Whenever I find out that a great product disappeared from the Net just because its author did not make money, I feel the urge to write an article helping people overcome problems and starting difficulties and persevere until they make the money they imagine.

And that is exactly why I focus this Article on the main reasons why so many people with quality products are not able to establish the right income and talk here about standard Internet situations that present basic traps for both newbies and people who do not yet make enough money even though they have spent long time online.

1) Affiliate programs: these are the simplest and easiest way to make money with almost zero startup cost. Yet, there are not so many people who actually do make money on these. In the following I mention the not-so-obvious reasons:

• everyone says it is so easy to succeed that hardly anyone does anything at all: the advertising says that everyone can make money with affiliate programs doing nothing that people take it literally and most of them do not even bother to put up a banner.

  Tip to succeed: it is not important what business you start, it always involves hard work, time and certain cost. Affiliate programs are no exception. If you want to profit from affiliate programs you have to devote time to learn and market the product you sell effectively.

• too many emails from the affi program owners: some affiliate program owners think they must be in constant contact with their affiliates so they email even several times a day, which is a nightmare.

  Tip to succeed: I would say leave such an affiliate program fast.

• too little real marketing material: other program owners do not offer any material to promote.

  Tip to succeed: this one is tricky: if it is the only program you want to promote (which I do not recommend), you can create your own materials based on the product. However, if you promote more or many programs, I recommend to stay with the program only if the product is exceptionally good and useful, and of course, the commission, payments etc are right.

• affiliate owners not helping you marketing their product but sell to you only: yet other managers confuse affiliates with leads and instead of providing promotional material sell only to their affiliates and bombard them with advertising.

  Tip to succeed: I do not say you should not buy the product you promote, on the contrary, but what is too much is too much. I recommend leaving such a program.

• dishonest program owners: still today there are dishonest program owners who cheat and rob their affiliates.

  Tip to succeed: Again, leaving is the only way.

• commissions paid/commissions calculated: some program owners calculate commissions the way hardly anyone can understand, try tricks showing that all the others are stupid and cannot see through the tricks - and/or also, pay after 2,3 or even 6 months and set ridiculous payment thresholds.

  Tip to succeed: again I receive letters asking how to solve it, I recommend leaving.

• dead links: quite a number of program owners constantly change their sites, web pages, affiliate managers... and the result is dead affiliate links. Mostly these people do not bother to let their affiliates know.

  Tip to succeed: stay only if the product is exceptionally good and the commissions and payments are worth your efforts.

• articles=ads: another popular item is articles which are not articles but long ads; this is not only unacceptable in any proper content directory but unusable for promotion.

  Tip to succeed: the same advice: stay only if the product, commissions, payments and everything else is worth your work.

Even though someone may feel that it is impossible to make any money with affiliate programs after they read all the above, I can say that if you pick up the right programs and do it the right way, you will make more than you can imagine.

I myself am an example of how little effort it takes to make great money with affiliate programs: in fact, I never promote any program specifically, the only thing I do is to create a proper webpage(s)/material devoted to a product I consider useful and announce it or publish a related article in my Pathway To Success Ezine. Of course, I watch out for dead links and obsolete information. That's it. Everyone can do something like that.

2) Currency/Stock Trading is easy: quite a recent trap but serious. Trading is NOT easy and what more: it is NOT for everyone. I am a former profesional currency trader, very, very successful, also, I used to teach new traders, met hundreds of traders and a person saying that trading is easy and everyone can do it either doesn't know what they're talking about or is a liar. Nothing in between.

Yes, you can make big money trading, the biggest and fastest BUT you must be sure you are the one suitable and you will never make it overnight: successful, ie long-term profitable trading needs lots of knowledge, disciplined, responsible training and behaviour and this is not easy nor fast.

Tip to succeed: first, take this test to see whether you are the person able to succeed: http://www.marktier.com/IQ-test.htm

Then, pick up the right course, open a demo account with a market-maker, never a broker, and start serious study and practising; do not start trading your money before you are absolutely right you know what you are doing. And, never risk more you can lose. Trading has a big leverage and works both ways: you can make exactly the same as you can lose if you do not know what you are doing. I can tell you that over my trading years, I saw more failures than successes!

3) Reseller rights products: another trap is buying other people's products and start to sell them. It looks great and easy BUT mostly these products are meant to work as viral promotion tools and to earn a large lump sum for the author; in which case a product like this is sold all over the Net to thousands of people who all try to market and sell it, which lowers your chances.

Tip to succeed: if you want to take this route, carefully pick up a unique product with resale rights, setup a related webpages/ website and market it effectively.

4) Search engine mania: this is such a well-spread hype that there are people concentrating exclusively on their website ranking instead of their product.

The truth is very simple: search engines want to render the best services to their visitors and clients, and it is valuable, fresh, best targeted and regularly updated content, and the sites providing the best content they are looking for get the best ranking.

So, if you focus on exactly this, ie valuable, fresh, the best targeted and regularly updated content for your niche, you will have no problems with getting the right ranking and proper automatic and targeted traffic to your site.

The other point is that ranking alone will not get you sales. The other condition is the ability of your site to convert the visitors you get from search engines into customers and it has nothing to do with your high ranking.

Tip to succeed: spend the time you devote to search engine ranking worries to creating the most valuable content for your niche product, optimize and market your site right and you will have more sales than you can imagine.

5) Copying mania: every guru advises you to copy them if you want to succeed. BUT this is the biggest mistake you can ever make: because only the unique win!

And, even if you do copy the exact ways, your conditions are not exactly the same, no two persons are exactly the same: your reactions to situations, the way you do things, your attitudes are different, so finally the result will definitely be different and it is not certain that the same successful, most times it is completely different and unsatisfactory.

It is good to study the lives of the most successful people of the world, not bad to analyze, modify their strategies to your own nature and conditions and adopt similar methods based on your specifications.

Tip to succeed: every person is unique, so spend some time and try and find your uniqueness and start from there. Be original!

6) Flash, video mania: another of today's crazy manias. Do not think that your ways are obsolete if you do not follow all the videos, if you do not flood your site with flash. I can guarantee you that if you do not sell quality products/services, flash and videos alone will not bring you sales.

Tip to succeed: try and find a reasonable balance; where flash or a video can enhance/illustrate the message you want to convey to your visitors, then, it is in place. If you focus on flash and video all over your site, you will not win.

7) Conference mania: even more dangerous. It is extremely time consuming: if you should attend every conference around, you would not be doing anything else. PLUS, most of the conferences are of very poor quality and not all are so populated as you have been told. But definitely almost all of them are here to get your money.

Tip to succeed:

• if you want to attend a conference, pick up the right one for your business, and of course, a quality event.

• if you want to organize a conference, be sure it is effective, quality and do not forget to engage a professional journalist if you are not one yourself - quality presentation is extremely important.

8) Disappearing newsletters, all advertising instead: I must say it: my Pathway To Success Ezine is almost the only ezine bringing real, useful and fresh, valuable content of long-term validity without hype. As I watch ezines around, almost all of them changed into sales copies and advertising boards, which is sad. There are millions of top sites and excellent, high-quality products, so much top information: not even thousands of valuable content ezines would manage to inform about all of them. And, all of us are losing on valuable content ezines disappearing.

Tip to succeed: if you are willing to devote your efforts to creating another real content ezine for your niche, you must succeed. It will not be tomorrow but it will come if you persevere. And, do not buy subscribers, build your audience the natural way using good, old subscription.

9) Content sites disappearing, Google and other ads all over: similar problem as with content ezines: I have a feeling that every website I visit contains only long, long sales letter, no real content, just hype trying to make me buy the stuff. PLUS Google ads all over or only a keyword directory.

Tip to succeed: to create a proper, content site related to your niche will bring you success if done right. However, I must warn you: this needs efforts, hard work, lots of patience and perseverence and time. It will not be fast.

10) Hype products: this one is quite old, the same old as the business itself. The only way is to learn how to recognize it at the first look and not to fall for it - and, this is the biggest problem of most of the beginners and even many, many seasoned netpreneurs.

Tip to succeed: two tips, in fact:

second: the faster you learn how to distinguish the hype from a real product the faster you will succeed.

To answer your question how: basically, the most important is false promises: hype always features unreal promises. And I do not talk about free products, some free products are of much higher quality than most high-priced items on the Net.

Conclusion: I can give you a general advice:
Create a complex system working effectively for you and your business, study, learn, work hard and improve. Your success is just round the corner if you know what you are doing, and do it right.

And, if you have a great product, are not making the money you imagine and thinking about leaving the Net, drop me a line before you do at: iwhitfield at thecassiopeia.com

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The article may be reprinted or used freely as long as it is in its entirety incl the resource box below
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Irena Whitfield  Irena Whitfield is the webmistress of http://www.thecassiopeia.com/ - Internet Business Consultant you need to make your online home business a real success. Without any hype, she will help you to get where you want to get. Get her new ebook Package 'Your Success Master Keys' , containing: 'Success Tips And Tricks' , '7 Stars of Online Success' and 'The Success Seeds: the Entrepreneurial Bible', and make your business profitable this year! http://www.thecassiopeia.com/ePublishing/New.html.

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