This is a good article to show that customers are seeking the Internet instead of traditional media of flyer or advertising. We are going back to the most effective marketing - word of mouth but today its word of mouth marketing via Internet.

BEIJING: When Lan Ping wanted to take a trip to the Maldives this summer, she turned to an online bulletin board instead of a travel agent to plan it.

“It is what everybody is doing now,” said the 24-year-old. “The comments in the online travel forums look more real and personal.”

Lan is one of a growing number of Chinese tourists logging onto discussion forums to share vacation diaries, search for information and seek advice from other travellers, according to a new survey from Nielsen China Outbound Travel Monitor.

The Internet has become the most important medium for the country’s growing number of tourists to plan vacations, the survey said.

While most Chinese visit traditional travel websites for research, they are likely to finalise their itineraries via interaction with other netizens on social networking platforms, according to the survey.

Nearly 100 million Chinese netizens regularly visit online bulletin boards to share opinions, ask for help or socialise with friends, according to 2008 figures from the China Internet Network Information Center.

“Word of mouth is the major factor for travellers when picking airline tickets or hotels,” said Nan Nan, marketing manager for travel search engine Qunar.com.

“For them, strangers are more reliable than advertisements.”

Online advertising, however, is also having more influence on Chinese travellers than advertising in more traditional mediums, like television and print.

Almost 70% of those surveyed remembered seeing travel ads on the Internet, the Nielsen survey said.

A number of online travel services that cater to the Chinese market are benefiting from the trend.

Ctrip.com, the largest online travel service in the country, reported a net profit of US$159mil in the second quarter of this year – an increase of 33% over the same quarter last year, an official at the company said.

“Every day our online travel forum receives two million page views, and the destination exploration channels receive 1.1 million page views,” said Tang Yibo, manager of Ctrip.com’s holiday department.

Tang said his department alone generated revenues of US$5mil in the second quarter of this year, an increase of more than 50% from the same quarter a year before.

The online trend also has implications for foreign tourism businesses trying to tap into a growing market of Chinese tourists planning trips abroad.

Despite the rapid growth of Chinese tourists travelling both domestically and internationally in recent years, the market remains relatively underdeveloped.

Many international tourism businesses are trying to find ways to cater to the tastes of Chinese consumers.

Less than 2% of the total destination media expenditure goes to Inter­net advertising, according to the Nielsen report. Many countries did not spend any money on online ads, it said.

The report also found that while tourism bodies in South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia utilised all major mediums to promote destinations to Chinese consumers, tourism organisations in many European countries only used magazines and newspapers.

“Advertising in China could be horrendously expensive if we weren’t getting it to the right market,” said Jennifer Cronin, vice president of sales and marketing for hotel chain Dusit International. “It is still such an unknown.”

China is a huge market, “but it is not a mature market yet,” Cronin added.

“So you could waste a lot of money going into China.”

Dusit is planning to open an office in Shanghai as part of future plans to expand further into the Chinese market, said Cronin.

“One of the things we are just getting comparative quotes on right now is doing our website in Chinese,” Cronin said.

“I guess it is the online market that we see as probably having a better return on investment for us in the future.” - CHINAdaily.com.cn

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where the business rewards you (the affiliate) for each action the customer did like filling up  a form or purchase you brought to them via your marketing efforts online.

Nearly every big brand on the Internet is offering affiliate commissions. Think of it this way, you are the sales person who works on a commission basis for these companies.  This is one of the most effective way of Internet marketing and it is not going anywhere soon.

Samples of Affiliate Marketing

It is easy to spot affiliates in the Internet. Some of them optimize their skills to rank high in search engine and some uses google advertisements or yahoo ads to be ranked high in search engine.

The reasons affiliate can afford to pay for their ads is simply because they know how to drive targeted customers to websites and make sales and earn a good commission. However I will personally advice not to go this path unless you know what you are doing or else you will be losing lots of money very easily.

Here is a good example; let us say you are looking for information on how to build a dog house so you go to google and search the keyword “how to build a dog house” You see the first page and click an ad that interest you and brings you to this page. You found the sales page interesting and you bought it. The affiliate who did the ads earned $20.00 and his ad cost him 0.50 per click only.  However do remember that not all who click on ads are interested to buy and not all will convert to sales. Beware of competitor clicking or simply people who randomly click on ads to earn adsense money.

Those who take the longer and more effective path in my opinion are those who aims high in search engine optimization. In my case studies there are companies who dominate google with their knowledge in search engine optimization. Not only they rank in page 1 but they have multiple rankings in page 1 almost guarantee their site will be clicked when anyone search for the keyword.

This keyword has about 900m websites competing for this keyword yet I manage to help them ranked 1 internationally and also took no.3 and 4th spot in Google 1st page.  This is extremely powerful for any business because not only you are ranked top but gives the impression that you are extremely famous in search engine.

I hope this gives you  a better understanding of Affiliate Marketing.

There are many ways to make money online but I’ll narrow them from experience how others and myself make money online.

1. Article Writing

There are companies out there that pays you for your articles. This ranges from $3-7 per article depending on quality. There are also lots of Internet forums which requires articles and they are willing to pay on average $3 per article. If you are able to write good articles withtout grammar mistakes, you can earn easily $50 a day writing articles. As you progress in your writing and know how to write as the market demands, you can demand up to $100 000 per copywriting. It is quite common knowledge that this is the asking price for top Internet article writers today.

2. Affiliate Programs

There are lots of vendors who are willing to share 50%-75% of their sales value when you make a sale for them. Popular sites such as Clickbank and Commission Junction are a good place to start if you are interested in affiliate programs. However, this is not an easy path to follow as you need to be competing with lofs of otherInternet Marketers. Also if you are planning to write an ebook or a software, these places are the more established place to market your products. Imagine having more than 100000 people promoting your products online and they work on % basis only.

3. Ebay

You can sell almost anything on  Ebay. All you need is to invest in a shipping company like FedEx or DHL, have a good range of products and price must be cheap. This is suitable if you are a distributor or manufacturer who wants to bypass the middle man and offering great discounts to customers. There are also many collectors in the world and most of them go to Ebay to search fo this. I personally know someone who is trading stamps online at Ebay for many years now and each stamp he sells about $0.5-5000 each. His collection he told me he has over 30000 stamps.

4. Service Provider

If you are good at what you do, and you want to expand your market, you can certainly market it online. Whether you are a web designer, or web programmer or simply talented to do something, you can sell your services online. There are hundreds of websites that you can promote your services, all you need to do is search online for them.

5. Sharing Revenue

There are lots of advertising companies that pay to publish their advertisements and in return will reward you if there are clicks on their advertisements or purchase made. Google adsense is one of them.  The websites are made are optimize for these ads and one can earn a good income from just sharing avenue with these advertisers. On average 1% of visitors will click on your ads. So for example if each click earns $0.30 and your website can generate 5 clicks a day, that is $1.50 per day on autopilot. Top earners manages probably 100 sites a year and with just a low estimate of $45 a month per website, they can generate $4500 a month with almost no maintaince and cost. I do have seminars on these on a weekly basis if you are interested to know more.

6. CPA

I believe this is the main in thing today. CPA is an acronym for Cost per Action and refers to “ads” that are sold on the basis that money is only given when a certain action occurs because of the ad. A CPA ad could be one in which a publisher gets paid for people that click thru an ad and sign up for a newsletter or enter a contest or fill out a form for more information on a product. Many consider direct sales or Cost Per Sale ads, and CPC ads to also be a form of CPA. But CPA usually refers to being paid for leads, sign ups, and so on.For example if you can get people to put in your email, you get paid $1.00. So if you can drive targetted traffic to a site and all they need to do is leave their email which is FREE, you get paid $1.00! This is very easy to do if you know how. Some other CPA actions are like leaving your postcode, answering survey questions, purchasing a trial offer which is one of my favourite. Some trial can be purchased for like $0.1 cent and I get paid $50 for that! Totally mind blowing.  Reason being is these companies actually pay you on value of business per year they can obtain from a customer instead of a percentage of sales you make.

7. PPV, PPC, PPP,

Pay per view, pay per click, pay per download is what those acronyms stands for. You can drive traffic to your website and advertisers pay you a small fee for every 1000 views. Usually the range is $0.05 for 1000 views.

Pay per click is similar to revenue sharing and you can expect to get paid like $0.01 to $0.05 when someone clicks on the ads.

Pay per download is when you entice the visitors to download something for free and you get paid like $1.00 for each download. It can be latest trial games, or latest videos or software in the market.

8.  Membership Site

If you are choosing this path, you can set up your skills online and add value and people will subscribe to you. You will get residual income on a monthly basis and combined with your affiliate skills, this is a good way to make lots of $$.

I am sure there many other ways to make money online but I summarize to the most popular ones today.

Lots of people especially in Malaysia today are searching for the perfect home business where they can control their time and scale up their income. The Internet is here to stay. Every single year, more people are browsing the Internet with cheaper and faster speed.  More people are comfortable spending time online and are more educated on the Internet.

There are over 1 billion Internet users worldwide and this is expected to grow by 20% yearly. Out of the 1 billion Internet users, 60% are consumers who have earning power and out that there are over 70% who actually purchased something online before whether they were shopping for Christmas, buying special top ups online for their games or even paying their bills online.

So with over 420m Internet users out there who are your potential customer, how is your business geared towards targeting them?

Let us take a look at some advantages of Internet Marketing for your home business

•  A
 low
 barrier 
to 
entry
•  Minimal
 start
up 
costs
 and 
risks 
versus
 a 
brick 
and 
mortar 
store
•  Cheap 
 advertising 
options
•  A
 world wide
 marketplace
 24
 hours 
a 
day
•  The 
ability 
to 
be 
your 
own
 boss 
and 
set 
your 
own 
hours
•  The 
chance 
to 
make 
money 
promoting 
things 
you 
are 
passionate 
about
•  And
 the 
opportunity
 to 
make
 a
lot
 of 
cash 
along
 the 
way

Things You Need To Know

1. The Internet is not a get rich scheme model. There are thousands of ebooks and system that are designed to cheat you. Making money online is a process and not a super magical pill that you will swallow and make your debts gone. However, there is a shorter time period (6 months to 1 year) to achieve your financial goals while having a home business on the Internet

2. Most Internet Marketers never made a sale. This is very true because they are using shortcuts to success which will end up burn them more. By reading up on sites like these who are dedicated to help you and coach you, you will have a steady footing on your website, generating traffic and a solid foundation of knowledge, you will soon laughing your way to the bank.

3. If you treat your home business as your time income, you will receive part time $$. This is a common sense and simple logic. The more you study on something, the more better you will equipped.  Do not treat your home business with the Internet as a part time hobby, you will soon give up on it.

4. Websites will be forever online. This is a myth, thousands of Internet companies fail and if you are hosting from a less reputable company, all your work and probably your business online will be wiped out. Always look for the best hosting and domain provider.

5. There is no special software or 1 system on the Internet that knows all. This is complete bullshit and a favourite marketing tool to cheat gullibles everywhere. There is no magic formula to Internet success, there are lots of information out there which you must filter, and having a professional Internet mentor can guide you along the way saving you precious time and $$. Also remember that the Internet is moving very very fast and what works 3 months ago may be obsolete today.

6. Competition is fierce. Yes the playing field is even on the Internet. You can be of any colour, race, religion yet you can be part of the elites making money online. The reason why I call them elites simply because studies show that most people know how to make money online, but only 5% actually implement what they know. And a further 10% of the 5% actually follow through. Confusing? Read that again to digest the figures. Perserverance and implementing what you have learned is a battle half won!

If you are considering a home business using the Internet, by all means learn all you can. This article is not to discourage you but to give you a reality of what you will be expecting and what it takes to be successful. If you would like further information or which to share or ask more questions, I can be reached at

Skype - charlesgregory

If you do not have Skype, please download it at www.skype.com it is amazing what you can do with this nifty little software.