Twiends : Great Tool to increase your Social Media friends/followers

In Internet Marketing (IM), one of the most critical element that determines the success of your venture is targeted traffics. There are many ways (paid or free) to attract target traffics, of course, one of the effective way that comes to your mind is through Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc...

However, in order to gain any success via the Social Media avenue, you need to have enough friends/fans/followers (whatever you called it). Recently, I chanced upon a marvellous tool called Twiends (don't be mislead by the name and it's logo, it's not only for twitter!) which will drastically increase your followers into multi-folds.

First, this tool it FREE to join. Secondly, this tool is very inuitive, simple and fun to use.

So, how does it works? Just follow the 6 simple steps below:
1. Register your Account and tag your Facebook and/or Twitter account to your ID (or you can log-in directly through your Twitter Account). You will get x number of seeds upon successful registration.
2. Select the country you are coming from.
3. Indicate up to 5 categories of your interests (e.g. Internet Marketing, Self Development etc...)
4. Next, it's action time, you can choose to view the random list of users from Facebook, Twitter or Youtube channel
5. Select whether you want the list to be filtered by country (i.e. from same country as you) OR with the same interest(s). [System will always display another separate random list for your consideration]
6. Every time when you follow/befriend a user, you will gain the indicated number of seeds. Of course, the reverse is true too i.e. whenever somebody follow/befriend you, your seeds will be reduced accordingly.
P/S: If you want to get more friends/followers within a shorter time, there is an option for you to buy "one-off purchase" or "monthly subscription package" to ensure that you have enough supplier of seeds for others to follow/befriend you!

Thats' it, from then on, just repeat steps 4 to 6 until you are happy with your friends/followers list.


Attached is the main screen of Twiends, click on the image below to explore further on this fantastic tool:

I hope you will find this tool is of help and do feel free to drop me a line or two in the comment on your review.

Cheers!

How to find your IM Niche Market?

For IM (Internet Marketing) beginners, the first step is usually to find a niche market that you are interested to spend effort, time and money (if necessary) with, as IM is not a get rich quick program that many newbies/beginners thought it is! It requires lots of learning and effort in testing your approach until you get it right! Also, it takes a while for it to show the result. So, never GIVE UP easily!

Thus, you need to find a niche market that you are prepared to spend a fair bit (in fact, a lot) of time with. However, many IM beginners find it difficult to find a niche market to focus on (or unable to make up their mind because there are simply too many choices available).

To me, there are simply 2 key elements to focus on when come to deciding the niche market for the beginners.

1) Never choose the niche that is too popular at the moment:
a. For popular niche (like weight loss, health niche in USA at the moment), it is too competitive for the beginners to get anything out of it now.
b. The demand could be diluted by the time the IM beginners get their IM site/blog ready to face the market.

2) Choose the niche of your interest/hobby:
a. Always choose your niche from within (i.e. what do you like to do as hobby? What is your knowledge, experiences so far that you are able to contribute immediately? etc...)
b. If you have many hobbies/interests to choose from, make a decision to start your IM venture with one or two niche first. Once you have gotten yourself started and get the momentum going, you can expand your reach with other niches as well. Remember, for IM, there is no limit to the number of niche (sites/blogs) that you can create to earn money. In fact, the more diversification you get, your potential streams of income will increase. So, sky is the limit!

All the best to your IM venture.

Cheers!

P/S: Father's Day is around the corner, don't forget this important day amidst your IM venture! ;-P

Can You Still Earn Money Online? If Yes, How?

If you are new to the Internet Marketing (IM), I am sure you are as skeptical as I am when I was first introduced to IM world a few months ago through a FREE eBook by Mr Alvin Phang (which focusing on earning money through blogging). After a couple of months of reading and online/offline research, to my surprise, the IM potential is actually growing rapidly at unstoppable pace, especially with the mobile marketing coming into play more prominently now!

So, my resounding answer is YES YES YES! You can still make money online! I am sure most of the Internet Marketers will agree with me! Please take note that I said "earn" and not "make" as IM is NOT a Get Rich Quick program which many of you might already been "brainwashed" to believe it as such. In fact, you need to put in efforts and time (lots of it if you are the beginners) to learn and re-learn and most importantly, TAKE ACTION. Knowledge is KING as far as IM is concerned.

Noticed that I did not mentioned that you need to pay or invest any cold hard cash to get started? To me, it is NOT a necessity but if you have deep pocket and don't mind spending some money for the info-products, seminars, workshops etc... You definitely are welcome to do so. Having said that, do take note that it does not guarantee your success in IM by just spending the bucks! ;-P

In fact, there are much more ways to make money online now then before. Every now and then, there will be new innovative and creative program/scheme popping-up to entice the webmaster or blogger alike to join them as affiliates/publishers. Thus, it's much easier to get into the IM bandwagon now than before!

Of course, with all the IM jargon like PPC, PPV, CPM, SEO etc... (refer to "IM Glossary" page for their explanation), it does scare off many of the IM newbies. Hence, I am trying my very best to cut-through all the jargons and confusing schemes/programs and present to the readers a simple to read IM Table called "IM Foundation Matrix", which explain the typical IM models that you can use to earn money online, in plain English.

                                     IM Foundation Matrix                                       
Model 1: MARKET OWN PRODUCT/SERVICES                                                        
Brief Description:
1. creating your own products/services and market it online or offline. Typical products/services are : info-products like eBook, conduct seminar or webinar, article writing or web-hosting services etc..
2. if you are an IM newbie, this might not be a right place to start your IM venture.

Model 2 : ADVERTISING                                                                                            
Brief Description:
1. Placing of the selected advertisement on your website/blog/email content and earn money when visitors click (PPC) or view(PPV) or act(PPA) on the advertisement links.
2. This is the easiest method for the IM beginners to get started.
3. Type Of Advertising programs:
a. Placement of visual advertisement like banners, text with links etc...
b. In-Text Advertisement : less intrusive advertisement whereby selected words/phrase of the content of the website/blogs are being converted into advertisement links. When reader move the mouse over to these links, the advertisement pop-up! Another  innovative variation of such advertisement is from ExitJunction which will pop-up the advertisement only upon visitors click on the "back" button.
4. Click HERE to find out more details.

Model 3 : AFFILIATING                                                                                             
Brief Description:
1. Marketing/selling the products/services of another party (advertisers) online.
2. Usually you need to create an online Sales Page to promote the products/services.
3. You will earn the commission/fees when somebody buy the products/services.
4. Click HERE to find out more details.

Model 4: PAID TO CLICK (PTC)                                                                                 
Brief Description:
1. The vendor hosts a series of mini-advertisement or offers that allow you to click on the advertisements, fill-up the survey or sign-up as members to earn money.
2. Usually the amount earned can be as small as" 0.01" or "0.02" cents per click/survey and there is limit of clicks that you can perform per day. Thus, it might not be justifiable for your time invested (taking into account the opportunity cost).
3. Usually there is referral program whereby you can refer the scheme to others and when they joined, you can earn a portion of what the referee earned.
4. For this model, you just need a computer and internet connection i.e. there is no need to set-up your own website or blog.
This is more suitable for user with time to kill and want to earn small pocket money along the way.
                                                                                                                           

I am sure there are other models which are covered by the above matrix (like website flipping) but on high level, the above table documented the main actions of IM as a whole.

Hope that the above is of benefit to you and wish you have a wonderful and meaningful IM Venture. First thing first: Do find your niche market!

Cheers!

P/S: You may heard about making money through blogging, email marketing etc...but blogging and email alone would not make any money unless the owner "monetize" it with the above mentioned IM model!  

Welcome to "IM Foundation"

Hi there,

Welcome to IM (Internet Marketing) Foundation and thank you for your time here with me!

My name is Richard Ng, I am from Singapore, a very small Asia country which usually refers to as "Little Red Dot". My objective in developing this blog to provide one-stop IM (Internet Marketing) resource platform to all Internet Marketers, in plain English.

All the information/knowledge provided in this blog were gathered through my personal research and evaluation over the web. I hope IM Foundation can be developed and progressed into a one-stop resource platform on information/knowledge for the Internet Marketers, especially those beginners.

For a quick glance, following are the Pages available

• Home : Current page.
• IM Basics : For those who are still clueless about what the IM(Internet Marketing) is, this is the page you should go to first as it provide you with an bird's eye view of the IM.
• Advertising : Resources on placement of advertisement on your site/blog
• Affiliating : Resources on linking to third party affiliate programs
• IM Forums/Blogs : Forums/Blogs that related to IM that is good for your networking and creating back links
• IM Social Media : Related Facebook, Twitter pages for your networking and creating back links
• IM Glossary : All IM jargon explained here
• Contact Me : My contact details, hope to receive your feedback and comment.

I will keep the information here updated regularly, do come back often to discover the new information/ knowledge as information is KING is the IM World!

Keep learning and wish your IM venture is a successful one!

Cheers!

Richard Ng - May 2011