Domain Forwarding For Direct Linking To Your Vendor Page

If you guys have followed my marketing technique, I use a domain name directly forwarded to the product page. I purchase my domains from GoDaddy.com, and here are the steps to configure your domain to forward to your product page:

1) Login to your GoDaddy.com account and click on My Account on the top right corner of the page.

2) Click on Domain Manager on the left of the page.

3) Select the domain name which you want to configure, then hover your mouse the Forward button. Then click on Forward Domain.

4) From the popup window, enter the Clickbank hoplink which you generated from the Clickbank Marketplace page. Remember to omit the "http://" portion.

5) Click on the Advanced Options link.

6) Select Forward With Masking, and then put in your website details and a short description. You can use the same website title as the one you see on the original product page if you are unsure.

7) Click OK

And that's it! Wait a few minutes and test your domain name. It should now forward directly to the product page, with your domain name still showing in your browser window :)

The Best Antidote For Writer's Block

Have you ever had a day in your life when you suddenly go blank in your mind? As if you suddenly lost whatever you have learned. All your vocabulary and grammar banks go dry, and you can only think about that slice of cheesecake on your kitchen counter...

I've had countless moments like these. And I especially hate it when it happens while trying to write my articles.

So what do I do when my brain suddenly does the rebel attack on me?

Well back then, whenever my brain stops co-operating, I would just take myself off work, do other stuff and then get back to work when I feel ready. Usually that would mean watching TV, or playing games, or just snacking.

I just happened to read a post in the WA forum about how to "cure" writer's block. And one way is to just open up a textpad on your computer, and just start typing out whatever is it in your mind for the next 5 minutes.

Maybe I should try that next time. At least I think it is far better than getting myself distracted and KEPT distracted from doing my article writing...

What about you? I'd want to hear how you usually get over your writer's block moment.

Best Way To Write Articles

So I have had questions about how do you actually write a proper article for affiliate marketing purposes. It's a natural question for most guys new to article marketing, nervy and worried about whether their first article would be the right article.

There are 2 schools of thought as to how you can write your articles. Either you portray yourself as an expert specializing in the subject matter. OR you could just be a friend who discovered a product/idea/technique which you know would be useful to someone you know.

I personally prefer the latter. Considering you REALLY are not an expert, you can really sound sucky if you try and pretend to be one. Just read most of the articles you see on EzineArticles.

But writing as a friend... that is different. It comes off easier as you can let your writing be as natural as can be. This way the words get to flow out confidently off your fingers, you do not have to worry too much about being 100% perfect, and your article would sound much more genuinely trying to help your reader.

With this approach, there are a few potent words which would make your article soft-sell the offer at the end (where you put your links to the affiliate site). What are the words? "I personally feel", "What they claim", "You could possibly".

Why are they great words to use? By writing this way, you do not sound pushy to your readers. Remember how you hate going to that electronics store and get pestered by the salesguy to buy the product they recommend? You don't want to do the same with in your articles!

So again, write as a friend. I stress that again - write as a friend! I'm pretty sure you could possibly see the readers taking a liking to your writings then :)

An Article Marketer's Recipe Book

Are you ready to embark on a journey of writing for money?

That is what you would be doing as an article marketer!

But in order to start doing your job, there are a few websites and tools you should equip yourself with. Different marketers may have a different combination of tools they use. Mine personally is kind of basic, but they are still as effective and important.

Want to know what's inside my recipe book?

1) Clickbank (free signup) - of course, this is where I find products to promote. Clickbank has so far been efficient in its payments to me. Not all the products are great though, so if you find one, it'll be like a diamond in a rough.

2) EzineArticles (free signup, optional $97/mth premium membership) - to me, EzineArticles is the best article directory for you to submit your articles online. They have good "rapport" with Google, so you can easily rank your articles high on Google. There is an optional $97 premium package, where you can schedule the release of your articles according to your liking.

3) Google Keyword Tool (free) - keyword tools are good to source what kind of words people are keying in to Google to find things. This is important - you don't want to end up writing an article which no one would look for online! There are various keyword tools out there, but hey, this one's from Google... and it's free!

4) Zoho (free signup) - ahh my online office. A friend of mine recommended Zoho to me, and I have used their service for a long time now. Basically you can create, save, and share your documents, excel sheets, calendar online! So I can write and save my article on my netbook, then open the same document on my PC at home to submit to Ezine... pretty nifty!

5) GoDaddy (prices depend on domains) - when you do article marketing the way I do, you DO need to get a domain name. You use this domain name to forward your article readers to the product page. A professional looking .com domain costs about $11 for a year, which is a very small investment to make :)

6) Thesaurus and Dictionary (free) - these are very useful sites to keep your vocabulary juice flowing. Want a replacement word for "super"? Just key search for it in the online thesaurus!

These few are the most important sites I use to run my business. Most of them are free - I only invest my profits into the EzineArticles premium membership to take advantage of the scheduled release feature. And of course the number of domain names I have under my GoDaddy account.

If you think about it, it really is a small portion of the earnings I make each month. And since it helps to grow the earnings even bigger, I certainly have no qualms in spending money on them.

Bookmark and create your accounts on these sites first. That should occupy some of your free time tonite ;)

Start Writing (and Earning) Today!

Have you gotten "on" your butt and started writing your articles yet?

If you are still stuck with where you should start, let me try help jumpstart your article writing groove.

I have been doing article marketing for years now, earned a few thousands so far, and have messed with different article marketing techniques to find one which suits my capabilities, time constrains, and expectations.

I won't say the method I am using now is a long-term business model. To me, a proper business model should include building a proper site, working to get it ranked on Google or any other search engines, and then let it run on auto-pilot (earning money without you doing as much work).

What I am doing now takes effort. Daily effort. To come up with new articles each day, write and submit them to EzineArticles, and hope someone out there is interested in the offer I plant at the end of every article. Not something I would love to continually do for years to come!

But it does bring in money. Bags of it.

I would say this particular business model is great to get you started on something. For me, it is perfect for me to build up my reserves in the bank before I finally say sayonara to my boss!

You can adopt the same strategy too. From today!

Here is what you should do...

1) Get a product to promote

Ask yourself what you should be promoting. Check out Clickbank (for starters) and find a product decent enough to make you buy the product itself. That should generally give you the instinct that the product sells. So use Clickbank to create the hoplink for you first.

2) Get a domain name

You would want a domain name to cloak the ugly hoplink you just created on Clickbank. My tip is to get a ".com" domain which sounds similar to the product website. For instance, if the product site is MakeMoneyOnline.com, try getting a domain name in the likes of MakeYourMoneyOnline.com.

Get the idea? A domain name serves 3 purposes - to cloak the link, to make you appear professional, and to setup a direct domain forwarding from your EzineArticles article. And you can get one from GoDaddy.com for about $11 for a year!

3) Write your articles

How do you start? Do a little bit of research. Here's a trick: get all the info you need to write about just by reading the product website and other already published articles on Ezine. Ain't that stupidly easy?

Once you get all the facts, start writing! Don't worry so much about writing a perfect article. As long as it makes grammatical sense, you don't have to sound 100% professional in your writing. In fact, you SHOULDN'T. Be more human-like in your writing, and sound as if you were writing an advice for your dear friend.

And as I said, just start and continue writing. In time you will develop your own style, you will get fluent with your writing, and you may end up only spending 10 minutes to write a 400-word article! It just takes practice.

4) Create an appetizing resource box at the end of your articles

Don't just go "Click here to get Product XYZ". This is your chance to go wild and creative! A little bit of temptation to your reader goes a long way. The best way to learn how to write a good resource box is by reading all the fancy ads in the newspaper and magazines. They are the masters at promoting - learn from them!

That's it! Or at least that is what you need to get your feet wet in the article marketing business.

I will try to elaborate each single point above at a later post to help you advance even further. But for now, I hope you get my advice.

Taking action will bring you results. Analyzing won't. And once you get the momentum going with your writing, don't stop to give your brain that chance to go dry - keep your creative juice flowing by continuously writing!

Article Marketing Basics (Revision)

Ok, so what is article marketing again?

Let me put it simply. Remember those ads you see on your daily newspaper? What do they do? They provide you information on a particular company providing this and that service. And depending on what you were looking for when browsing the classifieds, you may be tempted to contact/visit the business advertised there.

How is that similar to article marketing?

The Internet is one HUGE classified ads. Research shows a major percentile of people surf the Internet looking for information. It is always useful information that people are looking for online.

The trick with article marketing is... it virtually costs you nothing to "advertise" online! You can easily submit articles to free directories online which would publish your writings onto the web for the whole world to see.

And if what you are writing is THE information a particular group of people are looking for, then your article will be read.

But how do you gain money out of that? Add a link to your article to recommend a certain service/product to your reader!

Say you are writing about how to cure hair loss. Give your potential reader some tips they can try from home. And then, lead them to a product which could help speed up their cure and stop their hair from dropping the soonest.

Get it?

The concept IS really that simple for starters. I will go more in depth the next time, so that you guys can jump start your affiliate marketing career and see success like (or even better than) me :)

December End Of Month Sales Report

Hey guys, so sorry for the late update. I have been extra focused on my business lately that sometimes I forget I still have a blog to maintain!

Okay, here is the screenshot of my December earnings. Well, I didn't hit my target of US$2000, but I'm not complaining with the US$1555 there :) In my currency, it's about S$2175 anyways!

This Jan has been a bit slower than usual though. I put the blame on myself though, because I'm experimenting with how to do my business effectively. In the process, I change what is already working and hence experience no-sales days :( But hey, I learn something from it.

I'm happy to hear from some of you guys telling me how my recent success is inspiring you to start doing affiliate marketing too. You should start taking action soon! I'll try to make time between maintaining my business to update this blog with various useful information to help kick-start your AM venture, alright? :)

Previous Month: US$1208.66

Current Month: US$1555.98

Next Month (target): US$2000

November End Of Month Sales Report

It's December already, where I am. And it is time to recap the commissions I earned for the month of November.

And there it is... USD1200+ for a month of sales. Not bad for myself, considering I am still working in a fulltime job. And this is also my highest amount of sales in my 2 years of affiliate marketing :)

My aim now is to double that figure for the month of December. Quite a high bar to reach, but that's a target I am willing to work for!

Hey guys, I hope this serves as a motivation or inspiration, or whatever you may call it. I have a dream of leaving my dead job and working fulltime on affiliate marketing from home. And I am working towards it and seeing some encouraging results.

Let me know if I can be of any help to realize your dreams of working from home and earning nice figures each month too :)

Previous Month: n/a

Current Month: US$1208.66

Next Month (target): US$2000

My Article Writing Process

Many people have been asking me how I manage to write numerous articles within a short span of time. I used to think that to myself too back when I was still starting out and wondering how the other guys could come up with so many articles quickly.

I have to say it all boils down to practice. The more you write, the better you get. It still happens to me today - I find it slow to get off the mark after laying off writing for a day or even a few hours. So the key is to keep on writing, and your flow of words will just take over from your brain to your fingers.

In terms of article structure, I follow the same 'guideline' for all my articles. An attention grabbing title, an exciting intro paragraph, factual body, and a closing which points back to my intro.

Title

Want to get the best ideas for article titles? Look no further than tabloids! Or even those magazine columns. Honest and dull titles just simply do not make it here.

Intro

Use challenging sentences here. Challenge your reader to try your solution in order to solve their problem. Yes, you start mentioning about your product here! Get your reader excited to know there is a solution to their problem, and lead them to read your article further.

Body

Just write your stuff here. Remember to include excitement every now and then. Don't just write facts - give hope to your readers!

Closing

I always end my article with a sentence that points back to my intro. Say your intro excites your reader about "start doing xxxx to cure your yyyyy problem!"... end your article with something in the likes of "with xxxx, there is no reason for you to live with yyyyy anymore!".

What about the resource box? Again don't waste your chance here. This is where you get all 'salesy' and promote your product or website! Write up a story about how you manage to solve your own yyyyy problem using xxxx, and how the reader can do so too.

But to sum it all up, again it boils down to practice. So start writing your first article today!

It Starts With Persistence

In the world of affiliate marketing, especially when you are just starting out, it is always easy to get discouraged by the lack of favorable results. That is where 85% of budding affiliate marketers drop and say "this stuff doesn't work".. while the remaining 15% bog down and persist, and end up champions.

I would like to think of myself as a newbie still. I haven't reached the stage of consistent results. But I can be proud of one thing - my persistence. See, I have made it a commitment that affiliate marketing will be THE career for me till I retire (early). And for the past 2 years I have faced little success and much failure.. and I still move forwards.

Let me tell you one example. Recently I have been getting this string of great sales results. Never before have I experienced many $100 days within a span of days! But yesterday.. I had zero.

To tell you the truth, I was disheartened. I had wanted the pattern to go along nicely. I did not want to see a $0 day.

Some people may view it as a turning point, where you start doubting your results. I very nearly started thinking the past few days were just a fluke.

But I remembered the word persistence. Instead of losing focus, I worked harder. I started writing articles after articles, which helps me get my mind off the $0 day.

This morning I was welcomed by 2 new sales amounting to US$67.80. Which I wouldn't have achieved had I slowed down or even stopped working after being disappointed by the $0 yesterday.

So remember, if you want to make it in affiliate marketing, it does not really start with all the lessons or tools you can buy out there. Start with yourself. Make a change of attitude, stay positive, and keep your focus laser sharp.

Good luck guys!