Hey guys I am just starting out and was surprised to see that there was no sticky for newbs. If you could help me a bit and tell me where to start my research I would be so thankful! I am eager to start making money online. I have recently had A LOT of free time. I want to utilize it to my benefit. How do I get started? A big hello to everyone in the forum. I just joined and look forward to some great discussions with all of you! Thanks Very Much Much Respect Darrin
Hi Darrin - congrats on getting started in the IM business, or at least for taking the first step which is deciding to take action. There are so many resources out there to get started with your education, in fact Way too many! The first thing you need to do is to remain focused! Don't sign up for a ton of different email lists from every marketer out there otherwise you will spend all of your time reading emails and looking for the "next big thing" that you won't get anything done! Believe me I have been there! Here is a rough overview of the process: 1. Niche research - this subject gets beaten to death but yet is THE most important piece of the pie. People will tell you to focus on something you are passionate about, etc which is something to consider but if your passion is underwater basket weaving you can do everything in the world right and never make any money. So, you either start with a broad niche, like health care and keep diggin down to say weight loss and keep going until you get to something like Fast weight loss after pregnancy, etc, etc (Just an example). Then you find something to promote that will Answer the searchers Problem! OR: 2. Find your Product first. You do the oposite and go to Clickbank.com and look for a product in a category you are interrested in pursuing. You can search by gravity which basically means that anything over 100 is selling well. There is a big misconception that competition is bad but actually competition is GOOD - because that is where the money is! Then you need to do your research and find good keywords that are micro-niche liek above that have good traffic but not crazy traffic that will cost you a fortune. 3. Keyword research and PPC Ads - man you could spen a year on this alone. 4. Building landing pages, squeeze pages, review pages etc to basically personally review and or suggect the product you are selling 5. Capture emails? Is this a market that you can build a good list of BUYERS and email them good content on a regular basis while also recommending new products? This is huge! 6. Testing and tracking - this is the key. The thing you need to accept in the beginning and actually all along the way is you ARE GOING TO FAIL - period. You are going to lose money and you are going to get discouraged BUT this is GOOD NEWS! First because that is when 99.9% of the people give up and move on. But if you Track your results, and constantly split test keywords, ad variations, langing page designs, your content and the networks you are promoting to you will eventually find a winner! That's when you... 7. SCALE - you have found a product / keyword / ad group that is making more money that you are spending - even if it is only a little. So you scale it - fist by simply dumping more money into it. If you are making $22 for every $20 you are spending then you should make $220 for every $200 and so on up to a point of diminishing returns. You also keep split testing your ads and tweeking everything to see which is better. In other words you run 2 ads for say fatloss4idiots and both going to same landing page - one ad will out perform the other so you keep it and drop the poor one - keep doing this until you can't find a better converter. Same goes for landing pages - you can set it up to go to page 1 on 1 click and then page 2 on the next, etc, etc. Then you branch out and look for more keywords and more traffic sources to expand your little niche. You can now spend more time on developing your websites, etc. 8. Rinse and Repeat. Obviously this is just an overview of the process, there is so much more to this and to each of these steps but the point is to GET STARTED otherwise it will be this time next year and you will be in the same position. You need to treat this as a business, not a hobby. Set a budget, make a plan, set goals and stick to them. Again you will fail and you may fail 15 times before you find a little nugget, but you will learn so much along the way every time! There is 1 product that I can whole heartedly recommend without a doubt and I have looked at almost every product out there. I can't post links on here yet since i just registered but if you want thee details just shoot me an email or pm. I am not saying this to earn $$ or sell you on something that is why I'm not even going to list it but the information is more than you will need with documentation, video's, help forums, etc and is only like $67! It could easily sell for $950. And no it's not my product - it has just helped me tremendously! Anyway - I hope that sheds a little light on the process and will hopefully create a ton of questions from there. Good luck! Aaron
Oh yeah - a few more things. I was mainly referring to PPC advertising in the above steps. You can also: *Create mini website blogs and post free content and monetize by either adsense adds, selling links and capturing emails to market products to as well as recommending clickbank products. *Buy and sell domain names *Buy and sell websites These steps require knowledge in hosting, building simple websites and web 2.0 marketing but are a good way to get started with very little money and learn along the way. Once you get better at it you then sell the websites for a profit or you make a residual income off of each on and then of course rinse and repeat. Ultimately you will want multiple streams of income from multiple areas in the IM field, that way if say your PPC ads get dropped, or say your main money website falls off of google then you have back up income until you can fix the problem.
There is also the free advertising road through social networks. Spread your online presence by opening accounts with You Tube, My Space, Twitter, Blog sites, video sites etc. It takes a bit of time at first, but once you get the hang of it, your message/product will get know by more and more people.
Yo yo I am relatively new too, but the other week I made $380.00 on one affiliate click which I was really pleased with. I wrote a quick report to help noobs like you and me. You can download it here: www.thisblogwillpaymymortgage.com