Johnson.

I just wanted to put this question out there since I’m focusing on Clickbank Niche Marketing at the moment. I know there’s thing’s like “get your ex back” and “weight loss”, but what other niches would be good to target on Clickbank?

1. Get Your Ex Back

2. Weight Loss

3. Building Muscle

4. Seduction

5. ???

These are the ones I thought of just off the top of my head. Any more you might care to add?

So Jason Fladlien is an Internet Marketer that I’ve been into recently. He keeps things really simple and I’m going to buy some stuff on his website. Before I do though, I just want to check out some of his free stuff. He is an EzineArticles expert author and while checking out some of his articles, I found some pretty awesome information that I want to write in this post, mainly as a mental note for myself, but if this post does happen to get ranked, then hopefully you might benefit from it too.

There’s an article called, “Internet Marketing – The Best Way to Build a List” and the logic I find in this article makes sense to me. I mean, we’ve all heard of forum marketing, right? You know, chucking a link in your signature, blah blah blah. The reason why this article caught my eye is because of the sense the marketing made. Basically, you sign up to 3-4 forums, look back at the last 3-4 posts, find the recurring problems. Compile these into a short 15-20 report. Then, you link to this report on your blog. Then you put a link in the report to your site. If it’s a winner, then do the article, PPC and all that jazz. Makes sense to me.

There was another article, “How to Enter Any Niche & Determine If It’s Profitable Overnight“. Again, very awesome simple marketing logic. Reading through just again, this point jumped out at me: “What I like to do is look at what my competitors are offering to that niche. I try to find an information product that sells for $47 to that niche.” That never occurred to me. If it is a profitable niche, then people are already capitalizing on this.

This rides upon the previous article. So after you decide that it could potentially be profitable, then you make your report, write articles going to your site, put the report in your signature. This is further niche testing. Of course, you’ve gotta have a good offer, a good report and pretty good articles to make sure the niche testing is of decent quality itself.

There was another line that jumped out at me, for another reason: “It becomes a numbers game. Every 6 or 7 niches I invade, I find one that works pretty darn well, making it well worth my time.” WTF? ” 6 or 7 niches? How much marketing does this guy do?

I’m sort of distracted because I’m watching TV at the moment so I’ll write more on Jason Fladlien’s articles a different day.

I’m pretty gullible, but there are always going to be just some things that I’m a little be wary around. Being on the Internet as an Affiliate Marketer for over a year now, I’ve learnt to mistrust a lot of the products that are advertised online.

Sometimes, I join lists just for the fun of it to keep an open mind to new marketing techniques/tactics. After the Mind Movies launch, I’ve received not a lot besides pitches for other products related in the self-improvement niche. I’ve ignored these pitches up until last night when I was bored and just decided, “what the hey”.

This time, they were promoting Sasha Xarrian from OutrageousMastery.com. Check out the website if you want, but personally, it screams out SCAM to me, even if the main product is on $17. It’s just the feel of the website and testimonials. They just feel and read very scammily.

Anyway, that’s far from the point. The free PDF they were giving away from the website was worth a read. What I tend to do when I read free reports is skim through them, then if something catches my eye or I have a mini-epiphany, then I’ll go back to the start and re-read the whole thing slowly.

So there was something that caught my eye as I was reading and it was the chapter on Guilt. I’ve been feeling guilty lately about some relationship stuff that’s been going on, so naturally, I read on. It just had some instructions on how to get rid of guilt from your life, since it saps your spirit and strength.

I don’t know. It just got me into a contemplative mood, thinking about what self-confidence was and how guilt fitted into the scheme of things. I’ll blame myself before I blame others. If you’re pissed off at someone, it’s usually a reflection of an insecurity you have. Keeping that in mind, whenever anger does ebb at my conscience, I remember that and go on. However, the fact that it did ebb initially means that there was some internal gravitational force that caused that emotion to be stirred up. So basically, I’m in denial.

I’ve copied Page  3 for you, since it’s quite simple to understand. It’s what Self-Confidence isn’t, so it’ll help you understand what Self-Confidence is.

2. WHAT SELF-CONFIDENCE IS NOT
Self-confidence is not acting like you are better than others.
Self-confidence is not feeling like you are better than others.
Self-confidence never feels false. It is not something that
you should feel guilty for wanting.
Self-confidence is not the ability to step on others or
promote yourself by tearing someone else down.
Many people are afraid to desire great gifts for themselves.
They feel if they desire great things for themselves it will mean
that they are filled with pride and may mean they are not worthy,
loving people. But, nothing could be further from the truth.
It takes a level of self-confidence to desire great things for
yourself and you never achieve great things without first having
the desire for them.
Having self-confidence does not mean you are unworthy. It
does not mean you should feel guilty for wanting to possess it.
Self-confidence is not boastful or mean or taking advantage
of others.

I’ve been pretty flat out recently at university. A lot of stuff being happening relationship-wise and just study in general. Still, hasn’t stopped me from thinking about Affiliate Marketing and dreaming.

Of recent, I’ve developed more of a “just do it” attitude. I day dream and usually succumb to short-term, quick fix sort of pleasures, but for the greatest rewards in life, I’m going to have to hold off for a bit and exhibit some self-control and discipline.

I’ve appreciated the time off I’ve had from affiliate marketing. Oh and another thing, one of the blogs that I’d set up earlier last year officially hit one year old! I checked my bank account and lo and behold, no cash increase… though I was short about $115 from the automatic GoDaddy hosting renewal.

I considered maybe stopping the hosting or even trying to sell it at SitePoint.com, but then I realise how valuable it actually is… I wrote a hell of a lot of articles and put them onto EzineArticles.com, pointing towards that blog and, like half a year later, it’s still getting a decent 250 hits a month. I mean, nothing special by anyone’s standards, but that’s free traffic that I paid for simply by putting in effort to writing article after article (I was trying to promote Vince DelMonte’s No-Nonsense Muscle Building. Look it up on Clickbank).

I’ve got to think of an extremely hands off way to monetize this traffic, since I’m a busy full-time university student. I can’t help but feel it’s all going to waste as I leave it there.

Anyway, just some more random thoughts about desperate niches.

The problem with most forms of Internet Marketing is that they lack the Marketing. Gurus and whatnot use flashy graphics and stuff to promise them the world to leave them nothing but a lighter wallet. The reason why it’s so hard for noobs to start making real money is because they don’t know enough about the market or marketing in general to start with an easier market that will give them a consistent but perhaps smaller income flow.

The first step is finding the desperate niche. You’ve got to understand why that niche is considered desperate.

The second step is identifying keywords that that desperate niche might type in with the intention of purchasing something. Besides the obvious words like “review” and so forth, most people, including myself, can’t tell a profitable keyword from one that may only be used for informational purposes.

The third step and last step is monetising that keyword by writing an article or advertisement that utilises the keyword so that it shows up in search engines. Of course, if the keyword is geared towards an extremely desperate and starving niche that is not being served, how well the article/ad sounds is negigable, supposedly. I’ve yet to prove this myself though I remain hopeful. =]

If you haven’t checked it out already, check out Travis Sago’s InstaCashKeywords.com. Corny name, but something worth checking out if you’re a fan of his Bum Marketing Method. Basically, what he does is send you a list of pre-researched profitable keywords that desperate consumers will type into search engines with an intention to spend money.

$4.95 for a one-week trial and $97 recurring per month. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve been meaning to. It’s just with uni and stuff I haven’t been able to. There’s not much to lose and you can do a lot in 1 week with material from Travis Sago. Perhaps someone can try it and report back to this blog to tell me how it is?

Well, that’s my ramble for the evening. It’s currently 8:42 pm, the eve of September 11 down under.

I read an article in today’s mX on the ride back home from dance rehearsal. It was something about the big companies like Microsoft and Amazon and another one signing some sort of alliance that protects their right to sell digital products.

Apparently Google is trying to make the hugest digital library ever and make them all free, if not at a predetermined super-cheap price discussed with the author.

Should us Affiliate Marketers be nervous? Could this mean the end, if not a substantial reduction in commissions from digital products?

On one of my Clickbank review blogs, GoSleevelessReview.com, I’m promoting a product, Go Sleeveless. I’d planned to automate it to for at least 15 sales a month by the end of the holidays but due to being disorganised, that never happened. At any rate, I changed it back to how it was before I’d tinkered with it. It got max 4 clickthroughs a day, which although wasn’t much, was something. I haven’t gotten one clickthrough for a couple weeks now.

I currently don’t have an answer on how to get more clickthroughs, but it’s going to be a question at the forefront of my mind. Any help or feedback I’d welcome; I realise it’s a pretty hard question to answer and there’s no set formula to getting more clickthroughs, but anything that stimulates some thought and discussion would be beautiful.

I actually googled the term, “how to get more click throughs” and the first thing that came up was a Copyblogger post. Love ‘em. They say that writing “click here” is a waste of anchor text but as I continued scrolling down, I came across a “click here” of their own and being aware of myself at the time, I smiled to myself when my first reaction was actually to click. I guess it does work. In fact, I might try it out now on my blog.

In terms of what I’m doing now, since uni’s started, my life’s become a juggling act once again. I want to continue doing my IM, but I’m limiting myself to 2 hours a day and only on weekends. I know it’s not much time, but at least it’ll allow me to focus when I’m doing it instead of ending up on Facebook or something like that. Of course, university is priority however and I’ve got to make sure that I get what I’m aiming for: a H2B average (75%). I need to start being more decisive and disciplined.

I am an overthinker at heart but I know it’s something I can conquer, since I’m aware of it. I’ve got wonderful, caring friends who help me and I’m thankful for that, but it’s still up to me to set up my Internet Marketing businesses once and for all.

It’s currently 12:03 am, Monday the 27th of July. In about 7 hours, I will have to get up to go to uni.

I never did actually do anything that I set out to achieve over these holidays. In terms of my goals, my holidays have been a completely failure. I was more reactive than proactive and I unfortunately, sleep was again the thing I valued most.

I want to have an automated income from Affiliate Marketing by this time, but yet again, here I am typing with no change in status quo.

If I sound a bit disappointed, I guess I am, but I’m not letting it get to me, because it’ll feed of itself and make me feel worse. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on certain things, especially marketing in general and for that, I’m happy. I also know that as long as I don’t give up, there is always a chance, a glimmer of hope. All I have to do is reassess my priorities and really find out why I am an Internet Marketer and why I want that automated income.

Because until I do, it won’t come and other things like sleep and being lazy will get in the way.

I’m always someone that puts a lot on my own plate and it’s something that I won’t think I’ll ever change. What I can change about it is my attitude. I guess I fancy myself as a multi-tasker. The only problem is, I can’t multi-task. This is what’s going to happen at uni.

I’m going to start later today and be all relaxed and still on holiday mode. I’m going to be more reactive than proactive again and only get whipped into a frenzy of hard work by a due date. I’m still going to try and get my IM campaigns up and going, but because there’s so little time, I’m not going to get anything done again. I’m going to end up with poor results and not a sliver of profit to my name, all because I was disorganised.

The first step I guess is addressing my habit of going from zero to hero. I have to take things in baby steps. I can’t set up crazy goals for myself and expect myself to achieve them. The things I do everyday have to be measurable and achievable and achieve an ultimate aim in the end. I have to plan out my days and make room for unexpected surprises and stuff. And most importantly, I have to take everything in good spirit. I know my capabilities as a pessimist. Already, I’ve put on my stinky face about this semester at uni. My reaction to that? I am different from everyone else. I’ve found my direction while being at uni and I’m pretty sure that everything I do, I do for my parents. They’re my #1 priority. I only want to help them live comfortably. I want to help them retire. My life revolves around them and honestly, if I had to, I would quit uni just to provide for them right now if I had to.

Anyway, enough rambling. These are my long term goals for this year:

1. achieve avg of H2A (75%) for all my subjects. This will require: planning, asking questions, being proactive rather than reactive and being POSITIVE. I can by just relishing the simple things: spending time with my new lady friend (you know who you are ), listening to music that makes me smile and dancing.

I want do to this to develop my mindset as something that is focused (and to make my parents proud)

2. have an automated income by the end of the year. This will require: planning, FOCUS and knowing my goals. Finding something that supersedes sleeping in. I’ve got to forget about the glamour and luxury of the Internet Marketing lifestyle and first have the mindset I need to succeed. I have it, I just need to take action. I have to remember, I’m doing it for my parents.

I’m far from being the man I want to be, but as long as I’m aware that I’m in control, everything will work out.

Today is Monday and the last week of my holidays before I start university again on the 27th. I guess I’m just a little bit disappointed at the way that I conducted myself over these holidays.

I had planned to do so much. There was so much growing I wanted to do and instead, I wasted my days sleeping in and “planning” marketing stuff to do. It started off with me wanting to do videos for my affiliate marketing blogs. Then I got bogged down in so many little, insignificant things, things like definitions of affiliate marketing and crap like that.

As I sit here writing this, I’m not sure if I’m able to achieve my goal of a new laptop by the end of this month. I want to get the Toshiba M700 Tablet PC, but it seems like I’m not ready for such a reward. I’ve hardly earnt it, having not really conducted myself during these holidays.

As I sit here writing this, I’m aware that I’m making myself depressed. Saying that I’ve achieved nothing during these holidays is stupid, because there are things that I’m glad that I’ve learnt. Just heaps of things about being happy, I guess. Knowing more about what I want in life. Knowing more about why I want to be an affiliate marketer.

All I want to do is make a sale a day of a Clickbank product. That’s all I need to suffice and be happy at university. And I’ll be damned if I don’t make it happen in these last 7 days of my holidays.

I was up earlier this morning, doing some pondering about Affiliate Marketing as usual. Before I hit the hay around 1:00 am, I had one of my mini-epiphanies about Affiliate Marketing. I realised the true reason that Affiliate Marketers need quality content on their blogs and what the content’s meant to do.

The epiphany came about when I was wondering why, on one of my other exercise-related blogs, a particular post about 3 exercises women could do to burn upper arm fat got so many views compared to my other posts. Taking a holistic point of view, that post actually gave USEFUL information that my niche audience could use right there and then, whereas my other posts were just me crapping on.

When everyone says you have to have quality content on your blogs, have you actually ever stopped to think what this means and why it’s so important? Again, let’s break it down logically…

Q1. What is content?

A1. Content is information.

Q2. What is quality content?

A2. Quality content is  good information.

Q3. What is classified as good information?

A3. Good information is information that is useful.

Q4. What sort of information is useful?

A4. Information that allows you to immediately address your problems is useful.

Q5. What sort of information allows you to immediately address your problems?

A5. Um I dunno, how about a post that’s called, “3 exercises to get rid of arm fat”?

Q6. Why would that post allow people to immediately address their problems?

A6. Exercise is an immediate solution (usually) and the results they get from the information allow the quality of the information to speak for itself.

Kapiche?

All the gurus always tell you to understand your niche audience and their problems and stuff. What better way to do so than to prove it by giving them an immediate solution to their problems?

And that, is the key. Content is used to give you expert status. If you give people content that helps solve their problems, they will see you as an expert, they will see you as someone generous who puts them before their hip pocket and they are more likely to trust you.