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Introduction

E-mail marketing is hands down the most powerful and effective form of online marketing. Nothing comes close. Seriously. Even search marketing with all its hype and tried-and-proven success can’t even hold the candle to just how effective list marketing can be. It’s easy to see why, survey after survey, marketing firms keep putting e-mail marketing at or near the top of their advertising preferences. Here are the reasons why.

Through e-mail marketing, you can get in front of the eyeballs of your audience members anytime anywhere. That’s right. You can be at a beach in the Bahamas somewhere writing an e-mail update. Plug that in to your e-mail service provider and your audience, regardless of where they may be in the world and regardless of what they’re doing, are sure to get your e-mail. After all, most people check their e-mail inboxes. Isn’t that awesome?

This enables you to sell more products. Since you have a de facto relationship with people who voluntarily got on your mailing list, you are able to keep the conversation going. You don’t get just one bite at the apple in trying to get list members to buy. Every time you send an update, you get a chance to convert some of your audience members into buyers.

Through e-mail, you also get to keep in touch with the needs of your audience. It’s like you’re plugged in to what they need, what they’re looking for and the problems that they face. After all, that’s the reason why they joined your mailing list in the first place. They’re looking for solutions and answers that your list can provide.

This enables you to keep a steady flow of traffic to your blog or online store. Now, this traffic may not convert right there and then but the fact that it is constant enables you to get many bites at the apple. You don’t just get a one-shot chance at converting online traffic. That traffic can come back again and again with each and every update that you spend.

If you’ve heard great things about social media, you might want to think again. Social medial marketing faces many challenges because of the evolving algorithms of platforms like Facebook. As the years go by, Facebook is sending less and less organic traffic. Even if you have a big Facebook fan page with a gigantic following, you’d be lucky for your page posts to reach a tiny fraction of your following. It’s getting worse and worse with each passing year.

With e-mail marketing, you have a higher chance of reaching your complete mailing list instead of being at the mercy of these changing social media platform algorithms. It really all boils down to how well you write your headlines and how targeted your list recruitment is. If you did your homework and you played your cards right, you stand to reach a much larger percentage of your list audience. This is not the case with the typical Facebook fan page.

Finally, with your own e-mail list, you stay in control of your access to your audience. You can even download your list members’ e-mail addresses as you move from one e-mail service provider to the next. This list is your asset. It’s not going away anytime soon.

Given all these amazing reasons, it’s no wonder lots of old-school online marketers say “The money is in the list.”

But wait… If you have just jumped in with both feet into e-mail marketing, I’ve got some bad news for you. You’re probably going to fail. There, I said it. You can fail by:

Putting up a list but it doesn’t attract many members.

Attracting enough people to your list but most don’t open your e-mails.

Building a huge list of people with many opening your e-mails - but most don’t buy anything.

The sad reality is that the vast majority of people who try their hand at e-mail marketing have very little to show for it. They spend money every single month on their e-mail service provider only to come up empty handed.

Failure in e-marketing comes in many different forms because people try many different things. Marketers also have many different circumstances and priorities. However, they all lead to the same place: very low to no income!

If you want to get into e-mail marketing and enjoy the amazing passive income it can produce for you, you are reading the best book to get your started. Seriously. No other book comes close because almost all other books out there try to pump you up about e-mail marketing. They get you all hyped up but they leave you high and dry. How come? They do not step you through a systematic and methodical way of doing modern e-mail marketing.

Let me tell you the old tricks no longer work. Get rid of them. Don’t get excited by them. Otherwise, you are just setting yourself up for failure. Unfortunately, almost all the other e-mail list marketing books out there keep rehashing the same stuff.

In this guide, you are going to get just what you need to succeed in the highly competitive yet also highly lucrative world of e-mail marketing. Put simply, I will step you through the process of putting up a modern e-mail list - one that is engineered to succeed from the ground up. I have trimmed all the fat off. There is no fluff in this book. Instead, you’re going to get clear, easy-to-understand concepts that you need to wrap your mind around for you to be successful.

Chapter 1: Identifying the Target Audience for Your Marketing Campaign

If you have a fuzzy idea of who your target audience is, you are going to fail with e-mail marketing. You really are. You might as well give up now if you are chasing after some sort of vaguely defined market.

Audience identification is crucial for niche list marketing. You cannot just target everybody. You have to drill down to a specific population of people who are trying to solve a fairly narrow set of problems. This is how you define their needs. By directly addressing the needs of these individuals, conducting enough consumer research and speaking their language, you would be able to convert a high percentage of them from website visitors to list members to product buyers.

It is crucial that you go from raw traffic to dollars in your bank account. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time. All the traffic in the world is not going to add one red cent to your bank account unless you target a specific niche market and give its audience the solutions that they are looking for.

Finding the Right Audience

So, how do you know which audience you should target? There are many different audiences out there. All of them cluster around a specific range of needs or problems. Well, it all boils down to commercial value of those needs. There are many problems out there that people are not going to pay top dollar to solve. Sure, people are looking for the right DVD set of headphones but there is a limit to people’s budgets. Different problems have different priorities.

You need to find a niche that has enough commercial value. One way to estimate this is to use Google AdWords Keyword Planner and do cost-per-click research on keywords related to your niche. If you notice that advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money per click on those keywords, then you’re in a good spot. Chances are there is enough commercial demand for that niche. People are willing to pay a significant amount of money to solve problems related to your niche.

It’s also important to make sure that you are targeting a niche that is big enough. Sure, there are lots of advertisers willing to pay a tremendous amount of money for “structured settlement” keyword traffic. We’re talking about more than $20 per click. The problem is the volume of searches for that niche is actually quite low.

Make sure the niche you are targeting has enough demand as indicated by Google Keyword Planner. This tool not only tells you how much advertisers are willing to pay per click but it will also give you an estimate of the volume of searches for keywords related to that niche. You’re looking for a nice combination of decent commercial value with decent traffic volume.

Finally, you should also pay attention to competition levels. If you pick a niche that is extremely competitive with gigantic brands monopolizing pretty much all the search volume for keywords related to that niche, you probably are going to have a tough time making inroads. You should look for a niche that is somewhat competitive but no so competitive that there’s absolutely no space for newcomers.

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Introduction

With the advent of systems like Shopify and WooCommerce that make it easier than ever to set up an online store without vast programming knowledge or deep pockets, and the prevalence of drop shipping companies that have affordable prices, e-commerce is booming like never before.

E-commerce is one of the only systems you can use to make money online that is truly long-lasting and sustainable, and, in a profitable niche, can keep making you money for many years to come.

In fact, there are ordinary people with no business background, no advanced education, and no huge starting bank account balances who are making millions selling everyday items.

If you’re interested in starting your own online store, I recommend reading this guide from start to finish. I’ll teach you the basics, and it’s up to you to pursue it.

So let’s get started.

Chapter 01 - Selecting a Profitable Niche

You can create the coolest, best looking, most exciting online store ever created, and fail miserably if you don’t choose a profitable niche. Niche selection is so important that it can literally make or break your success.

A good niche should:
Have a moderate to large audience
Have low to moderate competition
Have buyers who are passionate about the niche
Have products that are priced high enough to be profitable

You want to make sure there are enough people who are interested in the niche to support a good number of sales, but you don’t want the niche to be so saturated that it’s difficult to make a profit.

You want a market in which the buyers are passionate, or have a real need for the product. It’s going to be difficult to make good money selling ordinary products unless you have a very unique selling point, such as a drastically lower price, or some sort of value added selling point. You want to sell products people will be excited to buy, and that they will keep coming back for.

You want to make sure you have products that can be priced high enough to make you a good product without pricing you out of the market. You probably won’t make a lot of money selling products priced under a dollar, because you won’t be able to build a large enough market quickly enough, but a product priced at ten dollars or more would probably be enough to justify the opening of a store. Of course, there are people who have made fortunes with very inexpensive products, but it takes more volume than a beginner could likely manage.

A good starting point for niche research is to simply make a list of your own hobbies, interests, areas of knowledge, and needs. The more you know about a particular subject when you open the store, the easier it will be for you to source products people would want to buy and to find the right marketing channels to reach your core audience.

Once you have a list of at least 10-20 topics, you can begin to research them in earnest. You want to find out how many people might be interested in each potential niche, how many products are available that you could sell, and how much of a profit margin would be possible.

There are many different ways to do this, but one of the most popular ways is to check Amazon. Start by searching for individual products you might buy in a particular niche. For example, if you want to research the golf niche, search for things like golf clubs and golf balls and find out the bestseller rank for each product. This will give you a general idea of how well each product sells.

You want to be able to find at least a few products selling well enough to be in the top 10,000 in their main category, and in the top 1,000 would be even better.

Here is an example from a live Amazon listing for a particular brand of gold balls:

This product is currently #857 in its main category (Sports & Outdoors), which shows there is a strong market for golf balls, especially when I take a look at other products in the Golf Balls category. The top product in this category is #125 in Sports & Outdoors.

Now, you should be aware that strong demand within a main category might not always mean huge sales. Some categories will have fewer sales than others, of course. But this will give you a general idea if there is a market in the niche.

If you want to learn more about niche selection, I highly recommend checking out Ecom Smart Start. You’ll learn all about niche selection from start to finish, including dozens of broad niche topics you can use as a starting point for your brainstorming.

Chapter 02 -Finding Your Passion

It’s not enough to choose a niche that is profitable. If you choose a niche you aren’t passionate about, or one that you find you truly dislike, your business is likely to turn into a drudgery very quickly. In fact, one of the reasons many people start a business is to get away from jobs they hate, and the last thing you want is to end up in the same position you were in before you left your job—unhappy and wanting something different.

So as you look for potential niches, try to find something that interests you and you’re passionate about. This will make it easier for you to source products, market the products, and spend the time required to make your store a success.

It’s possible that you won’t have any interests that would be profitable, but it’s highly unlikely. Even if you like some relatively obscure things, there will usually be at least a decent number of other people who are also interested in it.

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Chapter 01 - Google AdSense - Definition and Overview

Google AdSense takes internet marketing to the next level. It is a helpful tool that allows website owners to select what types of ads are relevant for their target market, allowing only the most relevant ads to appear. When relevant ads appear on your

website, or ads that interest/speak to your specific target market, they are likely to click on those ads. And with Google AdSense, you earn money for every time an ad is clicked. It really is that easy!

In short, Google AdSense allows Internet marketers and website owners to work together to ensure the best possible results from results driven advertising. And do you want to know the best part about Google AdSense?... It’s FREE!

Rather than giving permission to advertisers of all varieties, Google Adsense puts the power in your hands to choose which ads make the most sense for you, your business and your target audience.

Google defines its AdSense program in the following way:

?Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site – or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts – you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

It’s also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

Google further hails AdSense as ?The flexible, hassle-free way to earn revenue online.

So, is what they say really true? Does it really work and more importantly, does it really work that well? The answer is, yes!

Google will pay you every time your site visitors click on an ad within your site. That means that you get paid whether they end up purchasing something from an advertiser or not. All they have to do is click in order for you to get paid!

In addition, you can not only choose which kinds of ads will appear on your site (as in relevant topics via keyword selection), but you also have the ability to integrate them seamlessly into your site by completely customizing the look of your Google AdSense ads. You have the ability to select a color scheme, size of the ads and and placement specifications for the ads as well.

Google also makes it very easy to follow your AdSense success by providing you with easy to read, easy to manage reports that show you which ads are being clicked, how often they are clicked, and how much you are earning with your AdSense account.

From an outside perspective, Google AdSense is, in both theory and reality, a fantastic tool. So, it’s not just a self-proclaimed useful and effective way to gain revenue for your business... It really is!

Chapter 02 - How Google AdSense Works?

While Google AdSense is an extremely user-friendly tool, it can take some time to figure out exactly how it works. You will need to become familiar with all of its features, how they work and how they can best be used to benefit your particular business, your business goals and your business needs.

Let’s take a look at some of the most basic steps involved in Google AdSense to better understand how it works.

1. You choose what and where AdSense ads will appear.

You will carefully select and specify what kinds of ads you would like to show up on your site as well as where on your site they will be placed. Google will ask you for keywords about your business, products and/or services that will help generate a topic or topics of ads that are relevant to your business.

2. Advertisers bid on ad placement in real-time.

Advertising space online is valuable real estate. That is why many advertisers are willing to pay for quality placement. With Google
AdSense, the highest bidder always wins the spot. In other words, you
won’t find advertisers with questionable businesses paying too much for advertising space, so the bidding system helps separate the ?good advertisers from the ?bad ones.

3. You get paid based on clickthrus.

Google bills those who win the bids and pay for advertising space. You then receive your payment based on the ads placed on your site and when/how often your site visitors are clicking on them.

Many people find it hard to believe that there is no fee for creating a Google AdSense account and allowing AdSense ads to be placed on your website. But the truth is, they only pay you when the ads are being clicked, so if you think about it, this method makes sense.

There is no need to pay them to advertise for others businesses. And in the same vein, they don’t pay you for simply placing the ads. There has to be positive activity in order for it to work on either end of the spectrum. The advertisers decide how much they are willing to pay for their ads (to be explored in Google AdWords) and you, as the one providing the advertising

space, benefit from the ads’ effectiveness.

AdSense is also more than just advertising. With Google AdSense, you can choose to include one or all of their ?products as a way to increase your

profit-earning potential through targeted advertising. For example, you can choose to place AdSense ads within your site (which are customizable and of course, targeted); you can also choose to include AdSense searches within your site (which help users and bring you a profit at the same time); or you can choose to place Google AdSense ads in your feeds. It’s up to you which, if not all, of these options you choose, but no matter how you look at it, Google AdSense just makes sense for business.

Remember, the more you take advantage of Google AdSense products, the more you will benefit from it.

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Chapter 01 – The Basics of SEO

Trying to get the site optimally listed on Google or other engines should be the priority exercise at every juncture. This should be part of the growth strategy of any online endeavor that is seeking ultimate success.

Literally meant to increase the site’s ranking of the web search conducted by the interested viewer, the SEO is one of the important ways to generate and direct traffic to a particular site.

The Basics

Monitoring the ranking of the site should be a priority to ensure the current efforts put into the content and choice of keywords to encourage the relevant clicks is the best for the site. Using complimenting platforms such as Marketing Vox will allow the individual to keep track of the page ranking with tools like Alexa and Google tool bar. All these will keep a regular check on the ranking and provide the feed necessary to facilitate a re-thinking exercise should there be a need to implement it.

Keywords are like the magnet or the eyes that are going to get the attraction of the SEO thus creating favorable ranking possibilities. The use of the most appropriate keywords will eventually make or break the success of the site’s ranking rate and this is the most important contributing factor from the viewing visitor’s perspective. Inserting the keywords into recognizable spots like the title tag and the page header will help too.

SEO ranking also takes into account the links the site manages to create. The integration of internal links is an easy way to boost traffic to the individual site or page thus creating a recognition element that is important.

Chapter 02 - How to Determine And Monitor Your Search Standings?

Business growth is always the ultimate goal sought after in any endeavor undertaken, thus the need to then consider the elements that are needed to successfully monitor this growth in an efficient manner.

Check In To It

The following are some tips on how this may be effectively achieved:

Through the process of monitoring the search standing the individual needs to be equipped with the proper understanding of how the SEO efforts work.

One of the recommendations would be to use the MarketingVox to help keep tabs on the search standing through the page ranking with tools like Alexa and Google tool bar.

Making it a periodic practice to check the referral logs to track the visitor’s movements within the site and the search terms that are being popularly used to find the site is encouraged.

Being committed to the process of determining and monitoring the search standings is also something that should be considered in a rather long term time frame.

This is because most of the results and information gathered can only be useful and effective if done for a reasonable amount a time to ensure the accurate gauging exercise in possible. Understanding that the material gathered is not beneficial is looked upon as a onetime solution or general idea of the overall picture being presented.

Having clearly defined goals will also better facilitate the monitoring exercise as the SEO efforts will be better managed. Using suitable web analytics software would be advised at this stage to create a clearer picture of what is working and what is not.

Monitoring the page yielding traffic is also a metric that determines how well the page at the specific site is able to drive search engine traffic to it. As a webhost it is a pivotal element to the success of the page to ensure its visibility to the search engines, to draw the new traffic to the site as often as possible.

Chapter 03 - Research Keywords And Know Where They Go

The harness SEO optimization there is nothing worse than using the wrong keywords, keywords that are ambiguous and misleading and keywords that are ineffective. The choice of keywords greatly dictates the traffic flow to the site thus creating the desired SEO ranking.

Research

Keyword research is vital to any search engine optimization campaign and every exercise targeted at the site should take this into account. Potential viewers may not be able to find the individual’s site if the connective keywords are not used.

Also using keywords that are deemed popular but have no connection to the material featured at the site will also pose problems as the visitors will eventually catch on to the ploy and perhaps take action against the site.

This kind of bad “publicity” is definitely not needed or encouraged. Targeting the wrong keywords would also put at risk the cost invested into the endeavor as it would basically mean that the money being used would not produce the desired traffic interest to the site.

This would then render the whole exercise a waste of valuable time, resources and energy. Staying competitive through the use of proper keywords that are relative to the material should be the target of the keyword choosing exercise.

Discarding misconceptions would perhaps be the first way to tackle the keyword research exercise. Most webhost make the mistake of having a preconceived idea of what the popular keywords should be that would draw the traffic to the site. This may not happen as imagined due to the fact that the host is making this assumption or choice based on what he or she perceives the visitor would key into the search. Looking at the keyword search from a wider perspective would be better and more beneficial.

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Introduction

What is an Amazon affiliate website?

Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce site has a well-established affiliate marketing program called Amazon Associates that allows you to earn up to 12 per cent of the total sales value of a transaction originating from your referral website. That’s a pretty decent figure you earn for a successful referral.

E-commerce companies nowadays are trying to outdo each other in terms of sales and they are investing on every marketing channel available. Affiliate marketing is where they are interested mainly for the returns it can guarantee.

Let’s start with the basics by getting a general idea of what an Amazon affiliate website is. If you are looking to make some money, then becoming an Amazon affiliate is a great idea, but you need to do more than just becoming an affiliate. You need to promote the products you think will earn you some cash on a regular basis.

How does it work? It is really simple.

Once you open your Amazon account, you can insert plenty of Amazon HTML links into your articles or blog posts, which are based on the products you choose to promote on your blog.

These customized links will direct readers that click to the item on Amazon’s page, and if they buy the product, you get a commission. Best thing is that these links will remain on your blog forever as long as you leave them there, meaning you can be paid commissions for an endless period of time whenever someone make a purchase through your referred link.

There is a fee structure within Amazon that will help guide you to the products

where you will earn more money. For example, electronics only earn 4% commission while mp3 downloads will earn 10% commission.

Lucky for you, the more products you sell, the more commission you will earn as your percentage will go up. In regards to electronics, if you sell more than six products in a month your percentage commission jumps to 6% and then will go up again after you sell more than 30 products in a month.

The greatest percentage that you can earn in a month is 8.5%.

Now that we know the basics of the Amazon affiliate program, what is an Amazon affiliate website?

An Amazon affiliate website is a website that promotes products from Amazon and uses affiliate links to sell these products. Typically, these types of websites will have a theme, such as cameras. There are product posts, reviews and other things to create interest about a certain product to send the reader to Amazon to purchase that product.

One of the absolute best things about the Amazon affiliate program is if a reader clicks to go to Amazon through one of your affiliate links, it stores your affiliate code and anything that they buy will earn you commission. Therefore, they don’t have to buy the product you suggested for you to earn commission - they can buy anything off of Amazon and you will earn commission.

Chapter 01: Reasons of being an Amazon Affiliate

It’s free to join and easy to use. And it makes money.

There’s plenty of reasons why the Amazon Associates Program is one of the best existing affiliate program.

One of the great things about the Amazon affiliate program is if a reader clicks to go to Amazon through one of your affiliate links, it stores your affiliate code and anything that they buy will earn you commission.

I repeat, ANYTHING.

This simply means that they don’t necessarily need to buy that product you recommended in order for you to earn commission - they can buy literally anything from Amazon and you will earn commission, as long as they are directed to Amazon through your website’s affiliate link.

It’s really common for people to buy more than one item. Regardless of whether people make purchase of the product you recommended or not, statistics have found that a significant crowd of people usually went on to buy all manner of products (other books, electronics, cosmetics etc) – where you will get a commission on each one of them – this is passive income.

You earn a commission on anything that a person buys within 24 hours of you directing them to Amazon.

Amazon is one of the most widely trusted brand on the internet. The traffic for Amazon has been proven to be one of the most popular shopping destinations online. Readers know Amazon and are familiar with it – they trust it and do spend significant amount of money there.

Tens of thousands of Amazon customers have already set up an account and specifically have a credit card stored on file for speedy checkouts. Proving that these pool of trusting loyal customers usually will not have second thought on making a purchase.

The amount of products on Amazon is what makes it attractive. The wide arrays of products selling on the site allows you to narrow down your options. Amazon has such a variety of products, bloggers with narrow niche generally get to avoid facing the common difficulty to find the right product that matches their blog’s focus.

For example, certain blog that only focus or specialize in reviewing a specific product that affordable affiliate program do not offer. Many bloggers don’t have the luxury of being able to choose high paying affiliate programs that have narrow niche because they simply don’t relate to their topics. Therefore Amazon is a great option to bloggers.

Your earnings might come in slower than you can wait but trust me on this, it will build up as time goes and when it is established, it will be your constant snowballing income source. The next best thing is the effort needed for this program is pretty minimal. Just by doing reviews, blog posts, adding links to your posts over time. Create as much doorways you can to direct customers into the Amazon store. Each time you do, you are increasing the chances of people making purchase and you will get your share of commission. That is literally all you need to do. Attract, direct, earn.

And just like any shopping center, the sales during holidays season on Amazon bloom rapidly too. There is a significant bloom in sales whenever it hits holidays season so the key to making profit as an Amazon affiliate is to aim for times like this. Plan ahead, line up your links and posts a couple of months before, and run specific posts leading up to the holiday rush (like Christmas or New Year). You’ll be sure to earn extra commission during the holiday season.