Sure, one marketer might find a way of reaching their target audience that no one else is using, but do you truly expect that marketer to give up his “secret” for $97 unless: 1) the “secret” is already out and the market has been flooded; or 2) the secret is losing its effectiveness?

Rather than searching for the next big secret behind every bush, take this deceptively simple three-step formula and apply it to your own business, then reap the benefits.

Plan and Create Your Site

Research your target market and find out who your prospective audience is. Then plan out your content accordingly and build your website to meet their needs.

Promote Your Site

Once you’ve finished building your website and have added content, it’s time that you get the word out. Use all the marketing tactics you have in your toolbox: article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, and traditional advertising. Test and tweak as you go along.

Grow Your Site

Once you’ve found the perfect balance for your site, it’s time to grow it. Optimize your revenue streams. Learn what, when, and how to outsource work. Reinvest in your business.

The last point is in bold because it might be tempting to start spending all that money as is comes in, but before you know it, your business has leveled out and there’s no more money left to push it to the next level. Don’t make that mistake. Reinvest at least 25% of your income (though I recommend 50%).

Once you have a handle on the three steps above, you can apply it to a number of other websites in order to fill out your online portfolio.

Something I’ve been testing with success for the past year or so has been to offer a serial soap opera on some of my affiliate websites. And it’s something you may be able to do as well.

What’s a Serial Soap Opera?

Actually, maybe the term “soap opera” isn’t the right one. Instead, create a fictional story that directly relates to your niche and release it weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

For instance, if your niche is medical, you might consider creating a story along the lines of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. Mind you, don’t copy Grey’s Anatomy, but create a story with a unique plot and characters set in a hospital or other medical care facility.

Even if you’re not a writer, you can hire a ghost writer. It’s also a great way to help brand your website (i.e. ‘A My Website Name’ story).

How to Implement it On Your Affiliate Site

Write your short stories, which shouldn’t be more than 15,000 words apiece, and offer the first one for free. You can even use it as incentive to sign up to your affiliate marketing website’s newsletter.

Whether or not subsequent editions are free is up to you—once you hook the subscriber with the first edition, you can then charge 99c for future editions—or you can use it as a way to keep a reader subscribed to your newsletter. Of course, you’ll have opportunities to market more products to your subscribers while they’re waiting for more installments of your story.

Another option is to compile the serial into a full-length book and offer that up for sale directly from the website or through Amazon, Smashwords, B&N, and other avenues.

While this technique may not work in every niche out there, it can work in a great many of them. (Selling tents and camping supplies? How about ‘Campfire Stories’? Patio supplies? ‘Backyard Shenanigans’.) You could always create the first story and put it up as a test on your site. If it works, write more.

Just because you use a smaller version of an image or publish a disclaimer or even credit the copyright owner doesn’t mean you can legally use the photo—not even under Fair Use guidelines. (In order to fall under Fair Use, the image must be a thumbnail and also be the focus of your discussion.) In fact, even if you receive a DMCA and immediately take down the photo, you can still be on the hook for monetary damages.

Rather than take a chance that can cost your thousands of dollars or more, select your pictures wisely. There are plenty of other resources available to you.

• Take your own photos: I love taking my own photos, whether with my digital camera or my phone. It’s a chance to be creative and creating unique images. Plus, by using your own photos you’ll know you have permission to use it however you choose. Just be careful that your photos are taken in public places (photos taken on private property or of the interior of private property require special permissions).
• Find Creative Commons photos: Some photographers are happy to get their works out there as long as they receive credit and will release their photos under a Creative Commons license. To find them, try Flickr or Stock.xchng or try the Creative Commons search engine.
• Select photos from the Public Domain: These are photos that have fallen out of copyright or were deliberately released into the public domain. These photos have no restrictions and you are freely able to do with them as you will. Wikipedia has a large list of places to find such images.

However, some marketers take this a step further by digging into every facet of your online business and seeking out every other niche in which you might be dabbling so they can hone in. But there are things you can do to keep prying eyes away from your various online businesses.

And I have a bad habit of assuming certain things are common knowledge, but I was made aware that not everyone who ventures into the affiliate or online marketing business knows how to maintain a level of privacy when it comes to their internet portfolios.

Because of that, I decided to write a short guide offering tips on how to do so. It’s completely free. Download it, read it, share it–you’re welcome to upload to your site and allow your readers to download it if you feel it will help them, only thing is it must remain unaltered. Or if you don’t feel like sparing the bandwidth, feel free to send them here.

Without further ado…download Private Business (PDF): Tips for protecting your online business from the prying eyes of your competitors. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

The Comment Relish plugin is simple…it sends an email the first time someone leaves a comment on the website. This email can be customized and personalized to help you establish a rapport with that reader. However, if you run a heavily trafficked site or are on a shared host with certain restrictions, you’ll want to install the plugin with caution.

But, what’s a blook? Basically, a contraction of the term blog and book, which was coined way back in the day by Jeff Jarvis. Of course, the term has fallen out of use in recent years, but I’m hoping for a comeback.

And one way to see that happen is to tell people how to create a blook of their own. If you’re on WordPress, it’s actually pretty easy with a quick and simple plugin. There’s a small caveat, however, because the plugin is still in alpha. Using the Anthologize plugin, you would be able to comb through your blog’s archives and choose which blog entries you’d like to include in your book.

Another way to create a book from your blog’s archives includes using Kalin’s PDF Creation plugin which allows you to comb through your blog’s pages and posts in order to output your blook in PDF format.

Of course, there’s always the manual way of creating a book using good old-fashioned copy/paste. Go through each of your blog’s pages individually, selecting and choosing, editing and tweaking as necessary, and paste the content into a document file which can later be converted in a plethora of formats, including PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc. As you may have guessed, this last option probably gives you the most flexibility, however, depending on the size of your blog, may require the most amount of work.

To close up, always make sure you use your own blog’s content and not someone else’s, at least not without her permission first.

Also, this may catch some people off guard because these habits aren’t what one might expect. Here are some of the things I do each day, in no particular order, which I feel contribute to my successes:

I listen to music — especially classical — and I think about the skill of the artist and all that goes into the creation of each note. Imagine, for a moment, all that it takes to create such harmony, flow, and timing. Music, in and of itself, can be a huge inspiration for developing your own skills. Music also has the power to push you forward, even when you feel like lagging behind.

I keep a journal. Since I was a child, I’ve captured moments of my life in a journal. Happy moments, sad moments, my hopes and fears all laid out on paper. Even now, when I go back and read those captured moments, I realize just how far I’ve come in my life and it motivates me to keep pushing forward.

I appreciate what I have. It’s easy to take things for granted, especially if you’re not exactly where you want to be in life. But, even when you’re not where you want to be, there is still plenty for which to be grateful. I try to take time each day to reflect on what I’ve accomplished, what I have in my life, and just appreciate all of it.

I dance like no one’s watching. Dance, regardless of the style, is a release–energy surging through the body and spilling out into the world with each movement. Dancing teaches you to control and direct that energy — of course, I’m sure the same could be said of any physical activity.

I read books, lots of them. The written word has become a dear old friend whom I try to visit each day. Reading expands your imagination, knowledge, and wisdom by sharing in the experiences of another. In essence, reading gives us an opportunity to see the world through another’s eyes. Although I haven’t been able to get as much pleasure reading done as often as I’d like, I do read something each day.

There are far more things than what’s listed above to include planning, positive thinking, writing, drawing, enjoying nature, and maintaining an open mind. Each person, however, will need to discover her own combination of positive habits for success, because, like most everything, success is different for everyone.

The general answer is, “There are article topics all around you, if you care to look for them.” Granted, that’s only helpful to people who want to churn the answer around in their mind for hours on hours. So let me save you a bit of time and just give you three quick ways of finding article topics to help better your affiliate website.

Niche Forums: The first option is to search through various forums within your niche. They’re usually rife with people asking questions or seeking advice about one thing or another.

Amazon’s Askville and Yahoo! Answers: Services such as Amazon’s Askville and Yahoo! Answers make it incredibly easy to find blog topics by simply checking out the questions people are asking and writing a short article answering the question and providing other resources.

Email Groups: Depending on your niche, there may just be an email group which you can join to interact with others who share a similar interest. One thing that email groups are good for is getting the creative juices flowing. You can even mine the archives for previous questions and their subsequent interactions which can then be transformed into articles or blog topics.

These are but a few ways to find inspiration for writing articles which will add value to your affiliate website, and with a little ingenuity, I’m sure you could come up with a few more.