Affiliate Marketing Business Blog

I’ve had quite a few people asking me “what information product should I create?”

If you want to make an information product, it’s best not to try and guess what your prospects are looking for. If you want to make sure you create a product that people are looking for, ask them what they want (and the sooner the better). Optimally, you want to ask them right when they opt into your list. Here’s a quick video that shows you one of the easiest ways to find out what your newest prospects are looking for using aweber. (more…)

It will substantially help your business to survey your customers. But if you’ve never done it before, it can be a little difficult to know how to start. Here’s a quick tip on how to do it. (more…)

I recently got an email from someone who told me that he’s spent over $15,000 trying to build an affiliate marketing business. And I know from experience that this isn’t atypical. Most businessmen (me included) do spend a lot of money building their business. And although $15,000 isn’t a ton of money when you compare the costs of starting up a normal bricks and mortar business, it’s still a lot of money. I’ve personally lost tens of thousands of dollars making all sorts of mistakes while building my business so I know how painful it is.

The real question isn’t how much you’ve lost, but how much you’ve learned. Despite losing all that money, I feel tens of thousands of dollars wiser because of my mistakes. So the question I have for you is, was the amount of money you’ve spent worth it? If not, please stop spending money and take a step back for a moment. Go through the money you’ve spent and figure out the value that came from spending it. Sometimes, it’s only a matter of saving you from making the same mistake again. Sometimes there was great value that was there but you missed. But sometimes just learning that something isn’t for you can save you all sorts of headaches in the future.

I know that building a business is the road less traveled and can be a difficult one. I want to try to keep you from making the same mistakes I have and losing the kind of amount of money I have. So I’ll continue to keep you posted about what I discover to be the safest, most cost effective, and most profitable paths to take.

I’m curious to know what are the best lessons you’ve learned from the money you’ve spent building your business. Feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Matthew Glanfield

Ok…maybe hate is a little harsh. But you’d have to admit that many internet marketers don’t really want to have anything to do with you. They don’t want to hear what you have to say, they don’t want your questions, and they certainly don’t want you to be able to contact them. They want you to buy their product and just leave them alone.

Now I’ve always tried to provide as much support as possible for all of my products. But as I’ve been building my business outside of Internet Marketing, the importance of interacting with your customers has become even clearer. People want to interact with the people they buy from. And lots of people are willing to pay more to do it.

In my current little niche, I charge more than many of my competitors for the exact same items. But my business has dominated that niche because we are continually interacting with our customers. We happily answer their questions, make a ton of videos, and encourage them to interact with us at every turn. What has that done for us? Well in 2009, we saw an explosion in growth while many other businesses were hurting.

So if you’re looking for a tool to explode your business in 2010, my advice is, don’t hate your customer. Interact with them every chance you get.

If you have success stories with how interacting with your customers has helped grow your business, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

To Your Success,

Matthew Glanfield

I got an email last week asking me if I have any recommendations for building a “real” Business. It was a good question because, if you are reading this blog, that’s exactly what you want to build. Too many people buy courses and training and think, “that’s going to make me money” and don’t give much thought to building a “real” Business. That’s a huge mistake. If you just want to make a quick buck, you are reading the wrong blog. But if you want to build a solid business, keep reading. Actually, if you’re just looking for a quick buck, you probably need to stick around more so I can convince you that it’s not the way to make money online.

Now, with that in mind, let me be clear. Affiliate Marketing, Membership Sites, etc.. are all real businesses. These tactics can be used to get a quick buck, but lots people use them to run legitimate businesses. In fact, almost anything can be built into a real business. You’d be surprised to learn about many of the zany and off the wall businesses people are building out there and making good money. My point, is not that you need a crazy idea to have a business, but whether or not it’s a real business is dependent on how you run it more than what you do.

So when you see someone offering to teach you how to make money online, ask yourself one of these two questions.

1. If you’re just starting out, “Will I be able to make this into a real Business?” or,

2. If you’re already running a real business, “Is this something I can implement now to help grow my current business?”

If you can’t see yourself using their training or service to build a real, viable business, don’t bother looking at it any further. It’s not something you want to get involved with.

In fact, last year, my attention was almost completely outside of internet marketing because I’ve been building a real business in a niche that’s a ton of fun for me. I feel like I get to play all day. When you find something like that, it makes building a business so much easier.

How would you define building a “real” Business? Feel free to leave your comments below.

Matthew Glanfield

In Yesterday’s post I talked about how education can be the best friend and the worst enemy to your business. Now before you think that I’m against educating yourself, I want to make myself clear. Education is Critical to building a successful business. But it’s important to be strategic and Find the Best Kind of Business Education.

So what IS the Best Business Educational System? The best education you can get is in The Doing. Actually running a business, making decisions and taking action will help you learn quicker than any “Guru’s” course ever could.

Have you ever wondered why McDonalds requires that you work there before you can own one? It’s a system of success. You need to work in a business to learn how to make it successful.

There’s a lot of people out there that don’t want to believe you have to do it to learn it. They have their sites too focused on the idea of the quick buck and easy money. They keep buying product after product thinking, each time, this one will be the Magic Bullet. But it never seems to happen because it doesn’t exist.

Now, while there may not be a Magic Bullet, there are shortcuts. Don’t buy anything thinking it’s a magical solution. Look for shortcuts, not magic.

So what’s an example of a shortcut? One example is to buy an already functioning business from someone else. Even if it’s just making $1 a month, that’s a great start! By running the business, you’ll get the best kind of education possible. It can often be better than investing in a course or educational product.

That’s just one example of a shortcut to success. What do YOU think are some of the best shortcuts to building an online business? Feel free to leave your ideas in the comments below.

Matthew Glanfield

You may not know this but it was just a few short years ago that I launched my internet business. It all started with a little niche website that I setup with no intention to make money. I simply put it up as a resource for myself and others in that niche. Soon I noticed lots of people were coming to my site. I figured I might be able to make a little money from Adsense. So I put some Adsense ads on the site and made a some money but nothing to write home about.

After a short while I purchased a small ebook from a guy named Joel Comm about improving your Adsense revenue. I figured I might be able to make a bit more money so I bought it. I followed Joel’s book to the ‘T’ and then something totally unexpected happened. My revenue didn’t just improve, it exploded! Joel and I later became friends and I’ve had several occasions to work with him and several other big name ‘gurus’ out there. But it was that little website and Joel’s ebook that launched the successful business I run today.

So what can you learn from this story?

* First, Stop trying to make money and start providing something of value to people. If you do, the money will follow.

* Second, that your education is key to making money. When you need to move your business forward, find someone who can teach you what you need to do to take it to the next level.

If you follow these rules, I have no doubt that you’re going to do well this year!

If you have any other suggestions for those struggling to start their business or just want to comment, please scroll down and leave your comments below. I’d love to hear what you think.

Matthew Glanfield

I get quite a few emails from people asking me for free resources for affiliate marketers.

Well, I recently came across a great free resource to help you get started and understanding what affiliate marketing is and how it works. It’s called Affilorama. It has tons of free tutorials and videos that can help you understand the basics and tactics needed to be a successful affiliate marketer.

You’ll learn tons of stuff from the lessons, be able to talk with other affiliate marketers, and find out what they’re doing and not doing to be successful affiliate marketer.

You should definitely check it out and sign up! I don’t know of any other free resource out there that shares this much!

Click Here and sign up now!

They do have a premium account, but even if you don’t sign up for premium, the amount of free information they provide is impressive and should definitely help you if you’re still struggling to get your affiliate marketing business off the ground.

I was looking through ClickBank today and found that Rob Benwell’s latest training package had gained a lot of popularity, so I decided to check it out.

He claims that over 3,500 people have downloaded this training, which teaches marketers how to dominate in any niche and make extra money with his methods.

He talks about website conversion, traffic generation, and also search engine optimization, as well as many other tactics that he is using.

However, is it worth the $47 that it costs? Watch this video to find out what I think. (more…)

The video I am about to show you is normally only available to paid BBO Traffic Club members or to those that purchased the BBO Infinite Profits Video Course.

However, I thought it would be fitting to post paid training for free here on this blog from time to time. Obviously I won’t be posting ALL of the paid videos, as that would defeat the purpose of needing to pay for them.

However, I want you to see the high level of training that members of the BBO Traffic Club get for the low monthly fee that they pay.

Today’s video focuses on Niche Litmus Test #2. There are three litmus tests in total, which readers of BBO Infinite Profits already know about.

The second one shows you how to do competitive analysis to find out if there really is money to be made in the niche market that you have chosen.

Here is the video: (more…)