All right! I believe you. The way to become a big success is through product creation. What a wicked wild ride I have found it to be.

First, I went looking for an idea for a product. I wanted to make sure that I picked a topic that I thought would sell well. I did all the market research and was pretty sure that I had located some markets of hungry buyers. That’s right, I decided to do more than one product.

Several reasons for this and if you knew me better, you would understand that this is the usual way that I do things. I am very creative but I bore easily so I prefer to be able to work on more than one product at a time. I also thought it was a good idea to test more than one niche market.

Next, I went looking for the PLR I have stored on my hard drive related to the subject. Once I set up three separate folders, one for each product, I moved the appropriate material to each of these folders. I also printed out the best material for each of the products so that I could read and highlight the information I might want to include. I began to construct an outline for each of the topics. Then I went and did my own research to find material that I felt should be included and would enhance the existing ideas presented in the PLR. Fortunately, I chose topics with which I was very familiar and could infuse my products with a lot of my own knowledge and experience.

Once I had the outlines pretty firm, I began to decide on a name and think about marketing the product. I also went shopping for a graphic designer to help me design the minisite template and ecovers for the digital ebook. Because I was new to selecting a designer, I decided to use three different designers. Boy, what an experience. Each one of the designers got a rough draft back to me in less than 24 hours. One nailed it and there wasn’t much to do, but make a few suggestions and thank him.

The others were a bit more of a chore. One was dead wrong on the first try, but with a little direction, it came together pretty quickly. The last one was a different story. I ended up sending photographs for him to use and pulled the design out of him step by step. It turned out usable, but it was never perfect. I really got a crash course in working with designers and how to give them instructions. I would work with all three of them again and I am glad that I have more than 1 designer to call on. They sometimes get busy I am told and the turnaround time gets longer when that happens.

One of the main things I discovered is that the time it takes varies greatly and that you should be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get your graphics together. I also learned to be very specific about explaining the sizes of the banners, etc.

While I waited for the graphics, I finished writing the three products and getting them ready to sell. The only questions I had while writing was how long should the manuscript be. How long is too long? I tend to be thorough and my ebooks came out a little longer than some others I have seen. Oh, well, my buyers will get their money’s worth. I have heard some people mention the shortness of people’s attention span. I hope this does not cause me a problem.

Because I plan to create products on a regular basis, I know for sure that it would be a good idea to outsource the chores you do not like. However, I am very glad that I took the time to build the squeeze pages and sales pages for the first time myself. One of the best things I did was to study John Hostler’s copywriting tips and learn the technique he calls “chunk copy.” After writing the copy for the first product, the second and third came much easier. Now I feel much more comfortable throwing together a sales page and feel I could repeat it again and again.

Writing the manuscript and creating the product was the easiest part of the project for me. I labored over creating the affiliate tools page and all of the other pages that I needed on the sales pages. Don’t get me wrong. It was not hard–just boring.

Submitting to Clickbank and making sure that I had followed their requiirements wasn’t too bad. I am sure that using CB is definitely the way to go to relieve me of having to keep track of affiliate payments and other bookkeeping necessities.

Now doesn’t it sound like a lot to do. Would you believe this is just the beginning? Now you have to send traffic to your squeeze and sales pages. You have to test and track so that you can tweak them to make them as highly effective as they can be. It is so important to make sure that they are highly converting. As you can see the work and fun really starts now. The fun part is making money when you get your sales rolling in.

Oh, and did I mention that you have to go and find affiliates to help you sell your products? That is one of the most important parts of the Product Creation System.

O.K. now you know the rest of the story. Wish me success, because I am working hard to make it happen.

Over the years students have asked me: “Professor, am I failing Accounting–or whatever course they were taking? Well now, I find myself in the same boat asking “Am I failing Affiliate Marketing?”

My first clue is that I am not yet making the kind of money I want to be making. Yes, I am working hard at building sites, getting backlinks, and sending traffic to my sites. I think I am following the best SEO tactics. So, why am I not making more money?

Suddenly, I start reading “Are you selling products that don’t sell?” During the past two days, there is a recurring theme that has jumped out at me–Are you selling products that don’t sell?

Here is a quote from Jason Gazaway’s Bloggers Pitfalls and Solutions: “Whatever the case, picking products that don’t sell are recipes for disaster as if others can’t sell them, what makes your blog so different that it can?”

But then, guess what else he said. “However, it should be noted that while choosing the wrong product is bad… choosing too many products is worse.”

Here is the reason he gives for why choosing too many products is worse: “….. your monetization options are going to be ‘stealing’ traffic from each other, as clicking on an advertisement would mean that a visitor probably won’t come back to buy from your affiliate link!”

Oh my gosh, am I guilty of doing these two things–picking the wrong products and choosing too many products? I hate to say it, but it must be true.

I went seeking more information and this is what I learned from Chris Rempel on his Lazy Marketer blog: “It’s WHAT you sell, folks. Not how “hard” you try…”

For me, this was eye opening. I had listened and read so much about how to pick a niche, how to find the best keywords, and how to follow my passion. There have been so many videos on how to select your products in the Clickbank marketplace? Didn’t this lead me to select the best products to sell?

I remember Greg Cesar saying it so well at one of the conferences I went to that you needed to find out where the demand was and go there. He emphasized how important it was to find out what was hot and go there. As Chris Rempel says, you should stand in front of the stampeding herd.

Chris also said this and it really hit home:

“You wanna know what’s sadly ironic?

What’s sadly ironic is that I (or any other experienced affiliate) could build and promote a site in 3 stinkin’ days that will earn more in affiliate commissions this year than most starry-eyed newbies would make even if they went ”full time” online – putting in 40 hours a week building sites, building links, etc.

Why?

Because I know what actually sells, and what kind of traffic to drive.”

Whoa! For me this was heavy! Of course, Chris talks about paying the price and going through his “ignorant years.” I guess that is what I am still doing–going through my ignorant years. Am I tired of it? Yes. Do I want to complete this phase of my learning? Again, yes. Unfortunately, I am still paying the price.

O.K. My journey through this maze of internet marketing information has been full of twists and turns. Sometimes I admit, I heard “how to” tips that were good, but weren’t relevant to me at the time. When I go back and look at videos again and reread ebooks, I do not always come away with the same information to use. There are times when I really get the significance of what is being said and other times it is wasted on me. This is all a part of the learning process.

In the end, I am making progress but I do not mind telling you that I am getting tired of the “ignorant years.” I do think I will be more cautious of selecting products from now on. How about you?

Since beginning the pursuit of riches through Internet Marketing in December, I have spent most of my time feeling lost. There have been many hours spent trying to figure out what to do next or how to do a particular thing. Because I am a good researcher, I would continue to seek the answer until I finally figured it out or stumbled across it. I kept wishing I had a coach that I could just ask a question and receive an answer. But, there just wasn’t anyone close to me that remotely understood what I was even doing.

Once I started down this path, I certainly learned that it was going to be hard work and it wasn’t going to be easy. My first mentor James Martel who wrote the Affiliate Marketing Handbook (you will find the link on the right sidebar) warned that you had to learn to work in isolation and learn to figure things out for yourself. He tried to provide as much information as he could and he wrote an excellent manual that was very detailed and helpful. He also held great bootcamps that answered a lot of questions. Here comes the second “but”–it only went so far. James is an affiliate marketer and did not deal with listbuilding, sales pages, or thank you pages.

When I visited forums, I did not have to look far to find many newbies sharing the same feelings that I had. Soon, I was fortunate to find my way to the Marketing Beginners Forum and Randy the Hermit. Imagine the fact that Randy our guru reads the posts every day and answers every question that anyone asks about Internet Marketing. The other members are also helpful. I wanted to tell everyone about the forum and share my good fortune.

In addition to this good forum, videos were my next salvation. Words alone do not always provide you with the details that you sometimes need. JP Schoeffel has developed a set of videos entitled Videosense that explains in a great deal of detail how to do niche marketing. If you are still wondering how to make money and what you have to do in each step to make it, these videos contain the answer.

Here is the perfect opportunity to help fellow newbies find their way. You probably have a limited amount of money to spend and are tired of buying videos and ebooks that don’t help. Finding your way to the Marketing Beginners Forum and watching the Videosense videos can be the beginning of a successful career. Just don’t forget to say “hi” to me in the forum. The optin at the top right hand corner will also lead you to Marketing Beginners. Please add your name to my list. I look forward to working with you. In case you are wondering, I am well on my way.

Last week I attended Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. While at the convention, I heard the word “Superaffiliate” used many times. Having found my way to Internet Marketing fairly recently, I find that I envy anyone who has been doing it since 1998 or even the early 2,000′s. It does not even make me feel better when they tell me that I will gain experience quickly and will be able to do everything they can do. The Superaffiliates seem to be in consensus when they talk about the “good ole days” and how much better they had it back then. Apparently Google has had a major influence and has restricted many of the liberties that were taken for granted. Perhaps there is a benefit in not having the point of comparison and just understand the way it is now. In any case, it does motivate me to want to become a Superaffiliate as soon as possible.

The major controversial topic was the pollution of the web. Jason Calacanis, Founder and CEO of Mahalo.com was the keynote speaker who brought up differences in the Internet today versus yesterday. He explained how any system can be taken over by gamers and how they create problems for everyone. He pointed out that curation on the web has started. He gave the examples that people now police their services; anonymity is being reduced, and bad people are being punished. He asked Affiliate Marketers to do what they could not to contribute to the pollution. Of course, by saying that, it may be interpreted that you are including Affiliate Marketers in the group that are polluting. Now you know why I used the word “controversial” in the first sentence. It created a topic for lively discussion–some agreeing and some disagreeing. A trademark of a good keynote speaker is one that can evoke discussion and Jason certainly did that. He explained how the search engine Mahalo.com has been designed to incorporate more human intervention to reduce pollution and steer away from some of the obvious problems.

Now I will editorialize just a bit. In hearing many of the Superaffiliate success stories, I have learned that some have experienced terrific successes when they least expected it. You might say that preparation and opportunity combined at the right moment to bring them very good fortune. They were working, trying different strategies, when–bingo–success struck. Definitely, they were not sitting waiting for it to happen. An observation–many young marketers are not afraid and so they are not constrained by fear of failure. In any case, the stories are always great to hear. I would encourage everyone to attend one of these events because it is great fun to be in a group where everyone totally understands the language and the difficulties of your everyday life in the business.