Introduction
By reading this article, it shows that you are among the very few people who really want to get ahead in life. I assure you that this material will be both a guide and a challenge to you.
A guide by introducing you to outstanding business opportunities, and a challenge because you won’t have any valid reasons for remaining where you are in life after learning what it contains.
You now have access to information that could transform the heart and finances of the poorest Nigerian into that of a king.
AFFILIATE MARKETING.
Affiliate marketing is actually based on a very simple concept. It’s all about helping the myriad of businesses who market their products and services online sell them, and you in turn earning commissions (a percentage) for each product or service you help them sell.
Affiliate marketing is really very straight forward; sell something to somebody and earn a commission in return. Sounds very uninteresting right? You will ask, ‘what’s the difference from someone who opens a shop across the street or even in the market? By telling you that this method of making money on the internet is still by selling something then where's the difference from selling offline? Now know the difference. The difference lies in the potential reach of the different markets you both operate in. Your neighbour’s market is limited to the people in his immediate vicinity, while yours is not. Your market is everybody who has access to an internet connected computer anywhere in the world! Got it? This proposition sounds very simple, but it will require lots of imagination to see all the possibilities that it has for you.
Presently, there are about 1 billion people with access to the internet (which is constantly increasing), and this makes the Internet the world’s largest marketplace. It is open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. There are no weekends, no public holidays and no strikes! So let’s kick-off!
OVERVIEW
Welcome to the lucrative world of Affiliate marketing. In the simplest terms, this is what happens - You send people to someone else's website. They buy something or sign up for something (i.e. fill out a form or survey) and you are paid a commission. It is a revenue sharing arrangement set up between companies selling products or services and affiliates (you). You are rewarded for sending customers to the company's website (and in most cases who eventually buy).
These pay-per-sale or pay-per-lead programs are easy to join. In an affiliate program, a company (website) pays you to generate sales for them from your pay-per-click advert, banner, newsletter or email. There are thousands of companies that will pay you commissions for the sales or leads you generate for them.
To join an affiliate program is totally free and easy to do. You are not required to buy and stock the product (as in distributorships). It just involves filling out a form – just as you do when you sign-up for an email account. Affiliate marketing is the ideal way to quickly and easily make money online as you do not need to come up with your own product or service. All you need do is choose a way to promote someone else's product or service effectively. You can actually begin making money in as little as 15 minutes!
EARN COMMISSIONS WITHOUT SALES!
In some affiliate programs, the persons you refer to a website do not even need to buy anything. If they fill out a form, request a free report or download software for trial, you get paid. There are several web sponsors that have several of these pay-per-lead programs.
STARTING OUT
Basically, what you need to do is to drive internet traffic to a website or company that you partner with. How you do this does not matter, it could be from a banner advert on your website, a link in your e-mail, your newsletter or from an advert in a pay-per-click search engine e.g. (www.google.com). Reasonably, let me assume that you are just new to the internet. Being new the ideal place for you to start is on Google.com. When you learn more you might then get a website which you can use to pre-sell your customers.
WHY GOOGLE COM
Presently, Google.com is the most popular search engine on the internet and boasts of more than 200 million searches every single day! These searches are made by people all over the world seeking answers to their questions or people out rightly looking for products and services to buy. Note: people who will be able to buy through your ads are people in more developed countries where the use of credit cards are common. However, it does not matter if you are in Nigeria or any other part of the world. Affiliates in the US do not have any notable advantage over you period! Now since people go to Google.com to research their potential purchases, it serves as a good place to show them those product and services you are affiliated with. Are you scared already? Please don't be, you will find it all easy by the time you are through. Ok.
GOOGLE ADWORDS
Google AdWords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising system run by Google. This is presently the best advertising system developed by man so far as you are only charged when and only when someone clicks on your advert. Google AdWords appear as little text ads on the right of your search results on Google.com
IN SUMMARY
You write Google AdWords ads promoting a company’s product or service. In your Google AdWords ad is a link, and when your AdWords ad is clicked this link contains information about you and shows that the visitor came through you. When the user gets to the site you are promoting, your affiliate ID is registered automatically.
Now when the customer buys something or fills out a form on the site, you are paid a commission. However, if the customer does not buy at the time, you do not need to worry as many merchant sites place small programs called "cookies" on the customers computer for as long as 180 days which is about 6 months. This means that if that customer comes back to the site on a later date and makes a purchase or registers for something, you still get your commission.
By the time you are through reading this manual you would have learnt all the tricks that are required to exploit the popularity of the popular search engine Google.
Things you need:
v Access to the internet (a café is very ok).
v A few hours of work weekly.
v A credit or debit card (You can get this from most Nigerians Banks)
Recommended: Go to any branch of Zenith Bank and ask for their WebSurfer Card - It’s a virtual MasterCard. They charge you $20 per year to own the card and the initial deposit is just $100. Your account will be ready in a matter of days.
v A domiciliary account.
v A Virtual Address (US Address)
You will get this from www.GraphCard.com. Register with them and login. You will see ‘get virtual address’. Click on it and follow the rest of the process. Choose the ‘Aluminum Plan’ when you get to it. Note that it isn’t a free service.
NB: The Virtual Address is the address you will use to sign-up with ClickBank or any other affiliate website that doesn’t accept Nigerians.
NB2: GraphCard will cash your affiliate cheque on your behalf. When you are registering on ClickBank use GraphCard.com’s business name: ‘LFR COMMUNICATIONS INC’ in the ‘Payee Name’ form field.
NB3: To add or withdraw money from your GraphCar.com account you will need to use their sister website: www.VirtualTerminalNetwork.com (VTN).
Once you transfer your money from GraphCard to VTN, VTN will pay your earnings directly in to your Nigerian bank account (current account).
Beginning
1. Choose an email address for you affiliate correspondence. You can use your regular email address or you can create one specifically for your affiliate correspondences.
2. Decide how you want to handle commission. Do you want to receive them through check or transfer?
3. Although you are now ready to register with affiliate programs, it is not essential that you do it right now. You can join later once you've identified a merchant you would like to promote.
Tip: Information products (books, software etc) are presently the highest selling products online. It is not that other products do not sell, but these sell more. So my suggestion is that you stick to information products.
STEP 2: Sign up for an affiliate program and get your own affiliate ID.
STEP 3: Sign for Google AdWords.
STEP 4: Research keywords for your AdWords campaign. These key words are the words you will choose so that if anybody making a search on Google, your AdWords ad will appear.
STEP 5: Create your own AdWords campaign, advertising the product or service you have chosen.
STEP 6: Analyze your initial results; if you discover from your analysis that your initial testing is making you money, then continue with the campaign if not redo them.
STEP 7: Relax and count your commissions! As you can see, this is actually a very simple process but it is imperative that you master all these steps in order to run a successful AdWords campaign. It is possible to do the first 5 steps within a few short hours. However, I would advise you to do things thoroughly and spend more time on researching your keywords. When you first start running AdWords campaigns it might take you quite some time to do your first campaign. After a while you will be able to get this down in much less time.
The benefit lies in the fact that once the initial work is taken care of there's little on-going work required. Now let me take you through the 6 steps. You can handle seven all by yourself.
WHAT ARE AFFILIATE PROGRAMS?
Affiliate programs which are sometimes called referral or partnership programs are basically commission based sales schemes. You drive people to a site and pick up a percentage of any sales those users generate. You benefit from your commission and the website benefits from sales it wouldn't otherwise have made. If you've ever gone to a website and seen links to eBay.com or another website, those were affiliate links.
HOW TO SIGN-UP FOR AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM.
Just like any other marketing venture, you need to be doubly careful in the selection of an affiliate program to promote. The beauty of an affiliate program lays in the easy way it opens up for you to make money with very little effort. Instead of having to come up with a product by yourself, you just send people to a partner's product and take a cut.
TIP: The key to your affiliate marketing success is to choose the right program right from the beginning.
Note: Several commercial sites run affiliate program because they know that they only have to pay a commission only if a sale is actually made. They know it is a proven way to generate revenue without risk. This means that there will be several affiliate programs for you to choose from.
However, while it might be tempting to go for programs that pay the highest commissions, you won't be paid a dime if your users won't go to the website or don't buy if they get there. You must be certain that the people you are driving to a site you have a partnership with have a genuine interest in the product. With Google AdWords you can always target your advertisement to a given group of people who are already looking for the product you have.
Three ways to make money from Affiliate programs
1. Sign up for an Affiliate program and advertise it on Google. This is certainly the quickest and simplest approach and can earn you money the first day you begin.
2. Look for a profitable affiliate program, and then build a website around that area. Finally you can then submit your website to the top search engines like Google.com, Yahoo etc and then get free visitors to your site.
3. Look for an area you are interested in, then build a website around it, look for affiliate programs that are related and then put them on your site.
I will undertake to take you thoroughly through the first method, the other two methods you can do after you learn the first.
HOW TO FIND AFFILIATE PROGRAM THAT WILL MAKE YOU MONEY.
Hints to selecting an affiliate program that is right for you and that will make you money:
Ø Look for affiliate programs where you make at least $25 per sale.
Ø Find out if they have a comprehensive statistics page listing the number click through it’s sales and your earnings so you can know how well you are doing in your campaigns.
Ø Find out how often you will be paid. And decide if you will like their payment schedule. Some like www.ClickBank.com pay as often as every2 weeks while others like www.Amazon.com pay quarterly (www.clickbank.com has my highest recommendation, they specialize only on digital downloadable products and their commissions are very high).
Ø Model success: use the methods that other successful affiliates use to get the best results.
Ø Do they offer top level support? If they won't answer your questions satisfactorily and in time, you don't want to work with them!
Some very lucrative programs.
§ Information products: These include e-books, softwares and all digital downloadable products. They have very high profit margins and hence are very lucrative to promote. You can earn up to 70% of the purchase price of a product in this category. The website www.clickbank.com specializes only on products like this.
§ Electronics: This is a highly competitive industry with low margins. Sales are usually bigger ticket items not purchased often.
§ Consumables: These include products that are used regularly and must be purchased continually. You will be better off with program under this category that offer recurring/residual commissions.
Top Searches.
Always be on the lookout for what's hot. What are the new topics coming out and what products do you think are related to these topics?
Places to look for the top searched keywords are Yahoo buzz, Google Zeitgeist and then subscribe to www.wordtracker.com‘s weekly newsletter that sends you the top searched keywords every week.
Look into the future, what trends do you see coming. What new products do you see coming into the market? The first people to pioneer in a niche make lots of money.
MORE WAYS TO IDENTIFY EXTREMELY PROFITABLE AFFILIATE PROGRAM
a) Is the product desirable?
As a matter of fact, if you seriously want to make any money from an affiliate program, you must have to sell it to lots of people. This implies that the product you are promoting must be desirable. If the product is good, then it will sell itself the only thing you will need to do is to present it to the customer.
b) Is the website reliable?
You will have to make sure that the company has established a presence online - that they have been online for a while and are trusted. This is important since you would want to be paid what you have earned and on time too.
c) Consider a multi-tier program
Actually, selling products or having people sign up for a product through you are not the only ways to make money from affiliate programs. Someone can actually make quite a living without having to sell a single product. How? You can join a multi-tier affiliate program and recruit other affiliates to promote that product. Under this type of arrangement, you earn a commission when any of these affiliates you recruit under you make a sale.
Below is an illustration of the benefits of a multi-tier program
Level 1: (10 sales) = $20 x 10 = $200
(when commission for each sales = $20)
Level 2: (25 sales) = $10 x 25 = $250
(when 2nd level commission = $10)
Level 3: (30 sales) = $2 x 30 = $60
(when 3rd level commission = $2)
Here you earned only $200 from your personal effort and a whooping $310 came from the people you recruited.
d) Do they offer real time online statistics?
You need to be informed continuously on how your hard work is paying off. If you'll have to wait a long time to see your stats, then you'll be more likely to lose interest in the program. You will have to look for affiliate programs that offer you real-time, instantly updated stats that you can access online anytime. It is always very encouraging and morale boosting when you see how your sales and commissions are piling up. It gives you the encouragement to promote the program further.
e) Do they offer opportunities to earn residual income?
Earning residual income means your ability to earn to commissions on the subsequent times a user you brought to a site earlier comes back to make another purchase. It is in your best interest to look for programs that offer opportunities for residual income.
f) Do they use 'Cookies'?
Cookies are small computer programs a website uses to save information on a visitor's computer which can be recalled whenever the visitor comes back to the website. Affiliate websites will normally save cookies on every visitor’s computer which indicates who referred the visitor to the website. What this means is that if the visitor doesn't buy immediately, you will always be credited with the sale whenever the visitor comes back.
g) Are the terms clear?
A legitimate and trustworthy affiliate program should spell out clearly what you will earn for your efforts. Unless a merchant spells out exactly what you will receive for your efforts avoid them.
MORE TIPS ON CHOOSING PROFITABLE PROGRAMS
· Does the affiliate program offer a free way to join without your having to buy their product or services? Is the product or service related your target audience?
· Can they notify you by email when a sale is made? (You may not want this feature when you start to make a lot of sales - those $25 sales notifications can start to be like spam except that each time you receive them you've just received another $25!)
· Do they offer back-end products so that you can get repeats sales from the same person?
· How often do you get paid?
· Do they offer 24/7 support?
· Do they offer a customer several ordering options so that you won't lose sales simply because their payment method wasn't convenient for the customer?
· Do they use a reputable system to track your ads?
WHAT DOES THE HIGHEST EARNING AFFILIATE EARN?
An indication of your earning potential is to find out how much the top affiliate earns from the program you are trying to promote. This should give you a good idea of your earning potential from that affiliate program. From the earnings of the top affiliate you should be able to figure out if it is worthwhile to spend your time on the program or not.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)
While promoting any affiliate program you choose. It is important that you get a proper return on your investment (ROI). Now assuming that you clinch a sale after every hundred clicks and your Cost Per Click is 10 cents. This means that it cost you $10 to make a sale on the average and so you should be making at least $25 from each sale for it to be worthwhile. However, this depends on the particular product you are promoting, if you have a product a where you make 5 sale from every 100 people, you can promote such a product if it pays you as little as $5 commissions per sale and you will still end up with some good profit.
WHERE DO YOU FIND AFFILIATE PROGRAMS?
Once you have a clear understanding of the kind of affiliate program you wish to promote, your next task is to find these affiliate programs. Luckily for us there are many online businesses that have affiliate programs for us. There are also affiliate Networks and Directories that have several affiliate programs under them.
AFFILIATE NETWORKS AND DIRECTORIES
Affiliate Networks act as brokers between merchants and affiliates. A major benefit of Affiliate Networks is that affiliates have access to a variety of affiliate programs at a single source. With affiliate Networks you will not have to go to different websites to sign up for their affiliate programs. Furthermore, affiliate Networks administrate all affiliate programs associated with their network. The Network will pay you a single commission check comprising your total earnings from all the affiliate programs they administer that you promoted. All affiliate Networks maintain a list of affiliate program by category.
Most affiliate networks are free to join. Once you become registered in the Network, you can browse through their products and then choose the ones that interest you.
NETWORKS AND COMMISSION TYPES OFFERED.
Below is a list of the top affiliate networks and the type of commission these networks offer.
KEY:
CPL: Cost Per Lead. You earn a commission for every person you bring to the merchant that signs up.
CPC: Cost Per Click. This type is for people who own websites. You are paid each time a visitor to your websites clicks on an advert on your site. These programs are open to lots of abuse so they are usually scarce. An example of this is Google AdSence.
CPS: Cost Per Sale. Here you earn a commission if the user makes a purchase.
CPM: This means cost per impression. This means getting paid for the number of times an ad appears on your website.
CPA: Cost Per Action. Used interchangeable with cost per sale although it is a general term.
TOP AFFILIATE NETWORKS
1. www.ClickBank.com: They specialize only on digital downloadable products. Because of the nature of their products, they offer very high commission since their profit margins are usually high. You can earn commissions of up to 75% of the purchase price of their products you promote. Their programs are mainly of the CPS type.
2. Commission Junction (www.CJ.Com): This is the top affiliate network for companies that sell physical products. Some of the biggest internet properties have their programs here. The type of programme they run are CPL and CPS.
3. www.BeFree.com: Also owned by Commission Junction. They also offer CPL and CPS type of programs with multi-tier commissions. Some of the merchants of this network include Verizon wireless, Adidas America and Citi Financial.
Others include:
4. www.Performics.com
5. www.WebSponsors.com
6. www.ShareaSale.com
7. www.Cliackxchange.com
8. www.AffiliateFuel.com
9. www.AffiliateTraders.com
10. www.ClickGalore.com
11. www.LeadCrunch.com
12. www.LinkShare.com
13. www.QuinStreet.com
14. www.FineClicks.com
15. www.FastClicks.com
16. www.DarkBlue.com
AFFILIATE DIRECTORIES
Affiliate directories are also another good source for finding good affiliate programs. They are websites that list different affiliate programs along with their reviews and descriptions. They bring to light their advantages and disadvantages making it easier for you to choose the better ones.
TOP AFFILIATE DIRECTORIES:
1. www.Affiliate-Options.com
3. www.AssociatePrograms.com
4. www.AdBility.Com
5. www.ClickQuick.com
6. www.CashPile.com
7. www.AffiliatesDirectory.com
8. www.BestCommissions.com
9. www.esponsors.ws
10. www.AssociateSearch.com
11. www.AssociateCash.com
12. www.Access-Affiliate-Programs.com
13. www.Affiliates4u.co.uk
14. www.Brishney.com
15. www.ProfitToGo.com
16. www.AffiliateLife.com
17. www.AffiliateAdvisor.com
18. www.AffiliateMatch.com
19. www.Webmaster-Programmes.com
20. www.Click2Lead.com
21. www.AffiliateOptions.com
22. www.SmokeSoft.com
23. www.OnlineBusiness.com
24. www.MoneyMakingIndex.com
25. www.IncomeMax.com
26. www.StartEarning.com
27. www.SponsorDirectory.com
28. www.ReveNews.com
29. www.Refferalincome.com
PART 3: HOW TO WRITE GOOGLE ADWORDS
Now that you've known what affiliate programs are and how to choose profitable ones, let us now learn how to advertise them for the best results.
GOOGLE ADWORDS
Google AdWords is the most popular Pay-Per-Click program on the internet. It has earned several people from many different parts of the world lots of money and it will continue to do so. Google AdWords ads are displayed to the right of search results each time a search is made on google.com.
They are also displayed on thousands of other websites which partner with Google.com on their AdSense program. On the average Google gets over 200 million searches every day so your ad reaches a vast number of people.
When you create a Google AdWords ad, you choose specific keywords that will trigger you ad and then you specify how much you are willing to pay for each click. Your ad will start running in less than 15 minutes after you set it up and submit your billing information.
MAXIMIZING YOUR ADWORDS CAMPAIGN
Read, learn and study Google's optimization tips, you will find it here: https://adwords.google.com/select/tips.html
Ø Until you gain more experience, keep your bids on keyword as low as possible.
Ø Start with a low daily budget; say $5 so that you can test things without getting your fingers burnt.
Ø Watch your ads very closely in the beginning and change them when necessary.
Ø Put your keyword list together then draft your advert.
Ø Target your keywords, don't use generic terms. If you are advertising ‘red tennis shoes’ don’t use only ‘shoes’ or ‘tennis’.
Ø Try using the same keywords or phrases you used in the title of your ads. This will that get you a higher click through rate.
Test and adjust your ad copy as you go. Constantly tweak your ad to get better Click Through Rates (CTRs).
· Include both the singular and plural versions of the keywords you use.
· Use keyword matching to achieve higher CTRs. This can be done by putting your keywords in a bracket e.g. [red tennis shoes]. With keywords enclosed like that, your ads will only show up when and only when 'red tennis shoes' are typed in that order. Your add won't show up when ‘tennis’, ‘tennis shoes’ or any other terms are searched except the keyword matched ones.
· Create a separate ad group for your misspellings list and another one for your abbreviated keyword phrase etc.
TRACKING YOUR CAMPAIGNS
You will need to keep track of your campaigns and make sure that you are making money and not losing it. Log in to your affiliate program, visit the statistics/reporting section and see how much commissions you have earned. Then log in to your Google AdWords account and see how much the corresponding campaign cost you the same day. Subtract your cost from your commissions and whatsoever result you get is your profit.
Frequently Asked Questions.
1. How can I get a credit card?
You can get a credit card from most of the Nigerian banks. However, Zenith Bank has one they sell ‘over the counter’. It’s called Web Surfer. The minimum opening requirement for the Web Surfer is about $100, and they charge you an annual fee of $20.
Alternately, you can purchase smaller credit card units like $50 and $25 from the website; www.GraphCard.com. The difference is that GraphCard charges you higher.
2. What do I need a credit card for?
You need a credit card to pay for your advertisements on Google.com
3. I tried signing up on ClickBank.com but I didn’t see Nigeria.
Register on www.GraphCard.com as I said earlier and get and pay for a US Virtual Address. Then use it to sign up on ClickBank.
INTERNET ‘REAL-ESTATE’.
Do you know how newspaper companies make their money? My guess is that your answered from the sale of their newspapers at N80 – N150/copy. Well, I wouldn’t actually leave that out but let me reveal their secret to you right now; the bulk of their income comes from the advertisement space they sell in their newspapers.
Secondly let me ask you again; how do you suppose newspapers will furnish their websites with even more news than in their newspapers despite the fact that you’ll be reading all that stuff for free? I guess you’ve gotten where I am driving at – they generate revenue from their websites by placing paid advertisements on them! That’s the same strategy used by Yahoo.com, Google.com and several of the web’s billion dollar companies.
Do you pay Yahoo or Hotmail before you open an email account with them?
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what they stand to benefit by letting you open an email account for free?
Do you know that Both Google.com and Yahoo.com are worth several billion
dollars each?
Well, that’s the power of selling ‘real-estate’ on the internet among other things. Of course, you do not need to own a website as big as Yahoo.com to qualify to sell advertising space on your website, in fact neither do you need to personally meet with anybody to advertise on your website before you can get adverts.
Right now, I am about to introduce you to one of the Internet’s biggest secrets: the Google AdSense.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a revolutionary advertising program introduced by Google.com, the Internet’s premier search engine. It is a direct result of Google AdWords which we treated earlier.
Since the Google AdWords advertisements show up on the Google.com website only when someone searches for an item or topic related to the advert. Google further devised a means to earn more revenue by letting website owners (webmasters) choose to display adverts (that other people) placed through AdWords on their own websites (instead of just on Google.com alone).
I will not go into technicalities, but Google.com automatically reads through your website, determines its major keywords, and then displays ads related to the content of your website. You are paid each time someone clicks on any of the adverts displayed on your website – these types of adverts are called Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements. For example, if the central theme of your website is ‘Nigeria’, then the AdSense adverts displayed on your site will be exactly targeted to Nigerians. You can register for Google AdSense at www.Google.com/adsense.
Beautifully, you do not even need your own website to start earning from AdSense – you can do so with a free website or a free blog. You can start your own blog at www.Blogger.com – it is also owned by Google.com. I recently read an article about a guy who earned more than $2 million from PPC adverts on his websites (mostly discussion forums) last year and there are even people who earn far much more. It all depends on the amount of traffic you are able to drive to your website.
Google pays you at the end every month when the AdSense revenue from your website has gotten to $100. NB: Do not be fooled into thinking you can repeatedly click on your own adverts to make money – Google will eventually find out and ban you from their network. Once you are banned, you stay banned!
Furthermore, www.Yahoo.com and www.MSN.com also have their own PPC programs but I’ll advice you to begin with Google.com as they have been there for some time and will provide you more targeted ads for your site.
Some websites you can create around AdSense include:
• Forums e.g. www.NairaLand.com
• Blogs
E-MAIL MARKETING AND
NEWSLETTER PUBLISHING.
Newsletter publishing online is just like newsletter publishing offline (just like publishing hard copy newspapers). However the beauty lies in the fact that it costs less to produce (you don’t need to go to a printing press!), you keep a customer database of your subscribers and then you can set your publication or messages on automatic.
In business, there are actually very few things as important as knowing who your clients and customers are and the ability to contact them whenever the need arises. Classic examples are the local telecom companies we have right here in Nigeria. MTN has all the phone numbers of its customers and can easily communicate new offers and promos to them. And a word of advice from me – whatever business you will ever engage in the future do make sure you keep a current database of your clientele – I can’t over emphasize it’s importance!
Now how you are going to profit from this is also through advertising or making your newsletter available to only paid subscribers. For the advertisement part, you can source for adverts from organizations and individuals and then secondly, you can recommend someone else’s product with your affiliate links in it of course or even advertise your own products!
However you cannot place AdSense Ads in your newsletters as Google doesn’t permit it but you can publish your newsletters on a website; say a blog and then send your subscribers a link to read it – this way you can also benefit from AdSense.
To own a newsletter does not require much financial commitment. All you need is an account with an email AutoResponse service provider and then a website through which people can register for your newsletter. Owning a website is not compulsory as people can still register by sending an email to an address you’ll provide them and be registered. But I’ll advice you to use a website.
Some good examples are www.GetResponse.com, www.Aweber.com and www.MyOnlineBusinessManager.com (this is a Nigerian company and you can pay in Naira).
For your newsletter, you’ll require a theme or a central topic you’ll address. Some examples are success motivation, video games, dieting, etc. And you should choose something you are interested in. However you can encourage your subscribers to submit their own articles so that you can publish them too and you can also get articles from the web. There are several websites out there that are dedicated to articles examples are www.GoArticles.com and www.ArticleCity.com. Please don’t forget to acknowledge the authors of any article you may choose for your newsletter whenever you publish it. You can publish your newsletter every week, 2 weeks or as often as you deem
fit.
An example of a good newsletter is www.ThinkTQ.com (visit their website and then subscribe).
Finally, as I said at the beginning, the most beautiful thing about a newsletter is that you can automate it. This means that you do not have to send it yourself each time. You simply write all the messages you want for a whole week, month, year or any number of years at a single time and then have it automatically sent to the recipients whenever the time arrives.
TAKING YOUR OFFLINE BUSINESS ONLINE.
Some time ago, the great Bill Gates said, ‘Very soon there’ll be two types of business people – people whose businesses are online and those that are out of business!’ Assuming this doesn’t ring a bell to you let me remind you that once upon a time in this very Nigeria, students used to queue up to register for Jamb examinations, same with checking for their examination centers and results.
Right now as you already know most businesses and organizations in Nigeria are already going online – where they belong! To register for Jamb, WAEC, NECO, etc you just need to get a scratch card then go to the internet and do your thing. So is it is with getting admission in all Nigerian Universities and Polytechnics.
Are you aware of online banking? Do you know how I found out you paid when you told me you have? Have you tried getting a visa lately or an International passport? Are you aware that most companies now request their job applications to be sent to them online?
Seriously, if you were of the opinion that the concept of businesses going online is something of the future, then I really do think you should think again. Remember, just a few short years ago the terms ‘GSM’, ‘sim card’,’ recharge card’, ‘access days’ and several more were completely foreign to us (right here in Nigeria) but today can you even think of living a full week without your handset?
Interestingly, Mobile phones didn’t come out today, yesterday or in the last ten years – in fact they’ve been there for quite a while and did make the people who took advantage of the possibilities they offered rich. Right now, they’ve only just been in Nigeria for a short while and have made such a difference. Now the internet we are talking about is a million times grander than telephones and the question is, ‘Would you take advantage of it?’
Today there are no longer boundaries due to easier and faster communication and with the internet; your business is open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Besides, people wouldn’t need to come to your office to know what your company or organization is about. If your business involves keeping an inventory (as in you have physical products for sale e.g. a shop, a clothing line, an art gallery, a bookstore etc.) then taking your business to the internet will be priceless to you and will increase your bottom-line (profits) a thousand fold. And if you are into the sales of digital & information products and you’re not taking advantage of the possibilities the internet offers then you really are missing greatly.
In conclusion, it will benefit you extensively if you take your offline business to the internet even if you sell services that cannot be rendered online. For example, in places like the U.S. you can book for restaurant reservations over the internet. I know we are not exactly there yet, but you can borrow a cue from them. And besides, it projects a more professional image of your business.
ONLINE CURRENCY TRADING AND EPAYMENTS
This is also another very lucrative online business that you can easily take advantage of. Actually, right now in Nigeria, lots of people desire to make purchases over the internet but their major problem lies in a medium of payment.
These are two different opportunities open to you in this area:
Ø E-gold trading
Ø Making overseas purchases for people.
E-gold trading: e-gold is an electronic payment solution that its value is actually based on the day to day prices or real gold. The day to day price fluctuations is however not our concern right now. E-gold is the preferred method of accepting payments online in Nigeria, and in most countries where credit cards and other electronic payment options are not readily obtainable. Because of its prominence and timeliness, you can make quite some money trading e-gold.
Trading e-gold means serving as a broker (just like a foreign currency trader in a bureau de change). You both accept payments in Naira, then send an equivalent amount of e-gold to the person who paid (sell) and also accept e-gold from people, then pay them in Naira (buy). Just like a bank or a company that exchanges foreign currencies, your profit comes from the rates at which you both sell and buy. Presently, a dollar exchanges for about N129 a piece but e-gold traders sell as high as N160 to a dollar.
This means that; at N160 to a dollar, your profit for each dollar you sell is about N31. The value N31 might not seem much to you but bear in mind that mostly people do not buy e-gold of less than N3000 at a go. This means that at N3, 000 your profit from a single sale is roughly N580. Now imagine when you sell to 10 or even a 100 people in a day – that’s about N5800 and N58000 in profits respectively.
Opening an e-gold account is free and does not take time. You can open one right now at their website: www.e-gold.com Furthermore, you should not misconstrue my examples and positive delivery as a definite promise that you will earn N58000 daily – of course you can earn far more than that daily. But bear in mind that every business venture requires some time and work dedicated to before it will work. A friend of mine, who trades e-gold, once mentioned that he makes up to N150k in some days.
Here are some Nigerian based e-gold companies you can model yourself after – at least now that you are starting out:
• www.GoldKobo.com
Finally, another profitable strategy you can use, is to have one or more products for sale on the internet and then to accept payment for it using egold where you are the dealer.
How & where to buy e-gold at wholesale prices.
This is obviously the tricky part in trading e-gold. A good place to buy e-gold
at wholesale prices is at: www.OmniPay.com or www.IceGold.com. You pay them by wire transfer.
International Purchasing Services: This is also another strategic opportunity you can easily take advantage of if you have the means. Lots of Nigerians desire to buy some of the items they regularly come across on the internet. Now most of those shops offering them are mostly in the U.S. and this makes it very difficult – because of a means of payment.
Now, if you have a relation or a friend who resides in the U.S or in Europe where they can easily purchase those items, then you can talk to them if they are serious, and then go into the business of making overseas purchases for people.
If this sounds farfetched to you, then you might need to hear that lots of people are already doing it. A good example is the Nigerian website: www.iShopAfrica.com.
I’ll advice you to study their processes very well and then model your business after theirs, then add your own ideas.
WEBSITE DESIGNING AND HOSTING
These are two opportunities that are much related, and that you can take advantage of simultaneously. For the web hosting part, you will have to be a reseller of some already existing hosting company – as I guessed you might not already possess enough financial resources to provide servers and adequate power supply to keep the websites you will host online for 24 hrs.
There are several online companies offering reseller programs. You can either join one of them or find a host where you can purchase their packages and then be able to sell them for a handsome enough profit.
Right now, there are a number of Nigerian based hosts (who you can pay in Naira) and then resell the hosting at a profit. To make the most profits from reseller hosting, it would be nice if you combined your hosting and designing services together.
An example of a Nigerian based host is: www.aimtechng.com. I know you must be saying: but I can’t design websites. If that’s true, web designing could now be as simple as composing an email because of some software called HTML (Hyper Text Mark Up Language) Editors or What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editors. It would just be as if you’re composing an email or using Microsoft word.
The two most popular ones are: Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage. For comprehensive tutorials on how to use Dreamweaver visit: http://www.adobe.com/support/dreamweaver/tutorial_index.htm l And for comprehensive tutorials for using FrontPage visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=299DFA4E-8BEC-4A9D-9F8A-277F43EE8EF6&displaylang=EN However, if you would want to learn HTML; it is not difficult. E.g. <b>You</b>means that You should be bolded. There are lots of free HTML tutorials available online. My favorites are:
• http://www.w3schools.com/html/
CSS and JavaScript.
CSS and JavaScript are used in addition to HTML to make website more attractive and interactive. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. With CSS, you can define properties very precisely. While with JavaScript you can add effects like mouseovers, dynamic dates, etc.
You can find free CSS and JavaScript tutorials here:
• http://w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp
Content Management Systems (CMS).
Additionally, you can create magnificent websites using CMS. CMS websites like Joomla, Mambo and PHPNuke are all open source projects and you can use their extensive programming work which they offer free to your financial advantage.
With a CMS website, you can easily have registration on your website and lots more. Almost all the websites these days are created with a CMS system. With a CMS website it is very easy to update content on your website and you have a wide range of templates to choose from. You can respectively download Joomla, Mambo and PHPNuke at:
• www.Joomla.org
• www.MamboServer.com
TIP: You can become an amateur web designer in less than 7 days. As an amateur, you can charge your clients about N15,000 for simple websites of less than 5 pages. Now, it costs exactly N4,000 to host a website with www.aimtechng.com (50MB disk space and 1GB bandwidth). This means that your profit from a single piece of work is N12,000. Now, if you are serious at what you are doing. There’s no way you will not get up to 300 people to design for within a year. There are lots and lots of people out there who NEED websites. Some know it while others do not. It is now your duty to let them know that you can help them to get a website. And then convince them that a website will…improve their business or make their lives better in some way.
By the way, if you succeed at designing for just 300 people at just N15,000.
Your income in a year would be N3,600,000!
OWNING AN ONLINE STORE/SHOP
The concept of online shops might be new to you but it’s far from being new even right here in Nigeria. Presently, there are several thousands of online shops spread all over the internet; some of the most popular ones include: www.Amazon.com, www.Walmart.com, www.eBay.com (eBay is an online auction site), www.BarnesandNoble.com , etc. While right here in Nigeria, we have such successful online shops like www.ShopforLess.com, www.Kalahari.com, www.OmaGames.com, www.OmaPhones.com, www.BooksNG.com, etc. You can go to www.shopforless.com right now and check them out.
Most possibly, you do not have enough capital right now to fund the purchase of all the inventory www.shopforless.com presently has, however I do assure you – it’s not as important as it seems.
Now, let me introduce you to a concept called OPM which simply means Other People’s Money. As you must have noticed, you did not see the ‘physical’ items that were for sale on any online shop you must have visited, but the pictures of these items. If that did not ring a bell, let me explain how you can take advantage of OPM and having to display ‘pictures’ on your online shop. Now, here’s how to harness the advantage of OPM. Let’s assume you live in Lagos and you want to own an online shop but you do not own the items (stock) you want to sell. Here’s what you’ll have to do.
First, talk to people who are dealers of the items you’ll want to sell. Reach agreements with them where you will be able to buy the products from them at rock bottom prices. With this settled, design your website with all the items you have for sell listed on them and you’re in business! I’ll advice you to study www.shopforless.com and other online shops very well if you’ll love to engage in this type of business. If you are going to use OPM, I’ll advice you to make the processes involved in what you do as fast as possible so that you can deliver someone’s purchases to them within 24 hrs to 48 hrs.
CREDIBILITY
Credibility is obviously the most important thing in Internet marketing. The person who is buying from you doesn’t see you and is afraid of being cheated of their hard earned money. Because of this, you’ll have to find ways to make you and your business come across to your potential customer as very genuine.
These are a few ways of enhancing your online credibility:
1. Include a physical contact address.
2. Include a land line phone number.
3. Include testimonials: encourage your satisfied customers to write to you about how satisfied they are with your product or service. Then display the messages on your website – this helps a lot do not underestimate it.
4. Get endorsements from already established individuals and businesses.
5. Apply for website awards and logo endorsements.
6. Register your business with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). With this, you can easily open a bank account in your business name. You do not need to meet a lawyer to do this. Just freely walk into any CAC office nationwide and tell them you want to register the name of your business. They do not charge an arm and a leg. With just N5,000 you can have your business name registered.
7. Offer a money back guarantee. When people see that you offer a money-back guarantee, they’ll know that you have lots of confidence in the value of your product.
8. 8. Accept payments online (People can pay you online with their ATM debit cards or with Credit cards). With an InterSwitch WebPay Merchant Account, you can easily accept payments for your products and services online and it will be credited immediately to your bank account.
When people see that you accept payments with WebPay, they’ll know that you are a credible business and that your identity has been at least verified. To accept payments online with WebPay, just go to your bank website and download the application form. Print it and then submit to your branch. Alternatively, you can go to the InterSwitch website at www.Interswitchng.com.
To Accept Credit Card and PayPal payments online use www.2Checkout.com.
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