The Secret Of Her Success

Despite all the "dot-com" busts a few years ago, the
Internet still represents the ultimate opportunity for some npeople to turn their initiative, a good idea, and a few nbucks into a legitimate, profitable business.

One such person, Rosalind Gardner, took her interest in nonline dating services and turned it into a business that ngenerated almost half a million dollars in revenue last year nand should do even better this year.

The fact that she created this business without spending one ndime on product development makes her story even more namazing.

Rosalind Gardner used to make her living as an air traffic ncontroller, a job most people consider quite stressful.

After getting tired of swing-shift work, and though she had nno product of her own to sell and needed to make money nrelatively quickly, Gardner decided to try her hand at nselling on the Internet.

What she did next might seem simple, but it started an nonline venture that would make every dot-com refugee from
1999 drool with envy.

Gardner logged on to OneAndOnly.com, an online dating nservice, and signed up as an associate or "affiliate". She nsaid they were paying "healthy" commissions to any webmaster nwho wanted to refer paying customers to them.

Commonly called "affiliate programs," this setup enables nentrepreneurs to create a business promoting other people's nbusinesses and bypass the entire product development and nproduct testing phases.

In short, by selling through other people's affiliate nprograms, virtually anyone can set up a business online npromoting almost any type of product or service.

Gardner created a website (101date.com), her storefront on nthe Internet.

Though she created her own website pages, she suggests that nan effective way to get started even faster is to go to ndollartemplates.com or 4templates.com, buy a website ntemplate for between $10-$30, and modify it to meet your nneeds.

"Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on nwebsite design," Gardner advises, "purchase an inexpensive nwebsite template for much less than the cost of dinner and a nmovie!"

Gardner also kept the content for her website simple, direct nand effective. Though she wanted to appeal to the widest npossible audience, she kept focused on her narrow "niche" of nonline dating.

She wrote a review of the dating service so her visitors ncould quickly understand the main benefits, pitfalls, nspecial features, and other information to see if the nservice met their needs. If it did, and they clicked through nher affiliate link to sign up, Gardner made a commission.

To drive traffic to her site, Gardner buys targeted, nkeyword-specific ads from google.com and overture.com which nget displayed on the Web's most popular sites, including
Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.

This type of advertising means she only spends money when ninterested people actively searching for dating information ngo to her website.

Gardner also offers a newsletter from her dating website nin order to update her visitors when new dating services and nproducts come available.

The side benefits of publishing the newsletter are many, nincluding the fact that she can build trust with her nsubscribers by sending them valuable articles and ninformation on a regular basis.

Instead of just referring them over to the merchant's site nand losing them forever, Gardner captures them and makes nthem her customer first... and then hands them off to the nmerchant.

So what's the secret of her success?

Gardner's system works because: nn~ she keeps it simple; nn~ she doesn't get slowed down by creating the product nherself; nn~ she adds her own unique value to the process with her nreviews and newsletter; nn~ she only invests in performance-based advertising.

Further, her added step of going the extra mile to offer nfree updates, articles and tips to her growing list helps nher business grow MUCH faster than affiliates who just hand- noff to the merchant website.

By building her list, she can bring visitors back to her nsite or send them to other sites through her affiliate link nwithout having to pay for them again.

So if the system is so simple, why don't more people do it nthis way?

My only guess is that maybe it's too simple! Often people nwant something complicated in order to feel like a "system" nwill work, but often the opposite proves true.

Simple = Powerful = It keeps working! n