I am getting ready to head off to the gym for my workout. Yes I really need to get into the gym and start losing some fat. I have not been for some time and sitting at my desk has created a not very pretty picture.

What does going to the gym have to do with “Article Marketing” and failure? Nothing on the surface, but it symptomatic of a major reason for Marketing Failure. Spreading ourselves to thin.

I started this blog with great intention, I also began Squidoo Pages and a couple other blogs, all with great intention. Along with these endeavors I have other aspects of marketing as well as living that come into play. I am spreading myself to thin, all except the waist line that is.

You are never too old to learn and your never too experienced to make a mistake. I have made a few in the past few months and they are causing me to take a second look at a few of my decisions. Focus: is one of the key ingredients for success and I really have lost focus of late.

I need to take a couple of days and look at what I am doing, what I am not doing well enough and where I am spending too much time, time that would be more valuable in other area’s.

One place that glares out and screams, enough, is squidoo. I have gotten so focused on building squidoo pages that I am not spending enough time with this blog and other areas that I really need to focus on. I had this idea of getting the “Giant Squid” that I have now built more than 75 squidoo lenses. Enough already! If it is going to happen, its going to happen, time to focus some place else.

Do you spend enough time focusing on one thing to be successful or are you spread to thin? There is no shame in realizing that something you do is not working. There is no blame in realizing you need to spend more time working on one area instead of another. There is shame in not admitting that you need to make a change, do something different or just throw in the towel and move on. That is part and parcel of trying and then trying again.

Never fall in love with an idea and refuse to let it go. If you do, you work hard and see few if any real rewards for your effort.

Until Next Time This Is The Marketing Hobo Saying - stay flexible.

affiliate marketing, Article Marketing, Bum Marketing, Home Business, Internet Marketing, News, squidoo

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Have you thought about your posts on a forum as being Viral Promotion?

If you are doing Internet Marketing or Article Marketing then you probably post on forums to build your expert status and to gain traffic to your Website or Landing Page.  Note: If you are not posting on forums for those reasons you need to start posting today!

Most forums allow you to place a link in your signature line that will direct traffic to your website, landing page or a specific article you have written, nothing new here.  Any good book or marketing course will tell you how important it is to share helpful information on the forum and build your expert status, again nothing new here.  The result of building this trust is “people will click your link and visit your site”.  When those visitors find helpful, useful information they will return many times.  Still nothing new!

Here is where the viral promotion for your website or landing page comes in.  If you go to two forums related to your topic and do all of the above and visitors from those two forums visit your site finding good useful information, you have done your job.  Now if those visitors post on forums that you do not post on and some one there is looking for information that can be found on your website, guess what happens.  Thats right, the visitors to your website will tell that person about your site and what they will find.

Viral Promotion is extremely important to your websites success and there is no better Viral Advertising than a personal recommendation from another visitor.  The key to promoting your website on forums is not hyping what you offer, it is building trust by furnishing good useful information.  Let the other person do the hype by recommending you as a source for relevant useful information on your topic.  I see far to often replies on forums that say “My website is the answer to your problem - see my signature”.  Do not become a casualty of your own hype.  Offer good relevant information and help on forums and the Viral Promotion will be taken care of by the other people on the forum that you help.

forum marketing, forum posts, Internet Marketing, marketing, maximum exposure, online marketing, viral marketing, web site

I wanted to share with you a great free resource for Learning about Blogs, Wikis and other forms of the new media.

Utah State university has a FREE online course you can download.

Course Description

Innovation continues to occur on the internet at an extremely lively pace. What was once the realm of email, FTP, Gopher, and the Web is barely recognizable a mere 10 years later. Keeping up with the speed of innovation and maintaining a familiarity with the most recent tools and capabilities is handy in some professions and absolutely critical in others. This course is designed to help you understand and effectively use a variety of “web 2.0″ technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis, social bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools, mapping tools, audio and video podcasts, and screencasts.

Note: In the left hand column you will find: the navigation bar. I recommend you begin by clicking on “Table Of Contents” and then use this list for study purposes. There is the ability to down load the course and save it in your own files. If you choose to do this, look for the file “toc” and begin there.

To Get your FREE course just click here: there is no sign up!!!

other courses offered you might find of interest are:

• Learn and Apply HTML
• Flash, micro-media flash
• Computer Applications for Instruction and Training
• Understanding Online Interaction
• Connecting People with Online Resources

You will find a complete list of offers by clicking Instructional Technology:

The Marketing Hobo saying: “Live to Learn - Learn to Live”

Blog, education, Internet Marketing, News, online skills

When I was little I heard the story about the goose that laid the golden egg, you probably did also.  I do not know if it was because of that story or because of some deep seated emotional quirk, but I seem to be caught up searching for that goose.

Now my life is about Article Marketing of affiliate products or aka Affiliate Marketing, seem fitting that I should re-write that goose story to fit my own life and title it “Affiliate Marketing and the Golden Key”.

Searching for that Golden Key fills too much of my day, going from one idea to another, one marketing method to another, and one way of publishing articles to another.  I realize this is not the best idea, it does fill a need in me and I have learned with time to study ideas, not buy into them.  I have learned to look below the surface and find if there is some little flake of gold that I can try.

Well today I found a Golden key, ok perhaps it really is brass or bronze but it shines like gold.  I hear hundreds of marketing Guru’s say go to clickbank to find your affiliate product to promote … so far so good

Now when you get to clickbank you go to the section on marketing and select the topic you want to market about. Again … no problem.

Hear it comes - the winds that blow many directions.  Select a popular product to promote because you know its selling.  What the?  If its already so popular, how much competition are you going to be up against?  I bet a lot more than you really want to compete with.

The new guy comes along and wants to add a new spin to an old idea so this “born again Guru”  tell you to sort by gravity and select a program that falls between 20 and 40 and you will have a lot less competition.  Yep, right there still is hundreds if not thousands of people promoting that product.

The Golden Key:  How about selecting a product that has 0 gravity … that few people have seen, heard about or promote.  How about giving yourself a real fighting chance to be the first?

Is this the Affiliate Marketing Golden Key or perhaps just a shiny key made from bronze.

The Marketing Hobo saying have a great day!

affiliate marketing, affiliate product, affiliate products, affiliate program, Article Marketing, Bum Marketing, Internet Marketing

Article Marketing authors may be finding it hard to place their affiliate links in the resource box for published articles. I found a simple free answer to this problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I sure do not feel that I am some sort of Marketing Genius that discovers places no one has gone before. Most of the time, when I discover a new thing, I assume that I am just slow and everyone else already knows about it. I also realize there are new people everyday entering the world of Article Marketing and these people may not have discovered something I have, so I try to share it.

The “No Secret” system is a free blog site on Blogger.com. Here are the steps you will be putting together for this.

1. Locate your affiliate product that you want to promote
2. Write a great review of the product
3. Write 5 to 10 articles on the topic your affiliate product is for
4. Get a free Blog on Blogger.com

After you sign up for your free blogger account you will be ready to create your blog. You will need to do a few things.

1. Name your blog
2. Create a blog address

You should use the name of your blog as the address. Example:

Blog Name: “Widget Reviews”
address: “widgetreviews”

you will click the next button and go to the choose template page. You can choose any template you wish.

Congratulations! Your blog has been created. Start posting … go ahead and click the arrow. Notice at the top of the page the tab “Template” click on that.

You are now on a page that allows you to make changes to the template structure. In the side column you will see some elements that allow you to edit. click the edit and then you will get a pop up. At the bottom of the pop up window, you can click remove page element. You do not want any elements to display for this page, so eliminate all of them you can and then click save.

Go to the top of the page and click on the post tab. You will be taken to a window where you post and here you will post your “Review of the Affiliate Program”. Check the finished post for errors and when satisfied click the publish post button.

You have now completed a web page dedicated to your affiliate product. Go ahead and publish the article you wrote earlier with your new blog site address in the resource box

If you would like to see an example of a completed page for this purpose click  here 

You can use the blog address in the resource box of any additional articles you write for this affiliate product.

If you have any questions “Please ask in the comments sections”

I hope this is helpful

Till next time this is the The Marketing Hobo saying keep well

affiliate marketing, affiliate link, Article Marketing, article publishing, article marketing, author resource, Blog, Bum Marketing, Internet Marketing, web site, writing articles