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Acronyms for the New Internet Marketer

You’ve decided to be an internet marketer.  You’re doing everything right.  You have a mentor or have joined a very good community where you can get some education and guidance.  When you start reading the material and watching the instructional videos, they’re peppered with what sounds like vegetable soup.  Undecipherable acronyms are confusing to say the least.  Here is some help.

When we start in a new career, there are always things to learn.  Some of the most frustrating are acronyms or abbreviations.  These get tossed about in documents and videos without much thought by the person using them.  However, to someone new to the field, they can be a source of confusion.  I will attempt to explain some of the most common acronyms to you.

Here are some of the acronyms that I encountered in my first few weeks of internet marketing:

SEO Search Engine Optimization – This is the process of improving the traffic to your site, either for volume or quality of the traffic. This involves unpaid methods of manipulating your web page with keywords to increase search engine visibility of your website.

SEM Search Engine Marketing – A paid method of increasing your search engine ranking by advertisement or paid placement.

URL Uniform Resource Locator –The web address of your website or page. It is what you type into the address bar in your browser.

CPC Cost Per Click – The cost of advertising where you pay for each click on your link or website.

CPL Cost Per Lead –The amount you pay an advertiser for traffic that is sent to your site that actually signs in to your capture form.

CTR Click Through Rate – The percentage of visitors to your website or page that actually click on something.

PPL Pay Per Lead – A method of advertising where targeted traffic is sent to your site and you only pay for those that sign into your capture form.

PPC Pay Per Click – An advertisement method where you pay for each click on your link or website.

ROI Return On Investment – The profit you make after you deduct any cost involved in making a sale of goods or subscription.

CR Conversion Rate – The percentage of people visiting your website or page that actually buy your goods or subscribe to your service.

There are many more acronyms related to internet marketing.  As your career progresses, you will be able to figure them out from context.  Some of the ones you encounter will have to do with your specific mentoring community or system you are using.  Good luck in your new career.

Author, Lorraine Ballard, is an internet marketer working with the Six Figure Mentors.  She currently lives in the mountains of North Carolina, where she shares her small farm with a flock of hand raised chickens and a small herd of silly goats.

Attitude - an Important Aspect of Internet Marketing

If you're a stay-at-home mom, empty nester, or maybe retired with time on your hands or a need for added income, internet marketing may be an attractive way to get that added income or lifestyle upgrade.  If this is your choice, there is one item that is often overlooked, but could be the most important - a positive attitude.

How's your attitude, your 'state of mind'?  Are you certain of your success, or are you 'floundering', just sort of trying this and that?  Research your options thoroughly to find what fits your personality and lifestyle.  It's your business and you should be passionate about it.

Here are some of the things to be aware of  to maintain that all important mind set:

Friends and family trying to be supportive, might drop comments about your business into conversations that might make you take your "eyes off the prize" and discourage or distract you.  Be aware of this, however well-meaning, and try to avoid these conversations.

Another consideration is the time your business takes from your family.  It's possible for your family to become jealous when you spend time away from them.  It's important that you schedule family time completely apart from your business, especially when you're first starting.  During start up, you'll undoubtedly have many things to learn, and building your business will take up a good bit of time. The point is, if your family is happy, you'll be happier and better able to maintain that all important positive mindset.

No matter what you're doing, whether it's a short term project, like remodeling your bathroom or long term, like a wealth building system, you will need to surround yourself with people that  encourage and support you.  If  criticism is needed, it should be constructive in nature, and from someone knowledgeable and experienced with your best interest at heart.  One very good option to consider is getting a mentor to help you to set up and build your business.

Some of you may have read The Secret , by Rhonda Byrne.  It addresses the subject of attitude very well.  What you might not know is that the inspiration for her book was a man named Wallace D. Wattles, who wrote, The Science of Getting Rich.  This book is in the public domain and you can find it free online or download it here, also free:

The Science of Getting Rich

Author, Lorraine Ballard, is an internet marketer working with the Six Figure Mentors.  She lives in the mountains of North Carolina with a flock of hand raised chickens and a small herd of silly goats.

Regular People Can Be Internet Marketers

Hi, I’m a beginning internet marketer. I used to have a regular job like, I suppose, most people have. It required that I drive long distances every day. I live in the mountains of North Carolina, almost to the Tennessee border.


I would drive 35 miles in to work and the same back. Gas was not as high priced as it is now, but it still took a good chunk of my pay. It took me about 45 minutes to get to work in the morning or whenever I was scheduled. In reality, my workday started an hour or so before I left with my morning routine, breakfast, shower, dress, etc.

In the place that I worked, the ones that worked very hard, were made to work even harder to make up for the ones that didn’t. The ones that didn’t do their jobs or didn’t do them very well, had few repercussions and got their bonuses and raises just as if they were performing well. The people that were actually doing the work got criticism, little praise, and were always afraid they would get fired for something they weren’t doing well enough. My self confidence was mostly gone. All the while, the management staff walked around with clipboards and did very little. Do these sound like your working conditions?

This situation would make anyone unhappy. I was. It was awful. I was spending almost 14 hours out of every day either at work or on the way to or from work. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. I can’t remember a movie or television show that I watched all the way through after work. I would just fall asleep in my chair. My two days off per week was spent mostly recuperating from the work week before I had to go back and do it all over again. I was physically and emotionally spent.

About a year ago, I had had enough and I quit. I had an idea to raise chickens on my little farm and sell eggs. This is a lot of work. I was not making a bunch of money with the eggs, so I started looking around on the internet for opportunities. I did a little of the surveys for money and blogged a little with clickbank links and then one day while I was cruising the internet, I found a video that has had a life changing effect on me. It described something I was not familiar with - mentoring and internet marketing.

I had never considered internet marketing because I don’t have anything to sell. I did a bit more research and found that many people were making money in affiliate marketing. I learned that there are individuals and companies listed on the internet that will pay you a commission to promote and sell their products on your website. This sounded too good to be true. How do I do this?

I needed to find out how to be an affiliate marketer. A little more research turned up an answer for me. I needed a mentor. Back to the internet I went. I found some very loud and obnoxious ads for services related to affiliate marketing and mentoring, from books to cd packages to downloadable software – all of them were supposed to make money for me ‘the easy way’ or ‘overnight’.

Only one of the links I found appealed to me as honest and sincere. It was an unpretentious video that said internet marketing could be confusing and frustrating and took time and effort, like everything else worthwhile. The young man in the video also said that, although he was successful now, he had made mistakes in the beginning of his career, been frustrated to the point of throwing his computer out the window, and was willing to teach me how to become successful, avoid those mistakes and to do every step necessary to become a successful internet marketer, including setting up a website. What’s more, inside his community, he would teach me how to market that website and give me a community of some of the best internet marketers for continued support. This sounded more like what I was looking for, so I signed up and now, I’m an internet marketer. I have a website, published blogs and an article in Ezines.

If you are looking to ditch your full or part-time job, I wouldn’t recommend you do that until your internet marketing business is producing good income. Internet marketing can provide that, but it does take time to develop your business. This can be done in your spare time outside your regular employment. That’s the beauty of internet marketing – you set your own hours. You control everything in your business. There’s no boss breathing down your neck or criticizing you and you don’t have to leave home to do it. There’s really no time like the present to start.  If you're wondering, I’ve spent very little money on my business and what I have spent, I expect to make back many times in the future.

I’m still working on the money part but, nothing comes overnight. I am working very hard at marketing and am expecting good things in my future. I think I’ve made some pretty good progress in less than a month. I’m learning good things from my mentors and I expect to continue learning and developing more marketing strategies. What’s more, through my achievements so far, I’ve gained some of my self confidence back and expect to make a success of my business. Watch me!

To find out more about Lorraine Ballard go to:  http://loryballard.com

Honestly, How Much Does It Cost to Start Internet Marketing?

A short time ago, I decided that internet marketing was the way to go to make money.  I got a little involved with Clickbank and blogging and while I was cruising the internet for something interesting, I found a mentoring group that sounded very honest and sincere.  They gave me a series of videos that they sent to my email over the course of seven days.  During and at the end of these videos, they offered me a 'test drive' of their system.  The price of that 'test drive' was $4.95.  Once I was given access to their system, I was directed to another set of instructional videos that helped me build 2 web domains of my own.  The cost of each domain was $10.00 per month.  Part of the set-up is an automated e-mail system, in fact, the same automated system that sent the initial video series to me.  The cost of this service is $19.00 per month, but you get the first month for $1.00.  

Honest and truly, I have not needed to spend any more than these amounts to set up and start marketing.  My total output for the two week 'test drive' has been $25.95.  With the potential of making many times that over time, I think I got a bargain.  After my 'test drive' is over, I will be required to pay $97.00 per month to stay in this mentoring group and my automated email system will eventually go to the regular $19.00 per month.  To continue pursuing my internet marketing career with this group will cost $136.00 per month.  With all the educational material available, plus some of the best minds in internet marketing today, this is also a bargain. 
For those on a very tight budget, you eventually might be able to achieve something of value on the internet, but what is your time worth?  How many hours do you have to research and learn and make all the mistakes that are inevitable when you don't have a clue what you're doing?   I acquired two web domains, they are fully loaded and ready for me to market and this was done in just a few days.  I am now spending my valuable time marketing my domains and making my list of prospects for future sales.  This has the potential to be a very big thing for anyone with a bit of self motivation and desire for a better life.  The really great thing is that the overhead is very low and you don't have to leave the comfort of your own home to do it.

Author, Lorraine Ballard, is an internet marketer with The Six Figure Mentors.  She lives in the mountains of North Carolina on her small farm with a flock of chickens and a small herd of goats.

Tempermental Computer?

I don't know about you, but it seems like when I have to do something important with my computer, it breaks down.  This is disturbing, to say the least.

I had just started internet marketing and found a great group of mentors online.  That's when my hard drive decided to stop working.  I have been working with computers for many years so changing my hard drive over to another computer was not a problem.  However, it was inconvenient as it is time consuming.  First you have to unplug everything.  Then you have to get your computer to a nice open place where you can work.  Next, the cover has to be removed and the power and controller cables have to be unplugged from your hard drive.  I then transferred the hard drive into a computer that it would run in.  This involved all the previous steps in reverse on the second computer.

Now, I had a computer that was running with my old hard drive and it was great because I did not lose my information like I would have if I needed a new drive.  My internet marketing business is now progressing.  I am now an author on Ezines and I have a personal web page and also a capture page for my business.  Part of my marketing education is watching webinars that have been recorded.  These are great - very informative.  Now I have a chance to participate in a live webinar.  All I have to do is be on-line with my headset at a time certain and........lightning knocked out my broadband connection and fried my ethernet socket on my computer and my router.  GREAT!

Down to the Best Buy we went and bought a network card.  It's actually called a PCI Network Card.  Once again, I pull all the plugs off the back of my computer and get ready to operate.  Off comes the side.  Fortunately, this computer has an empty slot to plug the network card into.  I plugged the new card into my computer and put everything back together.  It was supposed to be plug-and-play.  It wasn't.  It wanted to use the driver that was already in my computer for the burned out ethernet socket.  My next stop would be my device manager, where I disabled the old network adapter and then loaded the new drivers from the CD that came with the new card.  Success!  My internet was up and running.  I made it to my webinar with time to spare.

I now have my fingers crossed  and high hopes that my computer problems are at an end and I can continue building my internet marketing business.

By:  Lorraine Ballard

Is Your Computer Ready For Your Internet Business?

Owning a reliable computer is probably the most important thing for your internet based business, whether you are selling your product on line, telecommuting or running an affiliate marketing business.  You need a good computer.  If your computer dies, you’re out of business, at least for the time it takes for repairs or replacement.

First of all, you don’t need to be running the latest and greatest equipment.  As long as you already own a computer that is reasonably current and compatible with your marketing or other business software, you don’t need an expensive replacement.  You can always buy a big fancy computer when the money from your internet business starts coming in.

Some of the things that you should check on your existing computer are:

·         Internet Connection - To avoid frustration, your internet connection should be reliable and fairly fast.  You don’t want your connection to drop out in the middle of a project or video.  And, there’s nothing worse than constantly having to wait for things to load.

·         Operating System - Make sure your operating system is updated with the current files.  Your system can be set up to do this automatically on a schedule.

·         Hard Drive Space - Check your hard drive capacity.  If your hard drive is full, you cannot download business materials.  You will need to get a hard drive with more storage space or a second drive, either internal or external.

·         Virus Protection and Firewall - Make sure you have good virus protection and a firewall.  If you do not, there are many companies that offer online sales and they are readily available at stores that sell computers.

·         Software Compatibility - Check your word processing, graphics and video software for compatibility with your business and also for updates.  If you do not have any of these, consult with your company before you buy to see what, if any, they recommend.

·         Video Player Software- Many sites on the internet use FlashPlayer or QuickTime for instructional and other videos that your internet business sends you to watch.  The download for these video players is free.  If your business is using these, make sure you have them and they are current.

·         System Maintenance - Most computers will have a system maintenance program built in that will scan for hard drive and memory errors.  Run and complete these scans and make sure your system is set up to do regularly scheduled scans of your system to keep it in optimum condition.

·         UPS or Uninterruptable Power Supply - It’s very important to have a UPS in case of power outage, dips or surge.  Any of these events can corrupt your system.  The battery in a UPS will keep your computer on for a limited time in case of a power outage.  This will allow you to save any project you are working on and shut down your computer properly.

If you find that your computer is not suitable for the job you will be doing or is just too old and outdated, now is the time to buy a new one. 

Computers don’t cost a fortune anymore.  Nearly everyone can afford to buy a computer that has reasonable speed and storage capacity and financing plans are readily available if you need to make payments.  It is advisable to consult with your internet business associates so that you can get an idea of what features will benefit you the most before you buy a computer.  There are a couple of options for you when you're ready to buy.  All the major manufacturers have websites where you can order your equipment with the customizations you require.  Keep in mind that, in general, the bigger and faster your computer is, the more it will cost.  The other option is to buy a ready made computer in person, from a store.

If you don’t know a thing about hard drives and memory and operating systems, but you need a new computer, there are people to help you.  Depending on your budget, you can get a computer at most discount department stores and super centers.  If you have a bit more to spend, an electronics store or a business that specializes in computers might be your best bet.  Whichever option you choose the sales people are usually very knowledgeable and will be happy to suggest the right computer for your internet business needs.

For those of you that want to be absolutely sure you have the right computer set up and that it is configured correctly, you can always hire a computer service expert to come into your home and check your system out or set up a new system for you.  They will even set up your internet connection and install a home network for you if you need them.  There are many of these listed in your local phone directory. 

With your computer up and running reliably, you can focus your attention on running your internet business successfully.