The invention and widespread acceptance of the internet has provided, without a doubt, the greatest opportunity to earn a life-changing income from the comfort of your own home. With some time, determination, and knowledge, you truly can set your own paycheck.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. The easiest way to get into Internet Marketing is to sell other people’s products. The vendor or publisher develops the product, you do the marketing, and they pay you a commission on every sale that you refer. This is called Affiliate Marketing and it can pay anywhere from 1% of the sale price all the way up to 90% or more.

2. You must have your own website. Without a website, your only real option for marketing is paying for traffic and “direct-linking” to the publisher’s site. This forces you to rely totally on the vendor or publisher to convert your leads into sales. Several marketing methods are available to buy traffic, but buying traffic for a direct-linking campaign can quickly get prohibitively expensive, In fact, some search engines have made a concerted effort to ban direct-linking.

3. Choose a reliable web hosting company. The last thing you want is to have stable income from your marketing efforts and have problems caused by your web host failing to keep your site running properly. Or worse, shutting their doors and taking your website with them.

4. Your website must be search engine friendly. In order to build a long term, stable income, you need to depend on “organic” traffic. If you search for something in Google, you will notice at the top and along the right side of the page links labeled “Featured Listings”. These links are paid using Adwords. You can get a lot of fast traffic this way, but long term income should be based on the rest of the search results. These are the organic results and they have two major benefits. First, they tend to be significantly more reliable, and second, they’re free.

5. Research your keywords. Use a tool like WordTracker or Google’s keyword tools to research your keywords. Every page on your site should be optimized for one main keyword, with two or three lesser keywords. Don’t overuse your keywords. Your writing should sound natural. Use “long tail keywords” when possible – someone that searches for “weight loss for teenage girls” is going to be a much more qualified prospect than someone searching for “weight loss”, assuming you’re marketing weight loss products to teenage girls, of course.

Whether you own a traditional brick and mortar business, or whether you are making a go of business online, you will need to learn how to use some of the latest tools of the trade to market your business on the internet.

Yes, even business owners with a physical location need to have a virtual presence. Why? It makes simple sense – that is where the business is coming from more and more as our technology-saturated youth become prolific consumers themselves.

So how do you get an education in online marketing? Will you need to go back to school for something like that?

In a word, yes. You need to educate yourself on the tools available to you online. Whether you are looking to launch a social campaign using free media, or a full-blown pay-per-click Google AdWords campaign, you need to look before you leap. The consequences of jumping off too soon could be thousands of wasted dollars with very little or no return.

So where do you go to get this kind of information? There are a number of really good resources out there, some are free, and some cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Over the coming weeks we will be taking a look at a number of these opportunities. We do not necessarily endorse any one of these, we simply make them available to you as a resource, you can do your own homework and decide if it will benefit you and your business. We will give you tips, though, on what we feel are valuable resources (of course, we wouldn’t include them if we didn’t think they were valuable), and we will tell you which ones are free and which ones will cost you money.

So where do we start?

Tonight we want to point in the direction of a brand new start-up opportunity, and we have a good reason for this, which I will explain momentarily. A site called theTRAFFICplan was just launched last month by creators and long time internet marketing entrepreneurs Jeff Long, Bob DeCecco and Franco Gonzales. Together this trio brings more than 40 years online marketing experience to the table, and they are building what is likely to become one of the internet’s premier training and development sites.

Currently the site has two membership levels, Basic and Premier. The basic level is free, and offers a wealth of information on various online marketing opportunities, including social medias such as facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Twitter, Blogs and many others, as well as paid sources of advertising such as pay-per-click, banner advertising and more. The training is offered both in online printable and recorded media, as well as through various live webinars and conference calls. The basic information that exists on the website today is only a precursor of what is to come as the site grows and expands, adding valuable materials in all forms of online marketing. And remember, all of this information is free to the basic members.

The premier level costs a little bit, and depending on the plan you enroll under you could pay an initial fee with an ongoing monthly subscription fee, or right now during their Grand Opening phase you can lock in a lifetime membership for a one time payment. The premier level content is still in the development phases so it is sparse on the site at this time, however, the benefits are worth considering. For example, future co-op advertising leads will be shared among the premier members, thus driving additional members to their primary business opportunities. The premier membership also includes the printed and media resources: Social Profit Streams 101, 201 and 301. These comprehensive manuals and training videos are designed to teach the members everything about Web 3.0, a unique combination of online marketing and social advertising.

The concept is simple: users, whether free or premier members, can help direct traffic to the site, providing a valuable resource for all would-be internet marketers. On the site they can also provide information to their referrals about their primary business opportunities. Many people who are looking for online marketing resources are also looking for the product to promote. The members also receive a commission from theTRAFFICplan when their referrals purchase any of the site’s materials.

In addition, the members can enroll in multiple free affiliate programs promoted by the site, and gain additional streams of income through affiliate sales of additional web marketing resources. And this is the primary reason we chose to highlight this opportunity ahead of all others: even the free members can earn a profit using this system. Free members can earn commissions direct from theTRAFFICplan site, from its affiliates, and through the promotion of their primary business opportunity – and all without ever investing a single penny. Of course, premier members earn higher commissions, but we think this is a stellar and (as far as we know) absolutely unique opportunity for beginners to the online marketing business to both learn and earn without risking anything.

Of course, there is always a risk to that approach: invest nothing, gain nothing. In other words, when someone is handed something for free they often do not treat it as diligently as they would something they had to work for. So, my question is, with such a tremendous opportunity in front of you, will you strike while the iron is hot, or will you sit back and wait to see what develops, and very likely miss the golden opportunity? The choice is yours. Be sure to check back with us over the coming weeks as we explore more of what the web has to offer serious online marketers and entrepreneurs.

What does it take to become a network marketing success story? What does it take to be successful in anything in life? This is the 20 million dollar question to which everyone is seeking the answer. I have been successful in many things during my 51 years of life, and unsuccessful at probably just as many. Through it all, I have learned one thing: There are no tricks. There are no shortcuts to success. This is true with anything that is worth accomplishing in life, and it is particularly true in network marketing.

I often speak with people who are looking to start a home-based network marketing business. I generally take this opportunity to have a very frank and honest conversation with them about what it takes to be successful in this industry. More times than not, they are looking for something easy, quick, and free and it’s the last time I hear from them.

No, there are no shortcuts to success in network marketing, but I have found that there is a simple 4-step process that, when used correctly can greatly increase your chances at becoming a network marketing success story and, for that matter just about anything in life. It’s an easy to understand formula that must be followed sequentially to be effective.

Step One: Acquire Knowledge. You cannot do anything in life without knowledge, and this is particularly true in marketing. Most people do not come into network marketing with prior prospecting and marketing experience, and there are many new things to learn. The first step in the process is KNOWLEDGE, to learn something new that will help you grow your business, something that will help you get more prospects, drive more traffic to your website, or help you learn to relate to these prospects more effectively.

Step Two: Implement What You Have Learned. The second step is to take your newfound knowledge and take action. If you studied a new marketing method, set up a new marketing campaign implementing what you have learned. If you have been studying skills on prospecting, begin utilizing these new skills when talking to prospects and observe the results. The key in Step Two is to TAKE ACTION.

Step 3: Analyze Your Efforts. This is the KEY step in the process that many network marketers miss (or avoid). Analyzing your results from Step 2 will help you understand what worked and what didn’t. But even more importantly, it will give you a solid direction on where to make improvements in the future. Without this step, you will have no direction on which to base future attempts. Rather, like many marketers you will simply be “shooting in the dark” and even worse, spending money without direction. When this happens, failure is imminent.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 1-3. Based on what you’ve learned from your previous attempts, it’s quite possible you’ll need to learn more in order to be successful. Go back to Step 1 and learn what’s needed. Incorporate that into a revised marketing strategy (Step 2) and analyze the results of this new effort (Step 3). Continue doing this until you have mastered this marketing or prospecting strategy.

Many if not most network marketers fall off the wagon at Steps 1 or 2. Most are willing to learn something new and are excited about starting. Some will never get past the first step, as learning something new becomes tedious and boring to them. Others will learn and even take action, implementing what they’ve learned. But once they see that their results were not what they expected, they fail to analyze their efforts and learn from their failures. Their efforts end at Step 2.

Only the people who continue to Steps 3 and 4 are the ones who will succeed and make significant money from their network marketing businesses. These are the people in the videos showing income proof that they are making 100K per month.

This May I published my first novel. I’m an intellectual property attorney with no formal background in product development or marketing, so I knew that increasing the book’s profile would be a challenge. In this essay I’ll share with you some techniques that worked for me. Marketing is more art than science, so the suggestions reflect my personal opinion and experience. I’ll also mention some resources I found helpful, but in so doing, please know that I’m receiving nothing of value from third parties for mention of their services or publications. This is not an infomercial.

The first decision you need to make is whether you are approaching publishing as a past time, or as a business. If you are serious about getting the broadest exposure for yourself and your book, you must realize that literary critics and the buying public will not distinguish between your work and that of commercially successful, established professional writers. And frankly, if the choice is paying $22 for your book or $22 for Martin Amis’ latest novel, why should the new author be given a handicap?

Dedicated Website: A website structured around branding your new book is one of the most effective, if not the most effective, marketing techniques available to the author. When a prospective buyer pulls up Amazon’s website, with over a million titles available for purchase, what are the odds your title will cross their monitor? You need a conduit to direct the reader to your Amazon product page, and the most effective conduit is a website dedicated to exploration of your book. The website allows you to pitch the book and yourself, as author. It also affords the author the opportunity to interact with the reader: to establish a rapport with a prospective buyer. Setup a website dedicated to the book well in advance of publication date. There are many things in a marketing campaign that require retaining specialists. Much of the marketing you can do yourself, but setting up a professional quality website that will compete with sites mounted by conglomerate publishers, their webmasters and teams of graphic designers is not one of them. Having been immersed in technology, personally, for the past 20+ years, I’m very comfortable manipulating software and hardware, but even with this depth of knowledge, website design at this level is not something I would undertake. Unless you’re a professional in website design proficient with Dreamweaver, I strongly encourage you to hire the best person budget allows to perform this mission critical task.

Some marketing experts suggest using the author’s name as the registered domain name; e.g., ScottTurow.com. This is a logical approach for authors that are household names. I think it is a mistake for first time authors, unless you are an established personality in a different artistic medium or profession. Reason: no one knows who you are, so how would they know to search for you in order to locate your site? If you promote your book title as the domain name, rather than your name as author, there will be greater symbiosis between marketing endeavors, as each tool in your arsenal is focused on publicizing the book’s title. The exception would be if your book’s title is non-memorable, lengthy or otherwise difficult to promote. It is easier to come up with unique keywords — words that search engine bots identify and catalogue in indexing new Internet content — for a unique book title than for an author’s not-so-unique name. Unique and distinctive keyword and keyword long-tail phrases are critical in successfully ranking your website and, thereby, elevating its profile.

Audit the websites of successful authors in the same genre for ideas on how to structure your site and to assess the competition. Sites run by marquee name authors are what you are up against in achieving successful product placement: it is the standard against which your site will be measured. A website set up three to six months in advance of publication date is the most effective way to generate pre-release interest in your book. Include a blog component on the site, even if you maintain a separate blog, in order to keep the content fresh. The more frequent a site’s updates, the higher its ranking on search engine indexes, and that is the ultimate goal. If people cannot find your site, they will not find your book. The site should include a webpage providing a short abstract of the book, author bio, press release page and way in which to contact the author. Requiring registration on the site to participate in an integrated forum is also helpful, as you then have an automatic list of all prospective buyers for your book when it’s published.

Essays: One easy way to get the word out on the virtual street that you have an expertise in your book’s genre or theme is to publish short essays on the Internet. Ezinearticles is currently the leading host site and resource for essays by free-lance authors. It will provide you with the greatest exposure, but there are similar sites out there the author should explore. The body of the essay should offer the reader something of substance and value, and not be an infomerical for your book. To reference the book is fine, but the focus should be on a subject not directly related to pitching your title to the reader. Essay length should, ideally, be between 250 and 700 words. Shorter articles are more likely to be syndicated. At 2,000 words, this essay runs afoul of that rule, but there are always exceptions. The essay should always contain a resource box at the end with the author’s name, book title and contact information, including his website address. If the essay is popular on the host site, there is a good chance it will be syndicated by third party publishers, further increasing your audience. The value of such essays cannot be overstated as a tool to brand your name and your new book.

Blog: When I began formulating my marketing campaign, my understanding was that blogs were passé and had reached market saturation levels. Both assumptions are true, but oddly blogs remain a very effective marketing tool. The blog, like your website, must be updated regularly in order to work towards a high ranking on popular search engines. In my experience, WordPress, an open source software suite of tools and webhost, offers the most effective platform upon which to reach a large audience. There is a learning curve here, but much of it is intuitive if you possess average software fluency. Building a WordPress Blog by Scott McNulty (Peachpit Press 2009) is a terrific primer. The blog differs from your website in that it is intended to feature daily ponderances, essays not relating to your book and other writings that allow the reader to connect with who you are as a person. The blog, if used effectively, helps to build a relationship between reader and author that pure marketing vehicles, such as a book’s website, cannot achieve. I would also highly recommend registering a domain name separate and unique from that of your book’s website for your blog, rather than use WordPress’s community site. This approach allows greater search engine optimization (SEO), as well as permitting the blogger to fully exploit the power of the WordPress blog tools and plug-ins. Use of the latter on the WordPress site is extremely limited.

Podiobooks.com: Most people, even liberal minded artists, like to be paid for their work product; therefore, it goes against human nature to give away one’s prose or verse. Now is the time to set aside that instinct and fully embrace your inner Karl Marx. Podiobooks.com has yielded NYT acclaimed authors with major publishing deals out of complete unknowns. If your book in audio form generates enough interest on the popular Podiobooks website, it could well launch your professional career as a writer. The volunteers that are tasked with the site’s administration are, themselves, writers, and their hands-on approach to each submission is impressive. The site has been recognized as trend setting by the Grey Lady, herself, as well as Time Magazine. If the New York Times regards Podibooks as a serious resource, so should you. There are some excellent professional voice over artists that will translate your book to audio form. If you are not comfortable reading aloud your own work or do not have a strong speaking voice, I would encourage you to consider this as an option; albeit, it’s costly, with fees in the $1500 – $3,000 range depending on length of book and reputation of the artist retained. Sounds expensive, and it is, but that’s the cost of a decent studio microphone. At the very least, invest in a Shure SM58 mic and small mic pre-amp. Cardioid mics benefit from a mic pre, as they do not produce a strong signal.

Video Trailer: This is a hot new trend in book marketing and a highly effective one. The video trailer is not unlike the preview for motion pictures seen in theaters. It’s a multimedia presentation of the synopsis or theme of your book. Like most new and popular services, it’s also a market sector that is full of incompetents and opportunists. Carefully vet anyone retained to do this work for you: ask for a curriculum vitae and a portfolio of their work. What formal training do they have in video production and what is their specialty? How long have they performed contract work in the publishing field? Do they perform all the work in-house or do they job out the work? I’m a gearhead (a technophile that possesses a knowledge of hardware), so I often ask about studio equipment used and production facility. Much can be done these days with a Mac Pro Workstation and Final Cut Studio or Adobe Creative Suite, but you still need expertise, a sound isolation booth and professional mics and mic preamps in order to achieve competitive commercial product.

Price points for this service range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. There is — or should be — a direct correlation between price point and videographer experience and resources. The correlation typically extends beyond that to the contractor’s ability to effectively place and publicize the video. As important as the quality of the finished video trailer is placement of that trailer. Just as with one’s website or blog, visibility of the trailer is essential for it to be effective. If distribution of the trailer is limited to populist sites like YouTube, Spike and Atom, there is no way to achieve niche marketing — to narrow your audience to a desired target market of book buyers, much less niche readers in a particular genre. Much of what you are paying for with the better services is product placement. Just like your book, a video trailer has little utility if it does not reach an audience. Book Surge (booksurge.com) is one of the few print on demand (POD) publishers that offers an effective video trailer placement service. They are uniquely positioned to do so, as they are wholly owned by Amazon.com. When you pay for trailer production through Book Surge, they are able to guarantee placement of that video on your book’s Amazon product page. Something no other publisher or publicist, save for the major publishing conglomerates, can offer.

Virtual Book Tours: VBT have become a popular and inexpensive alternative for authors that have paid thousands to publicists with modest return on their investment dollar. With books now being the number one subject commodity of online transactions, it only makes sense to maximize exposure of your book’s website and related web presence. Here, an established network is everything. Few new authors have the existing relationships with literary special interest websites, forums and blogs to effectively publicize their book and their name, as author. You need these third-party sites to discuss your book, its author, and to link back to your site. As important as branding your book is branding your name. If your name is recognizable amongst readers, they are twice as likely to locate your book online or at a brick and mortar reseller. Since there is significantly less overhead for the publicist in promoting an author online, the cost to the client is less than partnering with a traditional publicist. The specialist in promoting books online should be able to secure author interviews, book reviews and featured articles — like this one — on sites frequented by prospective purchasers of your book. Because of the sheer volume of book sales online today, a VBT is a no brainer, but should be preceded, in my opinion, by having the aforementioned promotional tools in place to maximize the effect and reach of the VBT publicist’s efforts. Even the big publishing houses are now requiring their authors to be proactive in marketing their books, including updating websites and blogs. This is even more true for the new author, where it will require that much more legwork to establish both the author and his body of work as worthy of the reader’s cash and time.