Hello everyone, Deborah Hollingsworth has created a forum, Promoting..Input Needed... It is fitting to post this here in the Focus on Facts section, as Deborah is asking for REAL help getting past all the nonsense that she is likely to receive from a request like that. Let's do our part as real business leaders and give her a helping hand that will make her online business experience successful and fun. This is a good opportunity to focus on facts and really help someone over the hurdles of marketing. Invite her to be a friend, too. God bless, Dave

Hi Deborah! (Dave, I hope you don't mind if I post my thoughts for Deborah here...) Deborah, you're not alone struggling with the hurdles of marketing online. Many are in the same boat. I've been in marketing since the late seventies, and online since 1995. I hope I can help. : ) The second most important thing to realize about marketing online (I'll tell you the first thing in a bit) is that there are TWO reasons people will buy from you. 1) They perceive you to be a professional in your field and they want what you offer. 2) They are your "followers" and trust your recommendations. --> The first one, above, would fit if you had a website in a specific field and were perceived as a professional in that field. The products can be yours - or not. For example, pretend you had a website about coffee. Not a replicated website that thousands of others have too - but a real website that you create the content for. You share recipes. You share coffee tips. And, you sell coffee. People would get to know you as the coffee lady. They'd enjoy your recipes. And, they'd buy your coffee. Same thing applies to any other product category. --> The second would fit if you have any kind of following. You write a newsletter and have subscribers. Or you write a blog and have people that follow it. They get to know and trust you - and buy from you. So far, neither of those applies. You have a handful of affiliate links and you're hoping total strangers that don't know you will click and buy. It seldom works that way. More so, you're promoting them in a place where 27,000 other people are doing the same thing. They want you to click their links and sign up just as much as you want them to. This brings me to.... The FIRST thing that is important to realize about marketing online Before you start promoting anything online, you must make sure you're not selling all beef hotdogs at a vegetarian convention. (ie; that people actually DO want what you sell) I clicked on your links to see what you are promoting. They go to; -Home based working Moms -Alert Pay -Global Domains --> I don't know anything about Home Based Working Moms, so I can't comment on that site itself. However, I can probably guess that they're not helping you succeed, or you wouldn't be asking for help. So I can only assume that your goal is to earn the commission they offer. --> Alert Pay is a payment processor. What worries me about them is that they openly accept autosurfs and HYIP programs. There's been a LOT of news coverage when the government swooped in to investigate payment processors that accepted those types of programs. While I don't know much about Alertpay, their acceptance of autosurf and HYIP is a huge, huge red flag to me. I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone. --> Global Domains offers a .ws domain and 100 MB hosting for $10/month. That's $120 per year for a domain name. I get mine for $8 per year at GoDaddy and I don't lose it if I don't pay monthly fees. I have 11 years experience online and one thing I see is that experienced, knowledgeable web people don't sign up with Global Domains. Newbies do. In your post, you said you think the things you offer are needed. I think you've fallen for the same pitch that has hooked a lot of newbies. In all honesty, I think you're selling all beef hotdogs at a vegetarian conference. And I'm saying that in the kindest, gentlest possible way, so please don't feel hurt or offended. There is no offense intended. I really just want to help. Deborah, a LOT of newbies fall for the same things. Look around and sig files. You'll see them all over Adland. The truth is, NONE of the people promoting these things are making decent money. You might convince a couple of "friends" to sign up. Tom, Dick and Harry might make one or two signups. The parent company gets all the payout from the "one here and one there" sales, but the people selling them aren't making much. If you really, truly do want to learn what works online and how you can make some income, here's how to start. 1) Don't sell "internet marketing" stuff until you're making an income at internet marketing. You don't have the knowledge base yet to know which things to recommend and you could damage your reputation by recommending bad products. 2) Make a list of things you DO have knowledge about. Your skills, interests, passions and hobbies. Then we can brainstorm to help you find an idea that you can really succeed with. Sorry this was so horribly LONG. I hope you don't find it offensive or insulting. That certainly isn't my intent. If you're game to brainstorm a plan right here in Dave's forum, I'm game to help! : ) Linda P.S. Feel welcome to click my link and see what I do for a living. That might help show that I'm not speaking out of my posterior.

Hi Linda, Welcome, welcome! :-) I was going to send you an email, but then I thought, "No, Linda loves to help people get going online and she'll be here for sure!" You didn't let me down, and it's a real pleasure to have you here. Perhaps a few more members will gain some insight here, too. Your advice is most excellent. It is a fact that most of the "affiliate income" earned online is really, as you say, spread among a lot of people with only the parent company and a few heavy hitters making any real money. A brainstorming session to start the ball rolling is a great idea. As I posted on Deborah's forum, it's not a good idea to start marketing until you're ready. That's like opening an empty store in a back alley with no product on the shelves. It's a good way to go broke. God bless, Dave

Thanks Dave and Linda, It is great to see such authoritative confirmation of what I had already discovered for myself - I believe too much of what I read on the web! With friends like you to give such great advice, I am sure that my current exercise in rubbing it all out and starting again will bear fruit. I'll be watching Deborah's contributors with great interest. Regards Arthur

Hey Dave; ======================================== I was going to send you an email, but then I thought, "No, Linda loves to help people get going online and she'll be here for sure!" ... You didn't let me down, and it's a real pleasure to have you here. Perhaps a few more members will gain some insight here, too. ... Your advice is most excellent. ======================================== You're right. I do love to make a difference where I can. It's colored my whole life. From being a foster parent for the SPCA to Guides Canada to the Salvation Army, to creating sites (free) for charities - and on and on. It's funny, though. Life is a learning process. We stop learning when they throw the soil on us to return to that from which we came. One thing I'm learning is to do a better job of determining when I truly *can* help and when to just walk away. Guess that's part of my personal learning curve. : ) Linda