As we enter 2011 many people who tried to make money online in 2010 and failed will blame others for their failure. It’s natural to pass the blame when things don’t go our way and this is usually what separates success from failure. The purpose of this blog post is to identify where you may have gone wrong in 2010 and point you in the right direction in 2011. So I have identified 4 key areas that can separate success from failure.

If you want to succeed in 2011 stop buying new products. That’s right, stop buying the latest and greatest product that promises easy riches for doing very little. We’ve all see these products that will tempt you to buy with phrases such as ‘click your mouse 13 times to generate unlimited cash into your bank account’. I mean come on, do you really believe this rubbish? Maybe not but many people do and the sooner you realize that products that promise easy money for doing nothing are never going to work the better.

If you want to succeed in 2011 get to work. Yes, you heard me right, get to work. You now know that push button riches don’t exist so the next thing you need to realize is that it takes hard work to become a success online. You are never going to make money browsing Facebook or watching videos on YouTube. So start by making a plan and get to work executing that plan.

If you want to succeed in 2011 start generating useful content others will want to consume. There is so much bad content created by various article spinners and programs that produce crap on autopilot that can’t be read by anyone these days that it’s getting ridiculous. Who wants to read random generated crap created by a machine that makes no sense? Not me! Remember that the best content you can create is original content that you put hard work and effort into creating. Whatever you produce leaves a trail on the Internet so remember that any randomly spun work will reflect on the quality of your products. If you don’t know where to start create a blog and start writing, this will soon get you used to generating content.

If you want to succeed in 2011 start creating products of you own. This is the information age, people are craving for new information every day. Provide information that people want to consume and you will see success in 2011. If you don’t think you can create a product or don’t know where to start then find a mentor. A mentor can show you the path to success, can stop you making mistakes in the early days and can be someone to make yourself accountable too. They can also give you a kick up the backside when you start to stray. If you want to find a mentor be sure you do your research first. Google their name and a look for reviews of their previous products. Contact their support desk to make sure they are going to provide the support you need an if you need to ask to speak to them on the telephone. A genuine marketer who has your interests at heart will be very approachable. After all if you can’t approach them how can they help you succeed?

Finding a mentor wont come cheap but it really can be the fastest way to success and when you add up what you have already spent on information products in the past it could be a very wise investment indeed.

Just remember, becoming successful online isn’t easy, there are no push button solutions and the sooner you realize that the closer you will be to becoming successful.

Here we are again, another year in the Internet Marketing world comes to an end. So what did you make of 2010 and what are your plans for 2011?

For me 2010 was a bit of a strange year, I moved into a brand new office and I have became more productive than ever but it seemed to take me a few months to get going, I think I was just enjoying being an Internet Marketer and the freedom that brought me so I didn’t really do a great deal in the first half of 2010 apart from the relaunch of my Masterclass Program. That is now an evergreen product and pretty much takes care of itself.

I was a lot busier in the 2nd half of the year and I have just came off the back of a major launch with Affiliate Promo Formula. This actually took me almost 3 months to put together and was over 12 months in the making. The launch did really well and we have done over $50,000 in sales since launch last week.

There was over 500 hours put into creating this product and I initially sold it for only $37, I could have sold it for a lot more but I wanted to put this in front of as many people as possible. Also, what people who didn’t buy Affiliate Promo Formula will fail to see is the work that is going on behind the scenes with the Affiliate Alliance. This is a product that was created as a complimentary upsell to Affiliate Promo Formula and it involves me working with people on a personal level throughout 2011 as I reveal all I know about becoming a successful affiliate. I will be putting a lot of work into this in 2011.

I also released a couple of smaller $10 products and had a couple of 72 hour fire-sales with The 72 Hours of Madness (I’ll be running this again on Boxing Day) that proved very popular.

So why am I telling you this?

Well the reason is that no matter what you may think of the Internet Marketing world and whatever people tell you one thing will never change.

People will always be looking for information and it’s our job to provide this information.

I know I keep banging on about this but the key to your Internet Marketing success is to create and keep creating new information products and to use these products to build an army of followers. As long as you keep putting buy buttons and opt-in forms in front of people you can’t really go wrong.

I had a lazy year this year, I only had one major product launch and one re-launch but I still managed to earn 10 times more than I used to at my regular job.

So as we come to the end of 2010 I want to give you the best piece of advice I could ever give you, are you ready? Here it is.

Stop looking for the magic bullet because you will never find it. Ignore the promise of easy riches in the form of clever sales copy and unscrupulous marketers who don’t care about your welfare and get to work. Create valuable, useful content that people want to consume and success is almost guaranteed in 2011.

One thing I have never ever done is tell you succeeding in this business is easy, it can be but it takes a great deal of work to get going but if you truly want to be successful you need to be prepared to work at it.

So will you join me in 2011 and be prepared to knuckle down and do what it takes to become successful? If the answer is yes then I look forward to working with you as I have a lot of exciting things planned and it starts in early 2011. If the answer is no then you are on the wrong marketers mailing list and are in for a disappointing year ahead as I won’t be selling or pitching automated push button systems that simply don’t deliver. So you can either stop dreaming or knuckle down to work. I know what most will do…

Let me tell you one thing and you can quote me on this.

“2011 will be the year the ethical marketer prospers. People are sick of buying poor quality products and are un-subscribing from questionable marketers lists in droves. If you want to see proof of this simply check out the product review section of the Warrior Forum”

My aim is to educate as many people as possible and teach them how to become a success in 2011 by showing people how to create quality products that people want to buy and letting people see deep inside my business for the very first time. This is something I’ll be discussing in the coming weeks.

In the meantime may I take this opportunity to wish each and every one of my blog readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and prosperous New Year.

So how was 2010 for you and what are your plans for 2011, feel free to comment?

Since I launched Affiliate Promo Formula just a few hours ago things have been crazy, I have been manning my emails since launch and I have received quite a few questions which I thought I would share with you.

Q: What is Affiliate Promo Formula?

A: Affiliate Promo Formula is a complete training program that will show you how to become a super affiliate online. The methods I reveal are tried and tested and I have been using them myself since 2006.

Q: How is the course delivered?

A: The course is delivered over 15 modules, 3 bonus modules, a pdf mindmap, pdf worksheet and eBook. All modules are multi format so they can be played on a computer, iPhone, iPod, iPad and even read on a kindle.

Q: Do I need a list to make this work?

A: No, if you haven’t yet started to build a list I have that covered so you do not need a list to get started.

Q: How much does it cost?

A: This may shock you, the cost is only $37 and as it’s sold via ClickBank you also have a no quibble 60 day refund period meaning there is no risk to you.

Q: I’ve seen a lot of questionable ClickBank launches lately, what makes this product any different from the sort of stuff I’ve seen launched recently?

A: This is a tried, tested and perfect method I have developed myself and have been using since 2006, I do not promise automated or push button riches. (Hint!, there’s no such thing) I provide  methods that have worked for me for the last 4 years and still work just as well today.

Q: Are there any upsells?

A: Yes, there’s one upsell and it is complimentary to Affiliate Promo Formula, it is in no way needed to make Affiliate Promo Formula work.

Q: What about support?

A: I take great pride in my support and I will provide all the support you need and all questions I receive are always answered within 24 hours including weekends. Usually much sooner.

Q: I have another question.

A; No problem, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you on this blog.

Affiliate Promo Formula is the result of over 4 years of promoting products as an affiliate marketer. I have generated over 1 million dollars in affiliate sales and everything I know has gone into this.

I feel it’s my best product to date and it will help you earn more as an affiliate.

http://www.affiliatepromoformula.com/

Here’s to your affiliate success.

It’s getting worse, another major rubbish product launch has happened again recently, I wont name names but those in the know will be aware about the latest ‘push button’ product that doesn’t deliver on what the sales page promises that has been peddled by unscrupulous marketers.

The product creator doesn’t care that the refund rate will probably be over 50% and that there is little or no customer service being offered and that the product is just more rehashed crap that we have seen getting launched time and time again over the last few months.

All he cares about is making sales, so the sales page looks fantastic and converts extremely well to attract as many affiliates as possible.

And this is the problem…

You see, as an affiliate a product like this can look like a very attractive product to promote and it’s easy to see why affiliates jump on board, plus there’s the ‘I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine’ mentality that means affiliates feel obliged to return any favours owed, something I suffered from and covered in this blog post.

So the affiliates promote and make some money (half of which gets refunded) and they carry on until the next ‘offer’ comes along and repeat the process.

Next time they make less sales…

Then less sales..

Then none at all…

You probably don’t need me to tell you why sales have dried up do you? It’s because their subscribers are sick of getting peddled crap launch after crap launch.

I think sometimes marketers forget that when they send an email they are getting opened by real people with real problems and they are looking to marketers like us for a solution, so when they are peddled rubbish products promising the earth but delivering nothing they quickly unsubscribe.

This is an easy trap for any would be affiliate marketer to fall into, but avoiding this trap is easy. Just remember these 3 golden rules before you promote any product.

1. Have you reviewed it?
2. Will it help your subscribers?
3. Does the product creator have a solid reputation online?

If you answer no to any of the above then you really shouldn’t be promoting the product. In fact if you have any doubts about promoting something before hitting the send button it’s probably best you don’t.

Remember, your subscribers are real people with feelings and emotions and most are looking to you for a solution to their problems. Provide the solutions and you will be walking to the bank to cash your affiliate checks with your head held high. However, promote crap and your affiliate days will be numbered.

You have been warned…

It’s 7am here in the UK as I write this blog post, this morning I woke up at 6am and decided to write some content for my blog as it’s been a short while and I want to start with a question.

Do you really want to succeed in Internet Marketing, I mean really want to succeed?

You see, some people will tell you how determined they are then fail at the first hurdle. Or they may work hard for a short while full of enthusiasm then they eventually give up. We all want success right? However, some want it more than others and the people who want it the most almost always seem to make it.

It is very important you understand if you really want to succeed or if you just think you want to succeed.

An example of someone who ‘thinks’ they want to succeed would be:-

• Someone who needs to learn wordpress then spends the day on the golf course.
• Someone who is having problems building a website who then spends the afternoon in Starbucks.
• Someone who knows they need to spend the day writing articles but then ends up in the pub.
• Someone who spends more time on Facebook than the Warrior Forum.
• Someone who buys into automated program after automated program to avoid real work.

An example of someone who wants to succeed would be:-

• Someone who spends almost every day building their Internet business.
• Someone who can ignore distractions and get their tasks done for the day. (Something that is very hard to do sometimes)
• Someone who when faced with a problem will solve it no matter what.
• Someone who does not even know what ‘it can’t be done’ means.
• Someone who knows they need to work hard to make their business succeed.
• Someone who wakes up at 6am and decides to create some content before doing anything else.

I’m sure you can see what I’m trying to say here.

There is a big difference between people who want it and people who think they want it. If you currently ‘think’ you want it then this may be your wake up call.

Remember! Making money online takes time, there is no magic bullet no matter what you keep getting told every day from most Internet Marketers. If you want it bad enough and are prepared to work at it then it will happen.

I go into this in a lot more detail in my report ‘You’ll Never Succeed Onine’, if you haven’t read it yet go grab yourself a copy, it’s free.

www.neversucceedonline.com

Articles can be the ticket to a lot of targeted traffic for you website/blog, but, once you have an article written where do you go from here? What is the best way to distribute your article to the masses of people all waiting to spend their money on your next big product? Many of us have been here before and many people are still at the stage where they have their first article sitting in a file somewhere on there computer, proud of their hard work but thinking to themselves,

‘What Next?’

The first thing to do would be to find one or two article directories to upload your first article, this will start the traffic flowing to your website/blog. Now while that first article is floating around a few article directories you should work on your next article and repeat the process as much as you can, this will help improve your writing skills and you will naturally develop your own article writing style. Keep doing this until you have around 10-20 articles written and submitted to a few article directories. Once you reach this point you can choose to do one of two different things.

Secondly, you could become a member of an article submission site. This is a site which, for a small monthly subscription fee, will submit your article to 100s of different article directories for you. You may be thinking that this could be done by yourself as submitting articles is not the most time consuming task in the world. For example, say it takes you one minute to submit an article, not a long time really? But then imagine doing this 500 times over, is that small monthly subscription starting to look a little more attractive now? The benefit of these sites is you do a few minutes work submitting one article they do the rest. You can then move on to other furthering your business in other ways while they carry out the boring monotonous task of submitting the article to all the directories.

Third, you could pay a one of investment and purchase for yourself some article submission software. This has the benefits of being able to choose which article directories you would like your article submitted to. Also after a certain amount of time you will eventually make back your money on your initial investment and all traffic gained after this moment will be for free. The only downside to this option is the larger initial cost than the submission service.

We all know that that articles are an excellent way to generate traffic but to a beginner who has just started out using articles this way it can be a confusing time, wondering what to do next when really it is relatively simple. You just need to start submitting to one or two sites till you have a good amount of articles and experience then either use a site or software to make these submissions on a much larger scale.

There is hardly a day goes by when your inbox is not flooded with offer after offer from Internet Marketers promising you ways to make easy money on autopilot while sitting on a beach sipping a cocktail.

As far as I know there is not a program that exists that allows you to make a easy autopilot income while doing nothing or if there is such a program it is a very well kept secret. This is actually one of the biggest reasons people fail online. They get sold promises of easy riches for doing very little work at all when the truth is there are no easy ways to make money online.

I’m sure a lot of people will be able to relate to this problem, you can be casually surfing the web and you come across a program online that looks like it could be perfect for you, it promises you overnight wealth and success and it requires hardly any work on your part, all you have to do is pay this product’s creator some of your hard earned cash and he/she will reveal to you the secret to easy wealth, so you decide to buy it. Only to find out things were not as they seemed and in fact there is a ton of work involved and things were not as easy as you thought, so you give up and keep searching.

The next day another offer lands in your inbox and the whole process starts again, and again, and again and before you know it your hard-drive is full of hundreds of products you’ve barely even glanced at, but worse still, you find you’ve wasted thousands of Dollars. I bet if you look at how much you’ve invested in these ‘get rich quick while sitting on the beach’ products and then look at how many hours you’ve invested in these products doing real work the cash would far outweigh the effort.

This is a vicious cycle people can easily find themselves caught up in, they chase the dream of easy riches and will buy into almost every program that promises them easy cash. If you find yourself in this situation you need to stop as you are doing yourself more harm than good. Just remember, there isn’t a product out there that can make you rich overnight, to become successful you must work hard and put the effort in.

The secret to success contains 4 letters.

W.O.R.K.

Only click this link once you realize this.

Over the last few months I’ve seen some shocking marketing tactics, while these tactics are nothing new it is a worrying trend as they seem to be happening more and more. This blog post is going out to all the marketers out there who think we are idiots! I may lose a few JV partners but hey, this needs to be said.

First of all why do you state on your sales page ‘only 8 remaining’ then have a link to your affiliate program at the bottom of the page?

We’re not stupid.

Why do you say things like ‘closing tonight’ then keep your sales page up for another week?

We’re not stupid.

Why do you say ‘price going up at midnight’ then wait a week to put the price up? Only to bring the price back down again a few days later.

We’re not stupid.

Why do you tell your affiliates ‘we are number 1 in ClickBank’ yet on your sales page it states ‘only 250 will be made available’?

We’re not stupid.

Why do you say the screenshots on your sales page are earned from the method you are selling when clearly they are from your last launch?

We’re not stupid.

I could go on and on and on but I’m sure you get the picture, but what’s more worrying than the people who outright lie is the amount of people who promote these lies to their subscribers.

While there’s nothing wrong with scarcity and urgency in any product launch (I do it myself and I’m all for it) to out and out lie and promote lies is something that will hurt your business, people don’t forget when shabby tactics are used so next time you come to launch something you may wonder where all your JV partners and sales went.

And if you’re promoting this rubbish don’t you see what you’re doing to your reputation, promote crap and your business will go down the pan.

So while this is a rant I must warn you, this style of marketing only works if you’re getting thousands of new subscribers each week and can afford to churn and burn, however, if you’re a marketer who gets in the region of a few hundred new subscribers each week think seriously about this style of marketing as it simply wont work. In fact why the big marketers who do bring in thousands of new subscribers each day do this is still beyond me, I mean why don’t they provide value and treat their subscribers well, surely they would make even more money as a result?

So remember, think about providing value and promoting products that will help your subscribers and above all, stop promoting the rubbish, fake screenshot, hyped up lies that we are seeing getting launched each day.

Because we’re not stupid.

This post is a little controversial and some people may disagree with me but that’s fine.

OK, so you’ve just spent 3 months working on a product and you’re about to release it but one thing is bothering you.

How will I protect my thank you page/product?

This is actually something I get asked quite a lot and let me tell you far too many people are hung up on protecting their products and download pages. Yes, protect your product with a members area or hard to guess thank you page but please don’t get hung up on this, the reason is because no matter how hard you try to protect your product if someone wants it they will get it.

I’m going to share something with you that I’ve never revealed before, here’s the thank you page to one of my best selling eBooks.

http://www.auctionprofitstreams.com/download_the_ebook/

That link has not changed since 2006, not very hard to guess is it?

So why would I do that? Well for starters most people are genuine and will pay for your product, never forget that. It’s a very small minority that will try to get your product for free.

Secondly, if someone were to ‘steal’ my eBook there are enough links inside the eBook containing my affiliate links that I will make more money if it gets passed around. In fact I wish that page was getting an extra 10,000 views per day from people who haven’t paid because if it were how much more money would I be making?

Do you know when I first started on eBay I used to go mad if I saw someone copying my work, I would spend hour after hour trawling eBay for listings that were using my templates, sales copy, eBooks etc. It got to the stage where I used to spend more time trying to stop people copying my work than getting any real work done. In the end I gave up and decided to stay one step ahead of the copy cats by producing new material faster than they could copy it. Since then I’ve never looked back and it’s now something that doesn’t worry me.

This post is not about not protecting your work, by all means put things in place but remember that if you set things up correctly and have enough backlinks in place having people ‘steal’ your work can actually work in your favour.

I am going to leave you with a thought, someone who I was consulting with was going to pay over $5000 for some software to protect his PDF files and asked me if it was something he should do. My reply was “if companies like Microsoft, Adobe and many many more can’t protect their products from theft what chance do we have?”

Remember, you’ll never 100% protect your work so put things in place to make you money if it is stolen, and the best way to stay ahead of the copy cats is to produce new work on a regular basis so they can’t keep up.

There’s a chance this blog post could be copied, but I’ll never know as I’ve got better things to do than look for duplicates on the net. BTW, if you are a copy cat and are about to copy this post at least leave the link to my eBook Auction Profit Streams in the post.

As always your comments are welcome, I think I may get some interesting ones

This is a guest post written by Martyn Boaden, if you want to be considered for a guest post please contact me.

What do you think is the biggest challenge most new Internet marketers face?

According to the results of a survey I recently conducted on my blog, by far the biggest challenge was “information overload”.

And I’m not surprised!

There are so many courses and products available claiming to show you how to quickly and easily make “squillions” of dollars with an internet marketing online business. And more are being released all the time. The result is that many “newbie” Internet marketers end up buying course after course after course. They give each one a half-hearted try, fail to get the results they were promised, and so move on to the next course … and the next, and so on.

The next biggest challenge was mastering the technicalities. And this is one of the reasons why so many courses fail to deliver. They assume a level of technical ability and experience that the average “newbie” just doesn’t have and then don’t provide adequate support.

They’ll say things like “upload this to the root of your site using your FTP program” but don’t explain how to upload, what the root of your site is nor what FTP is! These courses actually create more questions for the “newbie” Internet marketer than answers!

And that’s a shame because most so-called “techie” stuff is actually quite straight forward – when someone takes the time to show you how.

The third biggest challenge was lack of focus. If you are jumping from course to course and keep encountering technical “brick walls”, its difficult to stay focused on one business model, particularly when your inbox is bombarded with announcements about a “revolutionary new push-button automated system that will create a website for you in a nano-second and drive so much highly-qualified traffic to it that your PayPal account will meltdown while you are asleep”!

You can see the full results of the survey here.

Many people who took part in my survey went on to state how they couldn’t overcome these problems until they invested in a mentor or coach – someone they trusted who showed them, step-by-step, exactly what they had to do to get their business up and running and take it to the next level, AND (very importantly) provided all the necessarily help and support along the way.

In fact, EVERY successful person I know has a mentor. Its not rocket science is it? If you want to achieve a result, why try to “re-invent the wheel”? Why not let someone who has already achieved what you want to achieve take you by the hand and show you how they did it and help you achieve the same?

So, if you are suffering from “information overload”, lack of technical knowledge or lack of focus, get yourself a mentor!

To your success and happiness

Martyn Boaden