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Gobala Krishnan, one of my favorite Asian Internet marketers and one of my top selling affiliates for Blog Mastermind (I’ve sent him several hundred dollars worth of commissions every month for a year now) just released a brand new course Super Affiliate Blogger.

I have to admit I’m a bit ticked off that he’s done this because I have it on the cards to release my own training course for people wanting to use blogs for affiliate marketing, however since my program is probably at least six months away I’m okay with Gobala getting the jump on me. He uses a different system to what I do anyway, so it’s worth checking out his methods.

Here’s what Gobala’s new program is about -

Super Affiliate Blogger is more than just an e-book; it’s a complete system for affiliate marketing with blogs. It comes with a special link tracking system, special list building system and most importantly the customized Super Affiliate Pro WordPress themes. The theme is the most important factor here, as without this theme you will not be able to follow the instructions in the guide.

Click here for more details…

Gobala uses Pay Per Click (PPC) to drive traffic to his strategically crafted WordPress blog themes that focus on pre-selling an affiliate product. This is something I do not do - I’m not using PPC at all - I rely only on organic traffic and direct repeat visitors when I sell affiliate products from my blog.

Gobala’s system works with other forms of traffic too, however the great thing about PPC is that the traffic is instant - you switch it on and it flows and you can be making money in a matter of hours. Of course you have to pay money with PPC, so this is not something you want to get wrong for too long or you will lose money, you need to tweak things until you get a positive return on investment, which is what Gobala teaches.

The idea with Gobala’s system is to use a WordPress blog as a “landing page” that is themed and has content designed to pre-sell the visitor on an affiliate product. Obviously the plan is for as many visitors as possible to click the affiliate link on that blog post and then purchase the product, which is how the revenue is generated.

Gobala also makes use of targeted email lists he builds using his affiliate blogs, which is something I can wholeheartedly agree with (I’m all about email list building). His package actually comes with a plug-in called “opt-in forms manager system” that makes the technical part of adding an email list opt-in form to your blog easy. This is something I have to check out myself because I’ve wanted to get a service like this to my students too. If you purchase Super Affiliate Blogger from Gobala you get the plug-in.

Gobala provides a workbook that teaches the system, camtasia videos, a quickstart guide and a bunch of other stuff you can check out on the sales page. One of the best inclusions I think is custom designed WordPress themes you can put to use immediately to implement his system. They are crafted to sell certain types of affiliate products and are set up to use the tracking methods that Gobala teaches.

Testing and tracking is not something most bloggers do when it comes to affiliate marketing and it’s great to see a product that includes this topic and even provides blog themes to make the process easier. Props to Gobala for coming out with such a great feature.

Does This System Work?

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One of the great selling points of many online programs - I use this myself as part of the marketing approach for Blog Mastermind - is the appeal of following the steps of someone else who has done what you want to do. A system that has worked for someone else should work for you if you do exactly the same as them, right?

Well not exactly…

Let’s state the obvious. We are all different. It’s not possible to do something in EXACTLY the same manner as someone else, but you can certainly come close, yet that doesn’t mean the end result will be close to the person you attempt to replicate. If only it was as simple as that!

There are so many variables at play, for example - the external environment, luck, timing, skill, talent, resources - that it is almost ridiculous that anyone can claim if you follow their system you should expect the same results.

Let’s take my blog and my blog training program for example.

I grew a blog over several years and now make six figures a year from it. In 2007 I sat down and over six months documented, in a teaching format, the steps to replicate what I did to build my blog.

I couldn’t completely cover everything I did, but I’m confident I comprehensively covered the key points. It’s probably better for someone to go through the lessons in Blog Mastermind as a study resource rather than follow exactly in my footsteps since I made so many mistakes. You get the benefit of my hindsight to help you avoid my mistakes, you get the benefit of my insight so you don’t have to work it out for yourself and it’s all nicely packaged in an easy to consume program (and all of that’s part of the marketing spiel too!).

Yet, even with the road map laid out, no one will reach the same destination.

How many students who take Blog Mastermind will build a profitable blog? Not many. Of course I’ll do my best to highlight the success stories to lend credibility (and hope) that it’s possible, but I think it’s important to be realistic too. I’d love it if every student who studied my program experienced big time success and met all the objectives I state are possible. Most won’t even come close, a few will make it and maybe one or two will excel beyond my achievements (the grasshopper surpasses the master ).

I’m comfortable posting this to my blog because I know it’s not a reflection of my training that people don’t succeed. I know what I teach works, given the right conditions, which sadly are rarely met. I don’t publish this to discourage people from aspiring to become a professional blogger or take any online program - that’s definitely not my intention - but I do want you to understand why it is that so few people make it in the end so you can avoid the same fate.

Why Do People Fail?

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This is a cool tip and I have to give credit where it’s due before I dish it out to you. I first came across the idea while listening to an interview with Terry Dean, a very well known Internet marketer who has been doing the online money making thing for years. He’s also one of the only pure Internet marketers I’ve seen really embrace blogging as a tool to build an email list. You will see his blog has a pop-up opt-in form to join his list, which will definitely annoy some people but I suspect is converting well for Terry.

Now let’s look at this very underused method for finding topics and hot products using Paypal Shops to determine what people are spending money on. This is so easy it blows my mind it hasn’t been talked about before and that could be because people don’t know about it. I’m probably eroding someone’s secret advantage by publishing this one!

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Danial Scocco from DailyBlogTips put together a great article - 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website.

You might think you’ve read all the advice before, however it’s necessary that blog trainers continue to publish these articles to update the status of how you can profit online with a website. Plus of course, some of these ideas are new to beginners and we all know how important it is to help beginners.

What Methods Are Best?

To help augment Daniel’s suggestions, I’m going to dissect some of the points and talk about how truly profitable each method is based on my own experience, from online research and from what I have garnered from conversations with other people who use these methods. Hopefully this will help you decide which methods are worth chasing.

While I love lists of ways to make money, what I really love are stories from people who actually test the methods and provide feedback from their results. So, let’s get to it!

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I was thinking the other day about the niche of Internet marketing. It’s one of the most crowded niches on the Internet, yet so many people generate an income selling products related to making money on the world wide web. The reason is obvious - there’s a hungry crowd out there eager to make money and more and more budding web entrepreneurs are born each day.

You can segment the market into many sub-niches. There’s the AdSense expert, the pay per click expert, the affiliate marketing expert, people who buy and sell websites, email list builders, and of course the professional bloggers who use blogs to earn a living - and that’s just small handful of the areas people are making money in.

The laws of marketing dictate that these crowded industries will further segment into smaller sub-niches with the hope that you can carve out your own little piece of the pie by breaking things down to distinguish yourself from the rest. For example there’s no specific expert I know of who focuses on being the expert at affiliate marketing just with blogs or the professional website trader who only focuses on buying and selling a specific type of site, like forums.

For beginners, the issue of choosing what to sell, or in the case of blogging - what to write about - is the hardest choice. I know the thoughts that go through your head -

• I’m not good enough at anything to be an expert
• That guy or girl already dominates that market
• I’m not entering the make money online niche - it’s too crowded

The problem is about positioning and until you get comfortable with what you want to be to other people, it can be a very confusing time in the life of a young start-up business or a new blogger.

What Really Is Unique?

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