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I am always amazed by the purchasing practices of aspiring Entrepreneurs and established business owners alike. They think that they can purchase any popular retail item beyond the normal chain of wholesale product distribution. I have heard more than my share of horror stories regarding people who have wired thousands of dollars to unscrupulous individuals that claim to have “secret contacts” for popular retail merchandise.

With few exceptions, most of these claims are nothing more than bait and switch scams, designed exclusively to separate you from your cash. In this article I want to impart some simple advice when it comes to purchasing wholesale products for resale.

First, you have to consider that China is responsible for most of the knockoff merchandise here in the United States.

If a particular clothing product is a hot seller, you are almost guaranteed to find that the people who are selling them as wholesale lots, are marketing counterfeit goods.

Those Nike sneakers, designer jeans, or LV Handbags that seem like an incredible wholesale deal, are nothing more than a cheap imitation of the real thing.

In addition, if your local department store has a hard time getting the latest IPod or Microsoft Xbox, then the chances are slim that anyone else will either.

There are exceptions to every rule, but, the various Xbox listings in a wholesale or B2B forum probably does not have the latest and greatest electronic gadget at the wholesale to resale level. If they did, why would they be selling them wholesale to the public? You could make a fortune listing them on EBay.

Let me impart this simplistic advice to all you newbies out there, and for those of you who still think that there is a hidden vault of wholesalers lurking in the far corners of cyberspace that is selling popular retail merchandise for pennies on the wholesale dollar.

If you are looking for brand name merchandise like Nike, True Religion jeans, or the Microsoft Xbox, then you need to contact the company to find out who their authorized distributors are. This is the only true way to find brand name merchandise at the wholesale level.

If your goal is to find a variety of wholesale products, and the primary focus is not just brand name merchandise, then the resources below will help you pin point just about any product trade associations, publication, or wholesale supplier.

National Association Of Wholesale Distributors – NAW.org The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) is the Washington, DC-based trade association that represents the wholesale distribution industry.

Encyclopedia Of Associations – By The Gale Group Available at a large public or University Library.Ask the reference desk to see if they carry it.

Publist.com – 150,000 magazines, journals, newsletters, and other periodicals.

Tradepub.com – Tradepub.com allows you to subscribe to trade periodicals from their web site for FREE!

ThomasRegional.com – 550,000 industrial distributors, manufacturers, and service companies.

Remember, everything can be had for a price, but there is a price to pay for everything. Think, before you decide to pay for any brand name product that is advertised as wholesale. You just might wind up with counterfeit merchandise, or worse, no product at all!

Robert C. Potter is a wholesale trade specialist. Robert is the brain child of Products For Resale. You can find his 230 page ebook, which features over 600 wholesale products distributors by clicking here.

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Alex Goodall and his Internet Marketing Mind Map…

Does it really come as a surprise to you when I say that more than 85% of internet marketing newbies fail to earn money online?

A couple of things contribute to this staggering statistic. First I would say a definite lack of understanding internet marketing and second would be lack of effort in the right direction for success. These factors lead to frustration, over spending and the feeling that online business success is just hype and scams.

Been there done that, couldn’t afford to buy the T-shirt.

I have proven that online business success doesn’t usually happen by accident. It takes dedication and research to make a go of it online. Getting involved with other successful marketers is the route to take. Learn to follow in their footsteps without skipping steps and you will have online success.

Get your internet marketing material organized before you go mad.

If you are following the path I first chose you have probably have collected hundreds and maybe even thousands of ebooks and resell rights products. How’s that going? Well I ended up so confused trying to find things I ended up missing the boat on many opportunities for earning more money online.

Two things about that,

1) Get your internet marketing products organized. I took more than a year to finally get organized enough to let my mind relax a bit and I did that through the help of Alex Goodall and his Internet marketing mindmap, IM-Index. Worth the time and investment, take a look.

2) Once organized then you need to go through your ebooks and find one that is a guide to online success, written by a successful marketer of course, and follow the steps without skipping steps.

Keep that in mind when next you buy an ebook that teaches you how to succeed. Is it by a professional that is successful? Then you are on the right track, but don’t give up before you actually follow the steps given in their ebook.

I think the biggest reason for failure when it comes to starting an online business is the fact it’s just too easy to create web pages for websites. Because it’s so easy it is also assumed that earning money online is easy as well and it takes a little more than just popping pages online.

It pays to think about starting an online business for a minute or two before you start building.

If you were to go out into the middle of the forest where there are no roads or paths leading to you and then you setup a little shop to sell your products. How many visitors do you think you will get and out of those visitors how many do you think will part with their money? I would imagine the numbers of visitors to be no more than a few rabbits and birds but money holding buyers, not so much.

Online success is all about your target group, those people that really want or need what you have to offer them. The thing about your target audience is that you have to target them using words they use to find things, which takes some research to discover those special words we call KEYWORDS. Without them you will not have target visitors and that means no money for you.

Like most things starting an online business successfully is a whole lot easier to accomplish after some research and study is done. Then the real secret is to apply what you learn through taking action. Knowledge is power but only if you take action and apply the knowledge.

It is important to be unique.

Once you have the knowledge you need to succeed combine it with your own knowledge and make it your own. Don’t use the sales page that come with ebooks with reseller rights, instead modify the page so that it is unique and yours. The search engines with love it and this will help you move to the top of the search engines faster than those newbies that just use duplicate content.

eBooks with reseller rights truly can make starting an online business easier when you work at it.

James Mann
http://startanonlinebusiness.ebooks-with-reseller-rights.com/
copyright 2006 – All Rights Reserved

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Other than direct sales and adsense, are there any other methods you can make money from using your blog? Yes, there are several, but three are usually used more often than others: 1) lead generation; 2) affiliate marketing; and 3) newsletter subscriptions.

Of all the other methods you can make money from with your blog, lead generation may be the most promising. This is an especially true if the market your blog is in is related to anything financial. Mortage and refinance leads are especially good, as they bring in tiered commissions. Your first commission will come when you generate the initial lead – which will simple entail getting someone to fill out a completely free form; this lead will earn you anywhere from $3 to $12. If this lead then goes on to refinance her home with the company in question, you could earn a windfall of several hundreds or several thousands of dollars.

The other methods you can make money from with your blog include affiliate marketing and newsletter subscriptions. Affiliate marketing generally consists of either directly signing up as an affiliate through someone’s website – or signing up as an affiliate through a third party. You will then use your blog to market this person’s products for a share of the total price. If you sell information products from Click Bank or Commission Junction, you can earn as much as 75% per sale; however, if you sell physical products, such as chairs and tables from Link Share retailers, such as Wal Mart, you will earn a 7-15% commission at best.

If these other methods you can make money from don’t sound appealing, you can always consider newsletter subscriptions. You can create an opt-in page or a “squeeze page” on your blog and offer a trial subscription to your newsletter. If you provide quality content and promote your blog, you could end up with hundreds of subscribers over time.

Other methods you can make money from on your blog include selling advertising space directly and selling site memberships that allow visitors to access certain server-side tools.

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An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It’s a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitor’s large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust – unless you have had the foresight to utilize autoresponder power that captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.

The power of the autoresponder is truly remarkable. They are versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email. Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use the power of your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Autoresponder power in affiliate marketing, well they just go hand in hand. nform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder. Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliate’s page in your autoresponder. Affiliate programs and autoresponder power will make the reviews you write earn money online.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Let’s say you’ve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when you’ve written new ones that they may want to publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you’re selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Let’s say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospects’ email addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that each lesson has quality content – not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your course but are dragging their feet about actually making a purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new products or services, and the products and services of your affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have a record of the visitors’ email addresses who took your quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then
make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors that they may have free access to your affiliate page by simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should contain up to fifty links that would be of particular interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own!

Don’t underestimate autoresponder power! Use the power of autoresponders to make you money again and again.

James Mann
http://autoresponders.ebooks-with-reseller-rights.com/

Squidoo has really surprised me with the power Google gives Squidoo lenses, also known as pages. Take a minute or two and learn how to Squidoo so you can start to earn money online.

What is Squidoo?

First Squidoo is part of the new Social Networking, which has become a huge factor in the fairly new Web 2.0. Social Networking like you do once you learn how to use Squidoo can quickly get your web pages(lenses) noticed and indexed by Google and other search engines.

I have found a few sites similar to Squidoo but I don’t earn money online with those other programs like I do with Squidoo. It was definitely work my time to learn how to Squidoo and I started earning money from Squidoo in my very first month and each month, as I add more lenses and content, the amount I earn grows.

I find Squidoo very addictive which makes it easy to keep adding content and new lenses. The fact that Google will index your Squidoo lenses so fast is a big bonus and helps me make money from my other affiliate programs faster than any of my other static websites and blogs. I use Squidoo to point target traffic to my other websites and so doing help to increase my web site reputation, which helps me earn money online.

You need to learn how to Squidoo rather than just start guessing how it works and I personally recommend SquidooSecrets for the most effective teaching. Why waste your time spinning your wheels when Squidoo Secrets will give you a good push start.

What subject do you like above all others?

Well you can write about that at Squidoo and because Squidoo is so into charities that they will share what they earn with you and even give you the opportunity to share part or all of your earning with various charities of your choosing. When ever I can earn money and share with my favorite charity I am all over it.

Using Squidoo you can create lenses otherwise known as web pages but these pages can be powerful when you do them correctly and with focus. You can also start groups and have others join your groups making you even more visible.

Fast Action Bonus

I took the time to learn how to Squidoo and now I have more than 10 Squidoo lenses creating and earning money online. With Squidoo and Web 2.0 Social Networks that happens to be my main goal, earning more money from the internet. Squidoo is well worth the time invested to learn how to Squidoo.

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I wanted to make money online but I wanted to work from home part time. I had quit my day job and needed to start making that money ASAP, if not sooner. Well, I didn’t have much success with making money online on my first attempt. I am sure glad I don’t give up easily and my friends all thought I was nuts to keep plugging away at making no money.I eventually realized I needed help as I had zero marketing skills. But by then I think I had stressed myself out way too much and worked all my waking hours trying to earn something and February, Friday 13, 2004 I had a heart attack that caused so much damage I was out of commission for the next three years. I tried to work but the strength wasn’t there.

I slowly started gaining some strength enough to start working online again but this time I was learning first and working second. You know that started the ball rolling and things just couldn’t be better.

Taking the time to follow the step by step process other online marketer has taken to making money online. The biggest cause of online business failure is not taking action. If you want to make money on the internet you must to the work required. So don’t skips steps and use ebooks that have resell rights so you can learn and then earn by applying what you learn and reselling the ebooks as well so others can learn to make money online.

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In recent studies by the American Life Project and The Guardian (UK), researchers asked whether or not the popularity of blogs today was growing in the two countries; and if so, why? The results on the popularity of blogs today were not exactly what most members of the blogosphere might expect.

Researchers working on the American Life Project found that the popularity of blogs today in terms of readerships in the United States was absolutely exploding; however, they also found that the amount of blogs available was increasing slowly in comparison. In the last six months of 2004, for instance, blog readers grew from a mere 17% of the population to a robust 37%–a significant increase. However, blog writers only increased from 5% and 7%; and largely maintained their homogeneous composition, which is predominantly male, young, and wealthy. The ALP attributed this explosion in readerships to the Presidential race, where both candidates employed blogging in some form to attract campaign donors.

The Guardian, which performed their study more recently, also found similar results in the United Kingdom on the popularity of blogs today. While they also found that readerships had increased dramatically, they did not find the same issue of slow blog growth; however, they did find out that a fairly astonishing 30% of frequent Internet users had never even heard of a blog.

So in which direction is the popularity of blogs today moving?–To greater profusion or to obscurity?

Given that blogs are the best intermediary between websites and forums, it is hard to imagine that they will decrease in the popularity of blogs today; conversely, however, it isn’t hard to imagine that they will improve significantly in continuation with how they have changed since their inception in the mid-1990s.

In the short term, it is fairly safe to imagine that larger blogs will experiment with video technology while older blogs stick with easy, faster-loading models. It is also fairly safe to image that blog indexing methods will continue to improve and may even break away from the traditional algorithm method.

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What, you haven’t heard that content is king, well you can come out from under that rock. Content is king and people are information hungry so if you have been online for more than a few months and are not able to make any money online yet, then you need to learn about good keywords.

I am not going to explain the whole keyword power here in the article but I will give you the details you need to find out more. Those willing to find out more are usually the ones that start earning more money online. Here is a set of videos about how to create a huge list of good keywords videos by Louis Allport, and it’s free so learn learn learn.

Website traffic can mean money for you and your niche website but not just any traffic will do it. The traffic you get, or the visitors you get need to be targeted to your product or service. Do that correctly, through the proper use of good keywords, and you are on your way to earning a living on the internet.

I have found that when I write an article for my article marketing campaigns and use the standard private label rights articles I get little if any results but if I take the time to find the good keywords I earn money online. Plus the amount of time that it takes to modify a PLR article to make it unique takes away from the time you need to promote and get links back to the pages you’re promoting.

Here is a set of videos that will make the task a lot easier to understand and these videos show you step by step tips for getting as many good keywords as possible.

I used private label rights articles for quit awhile so I know that length of time it takes to make a mediocre article into a strongly focused keyworded article, too much time. I now use Article Underground to get my articles because they spend the time focusing on not only good keywords but they also remove the keywords that don’t produce results so again I save time which means I save money.

If you will take the time to seriously check out the Louis Allport Good Keywords Videos and look at what the Article Underground has that will help you make money online and you take action you will be unstoppable. Good luck and good keywords my friend.

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You can make money online but it usually doesn’t happen by accident. The work you put into your online business through researching your competition and article marketing will pay off because so many just don’t plan at all, making it easy to leave them in your dust.

To make money online you need more web site traffic that is target traffic.

Online marketers today pop out web sites by the hundreds and even by the thousands and expect to earn money online. In my humble opinion they are just a waste of cyber space. I have heard it said that about 90% of web pages are never seen and therefore useless.

I think we have all been on those sites where we know instantly that we don’t want to stay there and just as fast we are gone never to return, on purpose that is.

I chalk this surge of crappy sites and pages up to the fact it is just too easy to create a web site and web pages these days. New internet marketers come on the scene, see that the competition is way ahead of them so they try tactics that will help them get to the top faster. In just minutes they can have so many pages that it makes me dizzy.

Perhaps this is where the problem begins. No real thought has to go into what makes a great web page that attracts your target group so the pages go up and then they wonder why they aren’t making money online.

DONT’ LET YOURSELF BE DECEIVED…

You’ve heard it… “Content is KING”. The net runs on content so don’t let yourself drift into the thinking where a good looking website will earn money. That’s just not true. I go to good looking websites every day and never spend a cent there. I look for content that meets my need at the time and good looks just makes it nicer, but it’s not what gets my credit card out of my wallet.

Think about this for a minute or two. Building a better web site faster doesn’t mean that you are going to build it in minutes.

My reference to faster refers to making money. You do it right and you will have your web site up and producing long before those that don’t spend the time researching their target group and keywords for just the right content.

Let me ask you a question. How do people find your web site using a search engine?

When I use my favorite search engine I use the search box to type in a string of text that I believe will find what I am looking for. I have the choice of using quotes around my search text so that I am looking for the exact text string, using quotes around only part of my search string, or no quotes at all.

Now I get a list or search results showing me what the search engine feels is the best results for the string of text I typed in.

This happens because people either put keywords in their web site to attract anyone to their web site or they just don’t have any idea about how to use keywords and phrased to focus on specific target groups.

If you have not studied your competition to find the keywords they are using and how they are using them so that you can do it one step better, you just aren’t going to get a lot of traffic.

Now if you do research your competition and take steps to do better you can have a web site that out performs the competition and you will do it way faster than those that fly by the seat of their pants.

Don’t forget about ebooks that solve problems, they will teach you what you need to know to be successful online and then you can produce an ebook that solves problems. Then you can give it away to help others succeed and it has links to pages that will help them and you will make money online.

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The types of blogs you can build are limited only by your imagination and by your willingness to conduct research. For instance, while some bloggers focus on general topics, such as cars, other bloggers narrow the scope of their blogs even further to sub-topics, such as luxury cars or antique cars. From an optimization standpoint, a blog with a narrower scope would likely outperform a blog with a broader scope in terms of conversions or clicks-per-visitor. So, if your goal is to make money, the types of blogs you can build are somewhat limited.

In terms of actual topics for the types of blogs you can build, there are about 9 major areas that are popular for current blogs: business, culture, community, politics, religion, science, travel, online diaries, and gossip. Most blog directories use similar topical categories to order blogs.

In addition to the topic for the types of blogs you can build, you will also want to consider the program used to generate it. This is another way that directories categorize blogs. For instance, blogs can fall under the category of the tool or software that was used to create them. Some blogs are created using Google’s Blogger. These blogs are often lumped together in directories as the same “type” of blog. They actually have an auto-surfing system that allows you to jump randomly from one Blogger blog to the another.

Other types of blogs you can build include social networking blogs, which allow members of the same network to interact with each other using various blog functions. Two examples are Livejournal–which was one of the original social networking blog systems–and Myspace, which is currently the largest, boasting a base of around 80,000,000 users. In recent months, marketers and business persons have begun using Myspace to introduce their product to potential customers.

Another type of blog you can build is a video blog or “vlog.” These usually contain videos and allow other posts to attach media in comments.

The last types of blogs you can build are geographical blogs. With such a robust blogging atmosphere–with users weighing in from all over the globe–directories, such as Blog Wise will allow users to search for blogs by geographic location. If you believe you have some information you can contribute about your specific region, you may want to start a regional geographic blog.