It is endless let me tell you.  There are so many programs, money making schemes, social networking sites it boggles your mind.

In my affiliate marketing pursuit I validated the Six Degrees of Separation theory a number of times.  It did not always result in my selling something but the progression of links pretty well came out at six from the time I placed my first query for someone or something I wanted to pusue to arriving at my cyber space destination.  It’s uncanny.

Example:  I had sold an item from my Ebay store to an individual in Australia.  It happened to be some very nice Royal Doulton fine china pieces that she needed some replacement pieces for her china set she got at her wedding.   Later I found I had some more of the pieces she was looking for but when I tried to find her information, somehow it was lost.  I could not find it in my Ebay records.

The interesting thing was, I had also sold Royal Doulton stuff (different pattern) to two other people in Australia.  Royal Doulton apparently did well over there in the 90’s. 

Anyway I contacted  one of those other two individuals and asked if there was anyway they might be able to track down the person I had lost contact with.  I supplied that person the name of the second person so I had already provided link number 2.  They then put out the word to people they knew that might possibly have some information.

It took less then a week and if I understand them it took about 4 more links to make the connection.  I was able to re-establish contact with my lost customer and we made another deal.  She was delighted and I was able to land another sale.

Affiliate marketing, although I know it can be lucrative,  has not worked out well for me.

I am now pursuing a whole other avenue for improving my financial condition using the internet as a means of connecting with people.  And whatya know, a progression of six links seems to be how far it is from query to quest.   This new pursuit is strickly by Private Invitation only and that seems to be the key to connecting with an interested individual.

I place an invitation to someone I have been introduced to or already know and it flows from there.  As been my experience it usally takes a progression of around six invitations to connect with someone who wants to join my endeavor.

Could it be there is really only Six Degrees of Separation between almost any of us on earth?

Anyone can build a ning site.  It is similar to a blog but different because you can add a whole slew of stuff.  Like forums, groups. blogs, advertising, members etc.

Just for kicks and the experience I built one of my own the other day: http://someoneneedsit.ning.com/

You can design your own front page with a variety of themes that are available or you can design your own.

Usually there is a theme to a ning, like some sort of marketing group, or a group of people with a common interest.

Of course like everything else on the net, if you are not skilled at promoting your ning as with your blog then no-one ever finds you and the whole thing goes un-noticed, as with the particular blog you are presently on.

Oops, that sounded like sour grapes didn’t it.  I shouldn’t complain since I have pretty well ignored this particular blog for awhile.  I just felt like writing something today and decided it was time I visited the Six Degree theory. 

I don’t have anything new to report in regards to six degrees of separation, I am just out there starting new connection probes and tracking how many links it takes to meet that someone you were targeting.

In this process I have bumped into some interesting on line money making opportunities and have also re-activated and re-freshed an old web site of mine.

First degree:  Acquired a tutuorial on how to establish Automated Traffic Hubs.

Second degree:  Made contact with a tutorial rep. for more instruction on setting up and ATH.

Third degree:  Acquired a new domain name for the ATH.

Fourth degree:  Chose an affiliate product that fit some specific criteria.

Fifth degree:  Built the ATH by wrapping the ATH blog around the affiliate’s sales page and blog went live.

Sixth degree: First sale.

Ok so maybe I force fed the 6 degrees a little bit, but the theory tends to fit.  The theory being:  ”You are only approximately 6 contacts or events away from your first action to achieve an intended result”. 

It has been proven over and over again the number of persons or events in the process from start to finish tends to be six.  Following is some of my original research on the subject:

In the 1950’s an MIT guy and an IBM guy tried to prove the theory mathematically.   20 years later they still had not proven it.

Then in 1967 a socialogist named Stanley Milgram came up with a way to test the concept.  He called the test “The Small-World Problem”.

He selected, at random, some people in the midwestern United States.  They were to send a package to a stranger.   The only thing they were to know about their target was: his/her name, occupation and general location in the USA.

The instructions to the senders was to send the package to a person they knew and who they thought would be most likely to know the target personally.   That person would do the same and so on down the line until the package was received by the original target person.

The people participating expected it would take hundreds of people in the chain to get the package to the target.

As it turned out it only took an average of 5 to 7 chain links to get it done.  This is when the phrase “Six Degrees of Separation” was coined.

After that there were plays, movies, and games and even websites on the subject.  One of the 10 best websites of 1996 was “The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia”.

There is a whole Hollywood California story about the actor Kevin Bacon on how everyone in Hollywood is only 5 persons separated from Kevin.

The research continues to this day.  In 2001 a Columbia University professor, Duncan Watts, did a huge email test of the theory.   He collected data on 48,000 senders and 19 targets in 157 countries.  Average number of links?  You guessed it, SIX, 6, VI.

My first blog http://normsgreenforce.com is still up and running and it deals with the idea of DIY Green Home Energy projects.

This new one http://normsgreenenergy.com is an ATH built around a project that can basically create free power for your home.  I have just started to build one of these magnetic generators myself.   I think it will be fun but I must admit it appears a little more complicated than what the promotions indicate but it is a great idea.

The success of the ATH in regards to affiliate sales remains to be seen but there are definately encouraging signs.  I am tracking traffic with Google Analytics and there is a steep trend for the past week.  Currently I have made one sale.

I guess I should track that sale in regards to my Six Degrees Of Separation theory.   I will have to retrace the events from the start of my ATH to the sale, but I am running short of time today so I will do that at a later date.

As I said I am short on time today so I will close this post with just the short comments I’ve already made.

Don’t you wish there really was an introductory course to Affiliate Marketing. 

There sure are a lot of folks out there with the “Secret” to Affiliate Marketing.  I just love that sales method, how could something be a “Secret” if it’s put out there on the internet where there are literally “millions” of viewers.  Of course if was put on my blog, it will probably remain a secret for a long time, ha ha.

Once you start looking at the Affiliate Marketing plans, however, you discover they are all about the same.  Find a good Clickbank product, generate a good sales page, use PPC or SEO to get traffic to your sales/landing page.  Cloak your hop link so people won’t know your are an affiliate marketer. 

Apparently you will get a negative response if your potential customer finds out you are just marketing someone elses product.  Hmmmmm, I wonder why that would be?   If someone is intereted in a product, why would they care whether you are the author/developer or just a distributer?

Most products in the world are actually sold by distributers as opposed to the actual manufacturers of the product.  It is actually an efficient way for the manufacturers to market their products.

A network of distributers can cover a much larger customer base than what a manufacturer can afford to reach.

Of course if you are the customer I suppose there is the belief you can purchase the product directly from the manufacturer for less than what a distributer will charge.  Seems logical doesn’t it?   Truth be told a good deal of the time the manufacturer’s price will be equal to or higher than the distributer’s price.  Economy of scale, I believe this is called.

The manufacturer’s direct sales volume is lower than his wholesale volume and hence he feels he must charge a higher price to compensate for the lower volume or it isn’t worth even offering direct sales.

Well I have gotten off my original Affiliate Marketing subject.  Sometimes I do that just to excersize my brain a little.

Anyway I ran across an Affiliate Marketing method that I think has potential.  Not that it is different in regards to the basics.  Find a product, develop a sales page, get traffic to the page, make sales etc.

The difference is the method for developing a sales page and then getting traffic to that page.  It’s called Automated Traffic Hubs and it a product of a fella named Bill McRea and is called Marketing On The Fringe.

The basics of this idea is to, of course, find a good clickbank or commission junction product.  Then build a wordpress blog and use the affiliate product’s sales page as the home page of your blog.

Of course you need to check out the sales pages of the affiliate products to find ones that look good, that makes a good sales pitch for the product, has good graphics or videos etc etc.

Next thing is to find an automated article writing source and give them the concept of your product and they will write articles with related content and post them on your blog.

There are some other tags, backlinks and pings things to do but all that is fairly easily accomplished.

Once you have the blog live on line it will automatically build a series of content articles that will produce the backlinks, pings and all that other stuff  necessary to get you ranked on google.  Hopefully with good page rank and a good product you will get the traffic required to make sales.

There is a bunch of other social media stuff that Marketing On The Fringe offers but I will talk about that in a later post, this one is getting a little long.

Till tomorrow or after.

Norm

 As an on line marketer the only “good” way to have, might we say, a captive audience to which you can market your goods, is to have their name and email address and their permission to allow you to send emails to them.

The email list has to be large to huge because the same old traffic principles apply whether you are a store front where traffic passes by your store or you are passing your “store” so to speak by your traffic.

Whether it is the 80/20 rule or the 95/5 rule or “they’ve got to see it 7 times” rule it doesn’t matter, traffic is the key.

Seems kind of cold and far from a relationship but it is the cold hard facts.

Of course once you have converted a piece of traffic to a prospect and then to a customer and ultimately to a client, you can then build a relationship.  But first you have to keep them on your list, try to keep them from eventually opting out, as it were.

I have been slowly building lists using giveaway events in a variety of different product niches, so I have, I believe, 8 separate lists.  Each of the 8 lists has at least one follow up message that goes out after a prospect opts in.  Some have multiple follow up messages.

I didn’t pick up on any particular patterns in regards to opt outs with my regular follow up messages.

After my total list count got above 200 I then sent out some broadcast messages about some additional opportunities I thought the prospects might be interested in like a new giveaway or other free stuff.

This is when I noticed a definite pattern with opt outs.  It seems when they receive a message they are reminded that they are on someone’s email list and guess what?  The new message gives them the opportunity to opt out. 

I notice most of my opt outs are either the same day or the day after they have received a  new message.  Further it seems more prevalent when they receive a broadcast message then just the regular follow ups.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone in this business but I just noticed it and thought I would write about the phenom.

I’m not sure if this can be controlled but I am searching articles for ideas on how to make it better.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas I would appreciate your input.

As I stated in my first post, Alex Jeffreys’s Marketing With Alex mentoring program was basically my first link to my latest attempt at internet marketing.   2nd Degree.   Me being 1st degree of separation hence my first link becomes the 2nd degree.

Even though I had made earlier attempts to break into  internet marketing and actually had developed that second degree  there did not seem to be common purpose with those programs  so I never made it to the third degree.

Maybe it was the program but most likely it was my own lack of knowledge of how to implement.  How to plan and set goals, objectives and strategies to forward toward those goals.

 The biggest shortfall was “not” developing an email list. 

Then came Alex and it became clear that Alex’s purpose and my purpose tended to line up.  One of the entrical parts of the six degree theory is linking with someone of common purpose.  Someone who knows where you want your efforts to end up and not someone who is just trying to sell you something.

If you were trying to ship a package from point A to point B and you only knew that point B was somewhere in Australia let’s say.  It wouldn’t do any good to give the package to the US Post Office or UPS or Fedex.  They are in the shipping business to make money not to try to figure out where the package destination is.   You would need to give the package to someone who had a common purpose to reach someone at point B.

Then your 1st link will look for someone with a  common purpose which connects to the 2nd link and so on and so on.

The third degree or link in my chain became the process of building an email marketing list.  Alex introduced me to a couple of successful ways to build a list, “blogging” and “giveaways”. 

Blogging provides a platform to connect with other people who may have a common interest in what you are doing.  Someone who may know someone or someway to connect to another link moving you toward a viable on line business niche.  So your forth degree (link) could very well come from your blog.

Giveaways on the other hand provide you with a direct platform to build your a list.  When you give away a product you are actually selling the product for someones name and email.  People in your list  may also have common interest in what you are doing because they are interested in the product your have gifted in the giveaway which will usually be ebooks and reports on marketing.  

This obviously is not always the case because there is a lot of information products that have nothing to do with marketing that people are interested in obtaining.   I have had some pretty good response (opt ins) to this type of gift.

Anyway you develop it the list becomes your forth degree even though the list may come from different sources.  The list becomes the hub of people that will eventually provide prospects, customers and clients.

Prospects being the fifth degree and of course customers and clients being the objective of your business or the sixth degree.

I developed a few prospects from my meager list but none of them appeared interested in anything but the free stuff I was giving away.  Except for one person who contacted me for an entirely different reason. 

This person was interested in a product that I did not have to give or sell.  He/she was basically just seeking information, but the sharing of ideas eventually became a business relationship of sorts. 

A related niche market has been the outfall of this relationship.  Yet to know if it will produce any substantial income but the results so far show promise.

My sixth degree was originally targeted as my first customer.  I have since changed that target to “A viable on line business”.  

Broadening your goals and objectives I believe makes sense.  For example it would be better to have a “Fasteners” business as opposed to just a “Zipper” or “Snaps” or “‘Safety Pin” business.

Let’s hope the momentum sustains itself.

Guess what: “You learned everything you need to know about networking in kindergarten.

Be friendly, critical to gaining someones attention.

Share, give something that the other person needs or wants.

Say Please and Thank You, when you ask for something say “please” and when someone gives you something say “thank you”.

Take Turns, don’t hog the conversation, listen more than you speak, take turns listening and speaking.

Explore What You Don’t Know, drink in information from others that you didn’t know, be excited about learning new things.

Do Your Homework, know your product or information that you are going to share.  Know your audience, what are they interested in, what do they want or need.

K I S S

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JT used giveaways as his primary list building tool when he was getting started.  As I understand it he used them because you can get something started in a very short time period and the expense is minimal compared to the return.

JT even went so far as to write his first ebook on this particular subject.  JV Giveaways Unleased.   You can get it for free.  By the way if you haven’t already run across him in the forums he is one of Alex’s students from the first group.

I am finding that with a little organization you can put together a giveaway fairly quickly and it is very easy to join Giveaway Events.

JT’s book gives you access to a list of Giveaway Events, ones that are already inprogress that you can still join and then new ones coming up.