One of the basic problems you will have when starting out with internet marketing is learning what to do. On top of that is the need for a support structure to help you along the way. There are a lot of people on the net promoting “how to” and training products to teach you what to do. Some of these are good and some not so good. You also can’t trust the price tag to tell you what is a gem and what is not.

Many of these products also offer a forum or membership site to help you with support and questions. I have tried several of these and cancelled more memberships than I kept. It seems that so often once the sale is made, there is no more attention paid to you by the “guru” who owns the forum or membership site.

I’m here to tell you that there is a membership forum that is head and shoulders above the rest. It’s Lynn Terry’s SSWT Elite Forum. I stumbled upon Lynn Terry’s blog a little over a year ago and joined her Elite Forum last October. While I believe she would not accept the “guru” title, I’m here to tell you that she is a true expert in Internet Marketing. You can see for yourself by checking out the SSWT Public Forum.

There are several things that set the SSWT Elite Forum apart from the others.

• Lynn is active in the forum.
• Lynn hosts a brainstorming hour every Thursday for Elite members.
• The Elite community is outstanding. There are few internet communities like it!
• Many of the Elite members are experts in their own right. There always seems to be someone online who can address your problem.
• You can discuss your business ideas and challenges “behind closed doors.” The members (and Lynn) are there to help.
• It’s a great place to build your Internet Marketing network.
• Special deals (including many free items) for Elite members.
• The community gives you a built-in review committee to help you improve your projects.
• The price is right – only $27 per month!

I’m a big fan of the SSWT Elite Forum and recommend that you join up. You really don’t have anything to loose and success in Internet Marketing to gain!

In my recent post, Now I can get going!, I mentioned as my next step is to create an affiliate marketing site. The first question that comes to mind is, “How do I do that?” I have subscribed to a newsletter from Dr. Andy Williams called ezSEO. I always liked Dr. Andy’s detailed and methodical approach to doing things and remembered that he had a course for creating fat affiliate sites in WordPress.  Since I build all my sites using WordPress, I thought I would check out Andy’s course to see if it could teach me how to create profitable affiliate sites.

His course is called WordPress for Affiliate Sites.  It is a subscription course that costs $47 per month and runs for about five months.  It does have an option to purchase the entire course at once, but there are a couple reasons to subscribe monthly.

• Course modules are presented on a schedule of about one a week.  This is the right pace if you are doing this course on a part-time basis.
• There is a 14-day money back guarantee offered with the monthly option.  This is not available if you purchase the whole course.

On the flip side, if you are able to focus and do this full time, then purchasing the whole course might be right for you.

Each lesson comes with a PDF guide, video, and action plan.  Some lessons also come with a mind map. I just finished the first lesson. The PDF is 18 pages long, so it was easy to read in a short setting. The video is just short of 37 minutes long.  You can complete the first step on the action plan in about an hour. I did this today, Saturday, and then planned the remaining activities for the rest of the week.  Following this approach, I can make progress toward my goal every week!

I also want to mention that the quality of the materials is very good. You can definitely tell the skill, knowledge, and experience that Andy applied in making this course.  If you are wanting to setup quality affiliate sites, I definitely recommend that you give WordPress for Affiliate Sites a try for the 14 day guarantee period.  I am going to see it through to completion.

A couple weeks ago I laid out some steps I am taking with my on-line business.  The first one was to update the look and feel of this website.  I am happy to announce that the major work is done!  I used the DynaBlue WordPress theme designed by WebDesignLessons.com.  I must say that I am really pleased with this theme.   Here are some of my favorite features:

• Google Adsense integration
• Ready for Twitter
• Nice graphics for RSS and Twitter
• Configurable ads in sidebar and header
• Contact form
• Featured post carousel
• Big text
• My daughter said it looks professional!

One upgrade I wanted to accomplish was to add polish to my email opt-in form.  I always felt that the standard forms from Aweber didn’t look too good.  I really liked Lynn Terry’s form, so I started poking around the SSWT forum looking for clues.  Well, she pointed me to where she got the graphic! (I didn’t intend on picking the same color that she did, but blue is what matched the new theme.)

I want to share with you where I got the custom email opt-in form.  It is part of a great offer containing 120 Squeeze Page Designs.  When you follow this link, you will have the opportunity to get 2 free squeeze page templates.  One is an email opt-in form and the other is an optimized squeeze page.  Here’s where it gets good.  For only $37 you can have the full 120 Squeeze Page Templates.  You could not even get the email opt-in form completed by a web designer for that price!  I think it is a great deal.  (Of course, I bought it!) It is so important to have a good, Web 2.0, look to your web pages in order to increase opt-in rates.  This package will definitely help you with that!

All in all, I am glad that this step toward building on-line income is complete.  It is time to move on to step 2 – launching my first affiliate marketing site.  I’ll keep you updated along the way.

About a month and a half ago, I posted about roadblocks keeping me from starting a project.  As with things of this nature, it took longer than I anticipated to get past the roadblocks.  Once I cleared the major roadblock, a couple of other detours ensued.  Now that I am past those, I am ready to get going.

One other thing that has changed is the project I wanted to start.  I am putting that on hold to focus on something that will generate some quicker cash flow.  I still want to do that project, but my online business has bills to pay, now!

As an exercise in accountability, I am posting here my plans for the upcoming weeks and months.

1. This website needs a facelift.  I am going to update the look and better integrate with social media.
2. I am launching my first affiliate marketing site.
3. Create more affiliate marketing sites.
4. More consistent posting on all of my blogs.
5. Profit!!

As this is a blog about my journey to work from home, I will keep updating you on my progress and what I learn along the way.

I am amazed at the amount of instant traffic you can get to your blog by tweeting your posts. Twitter is quite the phenomenon on the Internet today. If you’re not on Twitter, I suggest that you sign up and start tweeting.  Once you are on Twitter, you can follow me at twitter.com/mikesmind.

This morning, I wrote a post for one of my blogs.  This blog has about three to five views per day.  It is a WordPress blog, so I added a plugin to automatically tweet a link when I publish a new post.  Within a couple hours, I had 30 views.  Now, that is pretty powerful and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how a plugin like this can really get you new readers for your blog.

Here are two plugins that I have tried that automatically tweet your blog posts when published.

1. Twitter Tools – This is what I am using on the blog mentioned above.  It is written by Alex King, who is well known in the WordPress plugin world.  It is configurable and I have included a screen shot of the options page.  As you can see, it is pretty straight-forward to configure.

   

   I found this plugin easy to use and it works like it is supposed to.

2. Another plugin that I am using to automatically tweet my blog posts is a commercial offering called TweetMyBlog.  This is an affiliate-based plugin that gives you the opportunity to make some money.  I have it installed on this blog, but have not made anything from it, yet.  It is free for you to install, but it does have a commercial intent as well as look and feel.  I found the extra graphics too much for many of my blogs, but if your blog is about making money, then this plugin should help you do that.  As you can see below, it doesn’t have as many configuration options as Twitter Tools.

   

   This blog has a few hoops to jump through as you get set up to receive affiliate commissions.  If you are looking to add another income source and increase traffic by automatically tweeting your blog posts, TweetMyBlog is a good option.

Either option I listed above will help you build traffic to your WordPress blog by harnessing the power of Twitter.