What is the most important internet marketing strategy for a newbie?
Good question! Before I give you the answer to that, I am assuming you are either or all of the following:
- you have just gotten into internet marketing, maybe a year or less (could be more)
- you have been trying out all sorts of business models and programs, buying all these ebooks and manuals, subscribing to all these membership sites.. ah yes… you have been spending way too much, and…
- you haven’t really been making any real money, or worse.. you haven’t been making any at all
- you are on several peoples mailing lists and receive a ton of freebies and stuff from gurus and the ordinary Joe
- you get excited when you get an email about this new promo, a discount, a sale, a launch… any darned excuse for you to whip out your credit card and buy buy buy
- after reading a sales page you get excited about the product and again, want to buy buy buy
Don’t feel bad, it’s not about being naive or gullible… you don’t know what hit you. You are just human, and the sales pages that convince you to buy or opt in to a list serve that specific purpose, and they cost thousands and thousands of dollar; the funny thing is the product itself in most cases costs but a small fraction compared to the cost spent on its sales page.
So what’s the strategy? I’ll tell you.
First of all I am certain the main reason you got into this gig is to earn more money, and mybe eventually quite your job, have more time for yourself yadda yadda. We all heard that before, and that is true, who wants to keep working and who wouldn’t want to own their own time, write their own paycheck.
So if you want to start making money online… especially newbies, pay attention.
Step 1 - Pick the Method
There are many ways to make money online; some ways require you to have a website, some don’t. Some ways require you to have your own product while others don’t. In most cases, you don’t even need to have a website or a product. If you do have a website you can try cashing in on google adwords or some of the other context ad companies, or you can simply sell your traffic.
Like I said there are several ways, but the most important first step, is to pick a method you are interested in learning.. in fact just pick one, and stick with it. Identifying one way allows you to focus on it.
Step 2 - Pick the Preacher… Or Teacher
There are so many info products and ebooks online, as many as the number of ways you can make money. Now that you have picked a method you would want to learn, find the product that you want to learn from, or the teacher/preacher/mentor who can guide you.
The internet is a vast body of information, a lot of it crap, but many good but only worked for the people that wrote them. You see, people who write ebooks or instructions on how to do something simply document a success story. Sometimes these are faulty, sometimes they don’t have all the facts, and sometimes.. well.. maybe they were just lucky. Just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you too. In fact if you have been buying ebooks like I have been in the past, it always comes with a disclaimer that the “author cannot guarantee results and that he or she cannot be held liable for however way you use the information on the ebook, and that results are dependent on effort and other circumstances”.
So the best thing for you to do is do some research, find an ebook, check who wrote it, check for reviews and commentary about the product, check for the reputation of the author. A lot of the information online is just second hand or passed on information, you got to go to the people who are actually really making money online, find out who they are, find out one who you think you can trust and you found the person to learn from. The great thing about most these ebooks is, you can return them and get a refund if you think they are crap.
Step 3 - Isolate Yourself From Marketers
The reason you get excited when you get a programmed auto responder email from a guru, or why you can’t help but itch for your credit card and buy, after reading a sales page is because all these are work of pros. Yes, you had no choice.. you didn’t know what hit you, you succumb to the convincing power for the sales letter or sales page otherwise they copywriter has no right to claim that thousands of dollar he got paid for writing the sales page.
It can’t be helped, if you don’t buy the product you keep wondering about it, and eventually visit the sales page again.
the solution to this is, once you have a product and the person to learn from, do not entertain any other emails, products, proposals, sales, etc.
Do not be swayed into buying something because of this one time deal or huge discount.. these are just some of the tactics copywriters and internet marketers use to instill a sense of urgency, stoke your desire so you will purchase their product.
If you belong to several mailing lists, maybe because you opted in to these while searching for the right product to buy, opt out of them right away once you have your product. Avoid distractions.
One side note about internet marketers especially the big name ones, they all promote each other and they push each other’s products to their respective mailing lists.
Step 4 - SMART Goal Setting
Give yourself a realistic goal to learn and put what you have learned to use, specify a time by which you are expected to accomplish this goal, or not; either way when thay time has elapsed.. move on and find something else.
Here is the SMART principle to setting goals:
S for specific, so you have focus… you won’t really be able to put the needed amount of effort into something if you spread yourself thin by doing other thing, which also happen to be a major distraction.
M for measurable, because at the tail end of it, you want to be able to judge the results of your actions objectively so you know if you achieved something or fell short.
A for attainable, because your goal needs to be something that someone has accomplished and that it is something you can actually do or achieve given your resources
R for realistic, so you know you got your feet on the ground and aren’t dreaming about doing something like reaching for the moon in one huge bound, get real is what it is all about.
T for time-bound, because you need to give yourself a specific span of time to learn the product or system, put what you have learned into action to generate the desired measurable results.
Here is an example of a great goal. If you were to learn how to make money from Adsense… you simply tell yourself that you will learn the ebook you bought and apply its strategies and in one month you ought to be making about say, 3 dollars a day for one site.
All the elements are accounted for; you got focus, you know how to measure yourself up at the end, and you know it is something that you can do and your lucid about it, and you know how much time you want to devote to the plan so it doesn’t become protracted and you end up wasting time on something that really would not work for you, time you could have spent on more successful endevours had you moved on.
This is your chance to succeed now… take this to heart, start out right and without having to make the expensive mistakes a lot of marketers have, in fact many drop out of the race and say internet marketing doesn’t work. The truth is, it does.. you just have to know what to look out for, what not to do… and what it takes for you to succeed.
Which leads me to one more thing; the icing to top the cake… most newbies do not take action… and they simply wait and procrastinate, putting the task on hold and dependent on something else that needs to happen first.
Clear your mind of all these ideas, stay away from mailing lists, avoid distractions and get busy.
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