I will retain this blog for the time being and post as needed and deemed pertinent. For information on the company and up to date news please visit us at the new site: Brad Hodges Enterprises.

Did you know that Affiliate Marketing is one of the best and fastest ways to make money on the Internet?

You would be surprised and perhaps shocked to learn that some of the biggest names in the business world use affiliate marketing and affiliates to promote their products and services. Household names like Sears, Dell, QVC, Allstate, Verizon, Yahoo, HP, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Amazon.com, The Home Depot, American Express, Delta Airlines, the Sierra Club and thousands more ALL use affiliate marketing and ALL are willing to pay approved affiliates money in the way of commissions per sale or per lead and for bringing them business.

Affiliate marketing has been going on for decades, long before the Internet, by companies like The Fuller Brush Company, Avon, Amway and Kitchen Craft “Waterless Cooker.”

As you can see from the major companies that have affiliate programs it is here to stay and a lot of money can be made selling other peoples goods and services.

At the beginning of this article notice I said that; “Affiliate Marketing is one of the best and fastest ways to make money on the Internet?” “Best and fastest” however does not equate to “Easy”. Affiliate marketing is by no means a “get rich quick scheme”.

Affiliate Marketing is an art and just like anything worth having or becoming an expert about, you have to work for it as well as learn as much as you possibly can about it in order to be successful.

Make no mistake however, that their are thousands of individuals who have become millionaires by selling affiliate products and using affiliate business websites to accomplish this.

Think about it for a moment. One of the most difficult tasks in becoming self-employed and making a full time living is coming up with a product or service to sell. Unless you have a PhD in computer science or engineering or are a gifted inventor, how many people have the ability to envision, create, manufacture and market a new product from scratch…Exactly…

With affiliate marketing you don’t have to worry about all this because you have thousands and thousands of products to choose from and sell that people want to buy! In addition you can market these products with simple affiliate business websites that are easy to set up and maintain.

The trick, the art and the key however to being successful at affiliate marketing is to learn how to pick the right products to sell that people are able and willing to fork out their hard earned cash for and more importantly how to market the products to these people.

There are hundreds of online “courses” created exactly for learning how to do affiliate marketing efficiently and lucratively. Some are excellent and some are a waste of your hard earned money. A key is to look for courses that help you learn how to set up affiliate business websites, as well as how to market them in order to drive targeted buyers of your affiliate products or services or “traffic” to the websites.

Educating yourself is the first step and I hope to provide an ongoing resource to point you in the right directions to become successful at affiliate marketing.

A good place to start, especially if you are a “newbie” at affiliate marketing is at a web site called Affiliate Business Website at http://AffiliateBusinessWebsite.com

I have found this site to be an excellent place to get an overview of affiliate marketing and to help you determine if it is right for you. The site has dozens of pages and links to help you get started. Even if you have done some affiliate marketing but feel you could learn some more it is a good resource.

All in all affiliate marketing is a great way to earn some part time or supplemental income and once you get your feet wet and learn about the “art” you can progress to making a full time income as a self employed Internet Marketer. Who knows maybe you will become the next affiliate marketing millionaire.

Lauren has for awhile now been the Executive Director of woman’s health for our website at http://MenstrualCrampsHelp.com, but now she has stepped out on her own with her new blog dedicated to woman’s health, beauty and fitness.  Dad even helped set her up with her own Twitter account at http://Twitter.com/laurfaceiam where she Tweets about these subject matters.

I am encouraging Lauren to get her foot solidly in the world of Internet marketing since she has aspirations of starting her own beauty salon in the future.  She enrolled in beauty college this past August and is committed to learning everything about this field over the next 9 months and obtaining her required State of California cosmetology license at the end of her tenure in school.

These days not having a background and experience in Internet Marketing is a handicap so getting her started early is my kick in her butt.  By having her own blog she will learn to communicate her thoughts, experiences and ultimately her business to the world and no doubt increase her future business clients and exposure for the business.

I am proud of my daughter and look forward to her success in this and future endeavors.

You see you do not have to be a Guru to make a decent living on the Internet.  In fact I personally am very weary of the designated Guru’s and their products. Sure I have purchased many of them and many of them are good, worthy products.  But did you ever notice how they are like a pack of hunting dogs in the way they all stick together?  It is always the same group hunting the same game; you and I.

It would be one thing if they stuck to creating new and innovative products on an ongoing basis and offered them at affordable prices, which to be honest, I have noticed prices dropping significantly despite the all too often heard quote of Guru’s that “You can make more money than God in any kind of economy.” They have finally realized they cannot con us into believing this any longer.

What gets me more than anything else is when one so called Guru comes up with a “new” or “rehashed” product you suddenly get the offer from 20 of their cronies and more often than not it is the EXACT same email!  It seems to me that desperate times create desperate Guru’s.

I recently received an offer from one of “The Group.”  Now I usually read the offers because I feel compelled, or maybe I am just an Internet Guru Voyeur, I don’t know, to see what they come up with and how often it is duplicated.  In this offer the unnamed Guru had several “testimonials” on the squeeze page. The amazing part of it is that I happen to know who the support personnel are for this person as well as who some of their cronies are, and they actually had testimonials from these individuals!  Talk about not being objective or for that matter even honest!  Now the average consumer/Internet Guru wannabe, stumbling across this product would have no way of knowing this and therefore would be taking an “inside” testimonial as face value and perhaps relying on it to purchase the product.  Of course how many of any of the testimonials you see are real and true anyway?  If you have been on top of the news recently you will have seen a crack down on the use of phony or illegal testimonials especially in the case of products such as Acai Berry and the use of celebrity names.

I don’t do business like that. Many of these Guru’s are honest, straight forward people. You would recognize many of their names in a flash but come on guys STOP flooding us with the same offers from your buddies over and over. Stick with developing good products at reasonable prices because, as you so often state; “I was once where you are, broke, living in a trailer, living out of my car, going through <name the tragic story here>, and I am now offering my great <name the product here> to you so you can be successful too” if you truly were there and truly were broke and truly are now a millionaire, you would truly price products to help, as you say you want to, and stop pitching everyone Else’s products over and over. It makes you look desperate and makes you look like you have run out of innovative products and ideas (and maybe YOU HAVE).

I prefer to make money quietly in the background as many, many excellent and if they chose to be such, folks who could call themselves Guru’s, are doing and have been doing for years. This term has lost its luster to be sure and it is a rusting, meaningless designation.

American entrepreneurship, ingenuity and success were built by those who can stand on their own with innovation, dignity and integrity.  Let’s now allow the world of Internet Marketing to get the same black eyes as the world of Mortgage’s, Investments, Bad Real Estate and many other once honorable career paths now have.  We need to police ourselves and stop being snake oil sales people in the methods and marketing we use or who knows we may be the NEXT government takeover!

We are especially fond of natural health and women’s health. Personally health has always taken center stage for our family but unfortunately this is not always the case with the average person. Often health is the last rung on the ladder when it should be the first. The reasoning behind this is simple; without good health nothing else matters because without it you cannot possibly enjoy life and live life to the fullest. Poor health will hold you back from everything else you want to accomplish or dream of.

It is important you make health the center of the hub and this includes eating healthy, exercising at a pace that is both comfortable and fits into your lifestyle just as long as you exercise in some form, investigating alternative health products when applicable as opposed to making drugs and other pharmaceuticals the first choice you seek out, and adopting an overall “healthy attitude” that will help you make it a habit rather than an after thought.

Starting a healthy lifestyle can take place no matter how old you are or what stage in life you are at. Make it a decision to start today. As always before you set out to moderately or drastically change your eating and exercising habits consult with your health care provider to be sure you take the right steps and to pace yourself appropriately so as not to make sudden changes that could impact you in a negative manner.

Here is a list of some of our websites and blogs to help you learn more and to educate yourself on the product options you may have:

Alternative Medicine

Anxiety, Stress and Panic Attacks

First Aid

Menstrual Cramps Relief

Natural Breast Enhancement

Skin Care

To your health!

We have various blogs on health related topics that range from Alternative Medicine to Skin Care and I have set up the blogs to update with tweets whenever a new post is made. This allows those who follow us to see the mini headline topics of the blog post and they can then in turn, choose to click the links and view the entire post.

For our Article Directory Twitter account it is much more focused. Each day a new tweet is posted directly in Twitter providing a tip or product recommendation that only pertains to Article Marketing, Writing and Publishing. In addition we have a blog that is solely dedicated to providing updates, tips and articles that can help our authors or anyone else interested in article writing and any new posts on the blog are sent in a mini post directly to Twitter.

By structuring our communication in the above manner we feel we can best serve our customers and keep them well informed about our products and services.

Twitter has become a quite a “gadget” phenomenon on the Internet but if used properly and not abused,  it is an effective way for an individual to “enhance” their communication channels rather than be a sole means of communication, which it would not be effective for, in my opinion.

I have not had much time lately to post on our blog as you can see! We have been focusing all our attention lately on our new article directory at http://ArticleStorehouse.com!

It is not easy launching a new site then doing all the things one needs to do to generate traffic to it but we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, at least as far as getting all the pieces in place.

In addition there are a number of new sites and projects that are on the boards and getting backed up but we are steely eye focused to get it all done so stay tuned as things unfold.

In addition if Leslie Wine Reviewer has a blog on quality wine and wineries and is searching for a quality article on wineries in The Livermore Valley Wine Country for her weekly blog post, and she goes to her favorite article publishing website and does a search for this topic, up pops your article, which she promptly publishes on her blog giving you and your wonderful winery more massive exposure when her blog post goes out to the thousands of wine lovers that subscribe to it and they see all the information on your winery; including the physical address, your website address, phone number, etc. in the credit section of the article and immediately plan to visit you this very weekend! Get the picture?

Article writing is king when it comes to getting your word out and the search engines love quality content.  In addition if you are searching for quality content for your own blog or website you will find that content for virtually any subject or topic you can think of on the article sites and the only cavaet is that you give credit to the author of the article by including an “Author Resource Box” which is usually provided by the author.

We know how important this is at Brad Hodges Enterprises, trust me. We are also aware of how important it is that you find a top quality article publishing and distribution website that provides carefully screened prime article content because anyone can throw up a website and a few well circulated articles and call it an article publishing site.

With all this in mind we have just launched our own such quality article site at: http://ArticleStorehouse.com. If you are a writer we are looking to publish your quality articles on hundreds of topics from Arts to Writing and everything in between. If you are seeking quality content for your blog or website on a vast array of topics we have that!  Please visit our site and check it out!

Who couldn’t use or want to take a tropical vacation? Even with our economy still in shambles we all need a break and last time I looked vacations remain a major part of life.

This new web site puts it all together. The site includes an online store catered to everything travel to a page solely dedicated to travel destination videos. The HIGHLIGHT however is our travel comparison page where you can view firsthand (complete with beautiful photographs) the unbelievable luxury travel discounts available through our travel membership. You can also view a free video detailing everything you would want to know about this incredible membership. Just complete the short (very) form on the Travel Comparison page for protected access.

Now go work on your tan!

Writing has always been a passion as well as a business for me so while it is not exactly new, it was with great pride that we completely gave a face-lift to a blog that has been around for about a year called Best Writing Sources. It is completely dedicated to writers and writing and is one of my pet project web sites. Check it out if you are into anything writing at www.BestWritingSources.com.

Software is the backroom machinery to any Internet endeavor. For a long time I have searched for a way to bring all the best software on the Internet into one glorious location so one does not have to seek out via the search engines for all the various products to meet their needs. Through a collaboration of luck, timing and finally finding someone who understand that simplicity and ease are king, we released our new software site called My Web Biz Software at www.MyWebBizSoftware.com and it is an Internet Marketers dream and a veritable Disneyland for software technophiles. You will find any software you can imagine to start, maintain or enhance your Internet business or presence.

Well that’s a quick update for February. Now it’s onto another month and more projects. Please check out our most recent additions and let us know what you think by posting a comment here.

Cheers,

Brad Hodges