If you haven't sussed it out already the only people making the money out of those tempting "get rich quick" advertisements are the guys who posted them. What's more is they are getting rich on the money that other folks are giving them in the vain hope of some kind of internet success. So if you want to spend your money as fast as you earn it just carry on buying into their dream and make them rich. Or you could take a deep breath, do some research and tackle the whole business of internet marketing from a completely different angle altogether.

There is a major downside however to this method which will unfortunately put a lot of people off internet marketing and home business before they even start. It seems to be the one thing that instills terror into the hearts of would be home business opportunist the world over. The very mention of it's name (even in an article like this) will cause sheer panic and a rush to find a real job in the real world. Making it easy to give up any crazy notions of working for oneself in the internet marketing industry at all. What on earth could it be that has such a devastating affect on these prospective stay at home business men or women? The answer....HARD WORK!

Whoops sorry, it's that four letter word again causing so much trouble for all those people who were looking for an easy option. A quick fix to get them out of debt or turn their lives around just like those online advertisements always promised they could. The bottom line is that there is no easy way to succeed in internet marketing no matter what you have been told previously. The only path to honest legitimate success is through hard work. Sure there will be the odd occasion when someone strikes it lucky the first time around but this will be the exception rather than the rule.

The secret to internet marketing is that there is no secret at all. All you need is guts and a determination to succeed in one of the most competitive markets in the world. Whilst everyone else is off chasing internet success rainbows and looking for the none existent pot of gold you have your chance. In other words there are plenty of folks out there who haven't clicked that the easy fix doesn't work yet. This means for those who focus the market is in fact still wide open. If you are prepared to be consistent in your approach and take a long term view you have every chance of internet marketing success. So the choice as always is yours. Keep on chasing rainbows or knuckle down to some long term hard word. Be Successful!

Everyday, we hear about people making 4 figures or even 5 figures online while some simply could not eve make t past the $100 mark. What is the difference and why is it so that some is able to succeed and some not. Is the hype for real ?

First off, let me address a few things that, Yes. The hype is for real. The internet is a tool that reach over millions of users each and every day. If you can even get 0.1% of the market share, and your product is selling at $27, you can still make a hefty $27,000 ! 

The simpliest form of Internet Marketing is simply Affiliate Marketing. That is to say, you can make money off the internet EVEN if you do not have your own product, website, list etc. 

I have mentioned in one of my articles that the wealth creation formula is Leverage. So likewise, the keyword to succeed in Affiliate Marketing is, leverage !

So How does leverage have to do with Affiliate Marketing ? 

Build A List: The most important thing you always have to note is to build a list. Alot of people misunderstand that you need to have your own product to have a list. The question to ask is, if you have given so much time and effort to advertise and drive traffic to promote a particular product, would you want to do the same again when you need to promote a new product in the coming months ?

If you have build a successful list of 2000 subscribers in 6 months. When you wish to romote a new product, you can go back to your usual marketing method togenerate more customers and also simply send a recommendation to your 2000 subscribers of which, they are already potential buyers. This is call, recycling your list and you are leveraging your efforts which you have done for the first product.

Endless Traffic: Why do you advertise ? Because you want to bring interested people to your page. Because you bring them to our site, it also means you have a chance of making a sale. As such, the law of averages applies. If your conversion rate is 30%, you will make 3 sale for every 10 person who visited your site.

Now, you can leverage on getting endless traffic on sources like ezines, email advertisment, forums etc. You see, the medium is already there for you. These are the place people will go to either to read up an article or participate in a forum discussion. Your ad/link is there for as long as the medium is there. Therefore, you are leveraging on mediums that is already well known and visted by many, thereby increasing your chance of free traffic.

There are other ways of getting endless source of Free Traffic from the web. You heard it right, free traffic if you are work on a budget.

Joint Venture: Now, you have endless traffic to your site, which continues to build your list. Once you have a decent list, you can even seek to ask for joint venture with other people or gurus of your niche market. So now, you use your list to "exchange" their list, in one way, its leveraging on his efforts in the past and he is leveraging your effort. One way or the other, both of you win in the trade off.

The good thing is, now you have new subscribers from his list after you made a new sale. That means that you now have a bigger customer base and not only did you earn a decent amount from your last Joint Venture, you hve just give yourself a bigger chance of a bigger pay cheque in your next product ! 

There are alot of other ways in which you can use to bring more success into your online business. Some of which are found in Ewen Chia's Secret Affiliate Weapon which I highly recommend as good read for everyone starting out in Affiliate marketing.  

The key point is again, Leverage. No matter what you are doing, if you can instaill leverage into your business, you are in fact building a future or business in a "less effort, more money" theory. 

It really hit home to me how lucky I was to be sitting at that table.

Joe Vitale is one of the fathers of the internet marketing business, and just keeps growing from amazing success to amazing success. His goal is to be the world's first trillionaire. I wouldn't bet against him.

Craig Perrine is one of the up-and-coming gurus. The gurus all know him, and respect him. He's one promotion away from being a guru himself. He's also got a dangerously skewed sense of humor.

Bill Hibbler is one of my oldest friends. He's the one that got me into internet marketing, and introduced me to Joe. He's quietly built up a very impressive internet empire. He also used to manage rock stars- so we share the music biz connection.

To get these guys together for a consultation would cost thousands of dollars an hour.

Let me share the wealth with you, by letting you listen in to a conversation we had about joint ventures.

There is a temptation for new internet marketers to use the "shotgun" approach when they try to set up Joint Venture deals. In the shotgun approach, you send a form letter to everybody you can think of, asking them to promote your product.

We were unanimous on this. The shotgun approach NEVER WORKS.

There. That's all you need to know about the shotgun approach. Don't waste your time

Bill reminded me of a time, 8-10 years ago, when I tried the shotgun approach in the music business. I put together a promo kit, with pictures, press clippings, and my latest CD and mailed it to record companies. Wasted several hundred dollars. I got no response.

Later, I got a record deal, publishing deal, and a couple of great agents- but I didn't get them by using the shotgun approach.

Well, what does work?

We all agreed that building a relationship was important.

So, I asked Joe, Bill, and Craig to imagine they were sitting in... Cleveland, Texas, or some other backwater spot, and they wanted to establish a relationship with a potential JV partner. What would they do?

I want to make it very clear that the first step is to identify who you want to establish the relationship with. You need to focus on each potential JV partner one-at-a-time.

Here are the steps they would take:

1. get on their list.

2. subscribe to all of their newsletters and read them. You want to know what their niche is, what their interests are, and- this is very important- what they like. More on this in a minute.

3. send them an occasional email telling them that you like their ezine, and telling them exactly what you liked. quote the ezine or newsletter.

4. once they've responded to an email, and acknowledge you, offer them a free article or ebook to use as a bonus for their promotion. It's important that your bonus has some relation to their promotion.

5. politely ask if they'd be interested in promoting your product. Do NOT send attachments. Do NOT send a long email with your biography. Do send a polite request stressing what's in it for them.

6. repeat step five politely but persistently.

I've seen this work with Joe, and I believe that it will work with most gurus IF... and this is a big IF... the product you want to promote is actually a great product and it is the sort of thing his customers will actually buy.

For example, Craig's customers are savvy, experienced internet marketers who are interested in the nuts and bolts techniques of list building. My ebook, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Internet Wealth, would be totally inappropriate for his list.

Joe, on the other hand, has a list of people who will find that book very useful. He'll be promoting it soon.

Now, look at step two- where it talks about finding out what they like.

Now, close the door. Make sure you're alone. I'm about to tell you a secret...

You can get a guru's attention by bribing them.

This is a secret. Don't tell anybody. You didn't hear it from me.

It's true.

Here are some of the bribes that have worked:

- single malt scotch

- italian leather coat(s)

- a case of oreos

- vintage books

- steak dinner

- gourmet coffee

- official baseball-team cap (worked wonders with a Japanese record exec.)

- twenty-dollar bill

- maduro churchill cigars (I live in hope.)

note- clever works better than expensive. You can't buy these guys. You can amuse them. If their passion is coffee, and you send them a pound of blue kona grown on a small coffee plantation, dried and roasted by loving hands- they'll think of you as they drink the coffee, and they will read your proposal. The point is that you cared enough to learn about them, and learn what they like- and send it to them. Don't go buy a hundred pounds of coffee and send it to a hundred gurus. Find the one who is passionate about coffee and concentrate on him.

Or find the one who has a sweet tooth for oreos, and send him a case.

(disclaimer: this is word of mouth. Hearsay. I have no evidence of anyone ever receiving or responding to a bribe. If I did, it was years ago and the statute of limitations has run on it. If it ever happened. In the case of the case of oreos, the evidence is long gone- his son ate 'em.)

A bribe will not guarantee that the guru will promote your product.

However, some of these guys get dozens of offers a day. It's a full time job just reading the emails.

If you send your proposal FEDEX, with a memorable bribe (remember, you've researched them to find out what they like), you greatly increase the chances of your proposal actually getting read.

It's still up to you to create a great product, and offer it to marketers who actually have access to the people who will buy it. Be sure to stress the benefits to the list-owner and his list. This is not the place to give your life history, or beg for help. Desperation does not sell.

A quick and easy way to build a relationship, and create a product, is to interview or co-write with your potential JV partner. The less work they actually have to do, the more likely they are to agree to your proposal.

Why would you do this?

1. When people see your name associated with a guru's name, there is a perception that you are worth listening to.

2. It gets the guru emotionally involved in the project, and he'll do what it takes to make it successful.

3. The first one is the hardest. Once you've successfully worked with one guru, it's much easier to connect with, and work with, others.

4. You get to "cream" the guru's list. You can build your own list by capturing the names of people who show interest in the product you create with the guru.

This led to a discussion of other problems beginning internet marketers have.

Craig said it best, "If you are currently broke, you have no business creating or marketing success products."

The funniest JV proposal any of us have ever received said, "I've got a great marketing course, I just don't know how to market it." It's actually become famous in guru circles as the ultimate bad example.

Bill followed up, "The internet marketing niche is full. Not only is there no room for anyone else to market products in that niche, if you do compete in that niche you're competing against the best marketers on the planet. You don't stand a chance."

I can tell this to my coaching clients until I'm blue in the face, and they'll still try it. I don't understand.

Your chance of success is higher in just about any other niche.

The trick is to discover what you're actually good at, and sell that.

What are your skills? Be honest about where you are now.

Craig, again: "Do you like being lied to? If you're marketing success products, and you're not successful- you're lying."

Craig had the solution- "There are two kinds of people in internet marketing: marketers and product developers. You're probably a product developer. Find what you're good at, and make a product out of that."

This led to a discussion about product development.

It's easy.

If you like to write, and you write well, it's even easier.

If you don't like to write, or don't write well, get an audio recorder and record interviews. You can record interviews over the phone. You can make camtasia videos and sell those. A cheap video recorder is good enough to make professional videos- the bar isn't very high, because you need to compress the videos so they can be downloaded.

Somebody brought up the story of Joe Kumar, who was a broke student who lived in Singapore. He emailed a bunch of gurus and asked them a simple question about marketing. He knew that getting an answer to an email was easier than any other form of gathering information.

He also figured out that the gurus he interviewed would be emotionally involved with the product, and would be motivated to see it succeed. When the product was ready to market, his interview subjects became his joint-venture partners.

He made a pile of money. His story after that is kind of sad, but is worth learning about. Do a google search-

This is a great business model. Joe and I used it when we created "The Myth of Passive Income."

We bounced this around- that's the beauty of mastermind meetings. The energy just swirls around the room.

One of the ideas that came out of this swirling energy- what if an overweight person interviewed a group of weight-loss experts, and created a product from the interviews? Then he could write an ezine to document his/her progress using the advice the weight-loss experts gave him. You could sell a lot of these.

What kinds of synergy can you create between Joint Ventures and products?