Making a Fortune with MySpace: Ashley Qualls

Some teenagers are taking a single idea and making a mint from it. Take, for instance, Ashley Qualls. When she was 14, she borrowed $8 from her mother to buy a domain name. She started a company that designed MySpace layouts, targeted primarily to girls.

Today, Ashley’s website gets 60 million page views each month. She paid cash for a $250,000 home and has turned down a 1.5 million dollar offer to buy her business. While her business is not classified as an affiliate marketing business, it just goes to show you how one teen with a simple idea can make more money than most adults. She is now 18 and well on her way to continued success.

Meet Nate Brown—a 14-year-old Affiliate Marketer

Nate Brown is a 14-year-old affiliate marketer who has already learned how to automate his affiliate marketing business. He’s been an affiliate marketer for a year now. He even blogs about how he does it and offers tips and tricks to others who want to do the same. I’m sure we’ll hear more about Nate as his affiliate marketing business grows.

Why are Teens Prime Candidates for Affiliate Marketing?

Teens are prime candidates for affiliate marketing because they haven’t yet become jaded about the Internet. In fact, they’re paving the way for the future of the Web. They have the “I can do anything” attitude that gives them the incentive to learn through trial and error.

Teens are experts at viral marketing because they’ve literally grown up in front of a computer. They know exactly how to get the word out about their favorite music, products, and ideas. They’ve already mastered MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and a multitude of other social networking sites.

Teens Need to Make More Money In Today’s Economy

With the federal minimum wage set at $7.25, teens realize that they can’t get much bang for their buck if they work only part time. The high price of gasoline, insurance, and the cost of going to a movie, is prompting teenagers to look for ways to make more money, more efficiently.

Once mastered, an affiliate marketing program can be automated, enabling a teen to have an active social life without being tied down to a set schedule. Just one successful affiliate marketing site, once set into motion, can give a teenage boy or girl enough money to pay for fun activities without interfering in school work.

Many teens see affiliate marketing as an avenue to generate just enough cash to get by, while others are learning everything they can to create wealth. Regardless of the motivation, more and more teens are turning to affiliate marketing as a way to create a positive cash flow and leave bussing tables and waiting on customers to someone else.

If you’re ready for some new ideas, read on. Here are 10 easy ways for getting traffic to your website:

1.    Focus on viral marketing. Viral marketing is hot! One of the best ways to get traffic to your website is to make sure the content goes viral. You can do anything from creating a YouTube video to adding “E-mail to a Friend” links in your auto-responders. The key to viral marketing is that it must be easy to forward to a friend.

2.    Add a signature file. Add a signature file in all your correspondence, especially if you participate in forums. The signature file should have a short description of your product, service, or blog, as well as a link to your site.

3.    Buy ad space. Find niche-specific newsletters and buy ad space in them. This will certainly increase the traffic to your website. If you’ve never written an ad, hire an experienced copywriter to do it for you.

4.    Create a fan page. You can create a fan page on Facebook to generate a buzz around your website. If you’re not already a member of Facebook, join now and create a fan page loaded with links from your websites.

5.    Create links on eBay. One effective way to attract traffic is to create an “About Our Company” profile on eBay and add your link to that page.

6.    Participate in joint ventures. Teaming up with another affiliate marketer is a great way to get more traffic to your site. You can work together to promote each other’s websites, and get more traffic in return.

7.    Buy misspelled domain names. “To err is human,” and no one knows this better than a website owner who wants more traffic. If you have a website that may be commonly confused with another, buy domain names that are “wrong.” For instance, office.com may be confused with offices.com. If you buy incorrect domain names and have the clicks forwarded to your site, you will see an increase in overall conversions.

8.    Sell classified ads. This isn’t a get-rich-quick road to wealth, but creating and selling ad space will attract sellers and buyers alike.

9.    Add chat rooms. People love to chat online, and adding chat rooms where people can converse about niche-specific products and services is a great way to generate a buzz around your website.

10.    Buy BlogAds. Buying BlogAds will help increase your exposure in the markets that want what you have to sell.

Getting traffic to your website is about positioning yourself in a way that makes individuals gravitate toward you. There is no real secret to attracting traffic. You’ve just got to be patient, get your name out there, and your affiliate marketing business will naturally grow.

The trick in writing the E-Book is, as usual in marketing, to keep them wanting more. Remember, we’re only generating interest. If your business is lessons in some craft or technique, or the selling of non-material services, write only enough about your service to get people interested, but don’t make it an actual giveaway. If, however, you are selling some material goods, a brochure or menu should be more informative, though it may not necessarily list everything.

The goal, of course, is to make the potential client interested enough in your services or merchandise to spend money at your site. Everything about it should lead them into purchasing from your website. If it doesn’t work out that way, that’s fine as well. It’s entirely possible that this person might know someone who is more interested or able to shop at your site.

A secondary goal of free E-Books is to “spread the word.” As part of writing the E-Book, there should be information pointing the potential client back to your website. Put your URL on the front page. Reference it throughout the document. Make sure it’s clear where your potential client can go if they want more information. This way, even if the first person isn’t interested, they may pass it on to someone else, who may not otherwise know where to go. If the information in your E-Book is presented just right, this part of the composition will be vital, as it may pass from one person to five, to 20 and so on more than exponentially…it can spread like a virus.

Within a short period of time, days in all likelihood, your E-Book can reach thousands, even tens of thousands of recipients. If only a fraction of these follow up on your information, how many visitors will your site have? When these people decide to share your E-Book, how many people do you think that would draw? The fact is, the longer it’s in circulation, the more draw it will have.

In summary, the free E-Book can be a useful draw for traffic to your website. If the balances of information vs. intrigue and content vs. referral are well-positioned, the recipients of this E-Book will have learned just enough about what you do to be interested in more information, and will be provided with a direction to go to get more.

Viral marketing takes advantage of the oldest marketing technique and brings it to a higher level. It’s word of mouth at the speed of light. This concept is what should be in mind with any viral marketing campaign.

Many businesses have misunderstood viral marketing to be just a matter of venue. Companies have posted their television ads on YouTube hoping to capitalize on viral marketing and wondered what went wrong when it didn’t have the desired effect. They miss a crucial part of what viral marketing is.

The essentials of viral marketing are that it has to be free, it has to be “contagious,” and it has to be easily spread. Without any one of these three elements, it doesn’t work. Let’s look at these three elements and how they work.

It all starts with you giving something away. It could be an e-book, an image file, a video, or a podcast. It could also be a great number of other things, but these are the most common. The essential idea is that electronic data is inexpensive to create “in mass,” so it’s the easiest to give away in large numbers.

It should be relevant to your product, because ultimately, that’s what you’re trying to make them want. It should only be a teaser of what your product can do for the customer. It could be a demonstration, a “leaked document,” or merely a catchy advertisement.

“Catchy” is the most commonly misunderstood element of viral marketing. Whatever your giveaway is, it should be something that people want to begin with. Because of this idea, you can’t just dryly demonstrate or describe what your product can do.

There has to be something that keeps their attention WHILE the demo is happening. Don’t go for flashing lights and talks about how crazy you are for making this offer—that tends to chase many people away. Instead, try working this demonstration into comedy. The idea is to make them like the giveaway so much that they have to tell other people about it.

If you do the last part right, you will essentially make marketers out of your viewers. They will want to pass your giveaway on to their friends and relatives. You can expect that they will send a copy of your promo on, and it can be infinitely spread that way. This is where the use of electronic media really has a chance to shine. The promoting will have gone out of your hands, and will spread like—well—a virus. Before you know it, with little effort, you will have drawn thousands of visitors to your opt-in page. It doesn’t take much, but if you’re infectious enough, they WILL opt in.