Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective & easy ways of making money online. It gives everyone a chance to make a profit from the sales generated of other people’s products, by various promotional efforts. Affiliate marketing programs are aplenty & more and more people have found it to be an easy way to make money online.

But despite all its advantages, there are people who tested the waters of affiliate marketing never to return. Why? Because they feel that it’s not worth the work involved. What these people don’t know, however, is that they are doing the no-no’s in affiliate marketing. Thus, they give up and lose the chance to earn a passive income for a long time.

In order for you to avoid being one of the many unsuccessful affiliate marketers, it pays to know what the common pitfalls are in this business. Below is a short list of affiliate marketing mistakes you should know of.

1. Choosing the Wrong Product to Promote

This is the number one mistake affiliate marketers commit because they want to earn from a program as fast as possible. They immediately sign up for what’s hot at present and eventually promote the same product everyone else is promoting. The downside with this, aside from competition, is that you may not be even slightly interested in the product to begin with. Affiliate marketing is still work and you have to be interested in what you are promoting so that you will be motivated to accomplish things.

Therefore, do your research and pick a product that you are interested in. For sure, you’ll have an easier time promoting it.

2. Joining Too Many Affiliate Programs Too Soon

Because joining an affiliate program is easy, you may be tempted to join as many as you can to bring in more income streams. Besides, there is nothing to lose by joining as many as you can, right? Wrong. While there is nothing wrong with joining as many affiliate programs as you can, promoting all these offers together will stop you from concentrating on each one. This means lesser profits for you because the full potential of the program is not realized.

Instead, choose a program that pays at least 40% commission and give it your best by promoting the product as much as you can. When you start seeing profits come in, you can now move on to the next product in line. Affiliate marketing is not a race. In time, you will see a steady stream of profit coming in for you.

3. Not Having First-Hand Experience

As an affiliate, you have to convincingly promote products and services to earn customers. Therefore, you have to know first hand the pros and cons of buying such product or service. It is very hard for you to ‘imagine’ how a product or service can help people with what they need. You may end up misleading customers which can ruin your reputation in the long run.

Thus, it is recommended that you try out the product or service first before signing up as an affiliate. This will enable you to truthfully convey to potential buyers what they can or cannot get with the product. Your sincerity plays a big role when they actually click your affiliate link to get to the product’s sales page.

These are the three mistakes affiliate marketers often commit and are paying dearly for. By knowing these mistakes, you can easily avoid falling into the same trap and be on your way to becoming a super affiliate. As with any other kind of business, patience is the key. Plan well and implement consistently. In no time at all, you will be able to benefit from the long term profits of a well run affiliate program.

Thanks to Jan C. De Joya for this article.

3 Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Sharing content through social networks is not a new concept (infact nothing is really a ‘new’ concept anymore!). You will have seen blogs with lots of sharing options to bookmark the blog, to retweet the blog & to share links on Facebook – something that is used a lot on this blog too in order for our readers to easily share this content.

Until recently, sharing a blogpost on Facebook has been slightly clunky in that you had to use Facebook Connect to share the content as a status update.

Last week, Facebook users will have noticed a few changes recently to some features, most obviously the change that got rid of the ‘Become a Fan’ on Pages and replaced it with ‘Like’. The ‘Like’ feature is now pretty much uniform across Facebook – incorporated into status updates, wall posts, individual pictures, photo albums etc..and now Pages.

Those of you who have WordPress.org blogs setup can now install one plugin which puts a ‘Like’ button into your blog posts so that your readers can ‘Like’ your post and it will publish the fact that they like your post on THEIR newsfeed. This instantly gives the blog post viral & sharing possibility through facebook unlike before where sharing on facebook was always a little clunky (clunky being a technical term, of course). It is now on par with the TweetMeMe button and others on blogs to share on Twitter etc. You can see this in action on this blogpost. Why not click on the Like button so you can see how it works.

Here are two places you can get this plugin - here or here (two versions, essentially the same thing though). You can choose to put it at the top or bottom (or both) of your blog posts & pages.

Add Facebook’s ‘Like’ button to your blogs is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Are you a budding photographer? If you like to snap pictures at family events or at friends’ parties as a hobby, put your photography skills to good use in ways that will earn you money for your efforts.

Here are seven ways that you can make money with digital photography.

Photography has changed since the instant camera was developed. With a digital camera, you can take a not so good picture and make it perfect using a variety of software options, such as Photoshop. Best of all, pictures can be printed on high-quality glossy photo paper on your home printer or at a kiosk for just a few pence per picture.

There are lots of opportunities for both amateur & professional photographers to make extra money with their pictures online. Here are just a few:

1. Stock photography. For website newsletters, magazines, blogs & articles, authors & publishers look for photos that capture the essence of their articles. It is not always convenient to go out and snap some pictures every time you need one for a new blog or article. Selling stock photographs of generic images to businesses and individuals is convenient for them and lucrative for you. You don’t have to sell directly to businesses either, you can list your photos on stock image websites such as Fotolia and earn a commission everytime somebody buys your image.

2. Newspaper pictures. If you are in the right place at the right time, you might capture photos that are worthy of being published with an article in the newspaper. When news happens, a newspaper photographer might not be on the scene at the right time. If you can capture the newsworthy moments and sell them to newspapers, you could be rewarded with a token payment. Pictures of celebrities usually attract the biggest payouts, although that does verge on being labelled as a paparazzi!

3. Magazine photographer. Create a portfolio of photos that you’ve taken and submit them to magazines.  Looking at your work, they may hire you for assignments or photo shoots. Magazines are a tough market to break into so cut your teeth on other smaller assignments for local newspapers first to build your portfolio.

4. Local photography for businesses & classified ads. Ever seen an ad that shows cars for sale or houses for sale? Someone had to take those photographs. It could be you. Hire yourself out to local businesses to do these photographs for them.

5. Event photographer. Family reunions, christenings, bar mitzvahs and birthday parties are perfect – the event organisers don’t always want to pay for a professional photographer but may be willing to pay you a small amount to cover the photos for their own memories. You can be the eyes in the room catching candid shots.

6. Photography website. If you know a lot about digital cameras and photography, create a website or blog to review photography products. Keep visitors and customers coming back with engaging content on various aspects of photography. You can then easily monetise your website using affiliate links to the products that you are reviewing.

7. Teach a photography class. Those cameras look easy to use but some of those symbols can mix people up. Teach others to use their digital camera and create great pictures that they, too, can market as a business.

7 Ways You Can Earn Money with Your Digital Photography is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

It has been said that you have about 3 seconds to capture the attention of a visitor to your website or blog.  The most powerful part of your blog that will help you achieve this is your headline.  I’m no copywriter but I know how important a skill it is to be able to write effectively in order to compel your visitors into reading your content. It is a skill that I am learning & practicing all the time.

There are several elements in creating a compelling headline and here are a few tips to help you create better headlines for your blog posts.

1. Tap into Your Visitors’ Emotions

Psychologists say that people’s buying decisions are based first and foremost on their emotions.  Use headlines which trigger an emotional benefit or reaction with your visitors & readers.

Emotions & feelings that you can tap into with a headline are a desire to feel:

• Attractiveness
• Sexy
• Assertiveness
• Confidence
• Energetic
• Pampered
• A sense of belonging
• In control of their own destiny
• Wealthy
• Proud
• Respected
• Safe

2. Make it Active

Headlines need to be compelling so it is important to use active language – i.e. language that shows movement and commands attention.

For example, ‘Stop Smoking Cravings With This Simple Step’ is an acceptable headline for a blog post, however it does not command any action nor does it tap into any emotions.  However, ‘Conquer Your Smoking Cravings With This Simple Step’ can make a big difference.  The word ‘Conquer’ is an active and emotionally powerful word and readers receive the benefit of feeling powerful and in control and it commands action.

3. Let Your Reader Know They’re Important

The word YOU is a very powerful word.  You want to try and make your readers feel as if you are talking to them directly and are genuinely interested in solving their problems and helping them achieve their goals. Instead of using I, Me or We in your headlines, use You where possible.  Using the headline example above compare the two options to see which one looks more personal & compelling:

Conquer Your Smoking Cravings With This Simple Step

Stop Smoking Cravings With This Simple Step

Your readers want to know what’s in it for them and when they can assess that information in the headline, theres a much higher chance that they are going to be compelled to continue reading your article or blog post, and possibly making a purchase from you.

Here are three more ideas for powerful headlines:

1. Make a promise or offer a desired outcome – i.e. Stop Smoking
2. Make it newsworthy – i.e. New smoking cessation tool makes it easy for you to stop
3. Ask a question – i.e. Do you want to stop smoking?

Three Simple Steps to Write Headlines That Sell

So now you have some ideas about what types of headlines can compel your visitors to continue reading your blog, how do you begin to write those powerful headlines?

Step One

Get to know your audience intimately. What are their hopes, dreams, desires, and problems?  Understanding your visitors will help you create an emotional and powerful headline directed specifically at your audience.

Step Two

Determine how your products or services are going to help your prospects solve their problems.  For example, if you sell gym & fitness equipment and your audience struggles with feeling attractive then you can create a headline that highlights a specific benefit that your fitness equipment offers to solve that problem.

Step Three

Write ten to twenty, yes twenty, possible headlines.  Not only will this give you practice writing compelling headlines, it will help you hone your copywriting skills.  And if you think you have a few winners you can always test them for conversion rates to find out which headline is more effective.

Marketing and copywriting experts consider your headline to be the most import element of any effective marketing piece.  Take the time to craft a compelling, and selling, headline and you will reap the benefits for years to come.

Create Your Own Powerful Headlines For Your Blogs is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Advertising on Facebook is one of the bandwagons that many business owners will jump on this year to promote their products & services online, however it was actually launched back in November 2007 so it’s been around for a while. I’ve been using Facebook’s pay-per-click platform for about 12-months now and can now say, with experience, that I actually prefer it over Google’s Adwords platform for a number of reasons.

Before I get into that, I just want to frame this up properly and share some common stats about Facebook that you may already have heard about, but are worth being repeated:

• Founded in February 2004 with a $500,000 investment (followed by 2 further rounds of private investment injecting $12.7million in 2005 and $27.5million in 2006 into the company). Microsoft also took a $240million equity stake in 2007.
• 400million (400,000,000) active users reached in February 2010 (6 years since launch)
• 200million users log-in every single day
• Facebook stock is valued at $10billion (May 2009)
• There are 1.5 million business Pages created by business owners

Now I’m not here to convince you that Facebook [or the Internet in general] is a powerful way of increasing the exposure of your products or services and that you must use it. The above facts speak for themselves and I merely want to show you how I use these tools and hopefully that will inspire you to look further into it for yourself.

Why I prefer Facebook advertising to Google’s Adwords

In my opinion, not only is Facebook’s platform much more user friendly than Adwords but it’s far more intuitive & accurate for me to be able to really target my advertising.

For example (this is an extreme example here), if I wanted to advertise a product aimed at 18-25 year olds living in London who are single female students at university who like reading about astrology and are interested in networking then I could very easily setup my advert to only target this particular demographic within Facebook. That is, of course, an extreme example but it shows how far you can drill down using the data that your target market provide on their profiles.

A real example that I used for one of my Facebook ad campaigns is this:

Using a Pizza Hut & Dominos Pizza affiliate scheme, I setup a Facebook advertising campaign with a budget of about £300 over 3 days during the week.

These are the settings that I used for that particular ad:

• Male
• 19-25
• Student @ university level
• Location: London, Manchester & Birmingham
• Interests: drinking, clubbing, eating, sleeping, pizza
• Keywords in profile/status: hungry, pizza
• Timing of ad: between 5pm and 8pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday

You can see that I was able to drill down to the exact demographic of the user that I wanted to target with this particular ad. This avoids unnecessary ‘wastage’ of the ad being shown to anyone who I don’t want to target. As the data is pulled directly from the user’s current profile I can be confident that it is all up-to-date and accurate. Facebook also tells you how many users you will ‘reach’ after you have setup your ad, depending on your settings.

The above ad generated enough revenue for me through my affiliate scheme to cover the ad spend of approx. £300 and made a tidy profit on top.

This feature of being able to target viewers of your ad to such detail can be used to target users working for a specific company or competitor too.

Some pointers when using Facebook ads (although most pointers here will apply to any paid advertising platform that you use online):

• Use images in your ads, unlikes Adwords which doesn’t allow images
• Put yourself in the mindset of your potential customer – who are they and what would they be interested in?
• Don’t rely on one advert – use at least 2-4 ads to compare against each other and split-test
• Keep monitoring your ad spend & click-through-rate (CTR)
• Set your budget from the start & limit the daily spend to gather data
• Choose when to show your ad – weekends and weekdays will give very different results

As with all forms of Internet marketing, especially paid advertising, you still need to ensure you have setup your adverts correctly in order to maximise the potential return.

There is more to know about Facebook advertising and I will be creating a guide to using Facebook’s advertising model in the near future.

Facebook Advertising – 2010’s Internet Marketing Bandwagon is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Kerwin Rae who is a business marketing & joint venture expert and an Internet marketer is one of my favourite speakers. I spent some time with Kerwin at his UK events during 2009 and really like his content and information and am really glad that he is back in the UK during February 2010 running his Power Up Your Marketing event.

Kerwin’s event is in London on the 5th and 6th February 2010 and you can book onto the seminar for free here –> Kerwin Rae’s Power Up Your Marketing

• We will be spending 7 hrs solid together and I will be teaching you some of the most powerful information I have available – the same info I normally charge £1000 per hour 1 on 1 to share.
• You Will Learn from Real Life Case Studies…I will provide real life case studies and stories (some that will make your toes curl!) for everything I teach you, no theory, no BS, no hype and nothing will be straight out of a book that’s my promise to you…
• I will be unloading some very powerful content the same strategies that have made millions for my clients, techniques that I have been paid hundreds of thousands to do and demonstrate1 on 1.
• You will be put In contact with potential joint venture partners on the day. Everyone you meet on the day will be a potential Joint Venture Partner capable of opening you up to their customers and potentially adding thousands in new profit to your bottom line in weeks.
• We will be going through internet ABC’s & I WILL make it VERY SIMPLE so no matter what your skill level with computers or the internet I will break it down into nice, simple and easy to understand concepts that you will be able to use immediately, as soon as you get home or even in an internet café next door on the break.
• We will be going through Online and Offline Advertising so it doesn’t matter if you have never even turned on a computer or written an advertisement before I will share a whole range of information for every skill level. And more importantly I will show you where to go to find people to do all the TECHINCAL WORK for you so you don’t have to!
• I will be teaching you the foundations of psychological influence and how it is created at every level of reality – influence is the basis of powerfully responsive and effective marketing and I will be teaching you somethings the most powerful marketers in the world don’t want you to know.
• You will be learning the spiritual and scientific laws of making money and discover for yourself the real reasons people struggle to make money And struggle even more sometimes to keep it.
• You will discover the link between Quantum physics and making money and how to tap tap into the Quantum world to create the life of your dreams… I have had the pleasure of inerviewing some of the worlds top physicist about business and making money and I will share with you what they taught me.
• I will reveal to your relationship with money and how it affects not only your ability to attract it but also whether or not you hold onto it…
• How to use your intuition to make lightening quick decisions that get you closer to your goals in less time with even less resistance (intuition or ‘gut instinct’ is one of the most common traits of some of the wealthiest business owners on the planet).
• You will discover the REAL Quantum Mechanics behind the Intentions and how to use it consciously and powerfully to create the life of your dreams (no fluff, hype or “The Secret’s Secret” just the pure science behind what makes it possible
• We will have a break out session and you will be able to ask me any question you can think of about anything!.

Kerwin Rae’s Power Up Your Marketing – London February 2010 is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

When I first attended Chris Howard’s 3-day Breakthrough to Success seminar in London in August 2008, I had no idea what NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) was and had never really heard of the ‘personal development industry’. I had no idea how to use & implement the tools that I would learn by attending this event into my Internet marketing business – which are now priceless to me.

I arrived at the venue in London not knowing what to expect really. I had received an invite by email from a mailing list that I was subscribed to so I had registered about 6 weeks prior to the event. Didn’t think i’d stay for all three days, but wanted see what it was like anyway.

The 3-days that followed really blew me away – the content that was delivered by Chris and his team was really fascinating; the showcase of information; the sleek arrangement and running of the weekend by ThinkBIG Education (then ‘Christopher Howard Events’) and the really friendly crew members helping to run the event.

After attending the Breakthrough to Success event in London, I started reading more about wealth creation and personal development (I bought Chris Howard’s book at the event called Turning Passions Into Profits) and a number of other books that Chris and his amazing event crew had mentioned to me throughout the weekend (such as Think and Grow Rich, The Alchemist, Rich Dad Poor Dad). I had never really heard of these books before the event and didn’t realise how ‘big’ they were in this industry.

The weekend also gave me a great networking opportunity with around 1000 other people and I made some great contacts who ended up becoming clients and/or suppliers. Not bad going for a free event!

Throughout the weekend, I learnt things that I had never even heard of before such as Strategic Visioning and the Decision Destroyer process that Chris takes the participants through from stage. The key to all of my new learnings was that anything that I want to achieve and accomplish is down to my mindset and the way that I thought. I learnt new ways of thinking, new ways of asking questions and new ways of communicating. The best part of it all was that all these new learnings & skills were totally transferrable and I could use them all in my Internet marketing business, as well as in my personal day-to-day life.

The Breakthrough To Success London weekend seminar with Chris Howard was a fantastic eye-opener for me in many respects. Not only did I see this great speaker but I saw the way the event ran as a business, albeit as a participant and spectator. I knew at the end of day 1 that I wanted to learn more about this industry from a business point of view and wanted to get involved in helping to run the event, because the crew seemed to be having so much fun! Now, I work with ThinkBIG Education to run the events and get to spend a lot of time surrounded by great people who have become very good friends.

I will be at the next London Breakthrough to Success seminar which is on February 12-14 2010 at the Ibis Hotel in Earl’s Court.

You can register you complimentary tickets to the event by clicking here.

Mindset over Matter: How I used NLP & mentors to reach the dizzy heights of Internet success is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

A blog that I follow recently published this article about a blogger (Glen Allsopp) who hated writing at one point, but who went on to love the process of writing and blogging…ended up making a whole lot of money in doing so.

A great read if you are blogging and getting bored or frustrated writing your blogposts. Take some inspiration from Glen’s article below…

Instead of me sharing my biggest tips about blogging, I just want to show you what is possible. After all, you can read tips on writing scannable content, creating killer-headlines and promoting your blog posts anywhere. However, at times all we really need is a little inspiration from somewhere who has been there and done that to get us going again.

If you’re losing a little bit of motivation for blogging or don’t really think you can achieve what you want to, then this post is for you. Allow me to start this story with a little of my background. In school, I absolutely hated writing. Despite being in the ‘high flyers’ class which meant that myself and 20 others took their English exams a year before anyone else in the country, I was definitely struggling. Computers were far more my thing and I would rather type out an essay than write it.

Being handed another assignment which involved 3,000 words, hand written, just drove me insane.
Over the next two years, I went through college and built up websites (some of which were blogs) on the side. In fact, three years ago, my first ever blog was the one I now write for full-time after giving it a recent resurrection: my site on viral marketing. For a year, I wrote on the site purely as a way to build up search engine traffic. I didn’t care about making my articles sticky or how viral they were; I simply cared about search engine rankings.
Of course, how search engines work and what I focus on has changed a lot, but even after a year of pushing myself to write and hoping that I would start to enjoy the process, nothing seemed to be helping.

Then something changed…

I slowly let my marketing blog die and wasn’t writing much online until I launched another site, PluginID. In just over a year, the site has gained over 6,000 subscribers and is viewed as a top 10 blog in the personal development industry.

If you’re wondering what changed between a guy that hated writing to one that makes enough money through blogging to support himself full-time, then let me tell you:

I Started Writing What I Want To Read – I decided this would be the best way to judge whether I was writing excellent content that my audience would care about. Instead of writing things for search engines, or for teachers (like in school), I simply focused on writing what I wanted to write about. And, miraculously, I started loving it.

I Realised the Importance of Content – Some people get so caught up in SEO, design and their analytics stats that they completely forget about the most important aspect of blogging: your readers. And, your readers are simply on your site for one thing: your content. Instead of writing for search engines, I started to realise that my blog would only grow if I provided massive value to my readers, so I started putting a lot more time and attention into my writing.

I Stopped Caring About Things Out of My Control – After pumping out articles for a few months, it suddenly hit me that there is just no way I can ‘control’ whether people like my work. At school, I could study as much as possible and try to produce the best work that I can, but at the end of the day it’s up to the teacher to decide on my grade. Focus on what you can control (writing and promoting the best content you can) and then remain indifferent to how ‘well’ that article does. When you eliminate the number of things you focus on, you naturally start to enjoy the things you do.

I Left Editing Until the End – Typically, with written content, I would edit as I go because I didn’t want to make a mistake on paper and have to start again. As you would expect, when I jumped into the online world, I kept this same method (as many people do). I now find that it’s much more enjoyable, and produces much better results, if you try to get down everything you want to say and then come back and edit the content later. This allows you to stay in the flow and enjoy two separate modes when writing your posts.
Each of these 4 things, individually, had a big impact on how I now operate online. Combining all of these changes meant that I went from literally dreading having to write posts, to living what I do and now enjoying writing as my favorite medium.

If you ever find yourself down about your writing ability or demotivated to write your next post, then keep these in mind. I went from someone who hated writing to making over $50,000 with my blogs in 2009. There’s no way you can’t do the same.

This article is by Glenn Allsopp and all credit goes to him for this great bit of inspiration.

Bored writing blog content? This guy was too… is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

There are a number of differences between a Facebook group and a Facebook page that many people do not know about, or that are not very obvious to the uninitiated.

If you are thinking of starting a group or a page on Facebook, here are some things that you should know and consider when deciding which to go for to promote your business/cause/hobby etc:

Pages (i.e. ‘Become a Fan’)

In my opinion, the most important distinction here is that a Facebook Page can be crawled & indexed by Search Engines which means that any content on a Page can be found online through Search Engines such as Google or Yahoo!

• Send updates to fans
• Updates are seen in your fans’ news feed
• ability to add various 3rd party applications to your page such as Twitter which can personalise your page further.
• Great for feeding RSS links into page from your blog
• Restrict access to your page by user age and location
• Pages are not seen as an extension of your personal profile – i.e. great for companies. The page admin is not listed anywhere on the page so a fan would not necessarily know who owns the page
• Can create events
• Stats to monitor page activity such as number of fans, post interactions etc
• No limit as to number of fans

Groups (i.e. ‘Join This Group’)

Groups on Facebook are seen as much more personal and are visibly linked to the person who created the page and the admins.

• Can send messages to all group members (up to a maximum of 5000 members)
• Can setup secret by-invite only groups and moderate much easier than Pages
• Can create events and invite all members of the group to the event
• Not indexed by the Search Engines
• Cannot add 3rd party applications or link blogs/Twitter to groups

There are other differences between the Pages and Groups but the above comparison should get your started when deciding whether to have a Page or a Group.

Groups are great for promoting personal hobbies or interests whereas Pages get my vote when you want to promote a business or a raise brand awareness.

What’s the difference between Groups and Pages on Facebook? is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Ten years ago the Internet was still in its infancy, let alone mobile Internet & telephony. Today, there are more mobile phones on the planet than human beings (apparently since 2004, actually) which tells its own story about how fast the technology has developed and made accessible to almost everyone. There was a point in 1985 when Vodafone claimed that where would only ever be ‘about a million’ mobiles sold..ever!!

The first decade of the 21st Century gave us so many new ways of using the Internet and communicating with our mobile phones in other ways than just telephone calls. We were introduced to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Skype, iPod, iPhone, DAB, HD, PS3, 3G, MP3, MP4, GPS…the list goes on.

The question is, what does the next 10 years hold for mobile technology? Read on for 10 predictions…

1. SMS Money (“text a tenner”)

Lending a friend £10 or splitting and paying a restaurant bill with friends will be as straightforward as sending a text from your mobile phone. You’ll simply send money instantly from one phone to another by SMS.

2. Mobile Barcodes

Shops, restarurants and theatres will text or email you tickets, vouchers and special offers in the form of barcodes which can be displayed on your mobile phone. And al you’ll do, to receive the benefit, is scan them on arrival.

3. Shopping by text

Savvy shoppers will be able to buy items from advertising billboards, magazines or TV adverts simply by texting a code on the advert to the store – which will debit their bank account and mail out the desired product.

4. Holiday Money

No more running out of foreign currency or worrying about stolen or cloned credit cards. Travellers will be able to load up a pre-paid currency card from their mobile phone, lock and unlock their credit cards from their handset and receive text alerts to confirm when their card has been used overseas.

5. Text for a balance-check

Queuing in the cold at an ATM cash point or waiting for the next available call centre operator simply to find out your bank balance will become a thing of the past. You’ll just send a text from your mobile, and receive a reply containing your bank balance in seconds.

6. Money Management on the move

With a range of new smartphones joining Apple’s iPhone as the must-have gadget of 2010, people will be able to use bespoke applications to check their balance, pay bills and move money from account to account with just a few taps on the screen.

7. Overdraft text alerts

There’ll be no more fear of plunging into the red, or worrying if your salary has been paid, with banks offering to text their customers when they approach their overdraft limit or when a payment has been made.

8. Click-and-pay bills

No more paper bills or having to log into multiple websites: 2010 will see ‘billing by text’ for many people. Registered users will receive a text telling them how much their bill is and enabling them to just click to pay it.

9. Touch and pay goods and services

Commuters in London already enjoy ‘touch and pay’ technology with the Oyster card system to travel around the capital. 2010 will see more people able to use the same technology, via their mobile phones, to buy a cup of coffee, a new book or even pay for a haircut.

10. Mobile money goes global

In many parts of the world, banks are few and far between, so the mobile phone is destined to transform the way millions of people look after their money, make payments, shop and trade. 2010 will see massive expansion in the coverage of these services throughout Africa, India and the rest of Asia.

10 New Ways You’ll Use Your Mobile This Decade is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway