Here we are already into March of 2011.  What have YOU done for your online business so far this year?

Each new year I try to sit back and evaluate what worked in the previous year for my business and also what DIDN’T work.  From there you can expand on the strategies that worked the best for you and eliminate those those failed.

When you eliminate that bad parts, you will free up some time to explore new strategies too.

One of my new projects this year is to spend more time providing helpful tips and strategies right here on this blog of mine.  I seemed to have slacked quite a bit last year in this arena, but I am ready for focus more time here.  So let me know what questions you have about internet marketing in general or if there are any product reviews you would like to hear about.

Stay tuned as there will be more news to follow!

So, you are hoping to sell your products, or have people join your mailing list and position yourself as an expert in your industry.

Well, Twitter is a great way to accomplish those tasks, however you have to do it the right way to make it work. They think that all they need to do in order to make money from Twitter is to get lots of followers and then send out sales link after sales link as their Tweets.

You’ve probably seen this yourself. I’ve seen examples of people sending out TWENTY or more sales links in an hour with no useful content or freebies at all. Sadly, there are automated tools to help promote this kind of Twitter spam and make it easier to blast out the ads.

This technique is very questionable and for the most part it is simply known as SPAM. And beyond that, it is a marketing technique that simply does not work. It’s like with a mailing list, people need a reason to follow and continue following you. Give them a good reason – make them interested in you and your Tweets. Start building relationships on Twitter and you’ll see far greater results – with people actually buying your products and opting into your promotions as a direct result of your Tweets. You will start to find people following you because they are genuinely interested in you and your Tweets and not simply because you followed them first in an attempt to have them follow you back. These types of followers are exactly what you want. These people will be the most responsive followers of the bunch.

Building relationships on Twitter – Here is how to do it:

Treat your followers well, and give them good information. Do you know what they are interested in? Ask them what is hot in the niche.

When a follower is interested in something, point them in the right direction. Don’t think about selling – instead concentrate on giving value and building relationships.

Ask questions, send people messages, and join in with the Twitter community spirit. If you like another Tweeter’s post, be sure to re-tweet it. This will be greatly appreciated by the original Tweeter as well as appreciated by your own followers for the added information.

Make sure to include photos and video links as well. People really like videos and pictures, and even more so if there is a little bit of gossip involved with them.

So in a nut shell, just provide true value and join in the social aspect. Taking this approach to Twitter will help you build a growing foundation of followers, which will ultimately help you make money on Twitter and lots of it.

Here is an interesting news post that one of my article writers thought I should share.  (I have not used either Posterous or VigLink myself, so I have no additional comments to add.)

Posterous is a very simple content publishing system allowing users to publish to many different services via email.  Their business has been going strong for quite a while now, resulting in them gaining many dedicated users.

Recently however, they have committed a fairly large no-no for a web startup, violating their users’ trust.

As one Posterous user has reported, they have been silently converting links inserted in content passed through their service into affiliated links using another service called VigLink.  VigLink, in and of itself, is a legitimate company, allowing users to accumulate revenue without inserting affiliate links themselves.  It also ignores all already present affiliate links, meaning if you put in your own Amazon link to a certain product, it will still be there when posted.

So in short, VigLink plays very fair, but Posterous, in using them, has not been doing so at all.

Co-Founder of Posterous, Sachin Agarwal conceded in a phone interview that they were definitely in the wrong when not informing users of what they were doing with links.  He also brought to light some other interesting tidbits of information.

Apparently, they have been doing this for a while now, it is just that no one has noticed it before.  He said they are just experimenting, and are not sure at this point whether or not VigLink will be permanently integrated into the Posterous service or not.  Regardless of whichever happens in the long term, users will be able to opt-out, or maybe even have to opt-in to use the feature.  Argawal has stated that if the permanent integration does occur, and a user is opted-in to use the feature, then they will be able to generate revenue from using it, which might actually increase the usage of the service, because not only will it be an easy to use content publishing service, but it will be an easy to use content publishing service that can make a user some easy, passive, revenue.

Posterous, Argawal also stated, is in the process of drafting a statement about the integration of VigLink, a company that has recently received capital from the likes of Google Ventures.  Little is known about how much this incident have affected their usage right now, but the possibilities of future money making, might actually serve to make this good press for both the Posterous, and the VigLink services.

Argawal needs to get this under his belt and move on, this was a huge mistake and very dishonest business move. Users realize the bills need to be paid, however they prefer transparency from their service provider and regaining their trust after something like this is going to be pretty tough.