One thing that all internet marketers are interested in is a growing list of leads. Leads are the primary reason that marketing exists at all. Without the ability to gather leads, there would be no commerce. For that reason, a great deal of time, research and effort have been spent on the technical aspects of capturing leads. Even though all of the old ways of capturing leads are still valid such as TV ads with a phone number or web address displayed, radio ads with a phone number or web address given , guerrilla tactics such as handing out flyers and making cold calls and visits to name a few, newer, more efficient ways of collecting leads are being used more and more heavily since the movement of commerce from the non-virtual to the virtual world.
With respect to the collection of leads, targeting is absolutely everything and in the virtual world, today’s powerful search engines deliver the most targeted traffic that the marketing industry has ever seen. An effect of the rise of these technologies is the establishment of a community dedicated to the optimization of interaction with the algorithms that build and format this virtual landscape. It is know as Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.
Quality SEO, does a great job of funneling these highly targeted leads. However, it does nothing to capture or retain them. In other words, if the content in or on you blog or website is optimized for search engines, search engines will send plenty of traffic your way, but they will do nothing to help that traffic convert into sales while they pass through.
If you are interested in learning Internet Marketing, depending on your level of experience, you may have a very large learning curve ahead of you. Many internet marketers are quickly overwhelmed by amount of information that they try to absorb when getting started with just the basics.
Depending on how much time you have spent researching this subject you may or may not still have to learn about the following: niche selection, keyword research, domain name selection and acquisition, hosting acquisition, domain name forwarding, HTML coding and/or PHP script selection, file transfer protocol, script installation, MySQL database installation and usage, content generation, search engine optimization, traffic generation, autoresponders and opt-in forms as well as squeeze pages, sales pages and landing pages, not to mention list building and all of the traditional marketing techniques. In addition to all of this, you have to maintain, build and nurture a brand.
It quickly becomes clear why many new to this business, which has become a highly technical version of a very old traditional trade (i.e. traditional marketing), quickly go in to information overload mode.
There are tools, however, that can help…at least with some of the items on the list of things to learn above.
One main item that can be of great help to assist someone interested in internet marketing is the new Internet Marketing Basics Resellable Ebook and Minisite available for download at TheBitBot.com.
If an entrepreneur is going to launch an internet business, there are essential tools that must be in place if success is to be the ultimate outcome. This article discusses the tools that I have found to be the essentials thus far.
This is not a long list, but if any of these are missing from your tool box, you would do well to incorporate them. Interestingly, these can be used to market small brick and mortar businesses as well as internet start-ups. All of the marketing techniques are the same in the virtual world as they are in the literal world. So here we go.
1) You must have an idea, a niche to pursue. You must have something to offer. You have to have something to sell. It could be knowledge, services, hard goods, soft goods such as software, or simply informational products. Whatever the case, you have to have something. You cannot simply sell “nothing” and expect to make money. I once saw a website about “nothing”. It was a blog about “nothing” and contained a series of articles written about whatever popped into the authors head. I looked at the site for a while and never really got anything from it. I left, never to return. Interestingly, the blog was monetized with Adsense. Needless to say, I was not a targeted visitor, so I did not click on any ads. Do not waste your time selling “nothing”. Find an affiliate program. Most brick and mortar businesses offer them and usually, it is just a matter of visiting their website and signing up. More often than not, HTML code will be provided for the products. Remember, pick a niche product that you believe in and enjoy writing about.
Do you have experience with anything? Have you studied a subject or worked in a field for years? Have you built up an understanding with respect to a certain niche? Can you offer your knowledge or insight to others? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you have everything you need to build a thriving business.
In the old days, to market your skills or knowledge, you would have to literally pound the pavement to get the word out that you have a service or trade you can share. These days, that is no longer the case. Welcome to the world of internet marketing. Here, the possibilities are endless.
Does this sound like a fairy tale? Maybe. However, it is true, none-the-less. Internet marketing, today, is very easy, despite what you think. Can you do it? Absolutely. Without a doubt. You just have to be shown what to do.
If you are like me, you are the type of person that has a variety of interests. Personally I think that this is a good thing. Why? Because a person who is genuinely interested in a variety of subjects can write articles with a variety of subjects granted the fact that a little research and concentration are invested into them. Fresh, unique content such as this is key to having a website.
This is the final chapter in the “How To Sell Online Series”. In this chapter, I wanted to discuss selling hard-goods as an affiliate.
So far in this series, we have discussed How To Sell Online Getting Started, How To Sell Online – Determining Demand Through Research – CH2, How To Sell Online – Can I Make Money In This Niche? – Ch3, How To Sell Online – Sourcing Suitable Products – CH4, How To Sell Online – Automated Product Delivery- Ch5.
One of the more popular things to do in the blogging and make money online world these days is to set up an autoblog. If you search the keyword autoblog, you will find sprinkled throughout the results, a tutorial here and there about setting up autoblogs. This post is actually a follow up to one of my previous posts which was a tutorial on setting up autoblogs and making money with adsense.
When I wrote the article, I was focusing mainly on the technical aspect of setting up the autoblog so as to provide a guide for bloggers to set up these types of blogs as a means of supplemental content.
In this post, I am highlighting the importance of adding unique content to autoblogs. Why is this important?
Over the past year I have spent a substantial amount of time researching the subject of internet marketing. I must say, this is really a much more fascinating pursuit that I ever could have imagined. There are so many variables and steps involved and the learning curve can be quite long and span several years if one does not know where to look or what questions to ask.
For that reason, I have decided, for this post, to condense everything I have learned into one short article that can act as an outline for anyone who has not yet obtained a personal road map to this end. So, here we go.
Step 1) Select a niche that you will write about. Take a moment and reflect on your life experiences, your interests, your pastimes, things you are passionate about, things that have consistently held your interest over the years or problems you have worked hard to overcome.
So far in this series, we have determined that we want to build an online business, selected a niche, determined whether or not there was money being spent in that niche and we began to venture out to determine whether or not suitable products are available for resale in this niche.
In the last installment, we began to discuss sourcing digital products from vendors such as Clickbank. Monetizing your online business using these types of products is a very simple process. Simply, all one is doing is presenting the visitor with sales copy that sells the product behind the affiliate link.
In this chapter, we will discuss selling our own product, perhaps one that we host on our own site. This is much more fun in my opinion because we are the owner of the product and not just an affiliate. Additionally, this gives us the opportunity to branch out and develop some new skills in that a landing page and download page will have to be designed and uploaded to our server. So how do I sell my own product online and set up my process so that my visitors automatically get a link to my product download upon my receipt of payment?
So far in this series, we have talked about selecting a niche, researching our niche so as to determine if there is a demand in this particular niche and finally additional research to see if there is money being spent in this niche.
If we determine that the niche is profitable, we can now begin searching for suitable products to sell on our website. There are many information products that we can sell online. All you have to do is Google information products for resell. Additionally, you could search for products with master resell rights (MRR) or private label rights (PLR). Please note that selling PLR items is not the same as using PLR content. You can actually use PLR items when selling because the information contained in them is not used as content for your site. Other people may also be selling these same PLR items. As a reminder, all content used for your site that is readable by search engines and counted as content must be original. That is the only way you will ever have a decent rank or SERP.
Making money with blogs is not difficult but at the same time, it is very difficult. What does that mean you ask? Simply put, there are two different methodologies that you can follow if you are going to launch a website or blog and use it as a source of income. One of these methods is quick and can earn you a small amount of supplemental income and the other one is very slow and has the potential to turn into an online business.
The first method, the simple one, entails signing up at at one of the following outfits or something similar:
1) https://www.blogger.com/start 2) http://www.weebly.com/ 3) http://www.sosblog.com/ 4) http://www.thoughts.com/ 5) http://wordpress.com/ 6) http://weblog.com/ 7) http://wordpress.org/
Please note that number seven does not include hosting. You will need to acquire free hosting if you are going to use the WordPress.org PHP blogging script. Additionally, your host will have to allow PHP and FTP. There are some free hosts that do allow these. Some will install it for free in the CPanel.
