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I have been thinking lately how viral marketing can be applied to blogging and making money online in general. I also have been watching how Jonathan Leger masterfully used viral marketing in building his “$7 Dollar Secrets empire”. Here is some of my observations.

Viral marketing, by most experts’ definition is a form of marketing where people are enticed to pass the marketing message around to friends, families and colleagues.

For viral marketing to be successful, you want to achieve a high pass-along rate. A high pass-along rate in turn is dictated by the incentives/motivations the message implies on the messenger and the easy of pass-along the message. In the case of $7 Dollar Secrets, the incentives for people to pass along the script is that Jon has given the source-code of the script away and anyone who uses the script could potentially be using it to build its own viral marketing effort to make money (although the money-making part is probably not easy for new internet marketers). Secondly, by setting a low price of $7, it dramatically reduces the psychological barrier for buyers to try it. Lastly, the script and ebook can be so easily passed along and setup by anyone which allowed an entire eco-system to be built around the $7 Dollar Secrets concept. On my last check, there are a total of 342 $7 eBooks listed for sale on 7dollaroffers.com.

There is also Digg style review site for all $7 eBooks at 7dollargurus.com. The most successful viral marketing is through a network of affiliates. And if you do decide to play affiliate games, you need to be aware that some markets are not for all users in every geography. For example, you don’t want to spend any of your money to target United States internet users for internet casino sites because gambling site is illegal in US.

By the way, Darren Rowes’s article on “34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog” listed infrequent posting as the number 2 reason why people unsubscribe blogs. I better increase the frequency at this blog.

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The best way to learn from an affiliate marketer pro is to watch from a campaign’s beginning. This often starts with getting on the affiliate marketer’s email list first, which the very easy to do. Who wouldn’t want to have your email address?

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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Making money on the internet isn’t fundamentally different from making money offline. The only major difference I would say is that you have a vast distribution channel of your wares or services on the internet. Businesses become easier to scale, customers become easier to reach in this environment, at least, in theory.

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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If you are a web savvy person, you almost can’t escape the idea of trying to make some money online using some or all of your web skills. I would readily admit that I am one of them:-)

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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