John Lagoudakis has been a full-time internet marketer since 2008. Since then he has become one of Clickbank’s top 100 affiliates. He lives in Brisbane, Australia with his wife and three children.
Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I’m 36 years old, was born in Sydney, Australia and have been living in Brisbane for past 9 years. In 2008 I became a full-time internet marketer.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
When I first came across affiliate marketing, it made sense to me so I gave it a go and within a couple of days made my first sale. The profit was only about $1 but I was ecstatic… it really worked!
I was sick of my job so I made a goal to build up my affiliate marketing business to a point that I could quit my job by my next birthday (which was about 5 months away). After working hard for 8 months I was finally able to realize my goal and quit my job forever! What a beautiful day that was. It was my most satisfying accomplishment. Every day after that has been great.
Another significant accomplishment was becoming one of the top 100 Clickbank affiliates. I was quite surprised when that happened.
How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
By accident I learned about affiliate marketing. It was while I was trying to build up my network marketing business online and using traffic exchanges that I kept on coming across affiliate marketing guides. Eventually I bought one called “Two Minute Profits” by Alok Jain.
The reason why I’ve stuck with internet marketing, despite all the challenges I’ve had along the way (it hasn’t been smooth sailing!) is that I love the idea of being able to work anywhere in the world and at whatever times and whatever pace I choose.
Some days I’m motivated and work really hard. Other days I just couldn’t be bothered so I do something else. I spend a lot more time with my family. It’s great!
What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
To be a successful affiliate, you need to know and do the following things:
- Never give up. So many times I see people try something once, or maybe even a few times, and when it doesn’t work out they just give up. Nothing worthwhile is easy. My advice is to find someone that is having the success you want to have and follow their strategy completely until you have the same success
- Stay focused. Many budding affiliates make the mistake of buying every single new affiliate strategy that’s released. You’ll never have success this way. There are a kazillion different ways to make money online but if you spread yourself thin you won’t make a cent.
- Provide quality information. Whatever type of affiliate strategy you use, if you want to be successful, you need to give people what they want. Like Zig Ziglar says, “you can have everything in life that you want if you help enough people get what they want”.
What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
The internet marketing world is constantly changing. When I first started out, Google Adwords was the big thing, i.e. setting up profitable PPC campaigns. That’s how I made my big break and a lot of money.
2 years later my Adwords account was permanently suspended (along with thousands of other affiliate marketer’s accounts). My income dropped by more than 50% overnight (literally).
Fortunately, I saw the change coming and had other strategies in place.
What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
One of the strategies I already had in place before my Google Adwords account was suspended was building a list in the internet marketing niche. A big part of that list building strategy was to do adswaps with other list owners.
My biggest frustration has been the amount of scammers that are out there, that will not reciprocate a mailout or send you junk traffic. It happens too much and other list owners need to be aware. If you’re going to do an adswap (and I highly recommend that you do) make sure you get references first.
Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Writing articles about things that I’m not passionate about. If you’re going to get into a niche, make sure you either really enjoy it, or outsource the content creation. If you don’t, you’ll go crazy or just give up on it.
What is the future of marketing?
I really don’t know. I won’t pretend to be a marketing expert. :) At the moment, social media and video are super popular (e.g. Facebook and Youtube).
If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
I like the internet marketing/make money online niche and that’s where I’m focusing most of my attention at this stage. I also like to go into any hot niche that has recurring billing products. I love the idea of making a sale once and being paid over and over again.
Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I used to specialize in PPC but now email marketing is my main promotion method. Other methods I use are video and article marketing, Facebook and Twitter.
What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Right now I’m working on creating more online content to get more subscribers. I offer a quality free video ecourse that teaches others the methods that I currently use to make money online. This free video ecourse is available at http://makemoneyonlinewithjohn.com.
I want to get as much publicity as I can for my free video ecourse so I’m working on writing more articles for my blog and more videos to share online at Youtube, etc.
What motivates you?
My main motivation is my wife and three children. Internet marketing allows me to spend more time with them and a means to give them the things they need and want in life.
What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My long-term goal is to have my internet marketing business set up in such a way that I can easily outsource the tasks. Eventually I do not want to be doing any of the ‘grunt’ work myself. I’d like to be simply overseeing the work and enjoying the financial rewards. :)
Internet marketing is ideal for this. It’s very easy to outsource. My main challenge is to get a system into place that I can easily hand off to others.
Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Traveling the world with my family. :)
If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I wouldn’t change anything. I like where I am right now in my life and believe that everything I’ve been through has led me here, good and bad.
What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
I strongly believe that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I hope that my greatest accomplishment will be the heritage I leave to my family.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Friday, 30 March 2012
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Sunday, 25 March 2012
5 Steps to Affiliate Marketing Success
To be successful in affiliate marketing requires the willingness to put in the time and the effort necessary to operate your business properly. It is a business, not a hobby, and you must treat it that way. There are certain steps that you need to follow in order to be successful and bring in those big commission checks that you have been dreaming about. If you leave out any of the steps then ultimately your efforts will fail. No matter what niche or specific product within that niche you have chosen to affiliate yourself with, the process to promote it successfully is the same.
That process consists of these five steps:
1. Build your own site. It is possible to get started in affiliate marketing and make money online without your own site, but to bring in the big checks and truly be successful you need to have your own site. And not just one site. You should have a separate site for each affiliate offer that you want to promote. If an offer is not worth the few dollars that it costs to get a domain name and the few minutes it takes to add the site to your hosting account then that offer is not worth promoting. You must build it before they can come.
2. Start your own newsletter. You want to brand yourself as the expert within your niche. There is no better way to do that than to publish your own newsletter on a regular basis. Promote it at least as heavily as you do any of your offers. Give something away to get people to sign up to your mailing list to get your newsletter. Go easy on the affiliate offers with your newsletter, keep it mostly content and provide good information. You will be getting affiliate offers in front of your subscribers with the autoresponder series you will set up in the next step.
3. Get an autoresponder. You should already have one for your newsletter, if not then get one now. You want to be able to use it for your newsletter and for a series of preloaded messages that your new subscribers will be getting over time. You can write the messages, stick them in your autoresponder, and set it to send them out to every new subscriber that you get over a specific period of time. You can have your autoresponder loaded up and ready to send out your affiliate offers for months or even years. Just make sure that any affiliate offers are evergreen so that you don’t have to go back and change them.
4. Start article marketing. You want to get your name and your articles out there in front of as many people as you possibly can. If you don’t like to write then you can outsource the articles. Articles that you have submitted to article directories will make you look like an expert in your niche, bring in traffic, and provide you with much needed back links.
5. Expand your linking campaigns. Back links are one of the most important aspects of getting your sites to rank highly in the search engine results. Set up a reciprocal link program on your site where you exchange links with other webmasters. One way links are even better. Get busy and start posting in forums, commenting on blogs, and writing more articles.
Follow these five steps and your affiliate marketing business will be off to a good start. A good foundation is the key to your affiliate marketing success. Get ready to start cashing in those commission checks.
This is a guest post written by Thomas Alling from http://makemoneyhelper.com
That process consists of these five steps:
1. Build your own site. It is possible to get started in affiliate marketing and make money online without your own site, but to bring in the big checks and truly be successful you need to have your own site. And not just one site. You should have a separate site for each affiliate offer that you want to promote. If an offer is not worth the few dollars that it costs to get a domain name and the few minutes it takes to add the site to your hosting account then that offer is not worth promoting. You must build it before they can come.
2. Start your own newsletter. You want to brand yourself as the expert within your niche. There is no better way to do that than to publish your own newsletter on a regular basis. Promote it at least as heavily as you do any of your offers. Give something away to get people to sign up to your mailing list to get your newsletter. Go easy on the affiliate offers with your newsletter, keep it mostly content and provide good information. You will be getting affiliate offers in front of your subscribers with the autoresponder series you will set up in the next step.
3. Get an autoresponder. You should already have one for your newsletter, if not then get one now. You want to be able to use it for your newsletter and for a series of preloaded messages that your new subscribers will be getting over time. You can write the messages, stick them in your autoresponder, and set it to send them out to every new subscriber that you get over a specific period of time. You can have your autoresponder loaded up and ready to send out your affiliate offers for months or even years. Just make sure that any affiliate offers are evergreen so that you don’t have to go back and change them.
4. Start article marketing. You want to get your name and your articles out there in front of as many people as you possibly can. If you don’t like to write then you can outsource the articles. Articles that you have submitted to article directories will make you look like an expert in your niche, bring in traffic, and provide you with much needed back links.
5. Expand your linking campaigns. Back links are one of the most important aspects of getting your sites to rank highly in the search engine results. Set up a reciprocal link program on your site where you exchange links with other webmasters. One way links are even better. Get busy and start posting in forums, commenting on blogs, and writing more articles.
Follow these five steps and your affiliate marketing business will be off to a good start. A good foundation is the key to your affiliate marketing success. Get ready to start cashing in those commission checks.
This is a guest post written by Thomas Alling from http://makemoneyhelper.com
Friday, 23 March 2012
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Feedback
Hi guys. I just wanted to ask if there is anything specific you would like me to go through that you are unsure of. I will try my best to give a good reply and if I don't know the answer I will find out for you.
I could start a small course on starting out with specifics on what you ask for. Feel free. Thanks
I could start a small course on starting out with specifics on what you ask for. Feel free. Thanks
Saturday, 10 March 2012
How to Start an Online Business For Beginners
If you are trying to figure out how to start an online business, I bet you are a little overwhelmed. So to narrow down the topic of an online business, I have decided to focus on three types of the cheapest and easiest online businesses.
Affiliate Marketing
Creating Ebooks
Membership Sites
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing basically means selling other people's products online for a commission. Affiliate marketing is the quickest and cheapest way to start an online business. There is no inventory to keep, no order fulfillment, and no customer service to deal with.
You can become an affiliate marketer of almost anything. From digital products, to computers, to clothing, and many more items. All you need to do is find a product or service that you believe in and want to promote.
This is how it works. You will sign up for an affiliate program with a company that has created products or offers a service you want to promote. Once you sign up on their website, then they will give you a special affiliate link that is only unique to you. Once you have that link, you can start promoting the product or service on your website or blog, in an email, or even on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.
Write An Ebook:
An ebbok is an electronic book that you download to your computer. You can read it directly from your computer or print it out. The great thing about ebooks is...you don't have to wait for them to be shipped. You receive them instantly. And people LOVE instant information!
You can create an ebook for next to nothing and sell it for 100% profit!
There are different ways you can create ebooks:
Brain storm and research your topic
Hold a teleseminar: Have somebody interview you, have the interview transcribed, and then turn it into an ebook.
Blog posts: If you have a blog that covers a certain subject, you can turn your posts into an ebook.
Type your ebook into a word document, then convert it to a PDF.
Membership Site:
A membership site is a website that provides information or services to those people who register and pay to be a member.
Most membership sites bill their members on a monthly basis. Once someone signs up as a member, depending on the owner's set up, they are automatically billed each month. Those who sign up to become members have access to member's only information provided by the site owner on a regular basis.
Types Of Membership Sites:
Ongoing: Every month members will pay you for the content in your site. With this type of membership site, you will add content on a regular basis.)
Fixed Term: This type of membership site will last for a specified amount of time. It could last for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, etc. This is a great way to present lessons into manageable chunks. You could actually turn your ebook into a fixed term membership site.
Membership sites are great because it is residual income. Meaning: recurring monthly payments.
Learning how to start an online business can be a bit overwhelming at first. Narrow down which type of online business sounds best for you, research your topic, and then start learning. Take it one step at a time. Before you know it, you will have an online business up and running.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3000317
Affiliate Marketing
Creating Ebooks
Membership Sites
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing basically means selling other people's products online for a commission. Affiliate marketing is the quickest and cheapest way to start an online business. There is no inventory to keep, no order fulfillment, and no customer service to deal with.
You can become an affiliate marketer of almost anything. From digital products, to computers, to clothing, and many more items. All you need to do is find a product or service that you believe in and want to promote.
This is how it works. You will sign up for an affiliate program with a company that has created products or offers a service you want to promote. Once you sign up on their website, then they will give you a special affiliate link that is only unique to you. Once you have that link, you can start promoting the product or service on your website or blog, in an email, or even on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.
Write An Ebook:
An ebbok is an electronic book that you download to your computer. You can read it directly from your computer or print it out. The great thing about ebooks is...you don't have to wait for them to be shipped. You receive them instantly. And people LOVE instant information!
You can create an ebook for next to nothing and sell it for 100% profit!
There are different ways you can create ebooks:
Brain storm and research your topic
Hold a teleseminar: Have somebody interview you, have the interview transcribed, and then turn it into an ebook.
Blog posts: If you have a blog that covers a certain subject, you can turn your posts into an ebook.
Type your ebook into a word document, then convert it to a PDF.
Membership Site:
A membership site is a website that provides information or services to those people who register and pay to be a member.
Most membership sites bill their members on a monthly basis. Once someone signs up as a member, depending on the owner's set up, they are automatically billed each month. Those who sign up to become members have access to member's only information provided by the site owner on a regular basis.
Types Of Membership Sites:
Ongoing: Every month members will pay you for the content in your site. With this type of membership site, you will add content on a regular basis.)
Fixed Term: This type of membership site will last for a specified amount of time. It could last for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, etc. This is a great way to present lessons into manageable chunks. You could actually turn your ebook into a fixed term membership site.
Membership sites are great because it is residual income. Meaning: recurring monthly payments.
Learning how to start an online business can be a bit overwhelming at first. Narrow down which type of online business sounds best for you, research your topic, and then start learning. Take it one step at a time. Before you know it, you will have an online business up and running.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3000317
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