I have sat on this system for too long now and it was all because I misread the map.

The journey all started really well with a sensible idea to create great content to put on the Internet with my name on it, a little bit of Google love never hurt anyone. Especially when you are playing well inside their rules and the mythical algorithm of doom.

The next leg of the journey involved creating press releases based upon the article, now after 2 weeks of learning everything I could about writing in a journalistic style, my effort got rejected and I was pretty dejected.

There is a kids verse about this, but I shall leave that for you to recall wistfully.

There was no way forward without this press release being accepted, so I jumped overboard and started another journey looking at social media.  This has gone really well but as my mentor and so many top business people have said, to achieve success you must leave a trail of completion not one of car wrecks by the side of the road, thus I knew I had to return to the article marketing journey sometime soon.

During a quiet moment, I sneaked another look at my article marketing map and realised that I had taken a wrong turn, press releases were along a very rocky dead end, there was nothing else along there, so it was a good learning experience but overall a wasted journey.

Now that I was back on the article marketing highway I could see that this road was  a breeze, next stop audioville. Here was an easy task, all I had to do was read and record my article, audacity came up trumps with this task and with that done very quickly I was able to resume my journey with the sound of my own voice in my bag. Who says you have to have a big ego to be an Internet Marketer.

There are free tickets and there are better tickets, I had brought along Sony Vegas Movie Studio for the ride and it will be interesting to see just how much better a travelling companion it makes compared to my old friend Windows movie maker.

Whilst I was pondering this I arrived in movie town and thanks to the great photo library that comes with Powerpoint I was able to created a slide show to go with my article in no time at all. Plus all of the images were free and of high quality.

The next leg of my journey was to use my travelling companion to bring the audio and image files together.

It truly came up trumps and this was done with flair in no time at all.

My simple article has now become an audio file, a video and the inspiration for a series of images. These can now be used for multiple journeys into the marketing niches of video, social bookmarking and as much as it pains me Apple podcasting.

Of course the question is, what are you using your articles for?

Businesses with a physical presence of brick and mortar face having all their money and the merchandise taken through the activities of criminals breaking into their stores, they can set the alarms and lock all the doors, this will deter most petty thieves. However although the store is now secure, did they leave their digital door open?

There should be a technique in which Internet business owners are able to protect their commissions, from the cyber criminals.

• Use Meta Refresh: From the name it may seem complex but actually its not. It is a simple piece of html code which redirects the visitor to your affiliate URL page. So it is actually a great way of presenting affiliate links in news letters. It is one of the easiest ways of commission hijacking and commission bypassing. It has lot of security advantages but another advantage is that it saves you a lot of time. For instance, if merchants modify their affiliate links, you can change links on dozens of pages rapidly and easily by changing only one file. Remember, using Meta refreshes can be dangerous for your website ranking as some search engines seriously dislike this process of theft protection.
• Web-based ad tracking service: It is another effective way of theft protection. It is actually a hiding technique that cloaks the affiliate links initially.
• URL re-direction service: In this technique you have option of using free services or buying a separate domain name for each affiliate program you join. The principle behind this is actually quite simple, URL redirection makes affiliate links less clear, so this will lessen some commission thefts.
• JavaScript redirect: It works exactly like the Web based ad tracking services and thus helps a lot in reducing commission thefts.
• Ad tracking script: It effectively hides the affiliate links and thus reduces theft chances. It is better than all of the above methods because it doesn’t promote someone else’s domain.

There are plenty more exotic techniques to be used, however you have to balance security against functionality just as you would with a real life store. No point having the igor3000 Super lock on your store door if you need the manual everyday to unlock it, eventually you will stop using it.

So be sure to take all the reasonable protective measures in order to keep your self protected from Internet theft. This is now unfortunately a big business with real casualties. Take measures and Stay Safe!!

Many Internet users will already be familiar with the word affiliate marketing but what does this term exactly mean? Affiliate marketing is a totally Internet based industry that is growing and developing at a very fast rate.

If you want a great career on the Internet and you want to earn handsome amounts of money by just online work then affiliate marketing is for you. Affiliate marketing is not a complex thing to understand, just consider it a way of selling products on commission basis. Put more simply, it is often a personally owned business that advertises and sells products for other organisations. It is not necessary that you should have your own product to start an affiliate marketing process. The necessary things that should be there in an affiliate marketer are:

• Always make a good, professional looking and convincing website in order to ensure a successful future online business. Remember, your website is the one single thing that can give a boost to your business. The website should be user friendly with a simple layout, such that it attracts people to click on the affiliate links.
• It is not necessary that you should have website building knowledge in order to develop a website. There are lots of companies doing this, so you can simply hire them.
• You should find products that are in demand. You can start advertising once you have a good collection of well demanded products. You may start with your own product but that is of course not necessary. You can take any product but whatever you take you should believe in it and have tested it for authenticity.
• It is required that you have good mental and written arithmetical skills. You will need to be capable of tracking your sales and determining profit, as well as, ensuring that your suppliers are paid in full and on time.
• You should be able to keep track of the cash flowing in and out of your business. This will ensure that the advertising you are paying for is producing more profits for you than it is costing.
• An affiliate marketer has to expend lots of time and energy initially setting up the affiliate marketing business and that is only possible if one has unwavering support from their family.

The application of this knowledge and doing it effectively is where the skill comes in, which is why I am happy to have met Phil Henderson, he is an ace at getting sites noticed by search engines and of course customers. If you want to find out more information on Phil Henderson and his training site then follow this link, Stupidly Simple SEO, he will provide you with fantastic information on his site and via his regular email updates

Which ever auto-responder you use, too much data is a problem common to all of us and is peculiar to the wonderful digital age that we live in.

In the good old days where data had to be hand compiled. it was by the nature of the process personalised into meaningful information as it was being sorted.

In the digital age, there is no such personal touch and reams of data can be generated and presented to you in wonderful looking tables and graphs in seconds, all of this information leaves you fully informed but none the wiser.

My list has grown quickly over the last 2 weeks and as I have been away on holiday for one of those, I have only started to look at the pretty graphs and tables.

I know I need to look at my open and click through rates and I have done this but how to make them better in a controlled manner?

I have found the solution and it is all contained in one graph

When you go into Aweber reports, look for the graph report that is shown, this is called ‘Followup Totals’ and ensure that you open it for the list you want to examine.

The reason that I think that this report is the key to your success is for the following reasons:

As you can see all of my rates fell after the first message, in fact there were some messages that did not even get opened, some were opened but the links were ignored.

You will see a data table below your graph and it is this that holds the key to improving your list response.

Hopefully some of your subject lines were intruiging enough to encourage your subscribers to open the message, but what happened with the next message, did this get opened also? If not, was the subject line on a new topic or did it build on the success of the last message.

My list response followed this pattern, some messages were opened and then the next was completely blanked, perhaps because there was no continuity between messages.

Using this report it is very easy to see where the fail points are in your message series and by using the power of continuity you can turn this failure into a success. Use this continuity to increase your reader engagement by taking them on a journey of discovery that feels like a path rather than a random series of bunny hops from one topic to the next.

Once you have dealt with the subject lines, how does the message link compare to the last one that was followed through?

What was it that encouraged them to take action and follow your link and, of course once at the destination did they actually complete the transaction?

Try using the same inspiring language around your message link and see what happens in a couple of days, as this message will have by this time, been sent to another subscriber, how did they respond, better or worse?

Always build on your success and use this to develop a series of messages that your list likes, if you have one click on either the message or its contents then that is a success that can be improved.

By the very nature of your optin page and the mindset that it creates, you are attracting your own special group of people with their own tastes and expectations, this is why no 2 lists are identical.

Good luck with your list building and I would love to hear about any of the other Aweber reports that you have found really useful.

This is not a sad story of love lost between 2 childhood sweethearts, who were separated during the war, and decades later found each other at bus stop in Clapham, nor is it about a dog the came good.

As an Internet Martketer, I use Firefox as my primary browser. This is because there are so many valuable additional software plug-ins that can be used to optimise your efficiency and safety online.

One of these plug-ins is great for preventing hidden code running on sites when you first visit them.

I am currently taking part in the 100 blog comment challenge, this involves visiting a large number of new blogs, the NoScript plug in has been having a nightmare with all of the uniques scripts.

The problem with this plug-in is that you have to review the site and all of its scripts before you can carry on. Now if you have ever visited an Internet marketers site, you may not have realised just how many hidden pieces of code are running in the background, in some cases it can run into double figures.

Thus a lot of the time, I skip the checks and attempt to complete the desired activity on the page.

Yesterday I actually disabled this plug-in as it was slowing me down, and causing important site features to fail, sometimes it is not obvious which script runs what.

This is where your glass is either half full or empty, mine is always half full.

Today with the software back in action, whilst visiting a blog and not verifying the scripts on the page, I left a comment and hit return.

Then for some reason I was redirected to an autoresponder page, or rather I would have been. NoScript like a caring parent stepped in and stopped the script in its tracks, gave it a quick clip round the ear and sent it packing.

I did not know or realise I was signing up for a newsletter, one up for Noscript, of course I won’t get to find out what the emails contained, but then I did not knowingly ask for them either.

As part of the 100 comment challenge, you have to respond to the comments on your own blog, these are of course mixed in with the exotic and medicinal adverts that most blog owners are used to getting. Most of these comments are obvious spam, but there are a few where the author has taken time to add value in the comment.

These are trickier to make a decision on, I used to check the validity of the email address and then check out the site content, this however is obviously a dangerous tactic, luckily I have Noscript and Norton to look after me.

Once you land on the site, if Norton does not have the site marked as dangerous, NoScript steps in and blocks all untrusted scripts. This gives you a few moments to make a decision about the site.

Noscripts has a great extra feature, when you hold shift and click on the name of the site in the NoScript menu, you are given a selection of validation sites to use.

The fastest at the moment is WOT

As an example I had what looked like a really interesting comment today from the owner of  a kids entertainment site. I carried out the process as described above, WOT reported that the site had a poor reputation, a kids site acting in bad faith!

Good enough for me, their comment goes down as spam and I can quickly move on.

If you use Firefox, I recommend this add-on as it really does work, it just needs to be taught about the brave new world that you are entering, bit like our parents really!

This is not a secret method of marketing or the latest fad to hit the web, nope this is all about you, your computer and the screen that you look at.

How many online videos have you seen where the speaker has multiple screens?

I know I have seen a lot and I always wondered what was the point.

The answer was always the same ‘You can get more done’

Not really inspiring and I could not really think of how 2 screens would make the difference.

However here is my example of how it would make a massive difference.

I use an online bookkeeping service for my business, which also needs an online bank account, plus as I am  a real person I also have a personal bank account online.

So far we have 3 windows that need to be opened, I also use a desktop program to manage my personal finances

Now that makes 4 windows.

Of course you are saying, well that’s the point of multi-tab browsers.

That works fine until you come to reconcile your accounts.

You could shrink the windows down until you can see both your accounts and the bookkeeping service in a split screen method.

The problem now is that I am having to jump between windows to see all the information

Shrinking the windows to split the screen in half, kind of works but its not ideal.

Hooray for multiple screens.

Now I can have the bank on one screen and the books on the other.

I can see all the information in both windows and can now race through the reconciliation without having to jump between windows

This is a real time saver and the screens are quite cheap now, £100 for a “19 and the best bit is that it only takes seconds to setup in XP and 7, of course if you are using Vista then good luck!

If you are working online then I totally recommend the use of a second screen.

I have progressed through my coaching with Alex Jeffreys, everything is clicking into place and from the modules so far I know for definite that this is the best online decision I have made.

If you are still looking for a mentor then choose one today, it is the most important thing you can do to achieve your dreams.

I am now part of Marketing with Alex 3.0 and in his first lesson he described a system for setting up a plan.

Of course we all have a business plan, but do you have a business timetable?

I certainly did not.

Alex described his system and I did not get it, I tried but it just did not click.

Then at 3am whilst I was sweeping the floor at work (I work as an aircraft wiring technician) I found my solution.

Writing a business timetable is like writing a book, let me explain…

In every book there is a title and inside there are chapters, paragraphs and sentences.

The title is the main theme of the book. The chapters are the key areas of the book and each chapter is broken down into paragraphs, in which the plot continues with the chapter theme as the sub-plot. This sub plot is fleshed out by the paragraphs and sentences.

So how does this relate to your business plan?

Your annual business goal is the title of the book, there is only one title so you only have one goal.

The chapters are projects that will lead you to your goal

The paragraphs are the stages required to complete that project

The sentences are the single step tasks needed to complete the stage.

Important point, each sentence or task should require no thought, it must be a simple task that can be done on its own.

Now that you have laid out the structure of your book, you need to look at this and prioritise the projects starting with the one that the rest depend upon, ie Internet marketing depends upon a list, thus my first project was to setup a capture system.

One you have the projects ordered, then look at the stages and prioritise these, repeat this until all the stages and tasks are in order of priority.

Now the fun bit begins…

Take a calendar set a date 12 months from now and divide the year into 4 quarters.

Make a goal for each quarter based upon a project. Then break down the first quarter into 3 monthly plans, with each month based around a stage that makes progress in the project.

For the first month, plan out the areas that will complete that stage. Finally plan the week ahead with the most important tasks required to achieve part of the monthly goal.

It sounds complicated however once you lay it out on paper it all makes sense. The cool thing is that you now know what you should be doing everyday until you achieve your goal.

Finally a quick test…

Write down a plan to change a light bulb, in this you must consider everything. When I did this the first time it ran to over 9 pages of A4 and I had not removed the old light bulb.

Using the system above it was all done in 2 pages, remember you plan down to the most basic of actions.

Getting a system for timetabling your activity is the most important thing you can do to achieve your goals, there is no correct system as we are all different, however I hope I have shown a simple system that can be used to break down any complicated system.

I would love to hear your comments on this, as this is all new to me.

The key to forums is being active and when you browse the links and add comments where you think you could provide some value. Remember less is definitely more when it comes to post replying.

While doing this I noticed that my signature was a little sparse, it had some text but no backlink to my sites. Creating backlinks is one of the reasons why so many people are keen to comment on other peoples posts. This adds value to your site as it implies that more people are reading your content.

Adding backlinks to your signature should be an easy fix, simply use BBCode or HTML depending upon the site and hey presto you have a link to a site that you like, I like my sites so the choice was fairly easy.

However did I know what BB Code was, not a chance.

I thought about training to become a programmer when I left the RAF in 2003, but quickly realised that there was too much to learn and too much to keep up to date with. You could spend thousands and still be no closer to a career in IT, so I stuck with what I knew.

Anyway thanks to Wikipedias page on BBCode I now have a handy reference of useful html and BBCode to use in the future and my signature has its back-link.

The key pieces of code to know are

BB Code

[url=http://www.igor-griffiths.com/]The library of Internet Marketing[/url]

and for HTML the code would look like

<a rel=”dofollow” href=”http://www.igor-griffiths.com/”>The library of Internet Marketing</a>

This has a useful addition, the dofollow part may over-ride the site settings that prevent your link from being followed by the search engine spiders. However as I said I am not a programmer or techie wiz so I have to take this on faith.

If you know otherwise then let us know, or is there some code that you love to use?

Let us know and I will be more than happy to test them out.

Yesterday my daughter asked if my PC had a web-cam,  funny really as it turns out that the computer that I gave her does not have one. However as they are currently dismantling it as we speak, their next one will have.

Children a team of modern day hyper efficient recyclers.

She had sown the seed of curiosity and I noticed that I do have a web-cam, so I had a play and noticed that there are loads of graphic overlays and viking hats?

Then I spotted it, the overlay that made me think of how I felt when I started out online.

In 2006, when I started. The Internet Marketing world was more like a wild west land grab with very few rules and even fewer morals. Every marketer would use any technique to get their list built and double opt-in was for those that were a little strange.

This was also the time of the day hire red Ferrari and the ladies in bikinis, if your sales page did not follow this formula then you obviously were not really interested in success.

Thankfully we have moved on from this, yet this image brought back how I felt at that time.

As I was being marketed to relentlessly by everyone under the sun. I honestly thought that there must be a room somewhere in the world where people are placing bids on me.

‘Who wants igor, he signs up for everything!’

This was unfortunately the truth and there are still 2 to do folders on this PC with Gigabytes of courses, guides, sales offers and whatever else passed my browser during those early days.

The scary thing is that this room did exist!

I was sent an offer where all of the top marketers were present. One of them did a sales pitch to encourage you to upgrade to their full offer, I think it was Andrew fox. Anyway I passed on that offer, as I still had no clue as to what the core offer was at this point. When I finally got into the members area, I realised I had found the theatre where all the top people hung out.

This was no normal theatre there were marble columns everywhere and even the walls were made of marble and this was all offset by a lovely seaside sunset, no wonder they wanted to hang out there!

The first marketer to offer their services was Mike Filsaime.

Then I was told what the offer was all about, he offered to build me a list as long as I used Aweber to do it.

Well I was determined not to use Aweber as I was scared by their price escalator, thus I turned this offer down. I was happy with Trafficwave anyway, thank you very much and I bid you all farewell.

Well mission complete I had found the theatre where the top marketers were lurking and bidding on names.

Thankfully the market has calmed down now, the Ferrari was returned, the ladies all went into motor racing and double optin became the industry standard.

However as a final thought I did switch over to Aweber, primarily because in 2010 I realised I needed a mentor and he was using Aweber.

Trafficwave by the way, is still a great auto-responder, with one of the best tracking systems that I have come across.

Beginners often complain that the system they are studying is rubbish, it does not work. When asked if they are following it correctly, they reveal that they have been mixing it with a couple of other training schemes, I know because that was me!

However this time I was going to do it right and thanks to Alex Jeffreys and Sterling Valentine I have progressed farther in the last 6 months than I did in the last 4 years.

It would be interesting to know what happened to that marble theatre?

I have a load of article seeds that could be used for this website, if only I had the time to create a take on each article, which is why I was interested in automatic article creation. However not all programs are made equal as this real article will illlustrate.

I used as a seed part of my article on Affiliate Profits, the text used is shown below:

When first beginning to work with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, it is very easy to discover which are the most popular products in any particular category. You simply punch in your own key search term, and the products that come out at the top of the resultant table are likely to be the ones that are most popular. For example, in the following screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace, you will note that the results are graded by ‘Popularity’, and that the top result has a gravity of 125.73. Whilst you do not need to know specifically what gravity is or how it is calculated, it is generally used as a measure of popularity for Clickbank products (more information can be found in Clickbank FAQs if you want a more detailed explanation).

The problem with this is that a product with this level of gravity is probably already too popular meaning that most of the big ‘dog related’ websites are also promoting this particular program. This is going to make it extremely difficult for you to make a significant impression in the general marketplace , and there is no doubt at all that the marketplace is going to be extremely competitive.

Now the only rule of the test was that I used the software as is, and only tweaked settings where I had to.

The first program up was 4Bec Article Rewriter, which gave us the following really bad English rewrite, UNUSABLE:

When principal alpha to work with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, irrefutable is very plain sailing to discover which are the most popular produce in any particular category. You simply punch in your own key reconnoitre term, besides the commodities that come out at the top of the resultant table are likely to stand for the ones that are most haunting. For example, in the next screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace, you will significance that the results are graded by ‘Popularity’, and that the top selection has a gravity of 125.73…

Next up was Quickcontentwizard.com with a random selection of topics, UNUSABLE

When aboriginal alpha to assignment with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, it is actual accessible to ascertain which are the best accepted articles in any accurate category. You artlessly bite in your own key chase term, and the articles that appear out at the top of the resultant table are acceptable to be the ones that are best popular. For example, in the afterward screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace, you will agenda that the after-effects are graded by ‘Popularity’, and that the top aftereffect has a force of 125.73…

articlechanger.net, A USABLE if probably too similar version

When first beginning to work with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, it is easy to discover which are the most popular products in any particular section. You basically punch in your own key search term, and the products that come out at the top of the resultant table are likely to be the ones that are most popular. For example, in the following screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace, you will note that the results are graded by ‘Popularity’, and that the top result has a gravity of 125.73…

autorewrite.com, UNUSABLE simply jumbled the paragraphs

You simply punch in your own key search term, and the products that come out at the top of the resultant table are likely to be the ones that are most popular. When first beginning to work with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, it is very easy to discover which are the most popular products in any particular category.The problem with this is that a product with this level of gravity is probably already too popular meaning that most of the big ‘dog related’ websites are also promoting this particular program.This is going to make it extremely difficult for you to make a significant impression in the general marketplace , and there is no doubt at all that the marketplace is going to be extremely competitive…

jetsubmitter2.com, UNUSABLE the articles are identical

When first beginning to work with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, it is very easy to discover which are the most popular products in any particular category. You simply punch in your own key search term, and the products that come out at the top of the resultant table are likely to be the ones that are most popular. For example, in the following screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace, you will note that the results are graded by ‘Popularity’, and that the top result has a gravity of 125.73…

and finally ezrewrite.com, UNUSABLE another random selection of words

When aboriginal alpha to plan with either Clickbank or PayDotCom, it is actual simple to ascertain which are the a lot of accepted articles in any accurate category. You artlessly bite in your own key seek term, and the articles that appear out at the top of the resultant table are acceptable to be the ones that are a lot of popular. For example, in the afterward screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace, you will agenda that the after-effects are graded by ???Popularity??™, and that the top aftereffect has a force of 125.73…

Having tried several artical rewriter, it has not been very impressive, with only 2 giving results that could be used and only one of these actually changed the original text.

So congratulations to articlechanger.net

As a final thought, the feeling I got after using articlchanger.net was not one of satisfaction, these were just words on the screen and I had very little engagement with them. Perhaps I am being too sentimental, but when I write I like to be involved in the  creation and know that I am submitting a unique article that will not come back to haunt me with allegations of plagarism.

Thus I do not intend to continue using this service, I am going to write my own articles…but more on this in the next post.

p.s. If this sounds familiar, it was originally posted on the original avelcomms.co.uk blog.