I had the opportunity to review a book titled, “The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide.”

I was offered a free copy of the book, and being interested in what Alibaba was all about, I took the offer. I not only agreed to review the book because I was interested, but I thought that maybe you all would be interested as well.

Afterall, it has everything to do with entrepreneur-ism and selling products online. I hope you find this book interesting and thought provoking, just as I did.

If you’ve never heard of Alibaba.com before, it’s the largest B2B marketplace provider.

Alibaba is all about Global Trade, which is what makes the world go ’round if you didn’t know. Every product we handle first came from an idea. The idea is then turned into a prototype, which is then mass-produced and distributed worldwide.

Alibaba makes this whole process as simple as possible by creating one single place for product inventors and manufacturers to come together and do business directly.

The “Success Guide” provides inside tips and strategies for sourcing products from the marketplace that you will find on the website.

What I liked most about the book is that it provides real-life experiences from the founder of Alibaba and other successful business men and women. Not only that, but it outlines in easy to understand terms how to get started selling online and forming partnerships with companies and manufacturers. It goes through the entire process from start to finish, giving you all the information you need to know as well as tips to make everything as easy as possible for you.

The book also has screenshots that illustrate what it’s describing in relation to the website. What’s really cool is that both the book and website go hand-in-hand. The book is basically a guide on how to use the website, but at the same time the book itself is a motivational and instructional tool. It’s simply brilliant.

If you’re looking for encouragement and inspiration, there’s none better than from the mouth’s of some of the most successful people in the world. You will find them right in the book.

Let’s get  into what exactly Alibaba can do for you…

Say you have a product idea. You’ve done all the research, testing, etc. and know there’s a market for it. You just need some way to bring the product into reality that you can then sell to the masses. That’s where Alibaba comes in. You can converse directly with manufacturers from all around the world. This is huge if you’re an inventor and looking for contacts that will be able to manufacture and mass-produce your product.

The other side to this is what really caught my attention (since I’m not an inventor ). Say you don’t want to create a product of your own but want to sell existing products. You also want to get wholesale prices on your items so you can earn a decent profit from each sale. Alibaba is a good source to find such items because again, you can deal directly with manufactures and get the best possible prices. Selling on eBay came to my mind.

Do you see the benefit of having a site like Alibaba.com where you have hundreds of manufactures ready to do business with you directly at your fingertips?

If you’ve been looking to sell actual physical products online, then I recommend taking a look at what Alibaba.com has to offer. And, here are some Sourcing Tips to help you in your search to find manufacturers and products.

Interested in getting a copy of the book? You can get it on Amazon today…

Did you know Google celebrates Valentine’s Day? I didn’t have a clue until I received a Valentine’s Day card in the mail. Yes, Google sent me a Valentine’s card!

I have no doubt I wasn’t the only one to get a card like this. Maybe you did, too?

As a Google Adsense Publisher, I usually get two or three mailings from Google each year promoting Google Adwords. Funny thing is that I’m also a Google Adwords user (or at least used to be). I haven’t ran any campaigns in over a year, so maybe that’s why they keep sending me these offers.

Basically, they send me promotions to give Adwords a try and offer a $100 coupon voucher. Now, since I already have an account which is several years old, none of the coupon codes they send me have ever worked for my account. Supposedly these offers are only for newer accounts.

However, the Valentine’s card I received a couple of weeks ago contained a coupon code that actually worked! I was literally stunned in amazement.

Google loves me!

LOL… at least that’s what I was thinking at the time. All other redemption codes had failed, but when I entered the this code into my account, it went through without a hitch.

I now have $100 in free Google Adwords advertising to play with.

I haven’t yet had a chance to test any campaigns, but you can bet your bottom I’ll be running at least one campaign.

I’ve made some money in the past with Adwords, but have sunk a lot of money as well. It’s a tough game if you’re not real good at it. Not to mention all of their new rules and regulations. It’ll be a while before I attempt it again, but I’ll keep you posted when I do.

Afterall, Google just gave me $100 in free, virtual money. I’d be stupid not to at least try.

Thank you, Google! It’s nice to know that you really do love me.

LOL…

Anyone else receive a Valentine’s card from Google? Did your redemption code work? What’s your experience with Adwords? Share your thoughts below…

I promised another backlink building strategy if you read my post Proven Strategies to Increase Website Traffic and Generate Sales. If you were waiting in anticipation for it, the wait is now over… it’s here!

This strategy, if used correctly, can catapult your blog posts, web pages, homepage, etc. to the top of Google and other search engines. Once you’re sitting high and mighty at the top, the sales will follow (if you’re targeting the right keywords).

To get started, you’re going to need a blog post (home page will do just fine) that you want to get a lot of traffic to. This is especially if you’re promoting something big and want to earn commissions (affiliate marketing). For your home page, you’re probably promoting something, selling your own product or building your list. In any case, you obviously want traffic, so this will work just as well.

Assuming you’ve done all the on-page SEO stuff for your blog post or home page, you’re now ready to start building backlinks. But not just any backlinks will do here. While article marketing is still very effective (and I recommend using this method as well), there’s another link building strategy that works very well.

It’s called a Link Wheel.

You may have heard of it before…. or maybe not. It can actually be somewhat confusing to people, so I’m going to explain it the best way I can without confusing you.

If you’ve heard of this strategy before but just don’t quite GET IT yet, then pay close attention here. Better yet, the diagram above should do all the explaining that needs to be done. But, I’ll still do my best here to explain everything.

With the Link Wheel strategy, you’re capitalizing on free blogs/web 2.0/social sites. Take a look at the sites in the diagram, and you’ll notice one thing. They’re all free to use and post content to, and there’s a social aspect to them (this doesn’t really matter for the sake of this strategy). Simply put, Google and the other two major search engines love these sites.

So to get started, you need to write some articles. Anywhere from 6 to 8 articles will be sufficient.

There are some key requirements needed with these articles, though. They need to contain your keyword in the title and two or three times throughout the article body. If you haven’t done so already (you should have), your blog post should contain the same keyword in its title and content. This is very important!

The articles you write for these sites only need to be anywhere from 250 – 350 words long. You don’t need a novel here, just enough useful information to make the content relevant to the keyword you’re targeting.

If you don’t feel like writing the articles yourself, outsource it to someone else. I can get 10 articles written for $27 that do just fine. That’s actually very cheap, by the way.

Once you have your articles, you need to sign up for these free sites. Once you sign up with a site you won’t ever have to do it again. This is a one-time process.

Here are the sites I recommend. This isn’t an all-inclusive list, however. You can sign up for as many as you want. But for the sake of your link wheel you only need 6 to 8 sites.

1. Hubpages
2. Wetpaint
3. Blogger
4. WordPress.com
5. Gather
6. Xomba
7. Quizilla
8. Squidoo

There’s a couple I didn’t mention that are in the diagram. Like I said it really doesn’t matter which sites you sign up with. It’s completely up to you.

Here’s where it gets tricky…

Each article you post on a site should contain two links… one pointing to your blog post and the other pointing to the article on the next site.

BUT… those links need to contain the keyword being targeted.

For example, if I’m targeting the keyword “golf swing” then I have that in the title of both the blog post and all articles for each site as well as in the content. Also, the backlinks will contain the same keyword “golf swing.”

Follow? Just look at the diagram again and this should make sense.

Each article will do this until you’ve completed the rotation and placed one article on each site. You now have a complete Link Wheel.

Doing this correctly will boost your blog post or home page’s rankings in the search engines dramatically. Of course, you still want to perform other link building strategies I’ve mentioned in previous posts because this is not the only way I build backlinks to my posts and home page, just to clear up any confusion you may have.

Any questions about what I’ve shared regarding Link Wheels? Still don’t quite get it? Feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to answer you.

If you know anything about SEO, then you’ll know that keyword research is so important in attracting the right kind of traffic to your website. I consider the right kind of traffic as being people who are looking to buy something, assuming you’re wanting to sell something.

If you’re doing business online, then obviously you want to sell stuff. So, wouldn’t it make sense to target ‘paying’ keywords?

Yes, I made that name up.

I go into all the details in my guest post and provide a video which I previously posted on my blog.

To check out the article, head to David Leonhardt’s SEO Writer blog where I had the pleasure of writing, Target Paying Keywords to Maximize Your Online Sales.

This neat little tool will help you pump out more sales by targeting the right kind of keywords for your website.

Feel free to browse David’s blog as you’ll find other helpful articles on SEO, which I know can be rather bothersome to some people.

We finally get to the end of our struggling internet marketer series (not that I was in any hurry), where I answered a key question yesterday about driving traffic and generating sales.

This post is going to cover the second question:

Is there another cool way of making money online from __________ (Wherever you are in the world)?

It’s a very good question, especially when so many people around the world are looking for a different way of making money than what they’re used to. Or, because of the global economic crisis, they have nothing and need a way to support their family.

In any case, there are many different legitimate work from home opportunities that are truly global opportunities.

Here are a couple posts I’ve written about various opportunities that I highly recommend:

• Flip Switch Profits
• SFI Marketing Group

Now, there are some other global opportunities I’ve tried firsthand but haven’t gotten around to writing about yet. I’ll simply post the links below, but keep on the lookout for when I do finally get around to reviewing them…

My Affiliate Power Site – A new opportunity created by my mentors that allows you to earn 6 streams of income from reputable businesses. It’s very new… only about 2 weeks into the launch, which is why I haven’t gotten a chance to write about it yet.

Online Data Entry Jobs – This one is great and is actually how I got into proofreading. It’s not your average “data entry” crap you usually see. It provides many different options out there depending on what interests you. A lot of training is provided for each area. Just so happened that I was already interested in proofreading before I checked this program out, and after, I was motivated and pointed in the right direction to get it going.

Each opportunity I listed is unique in it’s own way. I advise that you check each one out individually and see if it’s something that you think will work for you.

Be advised that there is no such thing as “get rich quick” and these opportunities don’t support that way of thinking. You will be required to actually work and put in months of time before you see any kind return. The amount of time it will take before you see income coming in will depend on your level of focus, determination and amount of time you spend making it work.

Of course, if you don’t find what you’re looking for here, you can just as well do a search on Google. There’s only a billion other opportunities out there that you’ve never heard of. Just be warned there are many scams out there. The opportunities I listed are legitimate and proven to work.

As always, do your own due diligence when researching work from home opportunities.

This post is going to contain the simple, yet effective techniques I have learned during my time online to generate targeted traffic and generate sales. These are strategies I’m using for my own online business and have found to be working well and improving over time.

If you’ve been following along with us, my last post was about a struggling internet marketer who is reaching out in a desperate attempt to generate sales with his affiliate marketing website.

One of the questions asked was, “How do I drive traffic to my site that can generate sales?”

This is going to be the topic of this post, and I’ll be going very in-depth, starting with the basics and moving towards the more advanced strategies.

I apologize in advance if this turns into a very lengthy post, but please bare with me as it will be well worth your time to read through everything.

So let’s begin, shall we?

The very first thing you must understand is that everything revolves around keywords. Keywords are the life-blood of websites and how they become seen by internet users using search engines.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the foundation of using keywords effectively, and this is how you’re going to target specific internet users to generate sales online.

Rather than going in-depth on the subject of SEO on this post, I have a few previous posts that should cover this subject thoroughly enough for you to understand. Please check them out, and if you have questions use the comment section:

• Web Page Optimization
• Easy Free Keyword Research
• Discover Commercial Intention of Keyword Phrases

Optimizing your web page for specific keywords is critical and is the foundation for which you’ll build the rest of your marketing efforts upon. Seriously, nothing else matters until you’ve done this. Don’t ignore it!

One thing I’ve learned is that backlinks are KING. Okay, so content is still KING, but backlinks are a very close second, and here’s why. Backlinks to your website or web pages are what helps to drive your site or pages higher in search engine results pages when someone searches for a specific keyword phrase. See how this is coming together?

Without building backlinks to your site, you won’t generate enough traffic to your site to generate sales. Now I know what you’re thinking here. There are other ways to generate traffic without building backlinks, and that’s true. However, the best traffic is free search engine traffic, and the only way to get it is to rank on the first page in Google, or Yahoo and Bing. I’d focus on Google as it produces over 70% of search traffic across the entire web.

Now that you understand the importance of building backlinks and getting your site or web pages to the top of search engines, you now need to start the backlink building process. There are numerous ways to go about this, and luckily for you, I’ve written many posts on the subject. Here they are:

• Improve Search Engine Rankings the Easy Way
• Get 80 High PR One Way Backlinks Each Month
• Build Long-Term Traffic to Your Work From Home Site with Article Marketing
• Build Your Online Business with Article Marketing
• Forum Signatures
• Free Traffic System

Remember when building backlinks that you want to use your keywords for the web page you’re linking to. This is the only way that your backlinks are going to be effective in boosting your search engine rankings.

Okay, so you now have  a great start in getting backlinks; however, I’m not done just yet.

Well… sorta. I have a post planned that will discuss another very effect backlink building strategy and will be posted soon, so stay tuned for that.

Hopefully right now you have a solid understanding of doing keyword research and web page optimization, and how it all ties in to building backlinks. This is all part of building targeted website traffic that will result in sales.

As always, if you have any questions about anything discussed here, leave a comment below.

My next post will discuss the second question asked by a struggling internet marketer, but in the meantime, start applying the tips I mentioned today to your website, and you’ll soon see an increase in traffic and internet income.

Today I have the opportunity to answer a couple of questions from a struggling marketer who came to me and is losing patience trying to make money online.

I’m going to keep the person anonymous, but I’ll provide the questions below along with my answers to those questions. I like these kind of posts as it gives you (my readers) a real example of people finding this whole internet marketing thing difficult, which is maybe where you’re at today. If so, I hope you find this post encouraging as well as helpful. This may turn into a two or three part series depending on how in-depth I get here.

So let’s begin. The questions are pretty specific, but I think there’s a lot of general information about each I can provide. The nice thing here is that I’ve already blogged about these topics in the past, so if you happened to miss them or weren’t sure how they related to the questions below, you’ll now be able to put them both together, and things will finally make sense (hopefully).

Here are the questions:

How do i drive traffic to my site that can generate sales?

Is there another cool way of making money online from __________ (Wherever you are in the world)?

From talking with this person I know he has about 6 months of time invested into his online business and has been working very rigorously at it.

Maybe you have less time, or maybe more time spent trying to build up your business. Perhaps you haven’t yet started but come here for the first time thinking about maybe giving an online business a chance, but you’re not sure if the time you spend will pay off in the end.

Well first of all, I just have to say that any type of internet business is just like any offline business. It takes a lot of time, dedication and focus. This isn’t something new that I’m saying for the first time, but a lot of people just don’t get it or haven’t completely grasped that concept. So, whether you’re only a month in or 6 months in, I can say with assurance that it hasn’t been long enough for you to see any substantial return on your time. Earning a comfortable amount of money online will take much longer, most likely a lot longer than you would like.

Every person is unique and has unique abilities and talents, and what might work for one person may not work for another. So, just because you know someone that may have “made it big” in only a few short months, doesn’t mean you’ll do the same. However, the good news is that as long as you stick with it and not give up, you’re time will come. You just have to be patient and keep pushing forward.

Trust me, I know from personal experience. I’ve been at this for a while, and I’m still not close to where I want to be. But, I believe everything happens for a reason, and there’s a reason that my time hasn’t come yet. I have faith that it will, but only if I keep pushing forward and don’t give up.

During my time online I’ve seen a fair number of people that have thrown in the towel and decided it’s not for them. Maybe that’s how you feel right now. But, let me ask you these questions:

Why did you try? (Or, why do you want to try?)

Why did you give up? (Or, why do you want to give up?)

If you could have did/do something differently, what would it be?

In my experience, it has appeared to me that everyone needs to know someone that has “been there, done that” and can learn from their experiences and know what IS working and can then apply it to their own business. Consider reaching out and saying “I need help!” Believe me, you won’t look like a desperate fool if you do. Unless of course you act like one and expect nothing but hand-outs.

A lot of people just need guidance and are looking for somewhere to turn and someone that can help them. I urge you if you’re at the point of failure, it’s time for you to reach out. Hope is not all lost.

Aside from reaching out, evaluate what you’re doing and why you’re not making money. Maybe the first step in getting help is realizing that you’re not putting in enough effort. It takes REAL work, and A LOT of it.

Okay, so right now I’ve just basically been lecturing a bit, but please stay with me here. Everything I said is important, so I hope that you’ll take it in. You seriously need to stop, think and evaluate where you are with your business. If you’re not making money, find out why. Find out what you need to do in order to start making money online.

If you’re not quite sure, then stay tuned for my next post as I’ll be answering the first question, which is “How do i drive traffic to my site that can generate sales?”

I’ve written many posts on this topic, but I’ll be combining everything I know into one jam-packed post, full of useful information you can apply to your own online business.

Hope to see you there.

Ahh… the first income report of the new year. This is where it gets really exciting as I can now use this report as a base for the next 11 reports of this year. I’ll be able to see how much my income is improving (or not) and tweak stuff as necessary to hopefully squeeze more money out of my site. All the while I’ll be improving on my marketing and driving more traffic to my site.

So, without further ado, here it goes.

• ClickBank: $63.70
• PayDotCom – $28.17
• Angela’s Backlinks: $7.50
• Paul’s Backlinks: $8
• Yarie: $43.81
• Google Adsense: $29.33
• SFI: $25.70
• Project Payday: $1.50 (commissions earned from promoting the program, not actually using it)
• Responsive Data: $9
• MaxBounty: $7.17

Total Income for the month comes out to: $223.88.

Now, I know that’s not a lot and nothing to get really excited about. But, you have to start somewhere and most never even get this far.

I’d like to introduce an exciting addition to my monthly income reports. I’ve been doing freelance internet marketing work for a very successful internet marketer for some time now. This has been great as I get to learn from him and at the same time make some additional income each month.

Total income for my internet marketing services totals $160.

Also, if you didn’t know I also do proofreading/re-writing freelance work as well. My total income from those services came out to $75 for last month.

So, total income from all three sources comes to $458.88

That’s it as far as income for January. I’ll be including all three of these sources in my monthly income reports from now on.

As you can see, making money online is very possible.

We all know that generating traffic to your website is essential if you want to make money online. Not only this, but targeted traffic that is interested in what you have to say or sell is what really counts.

In this day and age, there are so many ways to get free website traffic it’s almost not even funny. However, most people don’t know about all the various ways in which to go about getting it for free. I even fall into this category as some methods are either new or just totally unique from what most people are teaching.

Anyway, I’m always looking to increase the traffic to my site, mainly using free methods. Let’s face it, we all like free stuff.

Not only that, but free search engine traffic is one of the best in quality when it comes to converting that traffic into money. So, when I’m marketing my site I do a lot of backlink building to ensure my website increases its ranking in the search engine. Not to mention the marketing I do is, of course, completely free.

Hey, there’s that “free” word again, and speaking of, I have a free gift for you.

I just got my hands on a new ebook titled: “30 Ways To Get Free Website Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less.” The book is actually written by my affiliate marketing mentors and provides some traffic resources I haven’t yet tried or heard of.

Instead of diving into the details about what’s in the ebook, I figured you’re intelligent enough to find out for yourself.

I’m offering this ebook free of charge to you, my readers. If you’d like to get free traffic to your website, then I encourage you to grab yourself a copy and apply the techniques that they share.

To download your free copy, simply Click Here.

There’s no opt-in or any of that stuff. Clicking the link above will take you straight to the ebook from where you can then download it to your computer, which I recommend.

Or, simply right-click the link and choose to “Save Link As” or “Save As”, depending on your browser, to save the ebook directly to your computer.

After downloading and reading through the ebook, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, so be sure to come back and share them below…

With the economy still way below normal and jobless rates not seeing a high increase, people are still looking for new job opportunities, both offline and online.

When I lost my job in 2008, I decided to start building an online presence and get a proofreading portfolio together. I wanted to provide a valuable service to others and build up a clientele. At the same time I hammered down on my online business and tried to learn as much as I could about internet marketing. I knew there was money to be made online, and there still is.

That’s why I truly believe that affiliate marketing is the new job on the market. Trillions of dollars are being spent online, and as an affiliate, you can claim your share.

Affiliate marketing is by far the easiest and most lucrative business model, so it’s no wonder why you see so many new affiliates these days. I imagine that there are many people looking for something different, just like I was when I lost my job.

I wanted this post to be a little different, so instead of me rambling on about stuff you may or may not already know, I thought I’d make it extremely easy for you to find all of my posts related to affiliate marketing.

So, simply click the link below:

http://www.replaceyoursalary.com/work-from-home-blog/category/affiliate-marketing

and you’ll have every post I tagged with affiliate marketing at your fingertips. This will surely give you enough information to read up on for the next day or two until I get a new post up. Hopefully you’ll find some informative information as well as some inspiration if you’re thinking about getting into affiliate marketing.

Have any thoughts? Share them below…