Free Internet Marketing Tips and Resources Blog by Stuart Stirling

How was internet business in 2007?

As 2007 comes to a close, it's a good time to reflect and evaluate your online home business and plan for the coming new year.

Some points to focus on...

• Were your GOALS met?


• Financially? Profit? Loss?


• Development wise? ie. traffic, subscribers, products

If you din't reach your goals...

• Why not? What went wrong?


• What worked and what didn't?


• What could you have done better and what will you do better next year?

Of course, you want to take the things that worked to build your business this year into 2008 and try to improve on that.

For me, JV giveaways worked like wonders to build my list and e-book product releases helped boost my income and list of paying customers.

My marketing skills can always be developed. I'm always looking at how to appeal to my target markets. Are my emails interesting or junk? Are my websites entertaining and informative? Are they effective to produce business or are they just bandwidth wasters?

Success, like happiness, is not a destination, it's a journey. We learn things along the way. Even if you consider 2007 to be a failure, you only fail if you give up. Think of your failures to be stepping stones to bigger and better things. Afterall, 2008 is a new year.

Stuart Stirling

Labels: 2007, 2008, improve-online-business, internet-marketing-tips, year-in-review

posted by 'Disco Stu' @ 4:44 PM

Tips for making money in the holiday season

Christmas is over for another year! I hope you enjoyed Christmas day and have some nice plans for the coming holidays!

If you aren't going away anywhere..like me :( you've got an awesome chance to earn a few more dollars online by picking up on the season's shopping frenzy!

They don't call it the "silly season" for nothing!

I know we all want to take this period as an excuse to relax and do nothing, but, because we now have extra time on our hands, now is the best time to market like crazy!

Although most of the "Christmas shopping" is done with, people are still in the buying mood.

No matter which niche you're in, people are going to be friendly with their wallets.

If you've got a list, warm them up with a special crazy offer.

Here's that super deal I showed you a few days ago....

If you've got a blog, write up a super product review or "hot list" and send traffic like mad!

If you haven't got anything, then there's still a chance...albeit a smaller one...to make some cash.

Advertise your affiliate links with traffic exchanges, banner exchanges, link exchange, articles, PPC, forums, social sites, whatever.

-------------------------------------------------

Have some extra time and want to set up a website? Great! Here's how to do it....

1. Get a domain name from Godaddy or Namecheap

2. Get web hosting from Hostgator

3. Get an autoresponder account from Aweber

4. Get a simple wordpress blog or static HTML
squeeze page up

5. Drive traffic

6. Build a list

7. Make sales

It's that easy and you can do it!

Here's a short free report that explains all this and more which I highly recommend you take a look at right now....No sign ups, just a great free report you can download instantly!

=> http://www.stuartstirlingonline.com/likes/holidaymarketing

All the best for increased profits this holiday season!

Stuart Stirling

Labels: affiliate-marketing-for-the-holiday-season, christmas-marketing, how-to-set-up-website, money-making-ideas

posted by 'Disco Stu' @ 5:49 AM

Top 21 web sites you can't do online business without

Here's an early Christmas present for you!

Instead of some free report you download and let sit on your computer, I'll share some valuable info with you right here in this post.

Best 21 websites you can't run a successful online business without!

Here goes...

1. www.Paypal.com - It's the worlds leading payment processing website. You'll need it to take and make purchases online.

2. www.Google.com - Get a Google account for Gmail, Adsense, Adwords, Blogger, you name it.

3. www.Clickbank.com - The largest online marketplace for digital products. You can be a vendor (product owner) or affiliate.

4. www.Godaddy.com - Best web site domain name registry service. (I won't list a web hosting website because there 're too many good ones)

5. www.Aweber.com - Without a doubt, the best auto-responder mailing service available.

6. www.Wordpress.com - to host a free blog or www.Wordpress.org - to download the free blogging script.

7. www.Squidoo.com - Create your own pages about anything you want. Great free traffic source.

8. www.Hubpages.com - Like Squidoo but untapped and easy to get high SE ranking.

9. www.Ebay.com - Biggest online auction site on the planet. Sell (almost) anything you want.

10. www.Alexa.com - You can analyze traffic to any website and see the top 500 visited websites.

11. www.Freekeywords.wordtracker.com - Keyword research tool (no downloads)

12. www.Buzz.yahoo.com - See what the latest buzz is online. Great for getting niche ideas.

13. www.Mozilla.com - Fast and safe web browser.

14. www.Statcounter.com - Counts number of hits to your website or blog.

15. www.Onlywire.com - Auto social bookmarking.

16. www.Ezinearticles.com - Perhaps Google's favorite article directory. Get high SE ranking fast.

17. www.Pingoat.com - Pings 40 websites in one submission. Use this after you update your blog or website.

18. www.Ning.com - Run your own social networking website like Myspace or Facebook free.

19. www.Craigslist.com - The most popular online classifieds website. List your service or product here.

20. www.Skype.com - High quality free VOIP software to call and instant message your contacts.

21. www.Youtube.com - Video sharing website. Great for exposure or simply unwinding.... ;)

That's it. Enjoy! You may want to save this page for future reference. Please let me know what you think and if you have any more you'd like to add to the list with a comment.

Have a good day and take care!

To your success,
Stuart Stirling

Labels: best-bookmarks, best-business-websites, best-marketing-websites

posted by 'Disco Stu' @ 5:15 AM

Affiliate Cash Secrets Membership Candid Review

Is Affiliate Cash Secrets membership a rip off?

I've been a member of Derrick Van Dyke's Affiliate Cash Secrets website since it started over 12 months ago now and it hasn't been all smooth sailing.

In the beginning it was free to join and stay a member. For a new site, it was still very impressive. It had a downline builder and a squeeze page you could download and use on your own website to build a list.

I used these tools to get a few extra hundred subscribers and some extra profit over a few months.

Then came the downfall....

In a space over the last 6 months, I could have sworn Affilaite Cash Secrets was falling apart. It seemed like Derrick was changing the system almost every week. I couldn't keep up with the changes and I doubt that anyone else could.

So I said "Bye-Bye".

But something amazing happened.

Late this year, 2007, Derrick finally got his head screwed on right. It took a lot of tinkering and frustrated affiliates like myself, but he has made what I can consider almost the "perfect turn-key affiliate marketing system".

Here's a 1 minute break down of the "NEW" Affiliate Cash Secrets system:

1. You sign up for a free 7 day trial getting you full access to the
system. Your login details will be emailed to you. After the 7 day trial
is up, you'll be paying $29.95

2. You "Set Up" your system which is a squeeze page (4 to choose from) that
is all hosted on the ACS website. You just fill in forms with your
auto-responder info, affiliate links and follow up emails (all form
filling-no HTML required).

3. Read the "Traffic Tactics" page to see how you can get traffic for free.
You will learn how to use ad swaps, blogging and social networking sites to send
traffic to your squeeze page and build your list.

4. You get subscribers to sign up and download a free report with your
affiliate links embedded inside (that happens auto-matically in the "Set-up").
Your subscribers also get a series of follow up emails with your affiliate links
in them. These emails are pre-written so you just need to copy and paste them in
your auto-responder.

Some other cool extra features inside include....

• Ad/campaign tracking software
• Affiliate program that pays you $20 per month for every paid member you refer

It's really simple, but this is the exact same way I and all other online marketers build there business but with one difference.

The great thing about the Affiliate Cash Secrets is that EVERYTHING is there in the one place. It's turn-key. It's simple and fast to set up. If you're half familiar with computers, you can have eveything set up and ready to make money in less than 2 hours.

The list building tools are there. The products are there. You don't need to know anything about niche research, keywords, or anything techie like HTML, web hosting, FTP or cpanel.

The downsides....

Of course, nothing is ever perfect (but Affiliate Cash Secrets is not far from it). There are some "not so good" points about.

For one, you need to sign up and pay for an auto-responder acount with Aweber, Prosender, Get Response or Email Aces. This can hurt a newbie with no income stream. But the cold hard truth is, an auto-reponder service is absolutely 100% necessary to be successful online. Not 2 ways about it. You must bite the bullet on this one and get an autoresponder.

Next is, you've got the same squeeze page as 10,000 odd other people in the world targeting the same group of people. Everyone knows that originality wins at the end of the day. Derrick has got 4 different squeeze pages offering 4 different reports, but still, you're not the only one using them. And as more people join, the more watered down the effectiveness will be.

Finally, the navigation of the site is still a little confusing. There are many sub folders within subfolders, making it a little time consuming to get around and easy to get lost at first. The best way to deal with this is the watch the tutorial videos and just take some time to get used to where it all is.

All in all, Affiliate Cash Secrets is perfect for newbies starting from scratch. It's a complete system that makes it easy to start building a list and make their first dollars in commissions fast.

I have my membership and will stay a member. Not that I don't have my own business building system in place, rather, I will stay a member to keep it high on my list of recommended tools to help those who want to start making money online easily and in a hurry.

It's like the "microwave dinner" of online money making affiliate marketing systems. Not the perfect meal, but it's ready in a minute, provides enough "nutrition" and still very tasty!

For more information, click here to visit Affiliate Cash Secrets website and sign up for a free 7 day trial membership...while they last. Apparantly, numbers are limited.

Stuart Stirling

Labels: affiliate-cash-secrets-review, affiliate-marketing-for-beginners, easy-way-to-make-money-online, make-money-fast

posted by 'Disco Stu' @ 1:04 AM