Every so often, I like to use an issue of this newsletter to share the online success stories of some of my students and fellow Internet entrepreneurs.

It's a great opportunity for all of us (myself included) to see how some of you are using the kinds of strategies I teach for growing your business and boosting your profits!

All too often, I see entrepreneurs trying to market their businesses a dozen different ways all at once... and not really succeeding at any of them! If you have many different marketing strategies in place, and you find that none of them are really getting you’re the results you need, try focusing on just one and giving it all you've got. I think the results might surprise you!

As you read the case studies below, remember that these are "real people" just like you and me. Each one of these entrepreneurs focuses on the key marketing strategy they think will benefit their business, does it well, maximizes profits, and then moves on to developing their business further.

PLEASE NOTE: The three profiles I've included for you here have been heavily edited and condensed. The success stories that are posted at the SecretsToTheirSuccess.com Private Site are typically 15 to 20 pages each, so there is no way I could reprint them in full in this newsletter.

Case Study #1: GreetingsFromSanta.com

Mark Bulleit not only hit upon the winning idea of selling a seasonal information product based on the name of the town he lived in, but he also chose just the right strategy to make it a roaring success!

Mark's town is Santa Claus, Indiana, and his site GreetingsFromSanta.com offers people the chance to send children personal greetings from Santa Claus himself… complete with the Santa Claus postmark!

And, with all of the Christmas-related web sites out there, an affiliate program was the obvious strategy to focus on. The result is that Mark pulled in over $100,000 in revenues last year in only seven weeks -- and how he's planning to double that figure this year!

Critical to that success is his affiliate program that accounts for over 40% of traffic to his site, and up to 30% of his total revenues.

"For me, starting up an affiliate program was a no-brainer," says Mark. "There are just so many non-competing Christmas-related web sites out there that can benefit from offering my product.

"In my experience, a strong affiliate program can be the key to your success."

Mark's approach is to actively look for potential affiliate sites, and then take the time to study the site and contact the owner personally to ask them to join his program.

He has the following tips for those of you thinking of starting up your own affiliate program:

• Use affiliate management software that has good tracking and reporting features -- this helps encourage potential affiliates to sign up

• Offer generous commissions to "super affiliates" -- as they are the highly motivated sellers who will generate the most sales

• Look after your affiliates and do everything you can to make their job easier -- this way you both benefit and you build good, profitable long-term partnerships with your affiliates

This is all great advice, and well worth following. As Mark himself says, "You'll save yourself a lot of wasted time and money if you follow the example of other entrepreneurs whose online businesses are successful."

Now that Mark has a successful affiliate program up and running, he can focus on developing NEW ideas to build his business. "Every year, I come up with a new volume of ideas to help me solidly establish myself on the Web as the dominant site in my industry," he says.

And he's helped in doing this by the fact that he first identified and focused on one KEY strategy to help establish his business -- an affiliate program that, according to Mark, "opens so many doors that would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to open otherwise."

Case Study #2: VGSportsInc.com

How would you like to play video games for a living? Well, Bert Ingley turned his love of sports video games into an $187,000 a year online business, producing and selling sports video game strategy eBooks!

And, key to his success was his early decision to focus on using effective search engine optimization strategies to drive visitors -- and lots of them -- to his web sites.

"Search engines have been the core building block of our marketing plan," says Bert. "In the early days of our business, we spent huge amounts of time working on our search engine placement."

And it worked… Bert was able to establish a real presence on the Internet -- consistently listed in the top five in Google for his main keywords. He recommends the following as crucial to search engine success:

• Make sure that you have relevant keywords in your web site copy

• Buy domain names that contain relevant keywords and use them as your main URL or direct them to your main web site (Bert does this with www.maddentips.com).

• Many search engines re-rank sites on a weekly basis, so spend some time seeing where you stand and make necessary adjustments

• Keep up to date with the latest search engine news through www.searchenginenews.com for example, and update your sites accordingly

• Link to other popular sites in the same subject area and get them to link to you, as linking to other relevant sites helps boost your search engine results ranking

• Use Wordtracker to find the right keywords for your web site

All this early hard work really paid off for Bert, and saved him time later on: "Now that all our sites have high rankings," he says, "we spend just a moderate amount of time maintaining them."

And the time he now saves on dealing with these day-to-day tasks leaves Bert free to concentrate on building his business (seven web sites and counting!) and, of course, to play video games!

Case Study #3: Decorate-Redecorate.com

After becoming increasingly fed up with her consulting job, Barbara Jennings finally decided to take the plunge and start an Internet business doing what she REALLY loves -- giving home decorating tips!

Now, the 59-year-old grandmother's web site Decorate-Redecorate.com brings in $102,000 a year, and she only has to spend 30 to 60 minutes a day on the day-to-day management chores!

Barbara spends such little time actually managing her business because she has focused on automating her business, allowing her to spend more time on developing new products and providing good customer service. The areas of your business Barbara suggests automating include:

• E-mail communications using autoresponders
• Stock control and ordering processes
• An affiliate program

One example of this automation is e-mail -- vital for delivering her eBooks to customers. "I use Mailloop 24/7. It handles the purchases and usercodes and autoresponders for all my products," says Barbara.

"I just returned from a 10-day trip to Japan, and was able to track and administrate my business overseas with my laptop and a little help from a family member in the USA."

That kind of automation is worth its weight in gold. Not just in allowing Internet business owners like Barbara to take vacations AND check up on their business at the same time, but in creating invaluable business development time.

"I only spend about 30 to 60 minutes a day managing my business," she says. "The rest of my time is spent marketing it, developing more exclusive products, and expanding the web sites."

And, in Barbara's case this automation has freed up enough time for her to create SEVEN eBooks in just over a year!

Final thoughts

These three entrepreneurs all had a great idea for an Internet business, and they got their web sites going by focusing on selected strategies, including:

• Starting an affiliate program
• Effective search engine optimization
• Automation

Of course, there are hundreds more techniques you can use to build a successful online business. But if you try to implement them all at once, you're going to be scattered and unfocussed -- and none of your strategies will work as well as they could.

It's better to focus on just one or two strategies early on, and learn them as well as you possibly can. Then you'll be in a position to move onto other strategies as your business grows and develops.

Now for the fun part! If any of you think you've got a success story that my "Secrets To Their Success" subscribers would like to read about, please do not hesitate to visit www.secretstotheirsuccess.com/suggest and tell me all about it. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you!

We may even feature some of the stories in a later issue of this newsletter, so get writing!