However, I would like you to be aware that owning your own website has its own set of costs and responsibilities.

Here’s a list of just some of the stuff you have to think about as a website owner:

1. hosting
2. graphics
3. advertising
4. paying commissions
5. customer support
6. programming
7. and plenty more

And after all of that, you might not even be making a profit! If you pay attention, you may notice that for every site with thousands or tens of thousands of members, you will find hundreds of sites with little to no members – and I’d guess most are operating at a loss.

And it is for these reasons, that I am a big big fan of affiliate marketing.

The affiliate commissions I earn each year are actually very competitive with the amount of money I earn at some of my websites!

So while having your own website may seem prestigious and definitely a cool experience, if your main concern is making an income and some healthy profits, there is absolutely nothing wrong or disadvantageous about promoting other peoples’ products as an affiliate.

In fact, it can be just as profitable (if not more), than owning your own website.

In fact, I make an effort to brand my websites and myself.

But just why is it so effective at making you money?

Branding means that people know who you are when they see it. And that is 90% of advertising! You WANT people to stop and look when you have something to say.

Building a brand means the spotlight is always on you whenever you show up to the party. It doesn’t matter what you tell people if no one is paying attention! One of my first websites, Elite Safelist, is advertised all over the place. I even see it when I’m doing work on other websites sometimes. If you’re new to internet marketing, you may ignore those ads at first. But when people see it every day or every week without fail, they inevitably start to pay attention to it.

Once people begin to pay attention, your voice begins to be heard… and THAT is your opportunity to turn your brand into something special.

“How do I turn my voice into a powerful message?”

Easy! Offer people something unique and tell them what you can honestly provide them, if they subscribe to your mailing list and pay attention to you.

Some examples:

• “I’m an experienced marketer who has accomplished ______ using ________. Join my list and uncover my secrets!”
• “I’ve been joining and reviewing all the hottest new websites. Save yourself the time and money, and let me reveal the sites that are designed to make you money, versus the sites designed to TAKE your money!”
• “I’m an average ______ (ex. mom, dad, student, construction worker, office lackey, etc) who discovered how to make some extra cash online in my spare time …. from the comfort of my own home! If that sounds interesting to you, I invite you to claim my free profit-making newsletter.”

Take some time, get creative, and market yourself or your business as something special!

What can you offer that is unique? Have questions or need feedback? Got a cool or interesting success story? Leave a comment below and lets brainstorm!

And it seems like marketers all over are already seeing their websites drop significantly in the rankings. There’s already large and growing threads in many of the popular marketing forums where folks are sharing how far their website rankings have fell!

I just thought I would take this opportunity to show you yet another reason why I believe so strongly in building your own subscriber list.

This protects your business from being at the mercy of the search engines. So whether you are using SEO, safelist, traffic exchanges, paid advertising, or any other type of traffic generation method, please don’t put all that work to waste!

You never know when that website you’re promoting might go out of business, making your affiliate links pointless. You never know when an owner might just stop paying out commissions (has happened to me a few times and lots of other marketers!). And you never know when your top ranking website might suddenly stop receiving any traffic at all.

Build a customer list that you can bring with you wherever your business takes you.

For building a subscriber list, I like Aweber.

If you need some tools to start you on the way to building your own mailing list, try out my very cool list building and traffic system, List Recon.

Have you been affected by this change or know someone who has? Have a story or comment you want to share? We would love to hear from you!

I consider this to be a very significant milestone in the safelist world, and I certainly couldn’t have done it without your continued support. So really, I just want to say thank you to all of you for helping to make Elite Safelist one of the top safelists online for the last few years.

As always, I will do what I can to keep the results stellar so you can superior, free advertising at one of the best free safelists around.

I’ll have a cool post coming to you soon about what it takes to succeed with your own business (whether it’s online or off), but for now I just wanted to share this news with ya!

If you’re not a member yet, just check out the sidebar (yes I’m that lazy today!) and you will find a link to join Elite Safelist and my other sites as well.

Editor’s Note: So I actually meant to post this about 3 days ago… BUT of course the next day the active members number dropped below 10,000! So if that happens to happen again… we already hit 10,000 active members twice, so I’m going to commemorate it regardless!

And say this may be one of the most powerful articles you will ever read about online business.

Haha ok I take that back, but honestly this IS a powerful secret that I will reveal with you today. Do this, and you will experience greater success in your business.

At the time I write this, I have a mailing list of about 15,000 people and 300 followers on IM Faceplate. I’m not saying this to show off, but I want you to know that I speak from experience. And YOU can easily do the same or better if you follow the secrets I’m about to share with you.

I have to warn you though, if you’re looking for the answer for fast cash, you won’t find it here.

What you’re going to discover is the secret to BIGGEER, LONG LASTING cash. It won’t happen overnight, but once you have this, the money comes often and with ease.

This is what you’ve been waiting for…

You Must Build TRUST!

When you’ve established yourself as being trustworthy, people will begin to follow you wherever you go.

“Easier said than done Solomon!”

I promise it’s not as hard as it seems! =)

So how do you build a reputation and instill trust?

For beginners, the easiest way is to build your brand. This is what I did to get started online. I put my name and face everywhere I advertise.

For those of you who have the brand established, now it’s time to respect the people who recognize your brand. That means being an honest seller and taking care of your customers.

This could get very long, so let me keep it short, sweet, and simple:

* Build your brand – Put your name and picture on everything you’re associated with. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, create an Identity that you want to be known as. (Ex. Mr. Money Bags, except something less corny than my example!)

* Be yourself – Just be comfortable with who you are. While professionalism is important, you also want people to feel like you are a real person just like them. Can you kind of feel my personality through this article? Be yourself, and people will feel more connected to you as well.

* Be Consistent – This one is kind of weird, but it’s true. You want people to see you often, because it shows you’ll be around for the long term and won’t randomly disappear. For example, you can regularly in contact with your mailing lists and be active in IM Faceplate often.

* Be Honest – Of course part of trust is being honest! I can’t think of a great example here, but one thing I personally do is I don’t promote products unless I believe it can help you.

* Give Away The Goods – Educate people with solid information. It doesn’t mean you have to reveal all of your secrets for free, but share valuable information and show people that you can help them. Part of building trust is people want to know you can lead them somewhere great. Then be amazed as people anxiously await to hear what you’re doing next!

A big reason why I have 300 followers on IM Faceplate is because many perceive me to be someone you can trust to deliver real secrets about making money online.

You want people to “follow you” on IM Faceplate because they want to hear what you have to say… NOT because they’re hoping you will follow them back so they can spam you with affiliate links!

Try the steps above, beginning with building your brand first. And soon you’ll have hundreds or even thousands of people following you on IM Faceplate and everywhere you go!

What I’ve shared with you is some general, powerful rules to personal branding. You can read my personal story and INDEPTH tricks on how you can establish your brand today in my free report, Zero To IM Hero: Zero To IM Hero.

Check out Zero To IM Hero below:

Click Here Now To Join Zero To IM Hero

The reason I bring this up is because thousands of people have already created faceplates at the hot new social networking site for Internet Marketers called IM Faceplate…

=> Get Your FREE IM Faceplate Account here

That’s very powerful because these are basically ALL internet marketers that you can potentially be reaching out to.

Here’s some easy tips on how to profit from IM Faceplate:

* When you get lots of followers, your faceplate starts getting shown on the homepage, giving you free branding power and more sales power! Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to get some followers right now…

* following others sometimes results in them returning the favor and following you back!

* add your own articles – which can promote your affiliate links and websites… PLUS if people find your article helpful, they’ll be more likely to follow you!

* take advantage of the discussion and groups sections (it should open soon) to meet more people, brand yourself, and build credibility

* Update your “shout” area regularly – people visiting your page will see it, and all of your followers and will see it in their news feed. You can do stuff like linking to your favorite sites

* Adding new content on your Faceplate also alerts your followers about your new content

* and of course clickbank ads automatically rotate on your Faceplate, giving you even more chances to make sales

=> Create Your Faceplate Here

As you can tell, the possibilities are practically endless, but to me the most important thing is that IM Faceplate is targeted towards internet marketers.

That makes almost every member a potential lead, customer, partner, or even a new friend you can relate to.

So yea, I hope this helps you out. Thousands of your follow Internet Marketers have already joined IM Faceplate, but now you’ve got a major edge over many of them once you join =)

Check out IM Faceplate below:

Click Here Now To Join IM Faceplate

• Facebook has just added a feature where you can get your own username now. You should grab what you want now before it’s gone! Add me while you’re there too =) I’m listed at  http://www.facebook.com/solomonhuey

• I’m finding it more and more true that social networking is an incredibly powerful medium to grow your business online. And I swear I’m not just saying that because Social Bookmarking Exposed was released lately, haha.

• Blogging and tracking expert Mike Paetzold just relaunched an updated version of his ebook, Tracking Your Way To Profits. It’s free so I really hope you check it out, and of course it’s got a rockin one time offer when you first join. Get your free copy here.

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Main Article

In the past, I’ve signed up for programs where they literally make you jump through hoops and look through dozens of pages just to find some TINY footnote in the weirdest places in order to figure out how to cancel a subscription.

In some cases, I’ve even had to look through those large “Terms and Conditions” documents just to find out where to cancel a subscription.

Of course they say it’s easy to cancel when they want your money though.

I don’t really like to complain, so why am I bringing this up?

Well it’s because I’ve gotta give HUGE props to Mike Filsaime.

I bought his LaunchTree product last month and I went to cancel some of the monthly subscription stuff I got for free along with it. The cancellation process is so easy, that it makes me willing to buy his products with 100% confidence.

I also had a similar experience when I bought stuff from Stompernet too.

And I’ve gotta say, this is refreshing! It is very nice to know that there are companies/businesses out there that you can trust.

Can you guess where I’ll be spending my money in the future?

People really do value honesty, and it pays off huge when you have tens of thousands of customers who know they can trust you.

The lesson here isn’t to buy from me or Mike Filsaime (although you can certainly buy from me all you want!), but rather to follow his lead and understand that things like honesty and integrity pay off huge for you in the long term.

Nothing complicated for you today, just do these steps:

1) Run your business with integrity and honesty

2) Support the people and businesses that you know you can trust.

Have you had any good or bad experiences when making purchases online? How has that affected your purchasing decisions?

• Have you read a book lately? A couple of my personal faves are “Think and Grow Rich” and “How To Win Friends & Influence People”

• List Joe has been adding a lot of new features lately. I like what I’ve been seeing.

• Seems a particular traffic exchange hasn’t been paying out commissions lately. You can read it all here.

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Main Article

I actually think I’ve talked about this before, but I think this is one of those “magic” keys to success. So even if I did tell you about it before, I’m telling you again…

If you want to be successful, follow the people that are already there!

Making money online isn’t as hard as it seems.

All you truly need to do is find someone successful, latch onto them, and listen to everything they say.

Sometimes they might say something that you aren’t sure about. Maybe you think it just sounds flat out dumb and it can’t possibly work.

But if they are succeeding where you aren’t, then it’s important for you to listen.

Would it make sense to listen to me about weight lifting advice? Or does it make more sense to listen to a body builder?

Same goes for business!

I wanted to make money online.

When I wasn’t making money online, I listened to the people making money and I started to too. When I was just making a little bit, I found people who made a lot more money than me, and I started making more too!

It really isn’t rocket science, and that’s the real beauty of the Internet. You really don’t have to be some genius or go to school for years, yet you can make an income and live a lifestyle that other people dream of.

YOU could wake up with payment notifications sitting in your email accounts.

YOU can make money every time you send out an email to your list.

YOU can set your own schedule, determine your own income, and live the lifestyle that you desire!

All you really have to do is…

1) Find the marketers that you like, trust, and are making money.

2) Follow their advice. So if you like me, you might wanna to follow my advice. If you aren’t too fond of me, then I have no idea why you’re reading this! (haha just kidding!)

3) Looking for more advice? I recommend you start at Affiliate Funnel and attend their weekly online conferences. It’s FREE and you get advice from real marketing experts. It’s the same guys I listen to. Join Affiliate Funnel here.

But there IS an aspect that a lot of marketers use, but never talk about. So I’m going to reveal it to you here today (even though the title kind of gives it away).

The power of creativity and uniqueness.

Part of what I’ve been doing to really set myself apart is trying to be creative with older concepts and setting myself apart as unique.

The big catch is that when you hear the words “creative” or “unique”, it’s natural to think you have to make some revolutionary change. But that’s not really true!

For example, some ways that you can be creative is by taking an established concept and putting a creative spin on it. For example, List Joe is really nothing more than a viral list builder.

=>Click Here to Join List Joe

It’s a great program, but there’s really nothing incredible there that you can’t find somewhere else.

But if you go to their website, you’ll see exactly what I mean about using creativity to make themselves stand out.

They talk about how you can build your downlines in 19 other list builder sites just by joining List Joe. I hate to break it to you, but that’s just a downline builder! I’m a member of hundreds of sites and I’d imagine 30-50% of them have a downline builder too. Nothing really unique there, but they used creativity to make their system sound unique!

Or you don’t have to even be creative at all. You can just be unique by doing normal things exceptionally well.

You could offer top notch quality service to your customers. You can make sure to deliver the highest quality content. You can establish yourself as an expert in your field.

At my website EliteSafelist, I can’t say there’s anything particularly amazing about it compared to other credit based safelists. Above all, I decided to make it unique by making sure it gives members high converting traffic.

Jon Olson and Paul Kinder pride themselves on incredible customer service. As a customer before I knew them personally, I have to say they have some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced anywhere. That sure stood out to me.

And finally, if you’re one of those people that DOES have the ability to be really creative (unlike me) and invent new systems, then you’re one of the lucky ones.

For example, Darren Olander just launched his new website, List Surfing. He managed to create a website the effectively (effective being the keyword) combines a traffic exchange and viral list builder into one system. It’s a great site, and you should join it to see what I mean.

=> Click Here to Join List Surfing

Setting yourself up as creative or unique sounds like a tough thing to do, but as you can see you don’t have to do something no one has done before.

I know I went through a lot today, so I recommend reading this over again when you have time. And of course, follow these steps below for some quick results:

Step 1) First, look at how others are implementing these concepts into their businesses. I recommend reading the salespages and joining these programs:

• List Surfing
• List Joe
• EliteSafelist

Step 2) Think about what you’re good at or like doing.

Step 3) Brainstorm! Think of some ways that you can use those to your advantage and create a unique image for yourself. Even if it sounds dumb, write it down and maybe you can refine the idea later.

Step 4) This may take some time. If nothing comes to you at first, just keep revisiting this every so often and let it lurk in the back of your mind. Something will come to you eventually!

That’s it! While you’re here, leave a comment and let me know what you’re thinking!