As you would probably know by now, building inbound links is one of the methods to boost search engine rankings. However gathering links through link exchanges or other methods might be too time-consuming. Here is where TNX comes in allowing you to buy links, hence speeding up your link building campaigns for search engine optimization. or even selling links to earn some money.

TNX is the new kid on the block, entering the market with competitors like Text-Link-Ads and TextLinkBrokers. Despite being new to the game, they have kicked up quite a buzz in digitalpoint forums and are growing extremely fast. Let’s take a look at some figures.

At a daily growth rate of $0.66%, they look set to grow 20% monthly. No mean feat.

TNX has put a new spin on the act of purchasing text links. Instead of digging through a directory of sites and looking over each one TNX offers you the ability to just buy links en masse from sites that you never even need to see based on their Page Rank and content. Talk about gaining links on steroids.

Personally I have had a reasonable amount of success purchasing links for my niche websites and ranking high on the search engines. So I should be trying this service out pretty soon.

At the moment TNX is running a special promotion just to test out their system giving out free bonus points which entitles you to a bunch of free links. Click Here to find out more about it.

Selling Links

Frankly speaking, I’m not a fan of selling links. Because while you cannot be penalized much for bad inbound links. You never know when you might sell a link to a bad neighbourhood and get penalized by Google.

Nonetheless, I feel it right to let you know that besides allowing you to purchase links, TNX allows you to sell links on your website too. As a publisher, you will love their system. You get 3000 points for a PR4 page, 1200 points for a PR3 page, 300+ points for a PR2 page. So if you have a site with tons of high PR pages, you can make a lot of points every month. And either cash out the points for money or use them to purchase more links.

* Recently Google has been penalizing websites that sell links by downgrading their Page Rank, however its not exactly clear whether all websites selling links have been affected.

If you are interested in leveraging this system to earn some money or even get inbound links, you might want to consider joining their affiliate program

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This Episode’s expert Dave Taylor is an authority on blogging and Web 2.0 , do check it out and see which contestant is eliminated this round.

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I attended the 3 day Internet Millionaire Incubator 2 last Friday to Sunday organized by Jo Han Mok and Matt Bacak in Singapore. Through a special link, I was able to get tickets for a mere US$0.50, though I believe a minority of people did pay S$88 if they signed up through the newspaper advertisement.

I had attended the Internet Millionaire Incubator 2 event mainly to listen to Kirt Christensen and Adam Ginsberg to get more ideas. While I missed Adam’s talk on eBay, I did manage to get some new ideas from Kirt Christensen’s talk regarding memberships which I will be implementing shortly for the niches that I am in.

Just like all low priced seminars, it’s expected for each speaker to pitch their advanced courses or systems towards the end of their speaking slot. And true enough all the speakers mainly shared basic level internet marketing ideas before continuing to pitch their advanced courses. Hence for old hands, attending such seminars serve more as an opportunity to network and relax. While newbies and seminar junkies just eat it all in and purchase the advanced programs.

While some packages did seem decent, it was rather sad to see some speakers selling programs that were grossly overpriced (in my opinion) or just sheer hogwash systems that the newbies would never make a dime off. I don’t want to mention names, but there was a particular upsell which costed almost S$6k just for the license to sell the “guru’s” internet marketing product and get 50% of profits. Geez…it’s like paying to be his affiliate. Not to mention if you don’t have a huge internet marketing based list (which newbies won’t have), you will probably just be throwing your money away.

Overall I did benefit slightly but I’ll probably not be attending such seminars in future as it’s really all about putting the knowledge to work at the moment for me. And well, unless I really desperately want to network.

For those of you who missed the event. My friend Martin summarized the main points what each speaker covered and you can view them at the links below.

Patric Chan on Niche Sites Using Web 2.0

Jo Han Mok on His Internet Secrets

John Childers on Profitable Public Speaking

Vince Tan on His 10-month System

Dr Mel Gill on Mind Over Internet

Debbie Thompson and Her Bulls Eye Marketing

Mark Anastasi

Adam Ginsberg on MySpace Marketing

Jarl Moe and CPUnion

Randy Charach

Adam Ginsberg on eBay Selling

Kirt Christensen on How to Develop Your Own Membership Sites

Matt Bacak on Building a Large Mailing List

Chris Moreno on Building an Online Business Asset

Other Bloggers’ Opinion on Internet Millionaire Incubator 2

http://www.kchut.com/2007/10/internet-millionaire-incubator-2-singapore-expo-day-1/

http://www.dennissim.com/internet-millionaire-incubator-2/

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Have you ever been in a situation whereby you purchased an internet marketing related product online only to find out moments or days later that you could have gotten it for much cheaper legally somewhere else? Well I most certainly have and bet that a lot of people have too.

Here’s a recent example:

Through Lynn Terry’s blog post  2 days ago, I got to know that the product Impact Web Audio was promoted on DealDotCom. (A website which offers daily internet marketing products at huge discounts) It was somewhat surprising to see it there considering it’s a relatively old product and actually readily available with master resell rights or resell rights elsewhere.But nonetheless, people were still buying it at its supposed “low price” of $5 and saying what a steal it was. Strange considering you can get it so much cheaper through those bundled resell rights packages or just off eBay. You can find a variety of sellers selling Web Impact Audio at http://search.ebay.com/impact-web-audio_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQfromZR40 , with the cheapest one going for $1.29 with resell rights to boot. Talk about a good deal.

The internet was supposed to bring about perfect knowledge and level the playing field, but nonetheless pockets of misinformation or lack of information still exists. I still remember 2-3 years back I was selling the public domain version of the bestselling classic “Think and Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill (ebook version) on eBay for a few dollars. And people will consistently buying it on a daily basis despite the fact that you can download it for free just by searching the 1st page of Google.

So Where Can You Buy Internet Marketing Products for Pennies On The Dime?

Searching Google can be rather time consuming considering that you might probably save a few dollars. And time is much more valuable than money nowadays.Whenever you consider purchasing a product that you suspect it to be an older product (old does not mean useless, I use still Web Impact Audio regularly), I’ll check it up on eBay first. Because of strong price competition there, you might be able to get it for pennies on the dime.

Hopefully with this simple tactic, you will be able to save some money in your quest in make money online

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Catch Episode 9 of The Next Internet Millionaire and learn from copywriting expert Ray Edwards disclose his 4 part formula for writing quick and dirty effective copy.

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Imagine that you are interested in purchasing a new car, how would you go about buying it? Let me fathom a guess, you would probably ask your relatives and friends for advice on certain car brands, look through automotive magazines and websites, make a trip down to the car dealerships and ask questions. A car is a huge investment/liability and it makes simple sense to do our product research in advance before a purchase.

Let’s switch this around and look at it from the business standpoint. You need information in order to introduce products and services that create value in the mind of the consumer. And product research can be used to estimate customer needs and wants in the hope to develop products that will be well accepted in the market. Marketing research is a whole specialized subject altogether and it can be a whole degree on its own. Hence I will merely be summarizing it here. There are basically 2 forms of market research design: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative methods are mainly exploratory in nature, meaning that you conduct focus groups or in-depth interviews with your target group to understand them better. The questions you would ask are usually more open ended as you do not want to restrict the flow of thoughts of the people you are asking the questions. Do take special note that due to the small sample size of these methods, their conclusions are not statistically sound and you cannot depend on them to make decisions.

Fueled with the findings from qualitative research methods, you can then go on to formulate quantitative research in the form of surveys or observational studies. Using a representative sample size would then be able to assist you in drawing out answers to questions that you need answered.

You can read up more details on marketing research at QuickMBA.com

For online product research, here are some quick and dirty methods that you can adopt.

1. Google Trends

You can perform searches on related products and names on Google Trends to estimate the level of searches done across various countries and cities. Definitely serves as a good estimate whether there is demand for your product and helps define your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

2. iTarget.info

Great for performing checks on AdWords competitors (if there are AdWords Campaigns, there is probably a market) and even AdSense publishers who have related websites to yours.

3. Google Alerts

I’ve been using google alerts to keep myself informed on the latest happenings for keywords related to products I sell. Does keep a good tab check on competitors too. Famed internet marketer Willie Crawford just recently posted a great informative article titled “How To Guarantee Your Product’s Success Before You Even Start!” on how he uses Google Alerts for online product research. So instead of reinventing the wheel, here is a short extract of what he said.

How To Guarantee Your Product’s Success Before Your Even Start!
Copyright 2007 by Willie CrawfordToday, I’d like to teach you an easy method of researching a product or project idea BEFORE you invest a lot of time and other resources in it.

Over the past 11 years I’ve been shown over 100 products that “seemed like a great idea,” but when they were offered to the market, the customers weren’t interested. In a few cases the “marketing” was just bad, but in more cases, the product was simply something that the market didn’t want.

There are, of course, more research tools available than you could ever learn to use. So, today, I’m actually going to focus your attention on just two… and they’ll both be free.

First, I’d like to introduce you to Google Alerts! You’ll find this handy, free service offered by Google.com at: http://www.google.com/alerts

Note that Google does own the trademarks to all of the terms mentioned in this article that uses their name
Google Alerts allow you to subscribe to free notifications of when Google discovers new occurrences of a target phrase anywhere on the Internet. You can specify what types of databases Google provides you with updates from. As you’ll see when visiting the site, it’s fairly self-explanatory.

I have dozens of these set up. I have it set up so that… once a day, I get an email summary of new alerts for:

Target keyword phrases

• Target URLs
• Target product titles
• Discussion forums on a topic
• My name and my company name
• My key competitors
• Unique phrases that I created for various purpose

… You get the idea.

Click here to read Willie Crawford’s full article

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A few days back, I got this direct mailer package from Mouth and Foot Painting Artists Pte Ltd in the office mailbox. It contained 8 cards meant for festive seasons and a writeup of their request.

Sample of 2 of the cards

Basically the 8 cards were works of art produced by people through the use of either their mouth or feet, as they have lost their hands due to unfortunate circumstances. And the letter was a request for $17 for the 8 cards if you liked them, with a catalog of other things that you can order if it interests you. Interesting enough, you can send back the cards to them if you are not interested. At the back of the letter are photographs and stories of some of the people creating the art coupled with pictures of Singapore’s Prime Minister and President.

Exact writing of letter reproduced below

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for reading this letter. As I cannot use my hands I wrote this letter by mouth. My fellow artists and I lost the use of our hands through accident, illness or birth defect.

Despite our handicap, we have made a serious endeavour to earn a living for ourselves and in some cases, our families. We strive to gain financial independence by using what God has given us and by becoming members of MFPA which arranges the sales of our artwork in the form of greeting cards, calendar and etc.

Each of the paintings reproduced in this set of eight attractive festive cards was painted by mouth or foot. We hope that you will be interested to buy our selection of cards.

It is difficult to find a method of selling that pleases everyone. However, this method enables us to describe the back-ground story of these cards produced from our original paintings which require hard work, determination and patience. It also gives us the opportunity to examine the quality of our work.

If you decide to purchase this at $17.00 kindly forward your cheque/money order (pay to MFPA PTE LTD) together with the enclosed form and seal them in the endorsed reply envelope. If you should like to order more, please see the enclosed form for further details.

There is no obligation. We are not a charity but a self-help organization. Should you decide not to purchase, you may return the whole package back to us by marking “Return to Sender” outside the package.

We wish you and your family good health, peace and happiness.

Best Wishes,
XXXXXX XXX

Whilst direct mailing is a big thing in the United States, it is not very frequent in Singapore. And in my opinion this was a well crafted out piece and it prodded my mind further on how we can actually modify its elements to use it for our internet based businesses, especially for those which sell physical products online.

I’m not sure what its conversion rates, return rates or pure failure rates are but I am guessing that it should be reasonable.

For this direct mailer:

• It had the elements of creditability/social proof (with the pictures of our country’s Prime Minister and President – Politicians are highly regarded in Singapore)
• It gave the product in advance and was reasonably priced
• You could return the product on their
• There were up sells in the event that you choose to purchase something else from their catalog
• It had the call to action element, though in this instance was guilt (un-intended or not, you bet the majority of receivers would feel it) to either purchase it or return it.

Direct Mailing is definitely an art, but you can definitely employ some offline marketing methods to strengthen your online businesses to add that extra Oomph to it.

Offhand here are some ideas that come to mind.

For physical items that you are already sending to customers, you could:

• Include your catalog of products
• Include discount coupons that they can use online
• Add an extra sample bonus of a related product (if samples are possible)
• Include a general product in advance (something low cost and yet high perceived value) offered at a special price that you think the customer might want and request for payment or a return with you paying postage. While you do not have the guilt factor to pressure their call to action. You can probably add a special bonus that will be delivered/emailed to them upon payment.

For digital product customers (you need their mailing address for this though)

• Include a thank you card with your website to strengthen branding and mind recall of your product. Just like how Aweber sends a letter after you sign up for their affiliate program. Sending something physical builds up the relationship
• Include a surprise bonus item which they can download to build a list of responsive customers. (Your autoresponder can opt them out from your normal list and to this new one) You can then test future promotions with this list and your normal list.
• Include an informative sales letter for a higher priced upsell if you got it. Further reinforces the upsell that you might have online.

For prospects that you want optin-ed into your list (Modify Centerpointe.com’s model accordingly to suit their, check out their website and request for their sample package and you will get what I mean.) Here is a version which the famous Mr X of www.imxfiles.com mentioned in a Warrior Forum thread.

• Offer a “Free sample” (CD or whichever suits you) whereby they pay for shipping and handling
• Survey them when they enroll to target your offer to their stated needs.
• Follow up with a time limited offer after prospect has sampled the goods
• Upsell with backend products
• Utilize your uncoverted prospects for JVs with compatible lists to keep fresh prospects entering your funnel continually.

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