However that’s all about to change…

Last Friday I finally quit my 9-5 day job after six and a half years to start working full time as an internet marketer. I can’t tell you how unbelievably excited I am at this prospect. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for atleast 2 years but it’s only now I’m actually in a position to take the leap.

My office job was with a I.T. company specialising in video game console software and they were actually the best company I’ve worked for in terms of how they treat their staff. Unfortunately my heart just wasn’t in it any more and to say I’m relieved now I’ve quit is an understatement. And I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way…it’s just the way I feel.

So anyway, now it’s time to look forward and hopefully a much brighter future doing something I truly enjoy. It definitely feels liberating to be working from home, or the local coffee shop if I prefer. The other great benefit for me personally is I’ll be able to spend more time with my family including my lovely 10 month old son.

My goal is to create a true business, not just another job for myself. A business that makes money even when I’m not there and allows me to focus on those aspects of online marketing I enjoy the most. For me, that will be coming up with ideas and product creation.

I’ll be taking my inspiration from guys like Lee McIntyre and Terry Dean, in my opinion, not only two of the best marketers around but two of the best teachers of marketing aswell.

I also have certain financial goals ofcourse but I have no intention of letting them become all consuming. Life is far too precious for that.

Anyway, that brings me back to this blog. I’ve been giving serious consideration to how I make it stand out from the thousands of other marketing blogs out there.

I realise ofcourse that blogs live or die by the quality of their content and their ability to engage with their audience, and that’s central to my new plans for the site. I’m still formalising my ideas but rest assurred some exciting changes are afoot which I’ll be revealing very soon.

So onwards and upwards as the saying goes.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear the experiences of others who’ve made the move into full time internet marketing? Was it all you expected? Were there any aspects of working from home you didn’t like? Or was it the best decision you’ve ever made?

Let me know in the comments below…

Allan Gardyne has over 12 years experience marketing online and is best known for his associateprograms.com affiliate marketing directory.
His passion is writing and it shows in his prolific output and easy to follow style.

He’s one of the very best affiliate marketers around and now lives an enviable lifestyle down under.

Check out how he’s achieved his success and what it takes to emulate him by downloading the ebook below…

Download the Allan Gardyne Interview Ebook here

P.S. If you download the above ebook you’ll also get access to a rebranding package so you can brand the ebook with both your own website URL and a special discount link to Allan’s amazing SpeedPPC Pay-Per-Click Management software tool.

So I was delighted when Ros recently agreed to an interview with me. Ros talks about her early success with pay per click marketing, why she’s now using blogs for niche marketing, and just what it takes to be a super affiliate. Plus much more besides.

You can listen to this 21 minute interview here

Update: I’ve now had this interview transcribed into a pdf ebook which you can download here.

The ebook is also rebrandable with your own website’s name and your affiliate ID for Rosalinds best-selling and highly recommended Super Affiliate Handbook.

Many membership sites for instance have a high churn rate because their quality is poor or they simply don’t have enough follow up content to justify the monthly fees.

One monthly membership site I joined last year and have happily promoted ever since is Lee McIntyre’s Standing Start Profits

As you may be aware, Lee has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the last year, creating hit product after hit product and now consistently makes over $20000 profit a month. And SSP is where he teaches exactly how he does it.

Lee’s a former schoolteacher and it shows in the straightforward and enthusiastic way he delivers his message. Personally I’ve learnt more about marketing online from Lee in the past year than I have from anyone else.

He’s the real deal and I highly recommend Standing Start Profits to anyone who wants to make money online.

So anyway here’s where things get interesting.

Lee recently revamped his affiliate center and now offers 90% recurring commissions on all new members you refer but only if you are a member yourself.

Membership is $19.95 per month so you can earn around $18 per month for each member you refer.

You can still promote Standing Start Profits as a non-member through Clickbank but you only receive 50% commission for each month people you refer remain members.

But in any case, I certainly wouldn’t recommend promoting a membership site you havn’t joined yourself as you won’t be able to give an honest review.

Ok, so here’s the thing…

You may have already seen my interview ebook with Lee from last year. If not you can download it from the far right hand sidebar if you scroll down a little.

Now that ebook is the original one which includes a reseller package allowing you to rebrand the ebook with your own affiliate link for Standing Start Profits. However it’s the clickbank 50% commission link rather than Lee’s new 90% one.

So I have an offer that I hope you’ll find worthwhile…

Simply join Standing Start Profits through any of my links in this post and contact me to let me know. I’ll then send you a special version of the ebook which you can rebrand with Lee’s 90% commission affiliate link.

All you have to do then is giveaway your rebranded version on your website, blog, or your forum sigs etc and allow others to pass it onto their visitors too and you could soon have a very nice passive residual income coming in, month after month.

Remember it’s all a numbers game and the more hands you get the ebook into the more money you’ll make.

Just click the link below to get started…

Click here to join Standing Start Profits now

It’s main benefit will be the ability to show which of your subscribers clicks through from your emails and takes an action such as ordering a product, thus allowing you to determine your most profitable and responsive customers.

You can then segment your lists accordingly, for example by promoting higher value products to your best subscribers.

I’ve no doubt this will prove a killer feature and set Aweber even further apart from their main competitors.

Read more about email analytics here

Yet one of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking business success online is being disciplined enough to complete tasks inspite of all the other distractions competing for your attention.

It’s an ongoing battle and particularly so if, like me, you are trying to build an online business whilst also holding down a full time job. I also have a lovely young son (Louis, almost 8 months now!) to help look after. With such limited time it’s vitally important to remain focussed to have any chance of achieving success.

I’ve known for a long time that I do too much of the work by myself. I create the websites and landing pages, write the copy, install wordpress blogs and plugins, set up testing and tracking, market research, traffic generation, in fact pretty much everything.

I’ve persisted with this way of working far longer than I should have. Partly for financial reasons, but also because I’ve often felt it easier to complete a task myself than explain how to do it to a freelancer. And there is also the feeling of losing control when you hand the reins over to someone else.

So lately I’ve been examining how I run my business and what I can do to boost my productivity, and I’ve identified a number of areas where I waste time and work inefficiently.

I also made a forum post over at Starting Start Profits asking members for their suggestions. I got some incredibly useful feedback, some of which I’ve included below in my list of Top 5 Tips For Improving Productivity…

Tip 1 - Focus On Tasks That Have Leverage

Do something once and benefit from it indefinitely. My free rebrandable ebooks are a good example. Because these ebooks spread virally, each one brings in a consistent stream of visitors to my sites every single day. All from creating simple interview ebooks.

Tip 2 - Write Down Your Goals

This is vital. You should set daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. By writing your goals down, you give yourself both a focus and a plan of action.

Here’s one suggestion I received from Lee McIntyre on his SSP Mentoring Forum.

For your short term tasks try making a list of everything you want to acheive during the following week. Do that last thing on Friday, then allocate tasks to each day. Then when you wake on a Monday, you’ll know exactly what needs to be done.

Then at the end of each day, just spend 5 minutes updating your plan for the next day. It’s also helpful to prioritise tasks. So if you don’t complete your top priority A task on Monday, you can carry that over to the Tuesday ahead of any medium priority B tasks you may have.

Tip 3 - Set Aside Specific Times Of The Day For Checking And Answering Email

Another huge time waster is constantly checking the inbox for incoming email. I no longer check my email in the morning as soon as I switch my PC on. I try to get something done instead, like writing a report, making a blog post or outsourcing a project (more on that in a moment).

Try just checking your email only twice a day instead, say at midday and again late afternoon just before you finish your day’s work.

Tip 4 - Stop Checking Stats So Often

I’m a sucker for this one myself and it wastes so much time. I can easily end up checking my link tracking stats or aweber account 3 or 4 times a day. Once a day at most is all that’s needed.

Tip 5 - Create Systems and Outsource

Probably the single most important tip for growing and leveraging your business. You must outsource as much as you can. Easy and relatively inexpensive tasks to outsource include graphics creation, blog commenting, article writing and keyword research.

Think about how you can systemize tasks that you’ve previously done yourself so you can outsource them to someone else. Perhaps through creating screencapture video tutorials. Whenever you have a new task to perform, constantly ask yourself if your time would be better spent on another part of your business such as market research or coming up with new product ideas. If it would, then you have a prime candidate for outsourcing.

This means you can insert your own affiliate links for Dan’s D9 Webhosting service and Boomerang List Builder Viral List Building Software into the ebook before selling it or giving it away. You can also insert a prominent link to your own website on the first page of the ebook.

I’ve also included a high quality squeezepage for you to use if you want to use the ebook to build your list. Or you could just use Dan’s Boomerang List Builder to build a list with a 100% opt-in rate. Check out his site to find out how.

However if you prefer to give it away without an opt-in that’s fine too.

So by distributing this ebook, not only will you be providing fantastic content to your visitors, you’ll also be building your list, generating traffic and creating long term residual income from affiliate sales.

Download the reseller / giveaway package here

My reply to the poster is below. It was just one of the many replies given by the very knowledgable and positive minded members at Lee McIntyre’s site which, by the way, is well worth checking out if you havn’t already.

Anyway, this is the advice I gave…

Now as I say above, I’m still learning this game and a long, long way off making internet marketing my full-time living. So make of it what you will.

Having said that, I’d have been thankful of the above advice when I started out because it’s largely based on my previous experiences and mistakes, some intermittent success nowadays, and from talking to and observing other marketers and how they operate.

For instance James D. Brausch has an incredible outsourcing strategy in place via his intern program. According to his blog (which I also believe is outsourced to his interns writing under his “Diego” penname), he has around 400 interns helping run his business at any one time.

Now that’s leverage!

And I’ve talked previously about building business relationships with other marketers. It’s often overlooked by beginners (I didn’t consider it when I started out) but having a network of successful marketers you can collaborate and do joint ventures with, is pretty much a prerequisite for success.

That’s why online learning communities like Standing Start Profits are well worth joining just for the opportunity to network with other serious marketers, let alone the great tutorials Lee provides.

Ofcourse, the most important thing you can do is start to build a list of highly targeted subscribers. It’s the best asset your business will have.

Forget about trying to bombard your list with offer after offer though. That might have worked a few years back but not now. Today, web visitors are much more clued up and will only continue to subscribe to your list if you provide great valuable content that they benefit from.

At last year’s Britpack UK seminar, I heard about one very well known marketer whom despite having a huge six-figure list, was apparently struggling to make more than a trickle of sales from his affiliate promotions. Why? Because he hadn’t spent anytime cultivating a relationship with the people on his list. Instead all they got was one promotional mailing after another. No tutorials or tips or advice…nothing.

No doubt they were unsubscribing in droves too!

Anyway, that’s my take on things. What about you? What advice would you give to someone starting out in internet marketing? Why not post a comment below and let me know.

Like the Google Analytics Tools, it’s completely free to use and accessible to anyone who has uploaded a video to Youtube. Amongst other things it will show you how your videos compare in terms of popularity to other similar videos and give you a geographic breakdown of viewing stats. For anyone using youtube as a lead generation tool, this is sure to be invaluable information.

You can read the full story here.

Jeremy is best known for his High Performance Affiliate Marketing (HPAM) ebook which reveals the strategies he uses to rake in over a million dollars a year using PPC. His new Black Ink Project is a month long training program for new and intermediate affiliate marketers using Webinars and other resources.

However you’ll need to be quick as the program is restricted to 1000 places.

From my experience of the HPAM forum and ebook (both of which are now available free too), I can honestly say Jeremy is one of the most generous and knowledgeable marketers online today and a great teacher to boot. Many other marketers would charge hundreds of dollars for the training he’s providing so I’d highly recommend taking advantage of this fantastic opportunity.

Check out the full details here