Okay, so why is product creation so important? After all, there are tons of products out there that you can promote. Why create your own? Well, there are several reasons for this and it all comes down to the pros and cons of affiliate marketing versus promoting your own product.

For starters, as an affiliate, you have no control over the sales process other than your own little corner of the world. You have to deal with the sales page the product creator decides to put up, good or bad; you have to sell it at HIS price, and heaven forbid he should change it mid stream; you have to deal with any opt in process he has and hope that he’s sending his prospects to a sales link that still contains YOUR cookie info; and I could go on and on.

Essentially, you are at the mercy of the product creator. If he one day decides to shut down, and that was the ONLY product you were promoting (assuming it was really doing a great job for you) you’re screwed. You now have to go look for something else to sell.

But let’s say that you find the perfect product…one that’s going to be around for a very long time and sells very well. Do you think that you’re the ONLY one who is promoting it? If the product is THAT good, you are going to have a LOT of competition…and probably some very stiff competition at that. In some niches, the big boys are bringing in six or even seven figures a day. Getting a piece of the pie, in some niches, can be a rough go to say the least.

Now, as a product creator, you have COMPLETE control over the whole process. YOU create the sales page that YOU want. YOU set the price that YOU want to charge. And not only that, you can start your own affiliate program and have OTHER marketers promoting your product for you. This way, you’re not doing all the work yourself.

Okay, you’re probably saying to yourself one of many possible things.

“I don’t know anything about anything so what would I create?”

“I’ve never created a product before and don’t know where to start.”

“What if I create the product and nobody buys it? I’m out all that time.”

And so on. I know you have doubts if you’ve never done this before. It’s normal to have doubts.

But product creation DOESN’T have to be hard. If nothing else, even if you know NOTHING about a subject, you can create a product on it just by interviewing experts on the subject. You don’t actually have to come up with the knowledge on your own.

Bottom line is this. If you want to maximize the amount of money that you can make online, the best way is to create your own products or services, or both.

You can get others to promote your products AND…build a name for yourself in the process.

I didn’t start to REALLY make a good living online until I created my first product.

I can do it…YOU can do it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of creating products that nobody wants and don’t sell? Check out my Complete Guide To Product Creation at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/productcreation.html and create products that actually sell.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

Top 25 Success Secrets – Product Creation

Says who?

Please don’t start quoting me a whole bunch of meaningless stats.

Not interested.

Truth is, you don’t have to offer any kind of a refund on your product IF your product is really something of true value. I’m going to give you an example of what I’m talking about.

A week or so ago, my daughter, who is a big Jukebox The Ghost fan (as am I) told me that they were opening for Bare Naked Ladies in Morristown, NJ. Now, I’m not a big BNL fan, but I do love Jukebox so I agreed to get tickets for her and me.

Well, today they arrived in the mail along with, in big bold letters, the following sentence…

“All sales are final. No exchanges or refunds.”

It was right there on the envelop in black and white. You bought ‘em, they’re yours. You don’t like ‘em, too bad. They’re yours. End of story.

Think anybody is pissed off because there’s no refund policy?

Hell no! I’d like to think that if you bought tickets to see BNL and JTG that you REALLY want to see them. Otherwise, why did you buy the tickets in the first place?

Didn’t like the concert after the fact? Think they sucked?

Too bad. Don’t buy anymore tickets to see BNL or JTG. It’s that simple.

But you’re NOT getting your money back…plain and simple.

And this is just one of MANY examples where there is no refund policy.

When you purchase a video game on CD or DVD, there are no refunds. If the game is defective you can exchange it for the SAME game, but you can’t get your money back.

This is to prevent people from buying the games, installing them on their PC and then returning them. In fact, many games won’t even play unless the CD is in the drive while you’re playing. Annoying, but understandable.

When you buy a dinner at a restaurant and don’t like it, try getting your money back. Good luck with that.

I could go on and on but I think you get the point. There are many products and services in this world where you can’t get a refund.

Didn’t like the cable channels you were getting with your package? Great…cancel the service for the next month, but you’re not getting a refund on the month you just paid for.

And yet, especially in the IM niche, people seem to think that they can take advantage of a membership site for a month, get all the content they can out of it, and then ask for a refund. And because the site owner states in the sales copy, “I’ll Refund Your Money Up To 60 Days” they’re essentially screwed.

If you have a killer product that people just can’t do without, you DON’T have to offer a refund.

You’ll still make sales…LOTS of them.

So before you fall into the mindless trap of “I have to offer refunds” think about what you’re selling.

If it’s not worth spit, you may very well HAVE to offer refunds.

Because you’re going to get a lot of them.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of creating products that nobody wants and don’t sell? Check out my Complete Guide To Product Creation at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/productcreation.html and create products that actually sell.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

All Sales Final…NO Refunds Or Exchanges

Incoming search terms:

• all sales are final
• all sales final
• all sales final policy
• all sales are final policy
• no refunds or exchanges
• all sales are final no refunds or exchanges
• all sale are final
• final sale no refunds or exchanges
• no refund or exchange policy
• refund policy all sales are final

The first thing the vendor does is he goes to the marketplace to see what’s selling. No sense creating something REALLY new when there is stuff out there that’s already raking in the big bucks.

After they find the product, they get a hold of the product creator and offer him a sweet deal. Rewrite the product under some pseudo-name and hand it over to the vendor’s team. The original product creator gets about 20% to 30% out of this deal depending on the vendor.

Next step is for the vendor to have his proofreader go over the product and make sure it’s solid. He will make whatever changes he feels are necessary, including any formatting changes to make the product look good.

After that, it goes to the copywriter who comes up with some really killer copy for the product, complete with story about the person who created the product, under this new name. This way, nobody knows it’s actually another product that’s already out there. This is why we see so many knockoffs.

When the copy is done and the product is read to go out to the public, it’s sent to the list manager. This is the guy who has got a list the size of Asia. He writes up an email promotion to go to the list telling them about this new product and gives them all the affiliate link in order to sign up and promote it.

Thing is, because this product is usually in the “make money online” niche, many of these people will actually buy it themselves…but…they will do so using THEIR affiliate ID, which actually counts as an affiliate sale and contributes to the gravity.

Imagine 500 people out of a list of 100,000 buying that product. It’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility. So right away, the product hits the Clickbank marketplace at the top of the charts with an insane gravity.

This gravity then perpetuates itself as new affiliates will go to the Clickbank marketplace, see that it’s at the top of the charts, think that it sells really well, and thus will go and promote it based on a totally false assumption as no affiliate has actually proven that the product sells.

It’s really quite ingenious when you think about it. There’s nothing really unethical about it. Nobody is forcing these original customers to buy the product and in fact, their buying it using their own affiliate links, while a little sleazy, is not discouraged by Clickbank. They ALLOW you to buy from your own link. However, you need to make 5 sales with 5 different credit card numbers in order to get your commission. And no…PayPal doesn’t count.

So there you have it. If you’ve ever wondered how these products climb up the charts so fast, that’s how.

And you thought these guys just had great affiliates.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

Blowing The Whistle On Those High Clickbank Gravity Numbers

Incoming search terms:

• high clickbank gravity
• how to get high clickbank gravity quickly

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

They just don’t make movies like that anymore. And it seems that they don’t make informational products like they used to anymore…or do they?

I guess it depends on who you ask. And therein lies the problem when you hear people say, “That product is great” or “That product sucks.” A lot of it is subjective. Oh yeah, I know, somebody puts together a two page PDF that says to do keyword research and put up a blog isn’t going to get my vote for product of the year. But good and bad, in most cases, is quite subjective.

But why? Why is it like that? Well, I’m going to give you my two cents on this subject. You may not agree with me, but if nothing else, I think you’ll find this interesting reading.

As a product creator myself, I try to put out the best product that I can. However, in doing that, I find myself confronted with a problem that many product creators don’t want to face.

Not everybody who looks at your product is at the same skill level. Some have just turned on a computer for the very first time. Others are such grizzled vets that nothing excites them anymore. And then of course you have everybody in between.

Sure, you can try to target your ads so that they only reach a certain segment of the population. Good luck with that. It’s easier said than done. Truth is, if you’re a good marketer, a lot of different people will see your ads and sales page.

So, what can you do to try to weed out the people who will either be disappointed with your product because they feel it is too basic OR can’t use the product because it is way over their head?

And what about the people in between? Where do you draw the line?

Take my advice and don’t try.

State what your product will do clearly and leave it at that. Those who feel it is too basic will refund, probably. Those who feel it is over their head will ask for support. You can then decide to either give them the support or refund the product if their request is unreasonable.

But we still haven’t answered the question, one way or another, if the product is good or bad.

Again, barring a pure piece of crap, there is no such thing.

I can take the greatest product ever created, according to most, but if I don’t apply what’s in it or don’t understand the concepts, the product is crap as far as I’m concerned.

On the flip side, I can take what most people would consider a junk product, find some golden nugget in it, because I know what to look for, and actually make money with it.

So now you tell me…which is the good product and which is the bad product?

We’re too quick to put labels on things because we’re coming from our own warped perspective. We forget that not everybody is going to get the same things out of the product that we got.

At best, all we can do is say, “I found this product to (be/not be) helpful. You might find otherwise.”

So the next time you ask somebody if XYZ product was any good, take the answer with a grain of salt.

Your mileage may vary…a lot.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick and tired of spinning your wheels trying to make a buck online? Visit the products page of my blog at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/products and get a 6 figure education for pennies.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

Are You A Good Product Or A Bad Product?

First of all, a big problem with PLR material is that the rights seem to get very muddy these days. One of the reasons for that is because of the way many past PLR products have been abused. The chief abuser has been the sale of these products on auction sites like Ebay. If you’ve seen this yourself, then you know what I’m talking about. Products that originally sold for $97 being given away for pennies.

In fact, the problem with the selling of PLR goes way beyond Ebay and other auction sites. The truth is, even those marketers selling PLR through their own sales pages have been selling them at ridiculous prices, which is actually understandable. You buy something for $97, plan to sell it for $47 and then see another site selling it for $17. How do you compete with that? You can’t. And thus, the downward spiral begins. It’s a bottomless pit that nobody recovers from.

Because of these problems, PLR creators have been forced to put limitations on what you can do with the product such as stating that it can’t be sold at auction sites and can’t be sold for less than a certain amount. That leads to two problems.

Problem number one, which is the more obvious one, is that the product itself becomes less desirable to the person buying it. Why buy something that has limitations? I know I wouldn’t unless the limitations weren’t going to be too restrictive and I could still sell the product.

Problem number two, which is not as obvious and something only lawyers think about is that by stipulating a minimum price, you are, in essence, price fixing. And that is against the law any way you look at it. Sure, enforcement may vary from place to place and you may get lucky and get away with it, but it’s still a risky proposition.

Another big problem with PLR is that because PLR makers know that there are problems and that most likely they won’t make a lot of sales of one particular product, in order to generate a significant income, they have to crank out a lot of products. To do that, they have to sacrifice quality because you just can’t crank out 20 or 30 products a month and put any real effort into them. So the quality suffers and the buying public sees that…thus lowering sales.

Finally, and this is really becoming a serious issue, there is the actual authenticity of the PLR product itself. There is a lot of PLR out that that, quite honestly, is stolen. I’m talking about products that didn’t come with rights that product creators steal and pass off as a PLR product.

What happens is that somebody buys the product in good faith, sells it, gets an email from an irate product creator claiming that the product they’re selling has no rights and the person who bought it has to stop selling it or face legal hassles.

With all of this, it is no wonder that PLR products have taken a huge hit over the years.

Question is, what can we do about it? Can we salvage the PLR industry? If so, how?

That question is going to be answered in the next installment.

See you then.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Tired of creating products that nobody wants and don’t sell? Check out my Complete Guide To Product Creation at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/productcreation.html and create products that actually sell.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

Are Private Label Rights A Dead Duck?

It’s been a while since we last did the top 30 Internet marketing articles post, but it’s back again and with vengeance! I will be focusing in on the best 30 Internet marketing articles of each month, using a range of sources and blogs which I read on a daily basis.

If you want to check out previous months top 30 Internet marketing articles you can do right here.

1. Social Media Strategy Before Tactics – A look at whether using strategy or tactics first in social media marketing & which is more effective.
2. How-To Guide for Conversion Rate Optimisation – Stephen Pavlovich shares the secret techniques he used to boost his clients conversion rates. An excellent guide to optimizing conversion rates which help double, triple peoples income.
3. Social Media Supremacy – 10 Experts share their Tactics – Since social media was created, before the buzz and the mass focus on social media marketing as an Internet marketers tool these 10 experts were benefiting from day 1, learn from them now as they share the techniques with us.
4. 13 Ways to Position yourself as a Trusted Resource – An excellent short-guide to creating trust between yourself and your customer. Creating a trustworthy customer relationship is essential for any Internet marketer.
5. An easy and Powerful Long Tail Approach to On-Page SEO – Wordstream for SEO, check out this fantastic software and the great ideas listed in this article.
6. Really really really easy SEO – Mark Nunney explains how easy SEO can be with the use of Google Analytics and Keyword niches for really easy SEO results.
7. 10 Firefox Add-ons to help Affiliate Marketers - If your an affiliate marketer looking for the best Firefox plugins, check these out.
8. Google Counts Site Speed as a Ranking Factor - It seems Google has now officially said that site speed is a factor when ranking in Google.
9. Understanding Competitiveness in Search Engine Rankings - An excellent article write-up on SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty tool.
10. 10 SEO Tools Bloggers Must Use – A great list of the top ten tools every blogger shouldn’t live without.
11. Making use of Converted Visitors for Social Media – An interesting article which helps understand how you can convert social media visitors to customers.
12. The value of Keyword Rankings – A look at keyword rankings and positioning and the value of both of these.
13. Ten steps to arrange and write a Killer Guest Post – How you can create an interesting guest post in an effective, efficient amount of time.
14. 10 Pet Peeves in Blog Design & Usability - An interesting look at flaws in Blog design ones which may make your readers click back.
15. How to Create Amazing Backlinks - How to identify great linking partners and more.
16. 10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers & Tools to do it – An informative article which helps you to take action to build the size of your Twitter following, size does matter!
17. Impact of Time on Link Building - Time is of essence and as we all know link building takes time. This article helps to grip the time you have got and use it effectively for link building.
18. How to Improve Your Site Speed - We now know for sure that site speed is important so lets learn how to improve our site speed today!
19. 30 Problems & Tools to Solve Them – A great post from Rand at SEOmoz. Those problems some obvious some not, how to solve them quickly and effectively.
20. 7 Ways to use Keywords for Link Building Campaign Design - Keywords are a great place to start when designing your link building campaign, learn why now.
21. Google just Killed Your Business – Google has been making many changes but the latest one may really effect Your Business.
22. Turn Your WordPress Blog in to a Lead Generation Machine – It is essential to build a list and to create leads learn how you can create a lead generation machine with your wordpress blog today.
23. 80% of YOUR links will disappear within 6 months Why? - Wondering why this will happen? Check this article out now.
24. 10 Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes – No one can afford to make these mistakes however we also know people learn from mistakes so take a look today and learn before its too late.
25. 7 Ways your Homepage is like a First Date – How to refresh your home page through a site visitors eyes.
26. 10 Things I wish all Bloggers I read would do – An interesting article which explains one person’s personal views on what blogs should include.
27. How Small Victories help You Create Big Products for Your Blog – How creating several types of content can help you to create a product for your blog without you even realising it.
28. The 10 Commandments of Affiliate Marketing – A clever look at the ten things that seem most important when doing Affiliate Marketing.
29. 10 Blogs With Explosive Growth – A very clever and unique post which really does send the message that anyone can achieve blogging success. This post is also filled with lots of interesting techniques and strategies for blogging growth.
30. You don’t know Jack about Branding – An interesting insight in to branding an online business and how people can learn to brand easily.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

Top 30 Internet Marketing Articles of April 2010

Incoming search terms:

• marketing articles 2010

With any product you will always find competition especially when we are talking about digital products. It is your job however to find some way of enticing these potential customers to purchase the products from you instead of your competitor. A good way of doing this is by adding a unique bonus report which is only offered by purchasing through you. By offering a little bit more than your competitors you are able to look unique and also entice potential customers to purchase from yourself instead of one of your competitors.

Whether the product your trying to sell is about making home made pet food or making money online all you need to do is take a couple of articles combine them in to one long report and convert that in to a PDF. You can then offer this report as a bonus gift to customers when they purchase through you. To make it even more enticing add some fancy graphics and a small sales page or paragraph which highlights the benefits and features of this unique bonus report.

The reports you create should obviously relate to the product you are trying to sell however you don’t have to stop by just creating one bonus report why not make two or three. You could even create other types of bonus gifts such as video tutorials, discount on other products or one two one tuition or guidance.

The value of any product is far greater when a bonus is offered. If you are just an affiliate of a product then you could simply let the customers know as soon as they have purchased the product you will email them with the bonus gifts.

Give your bonus reports a title, fancy ebook graphics, list the features and more importantly show a price that the bonus report is worth, I will say that again show a price of what the bonus report is worth. You can also add permission to the customers that they can redistribute the report as their own, give them MRR (master resale rights) or PLR (private label rights) and it will make the bonus reports seem even more valuable.

It costs nothing to create these bonus reports all it takes is an hour or two development and that is it. With these bonuses in place however you could increase sales by ten fold. Ultimately with these bonus reports and incentives you will be ahead of most if not all of your competitors and stand a much higher chance of getting the sales.

Download your free All in one eBooks

This is a post from Will Blears at SEO Tips. If you want to learn more about Internet marketing whether your interested in SEO, Blogging, Social media marketing or anything else. Come and take a look around.

Create a Bonus Report & Stay on Top of Your Competitors

Incoming search terms:

• a bonus report
• bonus report