Having worked as systems engineer for 15 years, I have been able to view the mail admin records (mailsweeper or mimesweeper as it is more correctly called) and the proxy server internet cache for several large international companies. This highlighted some interesting information regarding the type of content that is most often forwarded and shared. The most popular content is humorous material.

The second most popular category is news, followed by healthcare and medical information, religious and spiritual material, games, business and personal finance information and sports/hobbies… in that order. So it is easy to see that humor is the best content for your viral campaign.

Cartoons, jokes and funny video clips are among the things that can be added to an e-mail or embedded into your site to insure that it will go viral. People will want to pass along something that makes them laugh.

They are a lot more likely to hit the forward button and send your email or forward your link to their friends and relatives if it is an “advertainment” rather than an advertisement.

Not along ago, about 35 million people got an e-mail containing a picture taken in Disneyland. It took a minute to see it but there was Donald Duck lying prone in front of the famous Cinderella Castle. The title of the picture was “Bird Flu has hit Disneyland”. It was a viral e-mail advertising Disneyland and used the edgy strategy of making light of what’s serious… and it works.

I’d guess that most people who own a computer have seen that picture… and thus the advertisement for Disneyland. The bird flu epidemic is newsworthy and has the potential to attract an enormous amount of attention to any brand that might, for whatever reason, associate itself with it.

Remember that people are much more likely to share a joke or a funny picture than anything else so you would be well advised to include humour in your campaigns.

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.
2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.
3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.
4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.
5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.
6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.
7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.
8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.
9. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.
10. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

1. Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
2. Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
3. Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
4. Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
5. Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
6. Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
7. Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
8. Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
9. Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
10. Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
11. Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
12. When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
13. When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
14. Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

I’ve found the best way to make sure a business is going to be successful is to create a business plan. It doesn’t need to be pages long and take you days and days to complete. Below I’ve created a quick 30 Minute Business Plan.

A good business plan will help you figure out approximately what your business will cost to get off the ground. You don’t want to guess at this. Knowing your costs will help you decide what you’re going to charge.

The 30 Minute Business Plan below also includes information about your competition. Don’t forget about them. In one way or another they exist and you’re going to want to get to know them.

The bottom line – most businesses fail because they don’t have a clearly spelled-out business plan. Don’t make that mistake.

For those of you who have been in business for awhile, don’t think a business plan can’t help you. Your business plan should be taken out on a regular basis, reread and updated.

Your 30 Minute Home Business Plan

1. What is your business exactly? Explain in one or two sentences. (If you can’t describe your business in a couple of sentences, rethink your business and focus your idea).
2. Is your particular business needed? List the reasons that make you think so.
3. Where do you see your business in one year? In three years? In five years? (Be specific.)
4. How will you fund your business? Savings, credit cards, loans?
5. What equipment/office supplies/licenses will you need to get your business started? Total Cost?
6. What organizations and trade publications will you need? Total Cost?
7. Who is your target customer? Describe them.
8. What other businesses will you be competing with?
9. What makes your business different from your competitor’s business? (Include price, quality, unique services, etc.)
10. Where will you set up your home office? Is it going to cost me money to make a nice workable office? Cost?
11. Will you use daycare everyday or once a week? Cost?
12. How much money do you need to make each month to help my family survive?

Once again, this is just a partial list, but there are enough questions here to give you a good idea of what you’ll be facing with a new business and the costs involved.

A business plan is essential to your successful home business. As one great quote says, Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

Some of those questions are the titles to spam emails you get. They offer get rich schemes, just fill out surveys and get paid, get paid just to surf the web, get paid to shop, etc. etc.

But what is the real scoop about starting my own Internet Business from home? In this article we will help you learn some of the facts about owning your own home business based on the web. We will tell you how to avoid the hype and tell you the straight facts about how to start and maintain your own Internet Business. Are you ready?

You have all probably read many stories about how people with nothing have become millionaires on the web. You have no doubt received tons of spam email promising you that the same thing can happen to you, all you have to do is buy this ebook, this software, sign up as a member, etc. etc.

Multi-Level-Marketing or MLM programs were around before the Internet was in everyone’s home, but since then they have boomed. There are many programs that offer to “get you in on the ground floor”. All you have to do is sign up and those who sign up after you will make you rich.

Most of these are actually pyramid schemes. If the primary goal is to recruit new members and not to sell products, then it is likely a scam, so beware of those.

The first thing you should know about starting any business is that it is hard work. You think your boss was bad? Wait until you are your boss.

For some reason many people think that while starting an offline business is hard work, starting one on the web is easy. I really don’t understand that philosophy, except for the fact we get so many emails promising to make you rich with little or no work at all.

Let me tell you this. When you start any business, whether it’s a store, a gas station, or whatever, you know you will have to go in everyday, put in long hours and be smart if you are going to become successful. It is no different when starting an online or home business. If you are not prepared to put in the hours and the work, you will not be any more successful online than you would be offline.

There are no shortcuts, no magic pills, no marketing plans that can make you rich online without hard work. If you are not prepared to put in the time and the work necessary to any successful business, don’t quit your day job and just continue to be a consumer surfing the web instead of trying to find a way to get rich without work.

That may sound harsh to you, but the web is full of people trying to get something for nothing and we don’t need any more of those. However, if you are a person who is willing to put in the time and effort, the web can be a great place to make your living.

How do you get started? Well, first of all, what are your interests? If you choose a business you don’t have a lot of interest in, you will find it very difficult to stay motivated. Look at things that interest you when deciding what type of online business you want to have.

Not all online businesses require having a website, but most do, so we are going to start there. Lets say you have chosen what you are going to sell, whether it is products, services, or promoting affiliate programs.

You will need a domain name. The first thing people think is that they should have a catchy name that equals the name of their business and that it should be their domain name. Not true. Generic domain names that contain keywords that describe your products or services are best. Your company name will be on the front page of your website, but the domain name is what people will remember and what will help people find you through the search engines.

Where do I register my domain name? There are many cheap registrars out there for registering domain names, but don’t go with the cheap ones. You get what you pay for. Go with the ones that provide you the most service. Do you really think saving $20 per YEAR on your domain name is going to make or break your business? If so, stop now, do not pass go, go back to your day job.

Now you have a domain name, now what? You will need hosting for the new website you are going to build or have built. Again, look for the hosting that provides you the most service. You want 24-hour tech support. You want a lot of space, but most of all you want a lot of bandwidth. You want easy access to your files and a control panel, not just ftp access.

You also want a host who provides a lot of extras like “instant install” of gallery managers, content managers, calendar programs, and other scripts for forums, blogs, and more. The more they offer, the better, because you don’t know where your business might lead you. A cheap host is just that, a cheap host.

Now you will need a website to put up on the host. You can buy a website on Ebay or from others that are already built and ready to go or you can have one built to your specifications. You can also learn to build your own website and save money, but make sure you research how to do this very well before you choose that option.

Building a website that is not optimized for the search engines or one that does not function or navigate easily will hurt your business, so if you are not ready to build one you are sure will work, have the work done or buy one.

Also, people have the perception that their website must be beautiful in order to be successful. They think they must have flashy introductions, databases, dynamic content, great graphics, etc. etc.

None of those things I just mentioned will help you become successful on the web. They are great to have, but do not put undue importance on the dressing. Promoting your website will be the key to it’s success along with the content that is in your website. Those are the things you will focus on if you wish to have a successful online business.

On building your website or buying one, make sure that it has a lot of text content rich with keywords that apply to the products or services you will be selling. You want it to have a professional look and feel, but you don’t need it to be too flashy.

There are a lot of freelance websites out there where you can post the job you want done and people will bid on doing the job for you. That is a good way to find a web designer that wants to do a good job for a competitive price.

Now you have your domain name, your hosting, and your new website. What now? Well, it’s not like in the movie Field of Dreams, where If you build it, they will come. That doesn’t apply to websites unfortunately.

You will need to promote your website. This is where the work starts. This is what will demand the most of your time, because if you do not promote your website, the customers will never come buy anything. They won’t be able to find you out of the millions of websites that are out there.

You have to be better than the next guy. You have to be willing to promote your website for more hours than the next guy. And you have to beat the next guy to the latest and greatest methods of website promotion.

There are several things you will be doing with your new website. First and foremost, you will be writing articles like this one about the products and services you sell and topics related to them. You will also spend time submitting these articles to websites that offer free content to webmasters.

A lot of website owners are hungry for good original content. They go to these content providers and pull articles related to their products and services and put those articles into their websites. Since your article, like the one I am writing here, has an author bio section at the bottom with links to your website, every website owner that inserts your article into their website is now another website that links to you.

That increases your link popularity, which in turn helps you get better listings in search engine results for your keywords. Writing at least one article everyday will move you up in the search engine rankings before you know it. This is my fourth article for the day, just to give you an idea of how much I’m willing to promote my website.

You can also post a lot on blogs and forums that are related to your products or services. In the signature line you put a link to your website. In this subtle way you not only create another website that has a link to your website, but by participating in the forum or blog you may just have users there want to see your website and might want to buy your product or services.

You also want to put your link in your email, on your business cards, on your letterhead, and anywhere else you can. Having your own business, whether online or offline is a way of life, not a nine to five job. So be sure you are ready to do whatever it takes to be successful. Because if you are not ready to work harder than you ever have before, having your own business is not for you.

By beginning with a free home based business you will gain the experience and the capital you will need to really take your earnings to the next level. You will learn what works and what doesn’t. The risk in a free home based business is nothing – so you have nothing to lose!

Any one can be successful with a free home based business but it does take time and lots of it. Having some funding will speed the process up and a good strategy is to use half of your profits towards paid advertising.

The following free home based business requires little knowledge, no financial investment and provides a firm foundation for the future. Here’s what you need to build your own free home based business:

(a) Product

Find a free program with a wide range of products for your free home based business. This way you will be able to experiment with different markets to find the one, which works, for you.

Choose a program, which has been around for more than 10 years. One with the largest possible number of affiliates (or members) and with a step-by-step training program.

The program must provide no cost advertising pages for your free home based business to use.

To start, select a product where you are paid to give something away. As your skills grow, you can move to selling more costly items from your free home based business.

(b) Advertising.

There are a number of advertising options for a free home based business. Traffic exchanges, free advertising directories, blogs and forums are the most widely used. You can also submit articles with your tinyurl (see below) in the bio line at the bottom of the work.

(c) Page or URL Rotator

A URL rotator is a must for an online free home based business. It will allow you to send all your advertising to one place – the rotator. It then shares all the incoming hits amongst the products you have chosen advertise.

Having a rotator allows you to change products without having to go back and change all the advertisements for your free home based business.

There are many excellent free rotators on the web. A good one will provide you information about the number of page hits sent to each product and where the incoming hits came from.

(d) TinyURL

Most page rotators have quite long names. These can be off-putting to prospective customers. So go to a site named www.tinyurl.com. There you can type in a long name. It will be shortened into something which works better with your advertising campaigns (and protect your precious affiliate commission).

Pulling it all together:

1. Load up the page rotator for your free home based business with web pages of all the products you wish to sell. I suggest starting with no more than three.

2. Then create a tinyurl for your page rotator.

3. Place advertisements in every directory you can find

4. Add your link to the bottom of your emails

5. Join every free traffic exchange you can

6. Write and submit an article per week with your tinyurl in the bio line

7. Find a number of active forums and post helpful messages making sure your tinyurl is included in your signature line.

8. Start you own free blog. Put a new entry in your blog at least once per week. Make sure there are plenty of links to your free home based business products from your blog. Always announce your blog updates using the tool at www.pingomatic.com.

Your objective is to get as many links back to your page rotator as you possibly can. The more people who see you links the more traffic to your rotator and the more sales you will make.

There it is, the basis of a free home based business and the start of your online empire.

To your success!

Lets us discuss some important benefits of affiliate marketing for both affiliate marketers and merchants.

Benefits to affiliate marketer

There isno need to create a product!

The best thing aboutaffiliate marketing is that you don’t require any products.Themerchants are responsible forcreating the products,your only requirement is to select the products to sell, get the affiliate links and start your business. You can focus on selling the product as you dont need to do anything with the production or delivery of the products.

Very little up front money is required to start your business

Another important feature of affiliate marketing is that you can start your business with little or no out of pocket expense. Very few businesses can be implemented less especially not businesses with the potential that affiliate marketing has. There are many very inexpensive tools on the market that will help build your affiliate business, there are also many free tools that can be found with a little searching.

The Easiest Online Business

It is the easiest online business due to the fact that the merchants do all the hard work like making products, delivering products to consumers, handling money transactions etc. Affiliate marketers are not responsible for any of these tasks. They just need to focus on promoting their affiliate links.

4. Make Money While You Sleep

As you have your affiliate links on the website which is available on the internet all the time, you are not required to remain online to keep in touch with your customers. People can visit your site whenever they want and can visit your affiliate links. If they like the product they can easily buy it by just by clicking the given links.
Your only concern will be checking your email to see how many sales you have made from your links.

5. Penetrate Hot Markets Fast!

You can select any hot market at any time to choose the products you wish to sell. If you observe that other marketers are making money, just register with an affiliate program to get involved in an alternativehot niche, set up an adwords campaign, and in very little time, you can startmaking money!

Benefits to Merchants

1) More Sales in Less Time

The merchants products areadvertised by many affiliate marketers at the same time. The merchants ownwebsiteis also advertising the products. If the page rank of the merchant website and his affiliate marketers are high, you will generate tons of traffic. The website of every affiliate marketer will send the traffic and potential customersto the merchant websites. This results in more sales in less time.

2) Broader Market to Sell Products

Having new affiliates just expands the market of merchants. Dont select the affiliates blindly. Do the research to check if the affiliates website is related to your business. If the affiliate marketers websitematchesyour product theme you obviously increase your chances of sales. The affiliates website will receive hits for the people who need to know about your products and they are more likely to visit your website to make a purchase.

3) Less Efforts Required

Affiliates are doing the hard work of advertising for your products. If your affiliates are doing good work then you dont need to spend extra time and money for advertising. Just concentrate on improving the quality of your products and launching new products.

Affiliate marketing can provide the easy, fast and reliable money to affiliate marketers. At the same time it gives more sales in less time and money to the merchants.

Finddofollow blogs withPageRank (PR). Have a look at the follow list DoFollow search engine. This isa list of100 blogs using the CommentLuv plug-in. Or just search Google for dofollow blogsto find hundreds of dofollow blogs.

Download and install SEO Quake one of the many utilities this ‘browser plugin’ has is a “Google Pagerank Checker”. This allows you todrill down into the blog and will giveyou the PR of each individual page.SEO Quake software is free and is really rather good.

Make a note of all the high rankingblog pages. Then go through the list and post quality constructive remarks on each page. Remember, quality is the key, nobody wants to read rubbish commentslike “gr8 post m8″ or “lol” or “free drugs.” Aside from the backlink, good quality comment postshave the potential to bring a steady flow of new visitors onto your site.

For best results and the most constructive use of your time, targetblogs within your niche. Blogs that are not in yourniche don’t necessarily carry much value.

Pick a Market
Why should youchoose a market instead of product? The reason is quite simple it means you have a complete range of products to develop. You shouldchoose a market thatyou are passionate about and you will need to gatherdetailed information about it.

Pick a Product
When you have picked a specific market, now it is time to select a product. You may want to add multipleproducts in the beginning, but I strongly advise you don’t. instead focus your on a single product and try to get best out of it. When youstart toget a fewsales then one by one you can add more products.

Build an Autoresponder Series
After you start your business, you must create a follow up series, which is also called an autoresponder series. This series should consist of all the information about your product. There you can add contents of your product. For example, if you are selling golf clubs, you can build a series with some basic information about the clubs.You can tell your visitors how they can purchase this set of golf clubs. You can also add some advantages or the profiles of some major golfers in the world. You should try to be more and more creative. It is observed that during the period of first few months affiliates do not get reasonable sales. But after six months, they expect to gain much better sales.

Build a Page to Capture Emails
Create a page in your website where you will capture information about your prospects so you can send them your follow-up series. If you are building a business, having your own web site is a necessity. This website will be needed to show your affiliate products to your website visitors. You should try and collectyour visitors emails to promote your email campaigns.

Use Traffic Generation Techniques
Once your website is up, use some traffic generation techniques. After applying the traffic generation techniques, you should wait for some time to get the results. Try different techniques and see the results. Then on the basis of your experience, continue with the technique that shows best results.

Find additional related products
Once you have started to make a good and reliable income with a single product, then you should add some new products to your products list. But you must carefully select new products to put them in the list.

Always start with a single, hot and demanding product to gain good results. Concentrate on this single product, make your website to display the product and capture the email addresses of visitors. Use these email addresses and your website to start a powerful advertisement campaign. Use the techniques to drive maximum traffic to your website. Once you have started earning with a single product, add more products and repeat the process.

Spread your risk – Try to spread your risk. Instead of one or two, try to associate yourself with ten to fifteen good merchants. If one merchant closes down, you still have other merchants to rely upon. It is unlikely that all the merchants will close down at the same time.

Diversify among different niches – Try to promote products from different industry groups or different niches. Many affiliates promote products from only one niche such as, weight loss or pets. But if there is any change in the demand for that niche, your business will suffer. In order to protect against such adversities, associate yourself with different niches and promote products from different industry groups.

Use different hosting companies – Do not use the same hosting company for hosting all your websites. If you use a single host for all your websites and that company suddenly closes down, you will be out of your business.

Different sources of traffic – Never use only one source of traffic. Try to receive traffic from different sources such as ‘Pay Per Click’ advertising, article marketing, classified advertising, forum marketing, search engine optimization etc.

The above tips will help you to diversify and to balance the risks involved in your affiliate marketing business.