You must have heard enough about making money online and how easy it is. But you never heard about people losing money there.  They did and they still do.  Many lost a small sum and moved on.  No one jumped up and down telling you that yet. That’s why you haven’t heard from them. Scientifically, this is called silent evidence.

Consider the following example.

Joe got a copy of a guru’s “making money online secrets” from his friend.  The formula is simple than ever.

“You pick an affiliate product from ClickBank which brings in $30/sale; create a Google AdWords campaign paying $0.05/click; at a conversion rate of 5%, you’d spend $5 to make $150.”

When Joe starts a campaign, the clicks are over $1 each to net any traffic and the conversion rate is much much lower than 5%.  Down by a few hundred bucks already without a single sale, Joe is mighty frustrated.

This sounds familiar! It was part of my experience as I started. There are a lot science and strategies doing it right. The following are the most important:

• Picking the right product that sells,
• Writing a good sale pitch which intrigues and convinces,
• Choosing the proper keywords with high conversion rate.

It is wise to prepare yourself before jumping in. Here are three classics that you must read.

“Rich Jerk” was published in Dec 2005 and updated a few times. Everyone agrees that this is the most stylish classic about making money online.  You may not like the obnoxious tone of Rich Jerk.  But he revealed the true psychology of selling online, i.e. writing a sales letter and AdWords copy.  A lot small but effective tricks are first revealed here, such as creating legitimacy on your site, why offer a 200% refund and stills make money, website cloaking and traffic acquisition with article marketing and incoming link building.

If you cannot borrow a copy from your friend, you can still purchase the latest version from here.  It’s only $9.95 last time I checked.

The second must-read is “Affiliate ‘Project X’”, authored by Chris. Chris was no guru or filthily rich like Rich Jerk who wrote the ebook to show off.  Chris was like you and me struggling his way in online marketing. What set him apart was that he kept on looking for a working strategy.  “Affiliate ‘Project X’” detailed 6 methods which worked in the post-”Google Cash” era.  One of the methods followed the stock technical analysis approach, using charts to determine winners. Promoting digital products are very much like buying stocks. Promoting a product before its time, you’ll end up wasting a lot of dollars without see much conversion.  Promoting it too late when easy picks are gone, selling becomes harder and again ends in lower conversion rate.  Very insightful.  “Affiliate ‘Project X’” was published in Sept. 2006 and updated regularly.

It turned out that there are intricate dynamics in online marketing. “Day Job Killer” was a follow-up continued the search for workable formulae and strategies.

Apart from providing a basket of ready to use strategies, another important point is these two ebooks will get you thinking and discovering more strategies. They certainly have done that to me. That’s why the two are must-read. You can order the books from here, “Affiliate ‘Project X’” and “Day Job Killer”.  These are a bit more expensive at $97 each.  Imaging the potential revenue they’ll bring you, the investment is worthwhile.