February 2010 Income Report

Posted by Alan Mater on Mar 15, 2010

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If you read this post, then you know I promised a follow-up post to that. But, I wanted to take a break away from that and update you on my income from February.

So let’s get right to it…

Income from ReplaceYourSalary.com

Income from Re-writing services via David Hurley’s Article PLR Service…

  • Article re-writing – $35

Income from Internet Marketing Services…

  • Internet Marketing – $160 (article writing, blogging, forum marketing, social bookmarking, etc.)

Total Online Income = $428.62

That wraps up my online income for last month. How well did all of you do?


Why I Chose Affiliate Marketing and Why You Should Too

Posted by Alan Mater on Mar 11, 2010

AffiliateMarketingWhen I first came online, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or even know where to start. All I knew was that I wanted to make money online. A passion that has stuck with me even till today.

Once I was introduced to affiliate marketing, it started to make sense to me. Of course, everyone made it sound so easy. You know, the pie in the sky, hyped up promises… and so on and so forth.

I can assure you it’s not quite that easy, but that didn’t stop me from pursuing my passion and finally getting my own little slice of pie.

At the time I didn’t know anything about niches and why I should target a small niche rather than diving into a huge niche, such as the “work from home” niche. As it turns out, that’s why it’s been a struggle for me. Had I started over and did my research first, I would’ve gotten into a smaller niche where I could get my slice of the pie more quickly and maybe even get more than one slice.

But, while the “work from home” niche has its struggles, the rewards can be huge once you do gain momentum and become an authority site. Afterall, it’s one of the biggest niches on the entire internet.

I’m not going to tell you what niche you should or should not get into, but rather explain why affiliate marketing should be your choice for making money online. I believe it’s the way to go for most people… at least in the beginning.

Here’s 3 reasons why you should choose affiliate marketing:

  1. You don’t need your own product – Unless you already have a solid plan in your mind from the start, a product is the furthest thing from people’s minds when they’re just looking for some extra income. This is why affiliate marketing is lucrative because it allows people to capitalize on other people’s products.
  2. No special training required – One of the best things, I think, about affiliate marketing is that you can jump right into it head first without having a clue what you’re doing. That sounds like a bad thing, but when you think about it, there’s no better way to learn something than to just do it. And, affiliate marketing allows for this. You can learn while you go, and if you somehow manage to really mess up, there’s usually plenty of leeway for this and can easily be fixed.
  3. Zero cost is required – Seriously, you can start making money with affiliate marketing for absolutely no money out of your pocket. Of course, there will come a time when you’ll want to setup your own website/blog, but the cost is less than $100 a year. But, that’s not necessary in the beginning, although I highly recommend it as it will help you further along from the start.

Now, rather than going for the big bucks at the beginning and picking a very competative niche, I recommend finding a smaller niche to start with. Besides, you can make a lot of money even with smaller niches, believe it or not.

What are you passionate about? Do you have a hobby?

Answering these questions will help you determine what niche you may want to get started in. It helps to like what you’re doing, not to mention being knowledgeable in that area will help tremendously.

Stay tuned as my upcoming post will detail how you can determine if the niche you want to get into will be profitable or not. You don’t want to waste your time if there’s not a big enough market in your niche. Weeding out the profitable niches from the duds will aide you in your decision.

In the meantime, here’s some homework for you. Write down all the hobbies and interests you have on a piece of paper. You could have 1 or 15… It doesn’t matter. Jot them down and save them for my next post as you’ll be using this list to narrow down your interests and hobbies to just one that you’ll target for your affiliate marketing venture.

However, if you want to skip this and go right for the big bucks and target the “work from home” niche (the most money online is spent in this niche) just as I am, I recommend reading this post.

See you soon. :)


A Complete Step-By-Step Guide to Setup a Money Making Website

Posted by Alan Mater on Mar 4, 2010

binder-bigLearn how to build a website and make money by monetizing and marketing it. This no-cost, step-by-step guide will show you from start to finish how to build a money making website.

From preparation, finding affiliate programs, getting a domain name and hosting, building your website, adding content and marketing your website, this guide will help you every step of the way.

At only 13 pages long, it provides simple and easy to understand instructions that you can put into practice immediately.

Experienced webmasters and marketers won’t find anything new here. Complete beginners who are looking to start their own website and start making money online will find this guide very useful.

There are two main components to building a website: A domain name and web hosting. This guide will explain the process of registering a domain name and getting web hosting. From there, you’ll learn about affiliate marketing and how to earn commissions promoting other people’s products and services.

The key ingredient to making a website profitable is building traffic to your website. This guide will explain some proven techniques to market your website and generate targeted traffic to your site.

Again, this guide is mainly to help complete beginners. So, if that’s you, I highly recommend you grab your FREE copy now. You’ll be well on your way to building a money making website within a week or less.

There is absolutely zero cost. You don’t even have to give up your e-mail address. Free meaning really free.

Download Now!

You can simply right-click on the link and choose “Save Target” to download directly to your computer.

If you read this post where I stated I’ll pay you $10 for signing up for a new website and hosting, that offer still stands if you build a website through my links in this guide. I’ll also be available to answer any questions you have about building and marketing your new website.

I’m in the business of helping people, and this one way I can do just that. Let me help you make money online starting today.


February 2010 Blog Post Roundup

Posted by Alan Mater on Mar 1, 2010

Another month has gone by. Seriously… is it going as fast as I think it is? I seem to keep losing more and more time each day and getting further behind on stuff. I apologize for the minimal amount of posts. I’m doing my best to keep up and provide quality content to you all.

Alas, another time for a blog post roundup of last month’s posts. I have some awesome posts included in this, as well as some awesome ones to come. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them so far and have benefited from them.

I don’t take my blogging lightly. I put a lot of thought into what I’m writing and always have you, my readers, in mind. As always, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Okay, without further delay let’s get started. Be sure to check out any posts you may have missed.

Affiliate Marketing is the New Job on the Market

30 Ways to Get Free Website Traffic In Minutes

Are You a Struggling Internet Marketer?

Proven Strategies to Increase Website Traffic and Generate Sales

Legitimate Worldwide Work From Home Opportunities

Are You Targeting ‘Paying’ Keywords?

How I Get Backlinks to My Blog Posts Resulting in Sales

Google Celebrates Valentine’s Day – They Gave Me $100!

The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide

I was very pleased to see the first post on this list had gotten Re-Tweeted 27 times so far. Thank you to all who spread the word to your Twitter followers.

The Twitter Tweetmeme plugin has proven to work well and makes it easy for Twitter users to Re-Tweet posts. If you’re not yet utilizing it on your own blog, you should be.

Again, thank you to all my readers!


How I Get Backlinks to My Blog Posts Resulting in Sales

Posted by Alan Mater on Feb 25, 2010

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.

link-wheelIt’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. :)


Are You a Struggling Internet Marketer?

Posted by Alan Mater on Feb 15, 2010

toughToday 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. :)


January 2010 Income Report

Posted by Alan Mater on Feb 14, 2010

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.

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. :)


Affiliate Marketing is the New Job on the Market

Posted by Alan Mater on Feb 6, 2010

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…


January Blog Post Roundup

Posted by Alan Mater on Feb 3, 2010

Wow, I can’t believe we’re a whole month into 2010 already. January felt like it went so fast. Almost too fast, actually.

But alas, a new month is here, and we gotta keep pushing forward. It’s the beginning of February, so that means another edition of blog post roundup.

If you happened to miss any of my posts in January, you can find them below. Hope you enjoyed them.

Work From Home Cartoon Humor

What Do You Plan To Accomplish In 2010?

Are You Finding It Difficult To Make Money From Work From Home Opportunities?

Affiliate Power Group – Online Business Coaching – Affiliate Marketing Training

6 Tips To Help You Reach Online Success

5 Tips To Market Yourself On The Internet

3 Reasons You Will Never Make Money Online

5 Things You MUST Do To Make Money Online


Affiliate Power Group – Online Business Coaching – Affiliate Marketing Training

Posted by Alan Mater on Jan 25, 2010

Affiliate Power GroupIn my previous post, I briefly mentioned about the importance of having a mentor or group of mentors that can guide you on the path to online business success. One of my loyal blog readers, Dennis Edell, pointed out that all successful people (especially the top 1%) have a mentor. Well, I don’t know that I’d consider myself successful (financial wise), nor am I in the top 1%, but I do have a group of mentors that have helped me out tremendously in learning affiliate marketing.

The reason for this post is to introduce you to the group of mentors I’ve had the privilege of working with. What’s unique, I believe, is that they’ve been open to helping ANYONE who is either new to affiliate marketing, struggling to make money, or looking to take their online businesses to the next level. There’s not too many successful internet marketers that are willing to work one-on-one with people, as pointed out by Meka, a recent reader of this blog.

Of course, they can’t literally work one-on-one with every single person, but I think they got a pretty good setup in place. They have a membership site designed specifically for people who want to get into affiliate marketing by setting up niche blogs. This is certainly the starting point in which anyone who is serious should take in order to start earning some extra income online.

The membership site provides an outline and step-by-step action plan to follow, from planning, getting your website set up, marketing/advertising, optimizing and bringing in a residual and passive income month after month. The mentors who started this membership site all are regular people just like you and me who had a desire to be their own boss and work from home. They saw an opportunity and did everything they could to see their dreams become a reality. They call themselves the Affiliate Power Group.

The mentors have been successfully working from home with affiliate marketing full-time for a number of years and are now sharing their experience and knowledge with the rest of us. That’s my main goal and purpose of this Work From Home Blog. I just love helping people and giving back, and it’s obvious that they’re very willing to do the same.

The great thing about Affiliate Power Group is that they have a built-in forum (just updated) where you can ask questions and get direct answers from the mentors as well as other members. This is where the one-on-one attention is created because you have direct access to each mentor at anytime. You can also email or message any of the members directly for specific questions if you prefer.

As mentioned in my previous post, being able to have direct communication with those who are successful in your field will give you the edge you need to become successful yourself. It helps you grow mentally and provides personal development needed to turn that “hobby” of a website into a real online business. I’m not saying you have to go spend a $1,000 to form an LLC, but you have to realize that creating a successful online business takes a lot of hard work and persistence. If you treat it like a real business, it’ll reward you as such. That’s something that took me a long time to realize, which is why I’m still not where I want to be yet (my monthly income reports are proof of that).

Affiliate Power Group is able to help anyone just starting out, struggling to make money, or trying to take their affiliate marketing business to the next level.  You can give their affiliate marketing training a try for just $1. $1 will give you access to the entire membership site plus all the bonuses. This is a huge deal, and I know once you see the value you’ll receive, you’ll want to continue your membership.

The total cost of the membership is very undervalued. Although, I like to look at it as the mentors over-delivering, which is really what they do. Seriously, learn the business or take yours to the next level for just $1 today. You won’t be disappointed.


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