Common Knowledge Amongst Internet Marketers, Part 3

There are certain topics that the seasoned information marketers take for granted and when communicating with newbies, they tend to forget the advantages they have. Welcome to the third installment of Common Knowledge among Internet Marketers.
When you’re a newbie to internet marketing, you come on full bore with the “I’m gonna make a boatload of money from the web” attitude. You think you can do it all, make a killing, and be on easy street in, say, six-twelve months.

The best advice?

Slow down and learn the basics.

Here are the last three subjects in this series that you should seriously look at to ensure your online success.

1. Drive traffic:

Learning how to drive traffic to whatever website you are promoting, whether it’s your own, an affiliate product, or AdSense ads, is the most important thing you need to learn. If you were in college to get a 4 year degree in ‘Successfully Making Money On The Internet’, the subject of marketing would be covered 3 out of the 4 years.

It’s that important.

What’s the point of spending all your time creating a fantastic product and website if no one knows it’s there and no one visits or buys it? That’s like throwing a New Year’s Eve Party in Central Park and not inviting your guests.

Take the time to look at and learn the many ways to drive traffic to your website(s) and product(s). Some methods are completely free but some can drive you to the poor farm rather quickly. Decide which ones appeal to you and give you the best results while taking up the least of your time.

Here are just a few ways to drive traffic:

Use Pay Per Click (PPC) (can be spendy)
Buy ad space in newsletters (not quite as spendy)
Have an affiliate program and let them drive traffic for you (cheap)
Comment on blogs (free)
Comment on forums with your link in your sig (free)
Article marketing (free, depending on which you submit to)
Participate in giveaways (free, unless you upgrade)

2. Have a mentor.

When you’re a newbie to information marketing, you can, like most, struggle, trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. One way to speed up the learning curve is to have a mentor. This can simply be another person whom you have gotten to know who also does information marketing that you respect and have been following. Watch what they do, what they say in their emails and how they say it, how their websites are set up, what business model they follow, etc.

Another option for a mentor is to contact a favorite online marketer and ask them a few questions. Pick someone who’s emails you have been reading and who you believe is approachable. Not someone who is so successful that they won’t have time to talk to you. Perhaps that person has a coaching program that you could invest in. Many newbie marketers use this particular method and find that their successes come much quicker.

3. Outsource.

It’s not so hard to get things done when you’re first starting out. But what happens if you run into something you don’t know how to do? Should you spend (waste) countless hours trying to figure it out? Or spend (invest) $25 to have someone set it up for you in 10 minutes? Keep in mind you could be using those hours doing more productive tasks towards building your business.

As you journey deeper into this wacky world of information marketing… you’ll begin to learn that you just can’t do everything yourself. It’s at that point that you will definitely need to start outsourcing some of your work, especially the more boring things or the ones you particularly hate to do.

With all 3 of these subjects, driving traffic, having a mentor, and outsourcing some of your work, you still need to have a plan of action.  Part of that plan should be to sign up for my K.A.R. (Knowledge-Application-Results) newsletter, where you will get ‘inside information’ on what I am doing to build my Information Marketing business and how you can follow those steps.

For more help making a plan and getting started, visit my good friend Peggy Baron’s IM-Focused.com website for further information and also for free tips.  You can certainly become an online success with a plan, a roadmap, a great vehicle to drive, and a full tank of gas.

Until next time,

Here’s to YOUR Successes,

Ron

Welcome to the second part of my 3 part series on ‘common knowledge’.

For the most part the ability of newbies to grasp the common knowledge and techniques of seasoned marketers is lacking. When you’re new, sometimes it feels like you’ve jumped into the middle of something and you feel stupid if you don’t know what others are talking about.

Like you are drowning in information overload.

In this segment I am going to cover 3 more topics of Information Marketing that are vitally important to your success. All of these topics important pieces to your online success so be sure to read Part 1 and Part 3 as well.

Topic 1. You need to sell something.

That seems like a no-brainer, but you can’t make any money without selling something.

Your own product.

There are definite advantages to creating your own product; you have complete control over the product and you can create lots of value. You stand to make more money from each sale if you’re the only one selling it, and it’s your property to do what you want with. But consider this: letting others promote it as affiliates will allow them to become your traffic-driving sales team. They make their cut of the profits, but you will probably sell a boat load more of your product this way. Need some direction on creating your own product? My friend Paula Brett has some great information, check it out here

Someone else’s product (an affiliate product).

It takes less work to sell a product that you didn’t have to create yourself.  They’ve done all the hard work and they probably even have some affiliate tools, such as emails, forum signature files, and possibly some small 125×125 images for you to use on your own website. You should capture some of the people yourself, too, by offering a freebie to create your own list.

Ads. Some sites don’t sell anything but they have constant fresh content and maybe do some article marketing to bring people to their site. The people read what’s on the site and maybe click on a targeted ad or two. Every time someone clicks on these ads it puts money in your pocket. Usually the more traffic you get, the more ad money you earn.

2. You need to network with others.

Getting to know other information marketers is one key to your online success. You will be amazed at the personal friendships you make and business relationships you forge. You will get satisfaction from helping others out and you can ask them questions when you have problems. If you want, you can form partnerships (joint ventures) that end up making you more money than you would on your own.

3. You need a plan.

Yes, yes, yes. You can waste days and weeks out of your life when you try to read everything on the internet about what you might want to do online. You can fail before you even begin by getting bogged down with information overload. Many new internet marketers don’t make it because they dabble in this and that, always falling for the next big promise of becoming an online success and making oodles of cash.  They don’t have a plan for what they want to do and don’t get very far.

Considering that you are probably drowning due to information overload, get your focus back with a ‘life jacket’ from my friend and accountability partner, Peggy Baron.

Stay tuned for Part 3 and be sure to sign up for the K.A.R. (Knowledge-Application-Results) newsletter to get more ‘inside’ information marketing tips and tricks.

Here’s to YOUR success,

Ron

As I continue providing you with information about my K.A.R. (Knowledge-Application-Results) system, I want to give you some tidbits to help you build your base of knowledge as an Internet Marketer. A good friend of mine, and fellow marketer, Peggy Baron, has a product that fits in nicely with my system: IM Focused.

The following are my thoughts as I read through her ebook:

Common Knowledge Amongst Internet Marketers

There are lots of things that are common knowledge amongst internet marketers, but if you’re new to internet marketing, you may not have learned them yet. Rather than cram everything into this one post, I’m going to break it down into a 3 part series and cover 3 basic topics in each part. These are in no particular order, but all are important to your online success.

1. You need a website.

While it is possible to start selling products without a website, it might not be in your best interest to do so. Having your own website(s) contributes to your long-term growth, which is crucial to online success. Your own website says you’re a serious, professional marketer interested in building relationships with people while selling products with value.

As you add more and more products, whether your own or affiliate products, it’s also good to have a “mother ship”, a home base website, where you can showcase yourself and your products. A website can promote your products and brand you as an internet marketing expert. This is common knowledge amongst internet marketers.

2. You need a list.

Another important factor to your online success is building a list. If you have a list, then you have a group of people who have said they’re willing to listen to you and perhaps buy from you. If you didn’t have these people on your list, then you have to work much harder to drive traffic to your website each and every time you want to promote a product. Would you rather have 100 targeted people on your list to promote to with one email, or try to get 100 new people to come to your website so you can then promote to them?

Consider what can happen if you have a list made up of customers who have already bought from you? They know you now, they know what kind of value you give, and they’re much more likely to purchase from you again. You can’t get a much more “targeted” crowd than that!

So build your list by offering something for free (an ebook, a report, an ecourse, audio or video) in exchange for their name and email address.

3. You need an autoresponder.

Autoresponders (I highly recommend Aweber) are your first step in putting your business on autopilot, and they are directly related to the all-important list you’re building. It might be easy enough at first to send out emails, promotional and informational, to the 5 people on your new list, but think ahead. When your list is in the thousands, you can’t possibly email each one of them.

An autoresponder is like a secretary. You set up your emails and they will go out when you want them to at a certain time on a certain day. If you want your autoresponder to deliver an ecourse you can tell it to send the lessons 3 days apart or whenever you want.

So, these are the first 3 of the topics covered in this common knowledge amongst internet marketer series.

Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3.

If you want to get on with your online success and make money quicker, take a look at IM Focused now.

Until next time,

Here’s to YOUR success!

Ron