product was available elsewhere at a much lower price. As you can imagine, I no longer take her emails seriously.

Of course, some marketer’s do under price a valuable product for a quick sale. In such cases, you could continue to sell the same product at the real price but do not make a big song and dance about how lucky your customer is to get the product at this price.

They will soon find out that they are not that lucky and will no longer believe what you say.

Do not bombard potential customers with email ads. They will soon get the feeling that you are exploiting them and are greedily sucking profits from your list.

If you do what you say you will do and offer products which deliver, you will soon gain a reputation which will be worth its weight in gold.

If you answer questions quickly and helpfully after your product has been bought and not only before it has been bought, your customers will trust you and keep coming back for more.

When I get email ads from sellers who deliver and who communicate fully and speedily, I will almost always study their ads carefully and buy if I like or need the product and sometimes even if I don’t!

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

The short answer is yes and no. Yes; it’s easy if you know how and promote first class products. No; it is difficult if you lack knowledge or expert guidance.

Yes; it is easy if you are prepared to learn, work hard and apply your knowledge. No; it is not easy if you expect money to drop into your lap as you sit around without bothering to study, learn and apply what you learn.

If promoting a product were that easy why would any product owner in their right mind pay you a commission for promoting their product? They could promote it themselves or hire a small team to do it for them instead of offering commissions to every man, woman and his dog.

The first part of many sales pages for internet marketing products often promises that if you buy the product you will be on the fast track to financial success. It gives the impression that marketing on the net is easy and that any one can succeed. The early part of a sales page may even guarantee your success.

However, by the time you reach the legal disclaimer at the end of the sales page, the writer’s attitude has mysteriously changed to one of caution, doubt and the realization that human beings are fallible individuals who may not necessarily have the skills of a super marketer!

For example, below is part of the disclaimer on a sales page I read this morning. I have altered the wording to avoid being sued for copyright infringement.

“There is no guarantee that you will earn anything using the techniques and ideas in these materials. Examples in these materials do not mean that we are promising or guaranteeing you any earnings. What you earn is entirely dependent on the person using our product, ideas and techniques….Your level of success in attaining the results claimed in our product, depends on the time you devote to the program, ideas and techniques mentioned, your own finances, knowledge and various abilities. We cannot guarantee your success or income level. “

What a contrast! Most people don’t bother to read the disclaimers or are so excited by the time they have read the sales page that they ignore any doubts they may have. They are then surprised that they do not swiftly become rich.

Some affiliates do seem to find it easy to make money but I have read that 90% of internet marketers do not make any profit at all. I do not know whether that is an exaggeration or not but all over the net one can find cries of desperation from those who have wasted their money on the great internet dream.

They have come away with nothing or very little. Some are seriously in debt. On the other hand some affiliates can make thousands of dollars a month. A few are millionaires.

The promise of internet marketing through the affiliate route seems a very attractive one. An affiliate simply promotes a product through his or her affiliate link for a product owner in exchange for a commission. The affiliate does not have to worry about creating or upgrading the product or even delivering it.

All the affiliate needs to focus on is advertising the product skilfully so that potential buyers find their way to the sales page for the product. However, they do need to guide their readers first to a lead capture page where they can add the customer to their own opt in list rather than the seller’s list.

Affiliates who fail to do this will usually make far less money than those who build up their own list of eager buyers. Once they have a list of buyers they can legally email their list with future offers of products which will bring in even more commissions.

If an affiliate promotes a poor product, they are unlikely to win the trust of their list. A successful affiliate will take care to promote a product that has been created by a reputable and reliable product developer.

Alternatively they need to make an effort to test the product for themselves and make sure that it works if it is software and that it informs if it is an ebook.

An affiliate needs to be well organised so that they can keep track of all the products they are selling and how well their advertising is working. One way of being organised is to sell Clickbank products. You will not then need to sign up for multiple affiliate programs. You need only to insert your clickbank nickname into the relevant clickbank links.

Software is available, however, which can help you keep your affiliate links organised and easily accessible. Many sellers do not use Clickbank at all.

You can, however, rely on the Clickbank system to make it less likely that you would be defrauded of your commissions. However, the successful affiliate also needs to make sure that his or her affiliate link cannot easily be altered or deleted by someone who wants to steal their commission or who wants to avoid giving a commission to an affiliate rather than the product owner.

There is increasing competition in the affiliate market. Affiliates now offer huge bonuses to those who buy high ticket items through their links. Many affiliates are expert and experienced marketers who know how to capture the market.

On the other hand, more and more buyers are using the internet every single day. The potential market is huge and involves billions of people.

We can conclude, then, that it is easy to make some money through affiliate marketing but some considerable skill, knowledge and hard work is necessary if you wish to make your living as an affiliate.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

The cheaper courses are usually much shorter than the mega products that cost a fortune. You are more likely to read or listen to them.

Of course, you may not read either the bigger or the shorter courses. Most people don’t! However, you will probably find it easier to, at least, start studying a shorter course.

You may become one of the very few who actually finish reading the course right through. You may even become one of the elite who actually go on to apply what they have read about.

When a big product is sold at a high price, you will see a photograph of the product laid out on the floor or on a table. There will be rows of sophisticated looking CD’s or DVD’s at the top of the layout. Then there will be audio tapes in serried ranks and finally books, manuals and reports galore.

This all looks very impressive but it also provides a mountain to climb. Who has the time or the patience to read or listen to that lot? Where do you start? To be fair, some product creators do provide a quick start guide.

But then, why not just sell the quick start guide separately for those who cannot afford the whole kit and caboodle?

Again to be fair, some product developers do just that. Recently one established marketer has sold or allowed to be sold the heart of his great marketing product separately. You can now buy this much more cheaply than the original mega product. I have bought it but not read it!

Another reason for buying the cheaper products is that you will then have enough money to buy the software, the hosting, the auto-responder system and even the computer and bandwidth that you will need to make your internet marketing a success.

You may even be able to pay a mentor to guide you and motivate you along the path to internet marketing success. A good mentor is probably worth much more than the most expensive marketing product.

A thoughtful mentor will still allow you plenty of choice to allow you to follow your own interests during the mentoring program. A mentor will set deadlines which compel you to get a move on. I have just completed writing 6 articles in about 24 hours to meet the deadline set by my current mentor.

No sooner had I written my six articles, than she demanded another six! I have now finished two of the second six. This must be a record I would have never achieved on my own. I feel I should pay her more than she is getting or perhaps she should be paying me!

A cheaper product may be an older product which once cost a fortune but which is now cheaper because it is partly out of date thanks to the rapid changes to the internet.

Some parts of it may be out of date but other parts will not be out of date. For example any advice on copywriting is usually valuable for a long time since human nature does not change as fast as the internet.

Many copywriters rave about the copywriters of the early 20th century and read them for inspiration and information.

People still want what they wanted half a century ago. It is also enlightening to see how things have changed since the original copywriters mesmerized their readers..

There is also a chance that what was once out of date makes a comeback. For example, I read recently that banner ads are now more popular than they have been recently. In fact, some argue that they have never been away.

We can conclude that you are more likely, then, to study or use a cheaper product than a mega product which costs the earth. You will have enough money left over to pay for the essentials of internet marketing like web hosting.

You may even be able to afford a mentor. An expensive course will not complain if you leave it on the shelf but a mentor will not allow you to leave your projects on the shelf. You will soon find out that you can achieve far more than you thought you could.

Beware, however, of mentors who charge the earth and demand a cut of your future profits. How will you ever know what profits you owe to them and which profits you owe to your own increasing skill and knowledge?

You will find treasure still in some of the older products which have now become much cheaper.

If you actually read and make use of the cheaper products available, you will eventually have made enough money to buy the more expensive products.

You may even end up flying around the world to attend internet marketing seminars in the USA, the UK, Australia and elsewhere. You might be asked to explain your success from the platform.

You could even end up on that proverbial beach sipping your favorite drink and watching the sun go down as you listen to the waves lapping along the shore line.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com/

However, the internet can make cheating much easier to do since it provides a cloak of invisibility and the shield of distance. It is easy to pretend to be someone else or something else or to just disappear when the complaints start coming in.

Others may not scam and cheat but they may well sell dubious products that are not what they claim to be or which they have not bothered to check out. They may overcharge the ignorant and prey on newcomers to the net.

Is it possible then when faced with such unscrupulous competition to succeed on the internet and keep your integrity or honesty?

The short answer is yes. You will not only succeed if you market with integrity; you are more likely to succeed.

You may in the short term make more money by telling lies about your products and then refusing to honor your refunds policy but in the end you will lose out because your reputation for honesty will disappear and people will no longer wish to buy from you or do joint ventures with you. You could even end up on the run or in prison.

Someone has said that you will succeed only to the extent that you help others succeed. You cannot help others to succeed by cheating them.

I have only rarely been let down by internet marketers but those who have treated me in a shoddy way have lost one of their best potential customers since I frequently spend money on internet products.

On the other hand, I remember those who treat me well and buy from them again and again. Their integrity or honesty pays off in the long term. I think most customers have the same attitude as me.

Even marketers with a good reputation cannot rest on their laurels. I have bought at least one product off a marketing guru with a good reputation whose product did not work for me and whose follow up help was perfunctory.

I no longer respect his reputation. I will think twice before buying anything from him again. I will certainly not sell his product to anyone else as his affiliate. If I did, I would soon lose my own reputation and my own integrity.

Of course, any one can make a mistake and sell something that appears excellent but isn’t. The honest marketer will acknowledge the mistake and make amends either by refunding any money involved or by supplying a better alternative if that is preferred.

Private Label Products are currently very popular but some aspects of the Private Label phenomenon concern me. You are told gleefully that you can change the name of the product and even add your own name as if you were the creator.

What about the people who have already bought the product under its original name and then buy your version of it because they think it is a new product? They may then be refused a refund because some slight changes have been made to the original which they already have.

What about the people who have problems with the product and expect you to be able to give them answers when you may not have a clue about the source code of the product since you are not a genuine software developer?

The original developer of the product will not want to know about your troubled customers; they will have plenty of their own to deal with!

I like the idea of private label products which you can alter and improve and maybe add a pen name to but the concerns above are real ones and integrity or honesty is right at the heart of them.

Private label articles are all over the internet now and are causing replication problems for those who use them. Neither article directories nor the search engines like duplicate content. They obviously do not want to send visitors to content which they have already read.

Some software is available which claims to be able to turn one article into a hundred different articles. I have not yet tried these out. Maybe there is an honest solution there.

At the moment, I prefer to write my own articles and have never claimed to have written an article by someone else. I would not feel happy doing so. Perhaps, I’m missing something?

The temptation to take shortcuts is at the heart of integrity. Usually, the honest way takes longer but if you take the high road of integrity and I take the low road of dishonesty, you will be in the promised land of sustainable internet success before me.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

Choose a niche market which sells products that you are interested in. If possible, choose one that you are passionate about. I am passionate about the self-improvement niche.

You can’t lose with this niche. Even if you were to sell nothing you would learn much from the products you were attempting to sell.

I have sold quite a few copies of a fairly well known self-improvement book. It was easy to write favorable comments in the sales page for this book because it is a book which has helped me to understand my past failures and to increase my confidence for the future.

I could and still can recommend it to others with a clear conscience because I believe it will help the buyer to improve their lives. If not, they can ask for a refund which will be granted without hesitation.

I can only remember having to refund one copy of the follow up to this book because the reader did not agree with something that was written in it.

There are parts of this author’s books which I do not agree with but much of what he writes can change lives for the better. Why chuck out the good with the bad? However, the refund was immediately supplied by me even though I thought the reason given for the refund was a weak one.

Another niche I am passionate about is internet marketing. The more I learn about it and apply what I learn the more interesting it gets. The possibility of making money as well is just the icing on the cake.

If you sell products in this niche with integrity, you will sell products from developers who have a great reputation or products that you have tried out or read for yourself. You will, of course, learn much from testing the products and reading the ebooks before you decide they are good enough to sell.

This reminds me of a second great key to success in affiliate and resale marketing. Only promote or sell products that are of a high quality.

It takes time and effort to ensure that you do not sell trashy products but it will be worth it in the long run as those who buy from you or at your recommendation come to trust and value your advice about which products are worth spending their hard earned money on. .

A third key step is to ensure that you build a list of people who are interested in the niche you are promoting. I am currently building a list of people who are interested in self-improvement and motivation. I am also building a second list of people who are interested in marketing on the internet.

I am building a third list of people interested in self-defence and a fourth list of people interested in religious education. I may well start a fifth list of people interested in general fitness and health. As these lists grow in size, I will be able to recommend a product that I believe in to them.

Some will buy it and others won’t. As Jim Rohn might say: “That is the way the world works!”

How do you build your list? One way is to write articles like this which have a resource box at the end which refers readers to an opt in page which asks for their name and email address in exchange for free ebooks or software.

They will then receive an email asking them to confirm their desire to optin. Most will usually confirm and you can then send them a regular ezine or an email when you feel you have something worth saying.

Alternatively, if you have nothing worth saying after a week or so, you can easily discover something worth saying by studying some of the great ebooks, audios and DVD’s which are easily available on the net.

Clearly, you cannot just copy what you read about. You will need to filter the ideas through your own brain and your own experience. What you then write will be as original as most writings that are promoted as original.

To sum up the three key steps described above:

Choose a niche you are passionate about. It is much easier to sell something you know something about and are already interested in. Even if you sell nothing, you may well enjoy learning from the products you are attempting to sell.

Make sure that you sell only products that you believe in yourself. This will make writing any ads or sales pages that much easier and you will sound far more convincing than if you know little about the product in question.

Start at once to build opt in lists for all the niches you are interested in. Once you have big opt in lists, you will find it much easier to interest other people to work with you on joint ventures where both of you profit and both of you can increase your own lists with people who are from someone else’s list.

Good luck with your marketing. Don’t be put off by the fact that there is competition. Other people are selling some of the ebooks I sell but that does not stop people from buying from me. Competition does not necessarily hold you back. You can always add bonuses to a popular product to make your offer more attractive.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

One of the essentials of time management is to make a list of exactly how you spend your time over a period of about a week. If you cannot bear to do this for a week, do it for a day or even just a few hours!

It is just as enlightening to see what you are not doing as what you are doing.

I waste a lot of time reading emails and then I waste a lot of money buying what the emails suggest that I buy. I must have been born with the word ‘sucker’ imprinted on my forehead.

I cannot resist a well crafted email or sales page and the internet is flooded with them. Each one promises solutions to every kind of problem imaginable and, even though I may not be currently experiencing the problem, I can easily think of a time or situation when I will be desperate for the solution on offer.

The time I waste reading the email escalates to reading the sales page and then to buying the product and then to downloading. However, I seldom spend time on actually doing anything useful with the product once I have it on my hard disk.

I now have two hard disks with huge capacity to make room for all the products I download but do not use. Do not follow my example!

A more recent timewaster is the huge number of giveaways now available on the internet. These giveaways are a cunning way for shrewd marketers to build their email opt in lists by giving away products to those who sign up to their lists.

As you might guess, I spend hours at these giveaway sites signing up and downloading vast amounts of products. Then even more emails start pouring in.

However, I am now becoming more ruthless with my emails. I rapidly delete large numbers of them without reading them. I don’t have the heart to unsubscribe from too many of them. After all, they have just given me a free ebook or useful piece of software. Deleting emails can be done very quickly so unsubscribing is not essential.

If I do not have time to read what looks like an informative and useful email, I file it where it can be consulted later. I even have the will power to file away the sales pages of products that I am very keen to buy. Almost always, I forget about these products after a few days and don’t seem to miss them at all.

The sales page of most products warn you that the price will be going up but almost always the price eventually goes down or a cheaper and even a better alternative emerges or you realize that you don’t really need that product after all.

My advice, born of bitter experience, is not to read your emails for at least an hour at the start of the day. It might even be a wise move not to read them until the evening when you have finished the important work.

Instead, work on something that will make you money rather than cost you money. Write an article with a resource box or an ad or an email for your list instead. You could spend an hour improving your html or your knowledge of what your autoresponder can do for you.

You will then feel a sense of energy and power that will permeate the rest of your activities and help you have a far more productive day.

Time management is all about priorities. Decide before you go to bed what your priorities are for tomorrow and make a list of 3-6 things you need to do in order of importance.

Make sure you start on the first thing next day even if you only work on it for five minutes. The five minutes will usually escalate into an hour or two. Try to stay with that task until you finish it.

Great marketers are quite often great time managers. They believe that consistent, relevant action to achieve their goals is far more important than pursuing the latest smart strategy or reading the emails and chatting on the forums.

Most marketers agree that building your list should be a priority. You could spend the first hour of the day working on an email or ezine to send to your list.

As you may, like me, have more than one list, you may need to spend several hours crafting messages to each list. Sometimes the subject matter will overlap and you can send the same email to all your lists.

Occasionally you will get a grateful comment from someone on your list which will make you realize that your efforts are being appreciated and you are not wasting your time. Even better, someone will actually buy something you have recommended

Remember these key points:

Don’t follow my bad example of reading too many persuasive emails and, as a result wasting too much time and money on products which you don’t really need.

Make a list of priorities and work on them first thing in the morning even before you have your early morning cup of tea or coffee or your first glass of fruit juice.

Make building your opt in list one of your key priorities and do something daily to build it or maintain it.

If you are not sure what your priorities should be, it might just be time to sign up with a mentor who will give you assignments which allow you to follow the steps they took when they achieved success. I definitely recommend doing this. You are almost certain to learn and achieve something.

Above all, don’t give up even if there are no apparent results. Results may be on their way.

It is easy to be discouraged especially in the summer months when the harvest you are expecting has not arrived.

A good time management plan will keep you working and sowing the seed through the bad times until the blackberries begin to show up on the brambles and you begin to reap the rewards of your efforts.

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com

Danny spends most of his week rescuing business owners who are having problems with their computers.

Last week I asked him for the advice he would give a business owner who was having trouble with his computer. This is the advice he gave me:

Keep things simple on your computer. Don’t use it for games etc. Just use it for business. Danny finds that half his customers have caused their own problems by the extras they have downloaded from the internet such as:

Additional toolbars for internet explorer. Unnecessary utilities like internet speed boosters which seldom work. Eye candy such as wall paper changers, animated cats etc

All most businesses need is

A base operating system
An email client
A web browser
An office suite
A firewall and anti-virus system

Don’t download any old stuff off the internet. The more stuff you put on your hard disk, the more likely it is that you will have problems. Microsoft cannot check all the different applications you might download for compatibility.

Your first graphics package and another graphics package might fight over the file extensions. Try to stick with one package. Similar problems occur with music and video players which should not be on a business system anyway unless you are in that field.

Don’t upgrade unless you could name three good reasons to upgrade. After Danny gave me this advice, I rather guiltily tried to upgrade my BT broadband service to the new combined BT Yahoo broadband service.

Sure enough as soon as I had installed the new service, things started to go wrong. Things that had worked before (like links in emails) no longer worked. I’m not blaming BT Yahoo. I just had too much stuff on my computer! When I uninstalled the new service everything started working again.

Danny comments: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” When you upgrade, the file formats are sometimes different from the earlier versions of the software. This means you cannot go back to the earlier versions because they don’t recognise the new file format.

Do not assume that newer versions are better than the earlier versions. All you have done is make the software producer richer!

Have a firewall and virus checker and keep them up to date

Back up your data. 90% of companies who have a catastrophic data loss go bankrupt within two years. You should have two copies of important data and three copies of critical data stored in three different locations.

One copy should be in a fire safe off site. This should be standard practice. You cannot trust computers. Sooner or later they will get you! If you don’t back up, you are an idiot and deserve all you get!

Today I received this message from an ezine owner:

A lot of you sent me an ad this week, which I had saved on my hard drive and guess what?

My computer crashed and I lost every one.

I have a backup computer, but no ads.

Please re-send your ads so I can get them in the Friday edition.

Sorry for the trouble.

The ezine owner is obviously a nice person but he may lose customers who haven’t got the time to resend their ads. No one likes to repeat their efforts.

Maybe his computer crashed because he had broken not only the back up rule but some of the other rules.

As a general principle, use your machine and don’t tinker with it. Once it is working, leave it alone!

Leave it alone!!!

John Watson runs a website about internet marketing which provides information about affiliate marketing, reseller marketing and selling your own products. His website can be found at the following url: http://www.johnwatsonpublishing.com