Although at the time I had heard of blogs, however, I didn’t know you could make money with one and I certainly didn’t understand how to be an affiliate marketer.  I knew people were making money online, but I didn’t know anything about how this was possible.  The more I read online, the more questions I had.  It took a great deal of time and frustration to sift through all the hype and scams, but finally I did find some really good programs that worked for me.

One Week Marketing and Word Press Goldmine along with Rob Benwell’s Blogging To The Bank have given me the tools and understanding I needed to begin an online affiliate marketing business.  These are very low cost systems that, if you commit to following their steps, will produce results that steadily increase over time.

Learn your internet marketing skills.  Learn keyword and market research.  Learn Wordpress.  Learn Squidoo.  Learn to write articles and sales copy.  Learn SEO techniques.  Learn social media optimization.  Learn all you can – I have mentioned some really good free resources in my previous posts “5 Free Education Resources That Every New Marketer Needs To Know” to help you grow your skills.  And guess what?  After a short time you will have gained real money making knowledge that most people will never know or understand.

Internet marketing and SEO techniques are also what local businesses are beginning to see the real value of, especially blogs and SEO.  More and more job listings are looking for people with internet marketing, SEO and social media skills.  Does this spark something in you?  Internet Marketing can be a valuable new skill.  Learn how to create wordpress blogs and you could have yourself a nice additional side business in your local area – installing wordpress blogs for local businesses.  Who knows, it could be your main business over time.  Every  local business should have a blog for several reasons including:

• posting regularly adds valuable, searchable information to a site
• they can quickly become an authority site in their local market
• a blog can open up a dialogue with their customers/readers and get valuable feedback
• Wordpress is really a “content management system” and they can easily manage and update their own content
• Wordpress blogs make great looking websites that are easy to customize and update

In summary, I am saying that it is very profitable to learn all you can about internet marketing and creating wordpress blogs.  These are valuable skills that have the ability to create many new job opportunities for yourself.

The process is:  (1) Build a Lens  (2) Write Articles to drive traffic to your lens   (3) Start blogging and send traffic to your articles or lenses.   The best part is  – all these methods are FREE!.

Now, you may be saying, “what the heck is a lens?”  I had never heard of one either.  A lens is a one-page website that is part of Squidoo.  Squidoo is a website community that is highly favored by Google.  Any friend of Google should be a friend of yours.  Squidoo has lenses on just about anything you can imagine from fairies to coffee to making money on the internet.  Go check it out…..I’ll wait.   Go to Squidoo here.

See what I mean?  It’s full of one page websites about nearly everything that you can imagine.  This makes it a great place for affiliate and Internet marketers to promote their products.  You can sell and promote affiliate products, e-bay products, amazon products, or your own products.

My first lens, I’m embarrassed to say, took me nearly a week.  There was no Free Squidoo Guide at that time and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  I also got stuck using the Squidoo Magic Builder  – don’t use it unless you want to! Now, I can make 2-3 lenses in one day.

Before you make a lens you need to decide what to promote.  There are 4 basic “green hungry markets” to sell to – health, wealth, love & transitions.  By green, I mean these markets will always be around.   By hungry, I mean that these markets have people looking and wanting to buy.  Your job is to give them places to buy what they want.  People won’t always buy what they need, but they will buy what they want.   A hungry “niche” market has people ready to buy.  A transitional market is something like weddings, divorces, having a baby, losing and finding a job etc.  Transitional markets are big and will always be around.

If “health” is your market then a “health niche market” would be weight loss, fitness, or nutrition etc.  Then you go deeper and more specific in your niche market such as  health – weight loss – fat loss diets – fat loss diets for kids etc.  The more words you have in your niche market phrase will keep you in a tighter niche market where the customers are ready to buy.

As a beginner marketer, the first thing you should do is make a list of all the things that you are interested in.  Stick with what you know and are interested in since you will be spending a lot of time working in this niche market.

Finding a market first and then finding a product second or vice versa is totally up to you.  It works either way.  Go to Clickbank sign up to be an affiliate then click on marketplace and find a product to promote within your niche.  You can sort the products by popularity or commission.  If this is your first lens – don’t sweat this.  Just pick something you are interested in and learn how to make a lens.  They are really fun to make and you can dress them up with videos or whatever to make them interesting.

Grab the Free Squidoo Guide by PotPieGirl.  This is a fantastic step by step guide to creating a Squidoo lens.  If you are interested in learning her complete step by step affiliate marketing system be sure and check out One Week Marketing Guide.  This is the complete system she used to make six figures after just 12 months.  She’s also very good about sending her OWM’s free bonus guides from time to time.  Her system comes with weekly checklists and action plans; all very good to keep you motivated and on track.

It doesn’t cost much and it’s well worth every penny as it will save you much time, trouble, and frustration.  It’s the system I bought to get started and I highly recommend it.  Check out One Week Marketing here.

Whatever you decide to do go ahead and grab the Free Squidoo Guide and get started making lenses.

1.  Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint is an excellent e-book guide to the world of blogging.  He is very thorough in his instructions and descriptions and it’s a very well thought out system that made him successful.  He also has a complete free video tutorial series to help you get started with setting up a word press blog.

2.  Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challange.  This is an incredible 30 day video tutorial covering all aspects of affilate marketing.  You start at the beginning with market research, keyword research and finding a clickbank product to market on your very own wordpress blog.  You can start anytime because you have access to all 30 days of instructional videos.  So you can move as quickly as you want anytime you want.

3.  Ryan Moran’s The Affiliate God.  This is also considered a 4 week video program, but the same holds here as well.  You can go through these at your own speed.  Ryan’s is presented differently from Ed’s, but I seemed to enjoy this one alot as it seemed to flow faster.  Also, TAG has a great forum that you can join in and network with other marketers. Ryan’s is definitely worth checking out.

4.  Caroline Middlebrook’s Blog.  Caroline offers a blog chock full of important money making information that anyone can duplicate.  She also offers 3 freebies that are a must in every new marketers tool box.  The Bloggers Bible offers 49, yes, 49 lessons on blogging.  Traffic Rush offers 10 free lessons and videos to understand how to drive traffic to your site or blog.  And this last one is a MUST to get – “How to Build Niche Sites With Word Press” e-book.  This book explains and give instructions on how to set up a wordpress niche site – not necessarily a blog.  Blogs are a lot of work and are useful when you want to dominate a niche where you must continually add fresh content so you can build a list.  A nich site is static and works 24/7 for you and you don’t necessarily need to add a blog to it.  We’ll go into detail about building a niche site later and I’ll share more resources for you then.

5.  Joey-Smith.com Joey Smith is an internet marketing expert who knows the industry inside and out.  Since April 2009, Joey has been offering free “webinars” every Tuesday evening at 7:00 p.m. est.  You need to pre-register before each class as there are a limited number of slots available.  Get ready for the best “hands- on” teaching experience you will ever find – aside from attending one of his paid coaching courses.   These fantastic live real-time classes are kind of like looking over his shoulder – get the picture?  You also get the opportunity to ask questions at the end of each webinar.  As of this post the class topics have been (1) Setting Up A  Blog From A to Z – Plugins To Profits (part 1)   (2) Setting Up A  Blog From A to Z – Plugins To Profits (part 2)  (3) Learn Affiliate Marketing and Fast Cash Strategies   (4) Squeeze Pages and List Building.  These are awesome video classes and he goes over step by step instructions.  And if you are in the Atlanta area, he is the MeetUp Organizer for Internet Marketers of Georgia.  We had our first meetup Thursday, April 29th and the meeting topic was Social Media Optimization.  It was an incredible group mix of internet marketing experts and beginner marketers.  Everyone will be looking forward to the next meeting.  In the meantime, join him every Tuesday evening at 7:00 p.m. est.  In case you can’t be there live – he also offers them on his website to view at your convenience.

Check out these super “free” resources for you to get started learning internet and affiliate marketing.  I have personally been through each one of these and they cover everything you need to have a good understanding of this business.  In other words, they are the best of the best.  Okay, go get started!

1.  Not understanding that there is no “one magic formula” for making money online. Well, there are only 2 ways to make money online – sell your stuff or sell somebody else’s stuff.  But there are probably close to 50 ways to do those 2 things – including the latest  “flipping” websites, blogs, lenses etc.  This is known as virtual real estate, right?  In the beginning you learn each step -  one at a time – get good at it – then move to the next step.

2.  Not knowing when to jump in and get started.  You can get so caught up in learning, studying, reading etc., you will be online for hours – just categorizing websites and information away for later use (then you’ll forget about them).  There is no perfect time – you just jump in the water and start swimming.  So start slow – maybe with Squidoo.

3.  Learn one skill at a time.  Master it and then learn another skill like setting up wordpress blogs and niche sites. Whether it is building Squidoo lenses or article writing etc.  Learn each piece of the puzzle really well and then build from there.  When I made my first Squidoo lens it took me nearly a week!  They are really good practice for building word press niche sites later on.  Squidoo lenses will teach:  how to crank out good content,  the art of design and making something visually stimulating and interesting, basic marketing principles (AIDA) and the art of preparation.  Before I begin a lens I have a checklist to follow etc.  I can now make 3 lenses in one day.  And you will, too.

4.  Not joining a forum soon enough.  It took me some time before I joined one as everyone kept insisting all online marketing is a scam etc.  It is not – and they do not know anything about the industry.  There are membership forums and free to join forums.  It’s up to you which way you want to go.  An excellent free forum is the Warrior Forum.  You can look for answers, ask questions, join a mastermind group or just find an IM buddy.  You can save a lot of time and frustration this way.

5.  Not utilizing Skype.  Skype is unbelievably easy and efficient.  It is a free web based communication tool.  If you find a mastermind group to join – you can have  group chats with voice or instant messaging.  Get a web cam and get comfortable being on camera.  One day you may create your own YouTube videos at some point.  Web cams are inexpensive at Target or Walmart.  I don’t like the way I look on camera, but video is a very important marketing tool.

6.  Having a good routine and sticking to it.  If you don’t have a day job by choice or what not (like me) then it’s very important to keep a routine going.  Get up early and be at your desk no later than 9:00 am.  Work regular hours and take small breaks when you can.  Stop at a normal time – no later than 8:00 p.m.   I got in a terrible habit and this would make me lose valuable working time.  I would work all day – up into the early morning hours….sometimes until 2 or 3 a.m.  My eyes would be so strained that after a few days of this kind of rigor I would have to stay completely off the computer to let my eyes get back to normal.  Plus the late nights – I couldn’t get up early…..  See what I’m saying?  I also have a family to take care of and I was computer obsessed.

7.  Signed on too many email lists. In the beginning as you search for information and learn the industry, you will sign up for every freebie under the sun.  At first it is all new and you  benefit from it, but after you round the learning curve you will see that they have become distractions.  Don’t let this happen – they will eat your valuable time and before you know it – it’s late in the day and you’ve got nothing accomplished.  Either trim those down or put them in a daily folder and set aside a certain time each day or night to read and discard quickly.

8.  Listening to Others. Internet marketing is not a scam.  The ones who say this do not understand the industry.  Keep going.  It is a lot of hard work and you can make a very good income working from home.  You will find a formula that works for you.  A secret of success is finding a niche market that is something you are passionate about.  You will be thinking, dreaming, eating and sleeping this market and it becomes much easier when you like it too.