With the rise of the internet, all of us have seen a huge explosion in the number of affiliate programs that are being offered today. While some affiliate progams are genuine, quite a number of them are scams which offer no real products. Hence, I have come up with a few guidelines for people who are thinking of joining an affiliate program.

Firstly, you have to ask yourself this question. What do I like? What is something that I like to do and use so much that I will not mind paying for it every month even if I do not make any money out of it.

Personally for me, I like personal development. That is why I joined Success University. Every month, I get to develop myself by learning and hearing from successful people as well as a few of the world's top personal development trainers. Hence, the bottom line is, what do I like?

Second, look at the company that is offering the program. Are they trustworthy? Do they have a registered business address? How is their customer service support like? Do they offer a real product? For me, I joined Success University after learning that their headquarters is at Dallas, Texas and their president is being interviewed by FOX TV. Besides that, they offer personal development products through the internet as well as a monthly newsletter.

Lastly, look at the executive team. Do they have qualifications that is suitable in their field of industry and the leadership experience to bring the company forward? For me the deciding factor for joining Success University is their About us page. I hope this helps with people who are clueless about which affiliate program to join :)

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

If you really want to, then make the same mistake as me when I just started out. When I first started out, I join forums which have low traffic and the posts are not updated regularly. Besides that, the forums which I joined are about money, finance and investment. After posting strongly for a few months and I see little traffic to my site and of course no prospects, I finally went bonkers and told one of the instructors at a internet marketing workshop which I attend every week my problem.

He asked me 3 simple questions. They are

1.) Which forums did you go to?
2.) What is the traffic like?
3.) How is your signature link written?

I told him that I posted mainly in finance forums with low traffic and I have just a simple hyperlink to my landing page.

He laughed and told me that is where the problem lies. He advised me to quit all the finance forums because in the first place, they are not related if I am advertising affiliate programs. Instead, I should join internet marketing or affiliate marketing forums because the traffic there will be highly targeted.

Second, the forum must have a high volume of traffic. If you go to the first page of a forum and see that all the threads that are featured on the first page are all not updated daily, do not even bother to join them. If you are an ice-cream seller and you are given two different venues to sell ice-cream, where would you sell them? A busy junction that link the train station to the shopping mall or along a lonely street?

Lastly, make your signature interesting and catchy. Always include a $ and Time value inside your signature because people are always attracted by these two variables. Of course, write something realistic. If the person write that he make a million in an hour, run for the nearest exit. :))

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

Hi fellow squidoo members and visitors, if you guys do not know, I am a person who is willing to admit my mistakes and learn from it. My reason for doing so is to allow others to also learn from my mistakes as well as hear advice from others who can give me valuable insights on my mistakes.

As you guys know, having a squeeze page is very important if you are promoting online affiliate programs. It allows you to capture your prospects' data so that you can send them information on your product. Like everyone else, I use a squeeze page and set up some link tracking device to monitor my traffic. I noticed that I got about 10-20 visits to my site everyday but somehow no one seems willing to opt into my list.

After thinking through, I realized that the problem lies with the elements on my squeeze page. It is not compatible with the current situation on the internet.

In recent years, there has been a huge spike in the number of online affiliate programs and a huge influx of people are busy promoting affiliate programs. This leads to two problems.

First, most affiliate programs are structured like an online 'ponzi' scheme whereby there are no real products. Many people got cheated and as a result feel that all online programs are scams.

Second, even if the program is legal, you will be getting the same sales page as any other Tom, Dick or Harry that joined the same program. Most of the sales page also only feature pictures.

Now, the issue is, most people will not believe in pictures because they can be plucked out anywhere and be forged.

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

What you need is a unique selling point about yourself and that is where the video comes in. First, adding a intro into your video that comes with your domain name will tell people that the video belongs to you. It is not taken from somewhere else.

Second, a video will give you a good credibility because now, people can see and hear you talk physically about your products. It will be better if you can show people a video of your product being used or you giving a lecture presentation to a group of people.

After I figured this out, I immediately changed the photos to just a video presentation. The results? I got no opt in for several months despite promoting heavily about my site. After changing the picture to a short video presentation, I got 3 opt in to my list in less than a week even though I have stopped promoting my site for awhile due to school.

So guys, the bottom line is this. If you want to increase your opt in rate, all you need to do is to take a short video. It can be anything from having you promoting your products or giving a short presentation to a group of people in the video. Remember, people buy people and not websites. Lastly, the video may not necessarily be of a good quality. For me, I shot the video using the video recording device on my cell phone :)

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

Fellow squidoo members and visitors, I am going to share a tip on increasing the amount of traffic to your site using video marketing through Youtube. I decided to share this tip after viewing several videos in youtube and noticed a problem.

The problem is that there are many great videos that several marketers used to promote their products but they somehow did not make their link clickable in Youtube under video info.

The problem lies in the way they write their website link. I noticed that most of them write say yahoo.com or www.yahoo.com. Now, you might have done a great video presentation but remember, people are lazy by nature. If they realized that they need to type your site address manually into the address bar, most people will think twice about doing so.

This will decrease the number of people visiting your site. To make your link clickable, all you need to do is to write out the full url address, e.g. http://www.yahoo.com :)

If you guys need an example, take a look at one of my youtube videos below.

NTU Hall 5 Cultural Night

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

Email Marketing is a wonderful tool because it works for any business. For a business that relies solely on online sales, it provides a wonderful platform to brand the business. If being used correctly and effectively, email marketing can help to develop valuable lifetime relationships with your list which can run up to thousands of people at a time.

The list consists of your friends, customers and subscribers who want to hear from you. By opting in, they understand that they will receive information from you that they actually want. Hence, do not ever spam people. Spam is an unwanted email sent by a person with whom the recipient has had no prior contact or relationship with. It also consists of unwanted email sent to someone who has specifically requested to be removed from the sender's mailing list. Spamming others will lead to online business failure. Instead, you should use the following seven steps to send an email to your subscribers who wish to hear from you.

The first step is to personalize you email. For example, do not write 'Here's all the info you need'. Instead, write 'Susan, here's all the info you need' in your title. By writing the person's name, you will be able to get the person's attention on your email out of so many other emails that the person may have in his or her email inbox. Remember, you are writing to a single person instead of a big list. If you personalize your header, body and 'call to action' by using your subscribers' name, you will be able to increase your response rate significantly.

The second step is to create curiosity with your title instead of using your tile to sell. For example, 'Make $75 000 every week' is selling in your title. Instead , write something like 'John, please keep this to yourself' . This will create curiosity and anybody who read the latter title is more likely to click on your email to see the content rather than the former title. Remember, your job is to create curiosity with your title so that people will click on your email to view the content.

Bill Chen is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

The third step is to recommend or give information about the product instead of hard selling because nobody likes to receive sales letter. Recommend or give information about the product just like the way you recommend a movie or restaurant to your friends.

The fourth step is to format your email to improve the readability. Make sure each line of text is no more than 55 characters long. You can apply this rule in your email, blog as well as in the forum. You can also use bullet points to highlight important things because people will scan bullet points first if they are lazy to read. Keep the paragraphs and sentences short using quotes to highlight key words.

The fifth step is to create a believable story around a product you are recommending. People love to read stories and if you have an interesting story or personality inside your email, it will hook your readers in and they will continue to read to know more.

The sixth step is to tell your readers what action you want them to do. This is also known as a 'call to action'. An example is 'Click here to know more ' or 'Click here to sign up'. Many marketers might talk about how wonderful their product is, but they did not give clear direction to their readers by saying things like 'Click here to know more'.

Lastly, always encourage your readers to reply back to you by talking or asking you questions. This sums up the seven steps to be used for any email marketing campaign. Note that before you start writing your email, think of an action you want your readers to do so that your entire offer will be designed around making your readers feel compelled to response to your ''call to action'. Use up to two or three 'call to action' in your email.

Bill Chen is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

Network marketing is a marketing concept that is misunderstood by some people. To put it into definition, network marketing is simply a method in which distributors bring goods and services directly to their clients. All of us practiced network marketing everyday. When we tell our friends about a movie and why it is good, we are using network marketing. It is just that we are not paid to do so. If we are paid, it will be professional network marketing. However, the business model of network marketing can easily be misused for illegal purposes like a pyramid scam. Hence, before joining a network marketing company, there are several factors to be considered.

Firstly, most people will be introduced to network marketing by an agent of a network marketing company. Before going down to the company for an opportunity talk, ask yourself whether the agent openly invite you to attend the opportunity talk or under the pretext of something else. If the agent invited you to an opportunity talk under the pretext of something else, then leave the place immediately as it goes to show how insincere the agent as well as the company is. If not, listen carefully to the presenter during the opportunity talk. If the presenter paint a rosy picture of easy money, big cars and houses, then leave the place immediately. A presenter of a legitimate network marketing company will only talk about the products, compensation and marketing plan. Nothing else.

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648

Second, the products that are being sold must be genuine, affordable and something that a customer will buy from you every month. A good example is a box of cosmetic product. It is simple and should only cost about ten to twenty dollars. It is also a product that can be used up easily and hence the customer will buy from you repeatedly.

Lastly, the company should not ask its agents to buy a certain loads of inventory to be stocked up at home. They should instead help their agents to ship the products to their customers once their customers have paid up. The company should also have weekly training seminars for their agents which will teach their agents on the ways to market the company products. If the company has no products to speak of and only earn revenue from new recruits, then leave the company immediately as it is an illegal pyramid scheme.

Chen Mingzhi is an Internet Business Expert where he
created $10,045 sales in 24 hours just by sending
out 5 emails without any list or website. Check out Achieve Success
to learn how he did it.

If you wish to contact him, simply drop him an
email at lionsault9@hotmail.com or call him
at +65 98157648