But there's also another way: study their web sites and reverse engineer their success.

The great thing about the Internet is that everything is visible - nothing is hidden. If it's working for them, you can find out exactly how they're doing it by studying their site.

• Subscribe to their Newsletter and examine their Welcome Message.
• Analyze their Newsletter and see exactly how they use it to generate income.
• Sign up for their free autoresponder course and find out why it produces sales.
• Check out which affiliate programs they promote.
• Read their free eBooks and discover how they bring in new customers.

Here are some examples:

1. Recently I signed up for the Newsletter of someone who makes $130,000 a year just from affiliate programs. I wanted to see how he was doing it. What I noticed was that he doesn't even try to sell the affiliate products - he tells his readers how much he makes from those programs. Naturally, they join (through his link). The result? He has an army of sub-affiliates who do the selling for him.

2. In another Ezine I recently saw a 40 word ad that interested me. I clicked on the link, and instead of taking me to the home page of the product, it took me straight to the order form. Very clever, and very effective.

3. A few weeks ago I subscribed to a free autoresponder course - 12 daily web marketing lessons. Many people never finish these free courses. They unsubscribe half way through.

   But this marketer made sure that people finished his course - he announced in the first lesson that the 12th lesson contained the download link for a very useful free eBook that I wanted. Naturally, I stayed with it till the last lesson.

4. Last week I signed up for a marketing guru's 15-day free autoresponder course and I was amazed to see how easily it had been put together. Each module was simply a freely-available article by a recognized web marketing expert, with a sprinkling of affiliate links.

To sum up, when you visit the website of a marketing expert, pay close attention to everything you see. Ask yourself "Why is s/he doing that?". Everything is there for a reason.

If you make this a habit you'll quickly learn the art of making money on the Internet.

© 2001 by Michael Southon