1) Be passionate about what you are selling. Whether it’s a blog, adwords, affiliate promotion via opt-in squeeze pages, etc, if you are not passionate about it, it will show through in your marketing & follow-through

2) Be persistent. Success does not come overnight, but if you are passionate and consistent about your websites, the RSS feeds and email signups will come.

3) Be generous. I recently began to dabble in screenplay writing. I asked a friend…what if I use up this good character in a screenplay that ends up being a total flop? His response…”There’s more where that came from!” Don’t be afraid to really put your heart into your blog posts…there’s more where that came from. If you are pasisonate, the ideas and blog posts will come, and the RSS and email subscribers will follow!

4) Be innovative. Don’t follow the pack, do something (slightly) different, stand out from the crowd (in a good way, mostly). Many of us can do this with unique blog designs that stand out from the common Word Press templates. Me…I’m still working on this. But since my blog is all about discoveries, I plan to share with my readers as I learn…and I’ve already noticed a following of people who want to discover in the form of RSS subscriptions, Diggs & Stumbles!

I did download a few “Money Making” e-books online to see what they were like and if I really thought I could make any money with the information in them. Two of them I actually kept and am using tips & techniques that they contained for AdWords Marketing as well as a crazy stunt called “Viral Marketing”. In this post, I’m going to discuss Viral Marketing.

In Derrick VanDyke’s Affiliate Cash Secrets he shows you how to take a pre-written e-book, and he even supplies you with two great ones (Automatic Money Machines and Free Traffic Secrets), and insert your own affiliate links to all the list building & online marketing companies that he uses.

There’s gotta be a trick…

Now I’m still having a really hard time wrapping my brain around this, but I followed his “Quick Start” outline just to see where it takes me. Basically, it’s this.

1) Buy his product ($27)

2) Brand two free E-books with your own affiliate links

3) Set up a “Squeeze page” system – he shows you exactly how, gives you his own squeeze pages, and tells you exactly what lines of HTML code to change to personalize the whole system.

4) Set up your autoresponder email campaign for follow up emails for those who signed up on the squeeze page.

That’s basically it. Once it’s set up, you just have to get traffic to your page. Besides buying his ebook, which includes the two brandable reports, his own squeeze page system and instructions on how to set up all of the above, you also have to sign up for an email list manager and autoresponder program…but you’re gonna need that anyway if you’re going to be building affiliate sites and selling products. So if you want to call that a “sneaky trick”, you can. But it’s not, really.

So what does the system really do?

Great marketing text compels the reader to click a link to get the advertised Free Reports. Hey, they’re free, right? The link takes you to a page asking you for your email address. After entering your email, you are sent a link to the download page where you get the free reports.

So what are the free reports about? One is setting up a squeeze page system (which I just did, you can see what it looks like here), and the other is how to build traffic to your site (which I’m working on!). Both free e-books really do contain good information.

So what’s in it for you, the affiliate?

You start to build a list of potential customers, people download e-books with your affiliate links sprinkled throughout (if a reader signs up from your link, you get credit), and if someone purchases a product, you actually get a commission!

So what’s in it for Derrick Van Dyke, the author of the original e-book that I bought for $27? Well, he also has his product marketed in the free downloads, and if you purchase his e-book (Affiliate Cash Secrets), you also receive a copy of the two free e-books and instructions on how to brand them with your own affiliate links.

It’s kind of cool.

But isn’t it all a big MLM Scheme?

Well, yes and no. It’s called “Viral marketing”, and involves the wide distribution of an e-book or PDF file that has back links to your own product. The key to making it work, and the only reason that I am participating in this particular viral marketing plan, is that the free e-books as well as the Affiliate Cash Secrets product both contain useful information that can be applied to ANY product, not just his own “money making” product.

It’s not an MLM Scheme, because you can actually use the information and apply to your own e-books…about fitness, accounting, stock picking, etc. Anything that you have some amount of “expertise” in, you can market this way. So if you have a unique product, that’s distributable as a PDF file or e-book, this could be the perfect marketing plan for you.

Why don’t you give it a shot? At the very least, download the free e-books, Automatic Money Machines and Free Traffic Secrets. They’re both free, and all you have to do is fill out the email address form!

Wait a sec, this is a trick, right?

I know you think I’m trying to trick you and that this post isn’t really about viral marketing, that I’m trying to sell you a product. Some things I really “get” very quickly, like computer programming and blogging, etc. But the whole concept of viral marketing has been difficult for me to understand, and so I have just decided to jump in, follow the instructions in the quick start guide and learn by doing.

You can do the same thing, too. There’s no risk in downloading the two free E-books. Besides, I’ve already spent money on about five different “Money Making” e-books online, and returned three of them. Affiliate Cash Secrets actually has some decent information that I think most affiliates can use.

Since my site is about discovery, I’m sharing my discoveries with you!

(So go ahead and download the FREE books!)

After the questions about the source of my information, I decided to just check Google’s policies myself. Here is a quote from the Google AdWords help center.

Treat a user’s personal information responsibly

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Most internet users are concerned with understanding and controlling how websites use their personal information. In order to build and maintain their trust, provide clear answers to these questions on your site:

• Why are you collecting personal information? (This is particularly important to address if you collect information soon after a user enters your site.)
• How will you use, or potentially use, personal information?
• What options do users have to easily limit the use of their personal information?

While they do not specifically state that the algorithm looks for a page called “Privacy Policy” before giving a Quality Score from your AdWords Ad, they do state that they take into account how seriously you, the website owner, takes your customer’s privacy.

Since a text link on your header or footer to a page called “Privacy Policy” seems to be the standard for disseminating this information to your customers, It would seem prudent to do so for all the reasons I stated in my previous post, as well as to comply with 3rd party advertisers as well as improving your Google Adwords Quality Scores.

(e) Privacy. You must conspicuously post Your privacy policy on Your Web site and otherwise make it available to all Visitors. Your privacy policy must comply with all laws and regulations regarding the privacy of Visitor information, be commercially reasonable, and fully and accurately disclose Your collection and use of Visitor information. You must fully and accurately disclose Your use of third party technology, including CJ’s tracking technology, use of cookies and options for discontinuing use of such cookies.

If you are serving ads from Commision Junction and do not have a privacy policy, you may be violating your terms of service and could have your account suspended.

Google also values user’s privacy. I have read in GoogleMoneyPro, a downloadable e-book by Certified AdWords Professional Steven Holdaway, that when creating a “quality score” for Google AdWords keywords, the algorithm takes into account whether or not the landing page has a privacy policy. So if you are targeting your own pages, you can increase your quality score and thus lower your click through rates by displaying a privacy policy of your own on your home page.

According to the Better Business Bureau:

Telling your customers how you will protect their privacy online is essential in today’s business environment. By publishing an easy-to-understand privacy policy on your Web site, you can foster a climate of trust and encourage visitors to feel comfortable doing business with you. A good privacy policy provides users with a clear understanding of how you collect information and how you use (or don’t use) the information they provide at your site.

The Better Business Bureau believes all responsible businesses should clearly post a privacy policy and show how you will be held accountable for following that policy. But how do you go about doing that? A number of organizations – including the government – have developed guidelines, enforcement programs and privacy policy generators to make this as easy as possible.

And finally, this quote from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development underscores why, as an internet marketer hoping to generate income from online sales, you absolutely must create and display a policy of your own:

Internet research has repeatedly shown that many consumers are reluctant to engage in electronic transactions because of concerns about the privacy of their personal data. Privacy policies and accurate public statements outlining such policies are a vital step towards encouraging openness and trust in electronic commerce among visitors to Web sites. They can help visitors to make informed choices about entrusting an organisation with personal data and doing business with it.

Several online privacy policy generators exist, check out these two automated generators that you can use to get started. It’s easy to take the resulting HTML and simply make edits as your policy changes, and as you understand more about various aspects of user privacy.

OECD Privacy Statement Generator
The Direct Marketing Association Privacy Policy Generatorhttp://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml

For more reading check out the following links.
Study: Search Engine Privacy Policies Improving

Safe Harbor: Aligning the privacy policies of the US and the EU

Create an Online Privacy Policy