To succeed in Internet Marketing, you need tools to help you run your Internet business.
Internet marketing is not just about making money online.
It’s about running a profitable business on the Internet that is going to provide you with profits on a consistent basis for the long term.
It’s not a hit and run situation where you only earn money 1 time.
To make lots of money on the Internet, you need to view Internet marketing as a real business, just like you would when you run an offline brick and mortar store.
…and to be successful in running a very profitable Internet business, you need tools.
PERIOD.
You can’t do everything manually. There simply isn’t enough time for you to do everything by yourself.
We only have 24 hours in a day, so we should focus our time and efforts on the more important things and leave the repetitive tasks which can be automated into the hands of technology.
Hey we’re living in the 21st century!
One VERY IMPORTANT aspect of Internet marketing that you can automate is through the use of an autoresponder system.
An autoresponder system basically is a system to follow up with your website visitors so that you can build beneficial and trusting relationships with them, in the hope that they’ll buy your products/services in the future.
In this ever-increasing-competition society that we live in, every marketer and his dog is doing everything they can to sell their products and services.
People are getting tired of being harassed with marketing messages all day long.
Because of this, it is VERY HARD to be able to sell your products/services to prospects on your first encounter with them.
This is especially true if you’re selling your products/services on the Internet.
They don’t know who you are and they see you as someone who’s hiding behind a computer.
With that said, in order to be able to successfully sell your stuff to prospects, you need some kind of mechanism to “capture” their contact info so that you can follow up with them on a consistent basis to build trusting relationships with them.
After they begin to trust you will you be able to sell your stuff to them.
Sure there are exceptions where prospects buy your stuff the first time you offer them, but this is VERY RARE.
If you want to sell effectively and consistently you MUST have an autoresponder system in place to follow up with them.
To get people to sign up for your autoresponder, you need to “bait” them with some kind of valuable freebie such as a free report on your field/niche. If they want to receive this valuable free report, then they need to give you their contact info (usually in the form of email address).
Once they signed up for your autoresponder, you email them every few days to build beneficial and trusting relationships with them.
The best part with this autoresponder thing is that you can compose your messages in one go and then determine when you want these preset messages to be sent out to your prospects and it will do the job of automatically sending out the email messages for you (yes even while you sleep)!
SUPER IMPORTANT: Do Not sell your products/services all the time within these emails. Instead what you want to do is to have a mixture of education/sales messages.
Let me explain…
Let’s say that someone just signed up for your autoresponder to get your free report. Your first message to him should be to congratulate him for requesting your report to affirm him that he’s made the right decision. You want him to feel at ease and assure him that he’s going to get valuable and useful information.
Another message might go out to him automatically from your autoresponder system 3 days later and educate him more about your niche.
Then a few days later your autoresponder system emails him another message revealing even more great content.
You can then set the next message to be a sales message where you do your sales pitch about your product or an affiliate product if you don’t have a product yet (by the way if you don’t have a product yet, you might want to check out my brand new product creation crash course Instant Product System).
The key is to keep a balance between content and sales message. If all you do is send out sales message all day long, then your subscribers (people in your autoresponder system) are going to unsubscribe and you will not be able to follow up with them anymore, ever.
The converse is also true - that is, DO NOT send content messages all day long without doing any selling because if you do then you’re not going to sell your products/services.
After all, the whole purpose of getting them on your autoresponder system (also known as your list) is to follow up with them so they buy your products/services. If you don’t do any selling, you might as well not set up your autoresponder system in the first place.
In my opinion, having a good autoresponder system in place is A MUST to be able to sell effectively on a consistent basis.
The 2 leading autoresponder companies on the market today are Getresponse and Aweber. I’ve been using Getresponse since the start of my Internet business and I highly recommend them. Aweber is known to be awesome as well, although it has a much steeper price when your subscribers go over the 500 limit.
Whichever company you choose, make sure you get an autoresponder system in place for your Internet business!
Read more...
05 March 2009
"What topic should I write about?"
This is the first big decision and the first point where everything can go wrong.
If you choose the wrong topic then you begin walking down the wrong path and it might be months before you even realize it and change direction.
Here's some common mistakes people make when choosing a topic to write a blog about:
- Don't pick a subject just because you see others make money writing about it
- Avoid writing about something you are passionate about, but very few other people are
- Don't base a blog on a topic you know little about or have minimal practical experience in
- Be careful not to write about too diverse a range of subjects, your blog must have a focus
WHAT IF YOU HAVE NO IDEAS AT ALL?
For people who have no idea what to blog about I tell them to write down a list of their hobbies, passions, experiences, education and skills in all areas of life and then take that list and derive blog topics.
In almost all cases it's easier to start a blog from something you have an interest in, so I try and steer people in that direction rather than get too caught up in the potential to make money.
I honestly believe that if you have traffic you can make money, and it's traffic that is hard to generate. The money comes easily enough once the traffic is in place, so it's better to seek topics you have the most potential to build an audience from.
For people who struggle to choose between a range of ideas I suggest picking one and devoting a serious amount of time to it. You have to really "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" before you really know whether a blog topic will work.
Sometimes no amount of research, self reflection, internal or external analysis will give you an answer. Only the MARKET can give you a definite result. You have to set a blog up and just start writing and see what happens. You can always make adjustments as you go along.
It's crucial to pick just ONE idea and not attempt to start a blog about every topic you have an interest in. If you spend your energy and time across three blogs you will end up with three average blogs. If you pour 100% of your effort into just one blog, you give it the best chance of success.
At the end of a three month trial period of focusing on just one blog you at least have a conclusive outcome, whether successful or not. There is no ambiguity about whether you worked hard enough and you can honestly say you gave it your best shot. You can continue with the blog if it appears to be gaining traction or move on to a different topic if it didn't.
At the end of three months of consistent blogging you also have an ASSET. Even if your blog doesn't have much traffic, it does have three months of content in it, so worse comes to worst, you can sell your blog and recoup a few hundred dollars and then take your experience with you into your next blog project.
There is no such thing as failure if you actually put something out there and learn from the experience and sometimes the only way to really know whether a topic has potential is to test it on a real live blog.
CASE STUDY
My friend Alborz began blogging by creating three blogs on subjects he enjoyed and believed had potential to become successful. He chose -
1. Cars
2. Going out in his hometown of Brisbane
3. Windows Vista (when it was in prelaunch)
He ended up writing one post a month to the Vista blog, one post a week to the Brisbane blog and one post a day to the car blog.
You won't have any problems guessing which blog took off.
Yep, the car blog.
Alborz eventually dropped the other two blogs and focused his energy on his one main blog, which became a massive success (last I heard he was making over $40,000 a month from it!).
All of the topics he chose had potential and he had interest in, but only one came out on top because of two reasons -
1. He found he was most passionate about cars, so much so that he enjoyed writing one or more articles per day to his blog
2. The car blog received the best response from the market - he built an audience
Sometimes you can't make concrete decisions until you actually test your topic ideas.
I suggest you narrow down your topic list and then start writing. If you have no trouble producing one new post a day, then do it for three months and see whether people like your work.
No one can tell you what to blog about, it's up to you to decide. Just don't stay suspended in limbo due to decision-paralysis. Nothing will feel 100% right until you actually start doing it.
Here's to your blogging success,
Yaro Starak
blogmastermind.com
Read more...
If you choose the wrong topic then you begin walking down the wrong path and it might be months before you even realize it and change direction.
Here's some common mistakes people make when choosing a topic to write a blog about:
- Don't pick a subject just because you see others make money writing about it
- Avoid writing about something you are passionate about, but very few other people are
- Don't base a blog on a topic you know little about or have minimal practical experience in
- Be careful not to write about too diverse a range of subjects, your blog must have a focus
WHAT IF YOU HAVE NO IDEAS AT ALL?
For people who have no idea what to blog about I tell them to write down a list of their hobbies, passions, experiences, education and skills in all areas of life and then take that list and derive blog topics.
In almost all cases it's easier to start a blog from something you have an interest in, so I try and steer people in that direction rather than get too caught up in the potential to make money.
I honestly believe that if you have traffic you can make money, and it's traffic that is hard to generate. The money comes easily enough once the traffic is in place, so it's better to seek topics you have the most potential to build an audience from.
For people who struggle to choose between a range of ideas I suggest picking one and devoting a serious amount of time to it. You have to really "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" before you really know whether a blog topic will work.
Sometimes no amount of research, self reflection, internal or external analysis will give you an answer. Only the MARKET can give you a definite result. You have to set a blog up and just start writing and see what happens. You can always make adjustments as you go along.
It's crucial to pick just ONE idea and not attempt to start a blog about every topic you have an interest in. If you spend your energy and time across three blogs you will end up with three average blogs. If you pour 100% of your effort into just one blog, you give it the best chance of success.
At the end of a three month trial period of focusing on just one blog you at least have a conclusive outcome, whether successful or not. There is no ambiguity about whether you worked hard enough and you can honestly say you gave it your best shot. You can continue with the blog if it appears to be gaining traction or move on to a different topic if it didn't.
At the end of three months of consistent blogging you also have an ASSET. Even if your blog doesn't have much traffic, it does have three months of content in it, so worse comes to worst, you can sell your blog and recoup a few hundred dollars and then take your experience with you into your next blog project.
There is no such thing as failure if you actually put something out there and learn from the experience and sometimes the only way to really know whether a topic has potential is to test it on a real live blog.
CASE STUDY
My friend Alborz began blogging by creating three blogs on subjects he enjoyed and believed had potential to become successful. He chose -
1. Cars
2. Going out in his hometown of Brisbane
3. Windows Vista (when it was in prelaunch)
He ended up writing one post a month to the Vista blog, one post a week to the Brisbane blog and one post a day to the car blog.
You won't have any problems guessing which blog took off.
Yep, the car blog.
Alborz eventually dropped the other two blogs and focused his energy on his one main blog, which became a massive success (last I heard he was making over $40,000 a month from it!).
All of the topics he chose had potential and he had interest in, but only one came out on top because of two reasons -
1. He found he was most passionate about cars, so much so that he enjoyed writing one or more articles per day to his blog
2. The car blog received the best response from the market - he built an audience
Sometimes you can't make concrete decisions until you actually test your topic ideas.
I suggest you narrow down your topic list and then start writing. If you have no trouble producing one new post a day, then do it for three months and see whether people like your work.
No one can tell you what to blog about, it's up to you to decide. Just don't stay suspended in limbo due to decision-paralysis. Nothing will feel 100% right until you actually start doing it.
Here's to your blogging success,
Yaro Starak
blogmastermind.com
Read more...
These 2 Elements = Profits
If you’ve been marketing online for some time now, you should have already known that the there aren’t really any “big secrets” to online profits.
The “big secrets” (as the “gurus” called it) basically comes down to 2 very important metrics :
(1). Traffic
(2). Conversion
If your site receives a lot of visitors but none of them buy your products or services, then you are not making any money.
Conversely, you can have the world’s best converting site, but without traffic, you won’t make a single sale.
Hence, these two elements work hand-in-hand together.
Traffic + Conversion = Profits
That is why it is very important that before driving massive traffic to your site, make sure that your conversion rate is good. But then again, without any traffic at all, you can’t gauge how good or bad your conversion is.
The solution is to drive decent amount traffic to your site and see what the conversion rate is.
For example if you drive 100 visitors to your site and you make 1 sale, then your conversion rate is 1/100 = 1%.
You could probably do better than 1%. Of course, it depends on the sources of traffic as well, as different sources produce different conversion rates.
Not all traffic is created equal.
For example, affiliate traffic tends to produce better conversion rates than traffic from social bookmarking sites, while joint-venture traffic usually produces better conversion rates than affiliate traffic.
Once you’ve calculated your conversion rate based on a decent amount of traffic, for example 200 - 300 visitors, you should always try to improve on it before driving any more traffic to your site.
Why?
Because advertising costs are increasing every single day. Since you’ve worked so hard (in terms of money, effort, and time) in getting that visitor, you should make sure that you have a great converting site so that he or she becomes a buyer.
Even if he doesn’t buy your product or service right then and there, you should have some kind of freebie to bribe him in exchange for his email address, so that you can follow up with him to generate sales later on.
An excellent yet free tracking program that can track visitors on your site is Google Analytics. I’ve also done an article some time ago that’s titled 5 Reasons Why You Need To Track Your Visitors. Be sure to read that article to get a better understanding why it’s important to track your visitors.
Once you’ve managed to obtain a great conversion rate, be sure to note down the changes you’ve made to your site, so that you can refer back later on and see which specific element you changed that has a major impact on the conversion rate.
Who knows you might be able to duplicate this change on your other site to boost its conversion rate as well, even though different markets and different sites may react differently.
But hey, this is testing and tracking, and nothing is perfect. That is why it’s called “testing and tracking”!
Once you’re satisfied with your conversion rate, it’s time to drive traffic like mad to your site and make oodles of money!
And you know what, since you’ve taken down notes which elements on your site you changed that resulted in a boost in your conversion rates, you could probably slap up a mini-report and sell it for a low price or use it as a freebie to bait more people into your list.
Welly Mulia
The Author
Read more...
The “big secrets” (as the “gurus” called it) basically comes down to 2 very important metrics :
(1). Traffic
(2). Conversion
If your site receives a lot of visitors but none of them buy your products or services, then you are not making any money.
Conversely, you can have the world’s best converting site, but without traffic, you won’t make a single sale.
Hence, these two elements work hand-in-hand together.
Traffic + Conversion = Profits
That is why it is very important that before driving massive traffic to your site, make sure that your conversion rate is good. But then again, without any traffic at all, you can’t gauge how good or bad your conversion is.
The solution is to drive decent amount traffic to your site and see what the conversion rate is.
For example if you drive 100 visitors to your site and you make 1 sale, then your conversion rate is 1/100 = 1%.
You could probably do better than 1%. Of course, it depends on the sources of traffic as well, as different sources produce different conversion rates.
Not all traffic is created equal.
For example, affiliate traffic tends to produce better conversion rates than traffic from social bookmarking sites, while joint-venture traffic usually produces better conversion rates than affiliate traffic.
Once you’ve calculated your conversion rate based on a decent amount of traffic, for example 200 - 300 visitors, you should always try to improve on it before driving any more traffic to your site.
Why?
Because advertising costs are increasing every single day. Since you’ve worked so hard (in terms of money, effort, and time) in getting that visitor, you should make sure that you have a great converting site so that he or she becomes a buyer.
Even if he doesn’t buy your product or service right then and there, you should have some kind of freebie to bribe him in exchange for his email address, so that you can follow up with him to generate sales later on.
An excellent yet free tracking program that can track visitors on your site is Google Analytics. I’ve also done an article some time ago that’s titled 5 Reasons Why You Need To Track Your Visitors. Be sure to read that article to get a better understanding why it’s important to track your visitors.
Once you’ve managed to obtain a great conversion rate, be sure to note down the changes you’ve made to your site, so that you can refer back later on and see which specific element you changed that has a major impact on the conversion rate.
Who knows you might be able to duplicate this change on your other site to boost its conversion rate as well, even though different markets and different sites may react differently.
But hey, this is testing and tracking, and nothing is perfect. That is why it’s called “testing and tracking”!
Once you’re satisfied with your conversion rate, it’s time to drive traffic like mad to your site and make oodles of money!
And you know what, since you’ve taken down notes which elements on your site you changed that resulted in a boost in your conversion rates, you could probably slap up a mini-report and sell it for a low price or use it as a freebie to bait more people into your list.
Welly Mulia
The Author
Read more...
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