If you are using Twitter, you may have already noticed that people out of nowhere mysteriously started to follow you. They usually have a pretty girl’s picture as their profile photo, and their twitter username usually ends with 3 digits, a sign that they are using some sort of automated twitter tools to generate these fake accounts.

It usually works like this: the spammer get an affiliate link through Clickbank or other affiliate networks; she or he then shortens the link by using bit.ly; they then create a lot of twitter accounts and start following people automatically; these links are posted to their twitter stream – usually as the first and only tweets these fake account will post.

So why do spammers target twitter now? It turns out it is quite profitable for the spammers.

I recently noticed that I have been spammed with all sorts of links related to online forex trading. I don’t know much about the forex trading market but it must be highly lucrative for the spammer affiliates promoting forex trading ebooks through clickbank.

Let’s do a quick back of envelope calculation on this type of spams. The url shortener service bit.ly has a nifty feature that gives you the statistics of clicks on a particular link. Here is a screenshot of a spam link that promoted a forex trading how-to type of ebook.

As you can see, this guy generated 14,571 clicks to his landing page in just one week. Let’s conservatively estimate that only 1% of clicks generates a sales for him. That’s almost 145 sales in one week. For an ebook on Clickbank that sells for $47 a copy and pays out 50% to affiliates, 145 sales would amounts to $3,407 in profits for this spammer in one week. Of course this is just an estimate, but you got the idea.

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There are two excellent examples of how great affiliate marketers produce, market and sell their products. One is Chris McNeeney with his smash-hit release of Day Job Killer (aff). The other is Jonathan Leger’s phased release of $7 Secrets (aff).

Apart from offering quality products, the most important techniques I learned from these two affiliate marketing gurus are the following:

Bold and Disruptive Affiliate Marketing Techniques

In the case of Day Job Killer (aff), this is the third product Chris created, where he banked on the idea of ‘beaing the gurus’. He claimed that the gurus are ‘cheating’ the regular guys. This kind of marketing is sure to have a grassroot appeal. Can you come up with something that’s disruptive?

Build An Affiliate Network Ecosystem

In the case of $7 Secrets (aff), Jonathan started with a simple (but very useful) ebook selling script and a 30 page report that basically outlines his idea of selling $7 ebooks while building up an affiliate email list. He followed up by creating a marketplace of $7 ebooks so that more affiliate marketers can join him to create an entire eco-system of affiliates, merchants, and services. If he is successful, this could become a mini-clickbank. What would you recommend Jon’s next step to be?

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There are three different ways you can use to make money online.

Selling Products Or Services

In this case, you have created some, hopefully, unique and useful products that you can sell. It could be physical products like an iPod killer or virtual products eBooks. Amazon.com is a great success. Or you developed some expertise in your professional area and you can offer your service to other people that are in need of your service. When your service is delivered through the internet, it could become very powerful. Youtube.com is essentially a video sharing service.

Another example of service providers is the web hosting companies, web designers / developers, and search engine marketers etc. These are all good money-making professions.

Affliate Marketing

In this case, you are selling other people’s Products Or Services. This is most appropriate when you realize that you are the type of people who likes to create stuff but you have a great skills for marketing and sales. Affiliate marketing could be very lucrative if you do your research and find great niche products to sell.

Internet Advertising

Internet advertising are essential to the success of the first two groups, which is why it is the fastest growing segment of the multi-billion dollar advertising industry. Google is the clear leader in this space with its Adwords advertising program.

Internet publishing (blogs, photo-sharing, video-sharing etc.) benefited from the huge growth in advertisers’ internet spending. One of the most significant product is the Google Adsense program, which single-handedly changed the business of media publishing, allowed numerous small, independent publishers (anyone who writes on a website:-) to make a nice profit from internet publishing.

So which one of the above money making methods is for you? It really depends on who you are and what you want to be. I would say most of the people that are making money online have two or more revenue streams so that they are not dependent on any one source.

This blog will not limit itself to any particular money making technique either. In the months and years ahead, I will post greater details on all sorts of techniques. Hopefully you will enjoy the journey as much as I do.

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But how do you get started and what are the tricks that made some people good money? On the surface, it looks really easy, at least, that is according to those gazzilion ebooks floating around clickbank’s marketplace. Wouldn’t it be just a matter of creating a good-paying keyword site and put your Adsense code on it, and you are on your way to stable ‘passive income’ stream? If you believed in all this, you are in for some surprises …

Then you say: I never believed that making money online is so easy and I am willing to work hard. But can I do it and how do I do it? Fortuntely it is my believe that with some hardwork, anyone can do it. Unless you are in the business of competing against Google, Yahoo, eBay or Amazon, making money online is not rocket science. It is an art!

Now you know why I named the blog TAOMMO. This blog is my attempt to chronicle my journey of learning the art of making money online. No hypes, only facts and battle-worn skills will be talked about here. I also encourage you to participate and learn with me. Stay tuned.

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