Back in 2002 I was playing around online trying to figure out how people were making money. At the time I had a great job and there was no financial pressure. But I knew that, eventually, I wanted to get out of the ad agency business and do something that would give me more time to do the things I really wanted to do. It wasn’t about money, it was about time. But in order to have the extra time, there needed to be some money. The Internet seemed to be the appropriate vehicle that would allow me to develop a passive source of income which would allow me to have more flexibility with my time.
“Passive” can be a confusing and misleading term in Internet marketing. Some people interpret passive income as income that you don’t have to work for. That is absoluely not the case in this line of work. Passive income simply means that revenue is being generated based on the work that you have already done, not on the work that you are doing at that moment. Passive does not mean easy. Passive does not mean effortless. Passive does not mean lazy. Passive means seeing the results of your online labor in an ongoing stream of revenue whether you are actively managing your business at that moment or not.
But trust me, if you remain passive about your passive income for too long, it will probably pass away!
Internet marketing is work. But it is very satisfying work in that you are in control of your life and you can see the fruits of your efforts over time. James Martell’s instructions helped me to ploant the seeds that are continuing to bear fruit for me nearly 4 years later.
I was involved in MLM for a time. It was the most prominent online marketing activity at the time I was looking around. I’ll write more about this later but one of the benefits on network marketing is that, by its nature, you meet other people doing the same thing that you are. That is what happened to me. I met a man who was seeking to expand his network marketing business through more traditional online marketing methods. That was very appealing to me since I really didn’t have the stomach for MLM. This man told me that if I wanted to learn about internet marketing I should check out a manual published by James Martell.
I really trusted this gentleman and after doing a bit of research I took the plunge and spent a whopping $147 for an instruction manual that wasn’t even in hard copy form. It was digital and was my first experience with ebooks and downloadable publications. It seemed to me that this was the way the Internet was supposed to be used. It made life easier and paperless.
Of course I promptly printed out a copy of the manual and its 100+ pages and put it in a 3-ring binder. So much for a paperless society.
In his manual, “The Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook,” Martell meticulously reviewed the fundamentals of building an Internet marketing program. The approach Martell used, and continues to promote, is identifying viable affiliate marketing programs, building a website to accomodate and promote the program, identifying keywords that are being entered by search engine users, developing content containg these keywords to attract readers and promoting the website through various methods.
This was just what I needed. I learned about meta tags, website templates (which I have never used), keyword research, affiliate programs and directories, search engine optimization, the proper structure for a website and many other very basic but truly critical information about building a website that will get visited and will convert to sales.
Martell walks you step by step through the entire process. He breaks the instructions into what he refers to as “baby steps.” These are structured to insure that you are familiar and proficient with the nuts and bolts of marketing through a website online. I will admit that I was way too undisciplined in my implementation of Martell’s procedures. I was in too much of a hurry and I was resistant to taking the time to break my website into the Product Pages and subcategories as Martell recommended. Consequently, my websites were not as orderly as and probably not as productive as they should have been.
The primary reason that I would recommend James Martell’s “Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook” is that it is a truly straightforward presentation of the things you must do and the steps that you must take if you are serious about a long term commitment to generating revenue online. Martell makes no promises about income or success but does keep you apprised of his own progress practicing what he preaches. There is no hype, no promises of riches and no statements about making easy money.
If you are serious about making a living online or supplementing your existing income with Internet-based revenue streams then the Affiliate marketer’s handbook is a great place to start. There are other tools out there that will help you maximize your efforts by providing detailed information about very specific programs. My advice is too hold off on the products promoting more narrowly focused marketing efforts like Adsense, Adwords, blogging, RSS and articlemarketing. Learn the basics first! The all the rest of these approaches to online marketing will make more sense and will build more easily on top of the foundation that you have already laid by following Martell’s instructions.
I’ll have more later about affiliate marketing and Martell’s activities. You will hear the good and the bad from me. If I have a bad experience or disagree with something along the way, including Mr. Martell, you will read about it here.