If you take a look at recent online marketing news, you will see that using pay per click advertising is growing online. In that past few years, this use has grown steadily. One of the reasons behind this growth is the fact that many small businesses are now using PPC advertising to get more visitors to their websites and customers to buy their products. If you want to get started as a small business user, then here are some tips that you can use to launch your first successful campaigns:

Take Advantage of Free Offers

Many PPC advertising service providers give free ad credit to members who join. You can find these free offers simply by looking online. Some web hosts also offer free advertising credit to clients that use their services. For example, you can get a $100 Google Adwords credit from many web hosting providers. Making use of these credits will allow you to start advertising at no cost on various platforms and see which ones will be the most suitable for your business and bring you the best quality traffic.

Don’t Forget to Target Your Ads

This is one of the most important aspects of PPC advertising: geo targeting, which means only serving your ads to web users that are in a certain defined geographic region. There are several uses of this: obviously, if you have a local business that only serves a certain area, you will want to limit your clicks to come from that area. Anything else will simply be a waste of money. Even if you do business globally, you may want to limit the countries that you target for your advertising, mainly due to the fact that there’s a much higher amount of fraud and poor quality traffic coming from certain countries.

Some PPC services also allow you to choose specific sites or groups of sites that your ad will appear on. They also have demographic targeting, meaning you can make your ads appear on sites that will be mostly visited by the demographics that are the most likely to purchase something from your business, thus making your traffic more useful for you.

Use Keywords Wisely

If you advertise on search services, like Google or Bing, then keywords for PPC are as important as for SEO. Even more so, as you will be paying for each click. Be sure to do your keyword research in thoroughly before and carefully select the keywords you will want to target. Avoid keywords that will be too broad, as they will result in getting traffic from people who may not necessarily be looking for what you’re offering. If your business sells clothes and accessories, instead of targeting general keywords like “fashion”, you may want to target more specific ones like “Diesel jeans” or “discount handbags”, etc. Basically, you need to think as one of your customers and target keywords that they would be most likely to search for.

Previously we’ve seen some ways to get your ads on classified ad sites to stay there and also to make a maximum amount of money while minimizing problems. Here are some final tips on how you can run successful affiliate campaigns by using classified ad sites:

• Look at the other ads

When you want to put ads on Craigslist or any other classified ads site, the first thing that you would need to do is to take a look for yourself about how all the other ads in the section look like. Look at the titles, the formatting as well as the wording used in the ads. Do people post pictures? Do they post contact information in the ad? What words or expressions are used more often? These are all things that will help your ad look normal and make it less likely to be flagged or reported as spam. Also, you should obviously avoid making any outrageous claims in your ad to draw attention to it such as “Get a free house!” or things like that. If you do, it would probably be flagged as spam very quickly.

• Use a local IP

Classified ads sites such as Craiglist and Backpage are mainly designed for local people to post local offers. So if you post an ad in a city that is not yours, you will need to use an IP address that is located in the area that you are targeting. You might not need this for all the classified ads sites, however Craigslist is known to be very strict regarding this and your ads in many categories will not appear if the IP address that you are posting from is not local to the area. To solve this problem, there are various workarounds. You could use a proxy, or a VPN service that will give you an IP address in the area where you are intending to post your ad.

• Don’t mislead people or make false promises

Selling something from a CPA offer is one thing. However, deliberately misleading people by making false promises is another. Examples of this would include: promising someone a job if they fill out a survey, telling someone they are approved for a mortgage if they get a free credit report from your offer, etc. With some creativity, there are quite a few ways that you can promote CPA offers on classified ads sites without promising people things that don’t exist.

• Check the rules for the offer you are promoting

Many affiliate networks recognize that classified ads sites are an important source of traffic and are used by thousands of marketers. However, some may have specific rules as to what kind of ads can be posted, as well as the sites they can be posted on. On some offers, classified ad traffic may be banned altogether, while on some you are not allowed to direct link to the offer itself. In any case, make sure you check the terms of every offer you want to promote before starting a campaign.

Even though it may have gotten more difficult in recent times, it is still possible to use Craigslist (and other classified ads sites) to promote some CPA offers, and there are still many merchants and networks which allow this kind of promotion. While these tips work for Craigslist, they will obviously be good for any other similar classified ads site out there.

However, many people report having problems, such as getting their ads flagged within minutes, or having their ads not appearing. Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of classified ads sites when used with CPA campaigns.

• Don’t direct link to a CPA offer

While this may seem pretty obvious, a lot of new marketers seem oblivious to the fact that if you put an affiliate link directly into your ad, you will get flagged down rapidly, or your ad will not appear at all. You basically have two ways that you can use to direct traffic from a classified ads site to an affiliate or CPA offer. Either you build your own landing page and register a domain for it, or you have people email you and then reply to them by email. The approach that you will use will vary depending on what you are promoting, but the second option seems to be the most popular and effective for the majority of CPA offers.

• Don’t use an autoresponder

An autoresponder is an email feature which automatically sends a reply with a pre-formatted message to anyone who sends you an email. Autoresponders have their value and are in fact extremely useful for some types of marketing. However, for classified ads, they are not a tool that you can use. Whenever someone gets an automated response to an email that they’ve sent, it automatically shows that something “spammy” is going on. Therefore, you are highly likely to get your ad flagged as spam very quickly if you use an autoresponder. I know that replying to emails personally takes time, but this is something that needs to be done if you want to have success. The task could be outsourced very cheaply as well. If you have to use an autoresponder (not recommended and we will get into more reasons later on) at least use one which is on a delay of a few hours and does not reply to emails automatically as soon as they are received.

• Be creative in your ads

There are certain words such as “make money online” which will get your ad flagged right away. Furthermore, avoid copy pasting ads that you saw in an e-book or in a forum post that details some money making method for Craigslist. These have a high tendency to get flagged right away, since chances are there are many other people who have used them before you. Therefore, the bottom line here is: the ad that you post needs to be creative.

Previously, we’ve talked about how to keep your Adwords account from getting banned. But what if it’s now too late and your account has already been given the boot by Google. Is it possible to ever use Adwords again? Yes, however there are a few things that you need to make this happen.

New domain names.

If your account was banned, chances are that some or all of the domains that you have used are blacklisted as well. You will need new domain names for all of the campaigns that you will be promoting. It is also a good idea to use Whois privacy on your new domain names, so that Google will not be able to determine who owns them.

New IP address

If you get banned, chances are that Google will ban your IP address too. If you have a dynamic IP, simply switching your IP should do the trick. Or you could instead use a VPN service to get your own private IP that you have not used for Adwords before.

New address and phone number

Your home address and phone number are blacklisted when you get banned from Adwords. This means that you need to get new ones. Well, you don’t have to move or anything. You just need to use a different address. You can use one of a friend or relative, as long as it is OK with them. Or, just use a mail forwarding service or a place that rents mail boxes. These services are used by plenty of online entrepreneurs who want to keep their business information separate from their personal one. When signing up for websites, many people will use a rented mail box rather than their address, out of privacy concerns and also to prevent receiving 1001 pieces of junk mail and solicitations every month.

For the phone number, it is much easier. You can get a prepaid cell phone SIM card for a few dollars and then just top it up with $10 or so of phone credit every month. Or use one of the internet phone services, such as Skype In. If you look around online, you will also find a few services that can give you a very cheap ($4 or so a month) or free VOIP phone number that you can use to receive calls.

A new credit card

You will need to use a different credit or debit card to sign up for the new Adwords account, as any payment cards that you have previously used are now blacklisted and will get you banned again if used on a new account.

By following these tips, you should be able to get a new account up and running rather quickly. Remember to review my posts in the past few days to get an understanding of what could get you banned, so that you simply do not get your account canned again. Because, you don’t want to go through all this trouble just to get the boot once more now, do you?

Previously, we’ve seen some ways to keep your Google Adwords account from being banned. However, there are some other things that you should be aware of when using Adwords. I also have two more tips for you to avoid getting your account banned:

• Don’t run banned campaigns again

Sometimes, instead of banning you, Google will simply disable a campaign that doesn’t play by their rules. This could appear in two different ways. Either Google will actually send you an email saying that your campaign doesn’t play by the rules and has been stopped, or they will simply “ghost” it, meaning that your ads will no longer be displaying, no matter what your bid amount is. If your campaign is stopped and you don’t know why, the best course of action is to contact Google Adwords Support. Sometimes you will get an explanation of what’s wrong with it, while some other times you will just get a generic “this is against the rules… you figure out which one” type of email. What NOT to do, would be to simply take down the campaign, get a new domain, change a few ads and keywords and start again. If you haven’t figured out what’s wrong with the campaign and Google is of no help, then try asking for some explanations on a webmaster or internet marketing forum. Many people there use Adwords and could help you. It could be something simple that you didn’t think of, such as your landing page not complying by the rules (i.e. a mobile offer that doesn’t clearly show the charges per SMS, etc) or simply a product that Google doesn’t like (i.e. many re bill offers).

• Don’t create a new account if you are banned

If you get banned from Adwords, then chances are you are banned for life. That’s right, no more Adwords for you, ever. There are some people who think that they are sneaky and will try to sign back up again, often using the same domains, ads and of course the same name and credit card. That won’t work. Even if it does, it is usually a matter of hours before you get caught and booted again. When you are banned, you are not able to create a new account with the same name, credit card, home address and IP address again. So trying to be sneaky will simply lead you nowhere fast.

But is it possible to use Google Adwords again after you got banned? Oh, come on, you may be saying, it’s not like I was selling crack on my website or something. Well there are a few ways to get back on board with Adwords, however I want to warn you that it is not as easy as you could think it is. Tomorrow we will be taking a closer look at some ways to use Google Adwords again if your account was perma banned.

Finally Some Other Ways to Promote Your Membership Site

We have seen that you can use forums, email, social media, as well as your own members to promote your membership site. But there are still a few other ways that you can attract members. Here they are:

• Create an affiliate program

In the online marketing world, many products have affiliate programs which pay a commission to the affiliate for each new sale. If you would like your site to be more successful, you could create an affiliate program for it and pay your affiliates around 50% of the monthly fee that you would make from members. You can promote this affiliate program on online marketing forums, just like you would promote the site itself. It is also possible for you to join an affiliate network. ClickBank is the most popular one out there, as they deal with digital products such as ebooks and membership sites.

• Use offline marketing

Even though your product is based on the internet and deals with internet marketing, it doesn’t mean that you can’t use any offline methods to promote it. Some ideas of offline methods include distributing fliers promoting your site or putting up ads in print media like newspapers and magazines. Some membership site owners have even created TV and radio commercials, but obviously these are quite expensive when compared to other advertising methods.

• Use pay per click ads

Pay per click ad networks such as the ones on the Google and Bing search engines are an excellent marketing tool and can be used to promote IM products. However, you would need to carefulyl plan, manage and optimize your campaigns in order to be successful. You would also need to have a decent budget, as the whole internet marketing niche is very competitive.

• Use media buying

Media buying simply means buying advertising space on another site. You can sometimes buy text ads, banner ads or even video ads. The payment model depends on the site where you buy the ad space from and could by a flat rate per week or month, a CPC (cost per click) or a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model. You could deal either with an advertising network or make a private deal with a webmaster to advertise your membership site on their website.

All of these are excellent methods that you can make use of to promote your site and get some new members. However, the best way to generate revenue from your membership site is to keep your existing members, rather than constantly try to sign up new ones. This is actually much easier as you don’t need to do any advertising to retain your current members. All you need to do is to keep them interested in your site by adding new content on a regular basis, as well as listen to any feedback that they may have regarding the content of your site or how it runs.

In the past, we have talked about what a great tool social media can make when you are trying to promote your business online. But in order to get good results from your campaigns, you will need to do things the right way, rather than simply plunging into the social media world unprepared.

We have already made a comparison between paid and free social media marketing. While there are some differences between both types of advertising, the following tips will be valid for both paid and free advertising on different kinds of social networks. Here are some things to keep under consideration:

• Will you do things yourself, or hire outside help?

Social media marketing is not complicated. However, just like any type of online project, it will require that you spend some time on it and acquire the necessary knowledge to do things right. You may want to spend about half an hour to an hour a day checking up on your campaigns and updating your pages. If you can’t do this, you may want to hire some outside help, either from a dedicated online marketing firm, or from a freelancer that is knowledgeable on social media marketing for small businesses.

• Which networks will you use?

There are plenty of social networking sites out there. Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are some of the most popular ones, but there are also some small and emerging networks that are used by many people. Some of these smaller networks could be quite popular with people residing in a certain region. What you need to do is to figure out who your targeted audience is, and what networks they frequent. You will then be able to focus your marketing efforts on the social media sites which are most popular with your target audience.

• How will you keep your audience interested?

Remember that social networking sites are places where new content is posted all the time, ever single second of every day. While users come to these sites to learn things and inform themselves about what their friends and local businesses are doing, remember that these sites are not an encyclopedia or business directory. As such, you need to keep your content fresh and interesting for your readers. This can be achieved in various ways. For example, if you run an auto customization business, you may want to put up pictures of work that you have recently done on customers cars. You can also put up info on upcoming promotions or events related to your business. While you don’t have to update your page every single day of the week, you will still need to put up updates on a regular basis.

By keeping these tips in mind, you will be able to draw a much bigger benefit from your presence on social media sites. It is always good to have a strategy in mind, but you might need to make some changes to it if you realize it is not giving you the desired effect, or if you want to try using a new social networking site that has just become popular.

Even those who know nothing about online marketing are aware of the fact that social media is having a big impact on our world today. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are keeping people from around the globe informed and entertained on a daily basis. But what does that mean to you, as a small business owner? Is it possible to use social media sites to your advantage? The answer is yes. How you do it will depend on your goals and budget.

Social media is very versatile in terms of an advertising medium. This is because there are free options and paid options to advertise on it. You can use any of them, or both at the same time to maximize your impact. Let’s explore what you can do with social networking sites:

Paid Option

Many social media sites, like Facebook and MySpace, have a paid advertising option that helps advertisers get traffic to their websites, while bringing in revenue to keep the social site running. The payment model varies from one network to the other, but in most cases it is a CPC (cost per click) type, where you pay an amount that you bid for each click.

The advantage of social media ads is that they can be very highly targeted. You can, for example, select who will get to see your ads based on factors such as location, age, gender, marital status, etc. This will allow you to get better quality traffic.

But since you are paying for this traffic, you will need to track and test your campaigns accordingly, in order to get the maximum benefit from them and avoid wasting your funds.

Free Option

This is a bit more simple and doesn’t involve you paying for traffic, but requires more work on your part. Depending on the network, you would normally build a page for your business, which provides contact info, a link to your site, news updates, and details of your products.

You will then need to attract people to become fans of your business and follow what you are saying on your page. This can be accomplished by various means. You could put social media buttons on your main website that will allow people to instantly become your fans. You could also include a link to your page on your communications with customers, such as on invoices or in your email newsletter.

If you have a very good product, or a page that is quite unique and engaging, your fans will do the marketing for you, by spreading your page around to their friends, who can also become fans of your business. This is called “viral marketing” and can cause your page to be seen by millions of people in a short time. But of course, you will first need to have something interesting to offer on your page which will captivate your audience. When you put together your page, look at what other businesses have done with theirs for clues on what made them successful on social networks. This will give you a good idea of what to do and what not to do.

When you start your own web marketing agency, one of the most important questions that you will ask yourself is: how do I get clients? After all, without any clients for you to do work for, you won’t be making any money. There is also another thing that you need to take into consideration: how much will you charge for your services.

Getting clients is not as difficult as it may seem at first. You basically have two options: either you can have people come to you or you come to them first and offer your services. In order to maximize your chances of success, it is recommended that you adopt an approach that would combine both concepts.

Having people inquire about your services means that you need to advertise in order to let others know about your business. You can use a variety of methods to do so. For example, you can optimize your website for certain keywords such as “internet marketing (your city)” or “web site creation (your city)”. This will allow it to be found more easily on search engines. Targeting “local” keywords means that you will be facing less competition as you will only be competing against web marketers that are located in your area and not around the world.

You could also combine your SEO efforts with PPC campaigns on both the search and content networks to see if this gets you results. Of course, you should also use free or low cost advertising methods that are highly effective. Posting on classified ads sites under the “business services” section and including your agency in online business directories is highly recommended, as many of your clients might be looking at those places if they are in search for someone who could start or improve their web presence for them.

Another thing that you can do is actually contact business owners to see if they are interested in your services. Of course, this requires a bit more effort than simply putting up a web page and some ads. You will also need to deal with rejection quite often. However, when you do direct marketing, this is all part of the game and simply something that you have to live with.

To accomplish that, you first need to make up a list of potential clients who look like they could use your services. Here again, there are numerous ways to make that happen. Check out online classified ads sites for local small businesses, such as hair salons, car dealers, plumbers, cleaning companies, etc. Do they have a website? If so, does it look like it was made by an elementary school kid for his computer class? Then you can offer them to redesign the site and make it look more professional and attractive. Even if they do have a site, you can still contact them and offer to promote it for them so they get more traffic and thus more customers. Another possibility is to print out a nice pamphlet with details about your offerings and send them to local businesses in your area.

Staying ahead of new developments in the internet marketing world is crucial to the survival of your online business. You see, the whole industry is one that is rapidly changing. New sites, services and ways to earn money pop up all the time. The opposite also happens as some shut down for various reasons. So how do you ensure that you stay up to date with what is happening?

Networking is important.

This is a well known fact in many businesses. In internet marketing, even more so. Even if you run a home business and are the only person in your company, this doesn’t mean that you have to do everything alone. Find other internet marketers to share advice, information and money making techniques with. Chances are, you will learn things that you otherwise would never have known.

Participate in industry forums.

Some online marketers are very active in internet marketing related forums. Others don’t really like them and consider them a waste of time. Whatever your opinion on web forums is, they can be a treasure trove of information and new opportunities. For example, when a new CPA network launches, chances are they will first advertise in industry related forums in order to get some new affiliates on board. You can also use forums to ask questions about things that you aren’t sure of and help others who might benefit from the knowledge that you have acquired. That way, everyone wins.

Talk to your affiliate managers and other contacts.

CPA account managers are there to help you earn more money. As they get bonuses based on how successful their affiliates are, account managers have an interest in you making a lot of money with their network. After all, if you make money, so do they. These people can give you some useful advice on which offers are doing well and can suggest you some to run in your campaigns.

Follow the news.

Consider this: when gas prices were soaring, so were sales of products that help people reduce their fuel consumption and find alternative sources of energy. When the recession hit, offers that dealt with business opportunities and government grants have become much more popular. Do you think all of this is a coincidence? By staying ahead of the news and current events, you will find it a lot more easy to take advantage of money making opportunities, as you will have a better idea of what people will be searching for. It is also a good idea to keep up to date on what’s happening in other parts of the world too. Even if you are based in the USA, there are plenty of CPA offers that you can run which target traffic from Europe, Australia, or Canada. Spend a few minutes each day to see what is going on in those places and whether this would create an opportunity for you to earn even more money.

Many people who are new to CPA marketing are wondering whether it is possible to get approved for a CPA network account even though you don’t currently have a website to run offers on. The answer is definitely yes. A lot of experienced marketers don’t even have a main website. Rather, they either directly link to the offer’s page or build a dedicated landing page for each offer that they run. CPA networks understand that there are various ways to promote their offers that don’t necessarily involve having a website.

Even though you may not need a site, it is still recommended to get your own domain name to use for your email address. The domain name could be the name of the business that you’ve set up for your online marketing activities, such as AcmeMarketing.com. If you are just starting out and don’t want to register a business for your online activities, you can simply use something such as RobSmithWebMarketing.com. You would then have an email address at your own domain name. This looks a lot more professional and serious than using a free email service such as Hotmail or Yahoo. You are also more likely to get approved for an account this way, as CPA networks tend to view registrations with no web site and a free email address with suspicion, due to the fact that the majority of fraud comes from users with free emails.

When you sign up, you will be asked how you will be advertising the offers that the network has. Since you don’t have a site, it is important for you to be as specific as possible when describing your plans here. If you are planning to run pay per click campaigns, you would indicate that you are a PPC marketer and tell the network the PPC networks that you would be using to run their campaigns like Google Adwords, Bing, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc. If you would be promoting offers by social networks, describe your strategy for doing so, such as which social networks will you be using and how you plan to draw traffic to the offers.

CPA networks will also ask you about your overall experience with internet marketing. If you have run any affiliate or CPA offers before (even if you weren’t that successful), list that on your application. For example, if you have promoted Clickbank products, you would mark that down under your experience. The networks are typically looking for people who at least have an understanding of how internet marketing works and prefer people who already have acquired some experience, even if you have only made a few sales.

Once you submit your application, expect to receive a phone call form the network within a few days. They will want to confirm the information on your application and will ask you some questions regarding your past experience and your objectives with regards to internet marketing.

While searching for ways to reduce the cost of your pay per click advertising, you may have come across the terms “advertising arbitrage.” There are quite a few products based on this concept, including one called “Get Google Ads Free!” which was quite popular about two years ago. Many other products tout that it is possible to get your pay per click ads for “free” by simply “inserting a few lines of code” in your page. But the question remains: is this really possible?

I will get right to the point with the answer: technically, yes. But these methods will not be suitable for most affiliate marketers or even those who have their own products to sell. Why? Aren’t the ads supposed to be free?

Well, they aren’t. You will still be required to pay for your traffic just like anyone else. The whole idea behind the “advertising arbitrage” concept is that you hope to make up the cost of your pay per click campaigns by selling ad space on your website. Claiming that your pay per click ads will be “free” in this case would be the equivalent of saying that you can get a free 8 bedroom house by renting out 7 of the rooms in order to cover your mortgage payment.

This will simply not work if you are actively selling something on your site, whether it’s a product of your own or affiliate offers that you are pushing. The first problem is that by selling ad space on your landing page you will be potentially leaking traffic away to your competition. Advertisers typically buy ad space only on relevant sites. So the only people interested in buying space on yours would usually be those in the same niche. Have you seen an ad banner for Pepsi on the Coca Cola website? What about an ad for Ford on the Honda site? I don’t think so.

To further add to the problem, it will be very hard to sell ad space on your site if it is a relatively new one with limited traffic. If your only source of traffic is pay per click ads, it will also be extremely difficult to sell enough ads to cover your costs.

Now, can this method of “traffic arbitrage” actually work for some people? Yes, it can, but only if the goal of your site is not primarily to sell something. Let’s say you own a discussion forum, a free image host or a free web hosting service. You could sell some ad space on your site (one of the main ways of getting revenue from these kinds of sites) and then buy pay per click traffic in the hopes of getting more members and thus drumming up more recurring visitors to your site. This is, to my knowledge, the only way to make traffic arbitrage work. The only true way to get free pay per click traffic is if you find a promotional offer or get a voucher for X amount of dollars of free ads somewhere.

You may have seen the term PPV advertising somewhere and wondered what it was. After all, this is an online advertising method that is not as popular as other ones out there, like pay-per-click ads, media buying or e-mail marketing. It basically consists of showing a pop-up or pop-under ad on a user’s computer. The thing that makes it different from traditional media buying is that the pop-up is the result of the user having some adware from the PPV company installed and running on their computer. This adware often gets installed when the user downloads certain web applications such as toolbars, screen savers, etc. While adware often has negative connotations within the computer world and some people protest its use, due to privacy concerns or the software affecting the system’s stability, it is not illegal in any way. The user has consented to being shown ads on his or her computer when they have installed an application which contains the adware. Furthermore, should a user no longer want to see the ads, all they would have to do is to stop using the software in question and uninstall it from their PC.

One of the advantages of using PPV ads to promote offers is that the traffic is targeted. Your website will pop up when the user enters a certain key phrase in a search engines or accesses a certain URL. It is also very cheaply priced, in fact you can get clicks for most keywords for very low prices, often fractions of a cent.

It also has all of the features provided by other advertising networks, such as the ability to target users in a certain geographic region and the possibility of setting up several different campaigns with different budgets. Most PPV networks also support pixel tracking, which will make it a lot easier for you to track conversions when you are sending traffic to CPA offers.

There are, however a few downsides to buying PPV traffic. Not all PPV networks are open to public registration, therefore you may need to be referred by an existing user in order to get it. Furthermore, unlike PPC networks, where you can pre-pay for amounts as low as $10 or $20 and get started, most PPV networks will require that you deposit far more in your account. In fact, it is not uncommon to see deposit requirements of $500 to $1000. The traffic does not start immediately either. You will need to wait a few days for your URL to be approved and traffic sent to it.

Despite these drawbacks, PPV advertising is used by many successful CPA marketers and affiliates in order to push their offers. If used correctly, it can generate tremendous amounts of profits for you due to the fact that the traffic is both targeted towards your chosen keywords and comes much cheaper than in other types of ads. After all, would you rather pay $0.005 per click with PPV, or $2 per click on Adwords?

Many people seek advice on how they can earn money online. A great deal of those are interested in earning a full time income with their own internet based business. The problem is, the majority of them will never make it. Here are some common misconceptions about making money online that people have. Those who fall for these are often the ones that end up quitting.

Pizza delivery boy discovers secret to earning online and rakes in $1000 on his first day!!!!

Well, strange things have happened. Some people DID become instantly successful online. But the odds of that happening to you are very low. In fact, you probably have better odds at winning the lottery. All those stories that you see on sales pages are either outright fantasy, or based on a small amount of truth but were subsequently embellished. While it is definitely possible to earn four figures a day, it will take you a lot of trial and error, and you will need to acquire a lot of experience before you are able to do so.

Working from home is easy! Earn money by sitting on your couch!!

No it’s not. And no, you don’t just sign up for an affiliate program and wait for the truck full of money to arrive at your door. You will need to do actual work if you want actual results. While there are many ways to optimize your operations and make them more efficient, therefore reducing the amount of time you are actually “working”, there is no such thing as a true “set and forget” system that will bring you money without any actions. You will still have to monitor your progress and make adjustments to your campaigns.

You can get started with absolutely no money and never invest a single cent!

Again, possible, but hard to achieve in reality. Just like any business, an online business will require you to invest some money. You will need to pay for things like web hosting, domain names, advertising, etc. While there are many ways that you can get started for free or with a very small amount of money, if you want your business to grow and make you a decent income, you will probably need to put in some money of your own.

Join my program/buy my e-book/download this tool and you can be rich in 5 minutes!

Sorry, no. While there are definitely some excellent informational products, membership sites and programs that can give you very valuable information and help you achieve success online, you will actually have to use them properly if you want to make money. This means actually applying the concepts that they teach, which will take you some time to see results.

Your success is 100% guaranteed for life! You can just keep doing the same things everyday!

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in this business. The internet is constantly evolving. When it comes to money making opportunities, some doors will close while new ones will open. You always need to be on top of your game and be aware of new developments in the industry.