Aira Bongco

I will go straight to the point. Making lots of money online has one secret: money comes from the brand that you create.

A brand is not just your logo. It encompasses the totality of what you or your organization stands for. In fact, some people call the brand as the identity of the person, company or product. It is more than the name, logo and slogan. It also includes the personality exuded and the emotions evoked.

Now if you are not yet building your brand online, here are some reasons that may convince you to start.

Branding Forms Identity

With a brand, people can identify you from the rest of the pack. Let us face it. The online world is overloaded with information. Each day, a new person joins the Internet marketing arena and tries to get the attention of the people. If you cannot stand out, then you will mean nothing. So forming your identity should be your utmost priority.

Branding Increases Customer Loyalty

Another great thing about building your brand is that it increases customer loyalty. Of course, as you build your brand, make sure to continuously provide real value to your customers. From there, people will recognize your name, form their trust on you and they will continuously buy from you.

Branding Creates More Relationships

In the same way, building your brand can also create more joint venture relationships. Soon, you will find that one of the hardest things to do online is to rub elbows with the real gurus. They will simply ignore you if you do not have a brand. Usually, these people will only work with you if they know that you provide value to your customers.

Branding Gets More Sales

Also, if you will observe, all of the highest earning Internet marketers are the most popular people online. They all have their own brand. They usually associate their names with certain aspects of Internet marketing. For example, Darren Rowse is for blogging while Mike Filsaime is for newbie marketing. There is also Frank Kern with list building, John Chow for make money online and Mike Merz for joint ventures. These are just a few. But all are branding themselves to be experts in a particular field.

Of course, this does not mean that if some people are already dominating a subniche, you cannot compete. There are lots of people competing with the people I mentioned above and I cannot say that they are not making some money. But the thing is, you have to define what particular subniche do you want to be an expert in? You have to do this, to effectively build your brand.

Branding is Everlasting

And of course, the best thing about branding is that it will not be shaken by anything. It is your reputation. People will flood to your site on a consistent basis because they like and trust you. Even an abrupt change in Google’s algorithm will not affect you. Branding is really everlasting.

So I hope these reasons have managed to convince you to start building your brand online. One of the easiest ways to get started on this is to start participating in social media websites. These will be tackled in my upcoming posts.

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It took over a year before I really grasp what Internet marketing is all about. In fact, I still cannot claim that I know everything. Internet marketing is a continuous learning process and at times, one can feel rather overwhelmed by the abundance of information.

The sad thing is that there are simply too many people claiming that they know Internet marketing. One person says this and the other person says that. And in the end, the methods they teach have some gaps in the middle that you have to fill in. So what can a newbie marketer do?

Here are five things I have learned as a newbie marketer.

It is Okay to Ask Questions

One of the first things I have learned is that you are allowed to ask questions. A lot of newbie marketers think that they are alone in the online marketing world. I do not blame them though. There are some Internet marketing communities that frown upon newbies who constantly ask questions. However, for me, I have learned a lot in forums such as the Warrior Forums. The people there are helpful and newbie-friendly. They will take you out of the rut and explain things to you in detail.

Manual is Always Better than Auto

I know that by making this claim, a lot of people will be against me and tell me that doing everything manually especially link building will cost you time. That is the reason why I want to start the discussion of this section with a reminder that I know that it will cost time. But I have an outlook of always prioritizing quality over quantity.

The only reason why I chose manual is because if you try to do something, let us say link building, manually, your links are usually indexed and recognized more. For me, a quality link is better. Why? It does not matter how many links Google counts. For me, what matters is that the people that see my link click it.

Great is Always Better than Good

I guess one of the things that the Internet marketing world lack is quality. A lot of newbies are often taught about the fastest way they can get ahead online when in reality, they are just taught how to create haphazardly done content. And with the abundance of mediocre content, search engines like Google put up more rigid ranking algorithms to filter out the people who game the system from the people who truly offer value.

As a newbie, the thing you should aim for is ‘great content’. You should always put your best foot forward and offer quality in the Internet marketing sphere. Don’t take other people’s advices about creating any type of content. Remember that 90% of product sellers have not really implemented their own methods themselves. Also, offering value is a lasting endeavor. People will continue to follow you and promote your content for you.

You Should Create and Cherish Relationships

The fourth thing that I have learned is that you should always be on the lookout to create relationships online. The relationships you create are like your back-up team. These people will always have your back and will support you in all of your endeavors. Of course, creating relationships takes some time. But it is always worth it.

If you like to gain some real joint venture partners, then you should start making friends online. Just be sure to keep track of your time. Give some time to the people in your life, your friends online and your business. Keep things balanced.

You Should Authentically Care About Other People

And the last thing that I have learned is that you should authentically care about other people. The sad truth is that a lot of Internet marketers think that Internet marketing is a competition. However, that is not the case.

The Internet marketing world is a community. Believe it or not, people help each other online. You should always keep other people in mind when you create content or products. In the end, the people will be your judge.

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A lot of people dream of Internet marketing as a miracle drug. They think that once they get into it, all of their problems will go away and their dreams will finally come true. However, these people usually experience the reverse.

But I am not here to discourage you. Internet marketing is as fun as it can be if your heart is in it. I love how Gary Vaynerchuck puts it on his Web 2.0 speech “If you are not doing something you love, stop.” There is simply no point of doing something that you do not love. Even if it can make you a lot of money, you will be empty if your heart is not into it.

By the way, I tackled about niches and passion in my latest product called Easy Net Market Newbie Coaching Bootcamp. You can get in for only $2. You can go here if you want to know what the program is all about.

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In keyword research, you will want keywords that people type in the search engines. You should target long tail keywords (3 or more-word keywords) because they are very easy to dominate. That means that your webpage can reach the front of the search engines without too much effort. Also, another reason is because people who are really searching for information they can use do not type general keywords. For example, someone who likes to learn how to cook spaghetti will not type the keyword ‘spaghetti’ on the search engines. Instead, they will type “how to cook spaghetti” or “easy spaghetti recipe”. So I hope you get what I am saying in here.

Now because we want keywords that people actually type, we will use the power of one of the leading search engines today, Google. We can do this with their Google Suggester tool and the power of our little program that you can download here.

Watch the video and see how I generated a huge keyword list in under 5 minutes.

Now if you are interested on how I use these keywords in my own promotions, I have thought about SEO and keyword research in my latest product, Easy Net Market newbie coaching. Click here.

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Another question you should ask yourself when you are just starting out is how much money you want to make online. This is a crucial question because it can define how long your journey will be. But people online are divided into two categories when it comes to determining how much money they can make online.

The Idealists

The idealists tend to dream big. These people usually have big dreams for themselves and they have this ability to think about the future. The great part about idealists is their optimism. These people do not stop until they reach their goal. However, the downside of these people is that they tend to only dream and not achieve anything in the process.

The Realists

Meanwhile, realists always make sure that their goals are in check in what they can actually make online. They also plan like idealists but they tend to stick on the beginning of the game. They plan the money they want to make online for a month but they do not plan for the future. The great thing about realists is that they get to achieve their goals. It would not be surprising since their goals are achievable from the beginning. The downside, however, is that they do not have a big picture. So sometimes, they tend to get lost along the way.

The Way to Go

As you can see, both idealists and realists have their pros and cons. But there is a better choice than being a strict realist or idealist. You can take a bit of both. You can do this by having a long term and short term goal. These goals should be represented in terms of the amount of money you would like to earn online. It should also be segregated by time which realists will do and should have a target amount like idealists. Just think of it this way. You start with a big goal, and then you break it down to bite size pieces. From here, you can start achieving the amount one after another.

Now take out a piece of paper. Write down how much your target will be and how you will achieve it. Divide it into small targets spread across months and years. Some even go to the extent of planning per week. Start with this and you will be surprised how easy it is to achieve your goals.

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A lot of people want to make money online for the wrong reasons. So before you embark on an online marketing journey, be sure that you keep yourself in check. After all, you do not want to go into the trouble to make money online only to feel depressed afterwards. Here are some common reasons that pull people down when they make money online.

They Are Looking For an Easy Way Out

You may be one of those people who wanted to pay their bills immediately or someone who wanted to leave their day job. If you are one of these two, then I have bad news for you. Making money online will require time and real effort. Sometimes, it is even harder than a day job. If you really want to make money online, you will have to work each hour of your waking time. You have to dedicate not only your mind but also your body to the process. It is not easy. In fact, it requires double the work than your day job.

They are Too Focused on Making Money

Some people want to make money online but they are too consumed by the idea of money. These people, although powered by their motivation, tend to be the most frustrated people in the process. If you want to make money online, it is important that you put money last on your list and put the things that you learn first. After all, the money that you will earn will not and should not go to your pocket. It should be reinvested so your online marketing empire will grow. As a rule of thumb, it is best that you only take 10% of your income when you are starting out. You have to dedicate the rest to the growth of your business. This means using your money to automate processes like purchasing working softwares (yes, I emphasized “working”), outsourcing and purchasing scripts.

They Want to Prove Something to Others

Another reason people fail is that they were at the wrong wall. If you want to prove something, you should prove it to yourself and not to others. A lot of people who want to make money online always look up to the biggest names in the industry. They want to be like them. While it is okay to be inspired by people, it is wrong if you want their popularity more than their success. To make money online is not a popularity game. In fact, the people who earn the most online are working on the background. While you may choose to build your brand so you can increase your sales, always make it a point to compete with yourself so you will not get frustrated.

Now if you have fallen into one of these traps, don’t despair. Now that you have realized it, it is time to pull yourself out. Get your act together and breathe deeply. Focus on the goal and make money online.

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There has been a significant change in the way people are reading tweets. This, of course, may affect the way Twitter users react to advertisements.

An idea struck me when I saw this article from Oliver Marks entitled “Twitter Four Years On: Investing Time Wisely.” If we think about it, it has been four years since the creation of Twitter. While one can attest that 2009 is the peak of its success, changes have occurred on the users over time. Take for example the utilization of Twitter for business which brought about the increased occurrence of advertisements. These only occurred with time.

Of course, it is not only the posters that changed. The tweet reading habits of Twitter users have also changed as well. I could still remember the times when I can carry on a full conversation on Twitter. While we know that we can utilize other means like online messengers, Twitter seemed to be a viable way during those times. But today, I somehow think that it is not that possible. While it may be useful for comments and sharing information, it is not as good for holding conversations. In fact, I think that email may fare better when it comes to this purpose. With this, the way I read tweets has also changed. Unlike before where I am excited to see the friendly tweets, now I am drained to see the constant sharing of links. Not that it is bad. I think this phenomenon has triggered my filter switch to only click through information that I am interested in.

To cut the long story short, I have this guess that people are not reading tweets as well as they used to. Ask yourself. Are you reading each and every tweet? I doubt that anyone can do that unless of course if you do not have a life and you can get online Twitter all day (which may also mean you are not human). What I mean is people’s habit of reading tweets have changed and this may affect the success of tweeting advertisements.

But of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. There are people who have built enough credibility online that they can send out messages and be noticed. The tweets of these people seem to trigger a this-is-important light bulb on their followers which makes their tweets not only read but retweeted to even more people.

With this, there is a question if Twitter remains to be a good advertisement tool. People are not giving that much attention to tweets like they used to. So if you are thinking on promoting your product online, maybe it is better to simply use other means of advertising. Or maybe you should just make your tweets more catchy.

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A lot of people who are starting online are wondering what anchor text is. For those who do not know, anchor text is the text used in the link. For example, someone linked to you. The link will therefore look like this

Click here

Now “click here” is the anchor text. While people cannot control how their links will look like when they are linked in other websites, they can however control their anchor text in other circumstances. You can do this in writing articles, reviews, directories and putting their links in forum signatures. Of course, you can always control your anchor texts when you purchase links in other websites but only if you buy text link ads.

Of course, it goes without saying that building anchor texts must be done naturally. Having the same anchor text in all your links will only raise a red flag. There should be an equal amount or a certain amount of links pointing to your website with different anchor texts. Of course, you have to do your keyword research to be able to come up with a good variety of anchor texts.

So how important is anchor text? Well, if you really want to get ranked for a certain keyword, you have to tell the search engines that your website is really all about that keyword through proper onpage optimization factors such as an optimized title, meta and tags and proper offpage optimization where the anchor text plays a major role.

You may be able to drive good traffic through your social media campaign, but it will also be valuable if you can get traffic straight from the search engines. You will be amazed on how much traffic you can get. And all that is just from optimizing your anchor texts.

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Zero search results here pertain to the results that come out when your visitor enter a particular keyword in your search bar. When this happens, it means that your website does not contain the information that your visitor is looking for. When this happens, your visitor will not give up. But you can expect your visitor to start searching in another website.

Now there is a good reason why you should track these. For one, it will give you ideas on what kind of content should you add to your website. You may think that you are already giving your audiences what they want but they may still be searching for more that you cannot provide.

In other cases, these results return zero results even if there is an existing post about the keyword in your website. This is all because of wrong optimization. This happens when you have written the post but have chosen the wrong title or choice of words in your composition. Be sure to do your keyword research and target keywords that your audience will likely search for.

Luckily, there is a solution to this problem if you are using Wordpress. Yoast has come up with a good plugin to track zero result searches. This is Google Analytics for Wordpress. This will help you create the posts people are looking for in our website.

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Perhaps you may have heard about this method so it is not really that new to you. But who would have thought that this marketing method can be so effective that it took one of my websites and let it soar up to Google’s front page.

I would just like to share how you can get the same effect on your website and how easy it is to do.

1. Look for the right forums

Go in Google.com and type in your niche + “forum”. The results will show a list of relevant forums to your niche. Why does it need to be relevant? Well, we want our links to work not only as a backlink but also as a traffic driver. You cannot really attract significant traffic from a non-significant website.

2. Activity is the key

The next thing you need to do is look at the site’s activity. If your niche is too specific try typing in broad terms. For example, if your niche is “Toenail Fungus” then you can search for health forums instead. I doubt that there will be a forum dedicated to discussing toenail fungus with members being actually enthusiastic about it.

3. The Signature is your friend

Try to remember that you are signing up to forums for a possible backlink. Do not make a mistake and post on forums that does not allow signatures. Though some forums only allow signatures when a member creates a certain number of posts, that does not matter. What matters is that they allow signatures for you will be doing this as a long term promotion method.

4. Participate

That word could not have summarized it enough. Even if you have entered the forums to simply get a backlink and some traffic, be sure to actually contribute to the forum’s discussion. Spam will get you banned and forum moderators can smell spam even if it is a mile away. Use this area to contribute new knowledge to other people and learn from them as well. If you are really passionate about your niche, then this is the time to really tell people about your expertise. If your profile has a “friend” feature, try to add friends and join groups. This will also increase your network.

The magic of forum posting lies on one thing: the anchor text. Even if you try your hardest to build the largest network in social media if you do not do your homework and target your keywords, you will never see your website ranking for anything. Although I will not argue that social media is a very powerful tool for getting traffic, it does not, however, play a very huge role when targeting keywords.

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