Hi DigitalPoint. I've been lurking around the edges of internet marketing for a while and hadn't really committed to it yet. I have had a feeling like there are so many directions to go in I don't know how to choose. I've bounced around readng about various techniques, ideas, and plans. To put an end to the wandering, I decided to begin my career in the field by buying a "Guru Course" which I would start at the beginning of and follow through step-by-step as a framework to build on. I expect that all the information in the course is probably available within these forums. That stated, what I am really after is a roadmap on a reasonable way to proceed step-by-step so that I can focus on just one thing at a time. Regarding this post, I've been inspired by Ponynugget's thread on his foray into bum marketing. There is some great information that accumulated in there and I think it really worked for him as a motivational tool to help keep him working since he knew people were waiting to hear how it was going. So, with that in mind... I will update this thread with an account of my experience and how things are going. I'll beg for advice and scraps of knowledge which can help me on my quest. And, I hope, that this thread will be a document of my first successes in online marketing. Either that or it will be a permanent testament to my public humiliation! Encouragement and help will be greatly appreciated... Either way, there is bound to be something in this experience that can help others in the same boat as me. I figure the least I can do is put it out there... Korak
Hey, i'm kind of interested to see what the results are. 90% of these probably don't work as intended, but I still hope it works out for you!
I would have to agree that most of the information in some "Guru" courses are available right in the open on the IM forums. The trouble is that most people who attempt to follow these guru courses are just addicted information junkies. I'll bet 95% of the buyers never seriously follow through with what they buy before moving on to something else. Even with this $$$ information sitting in front of them, they don't have the experience to be able to judge it and make use of it to turn it to their advantage. I never really started to make money until I just went back to the basics. Find a market, create a digital information product(PDF), generate traffic to a salespage, automatic product delivery=$$$ Nothing fancy. I just want instant paypal cash. I do collect email but have yet to totally backend market. Along the way there are 1000 different ways to do each step. Trying and failing was the way I learned. You can pick up skills by trying to do and learn on your own. Search engines are the ultimate tools. It just takes time. I think there are very few overnight successes in IM. But you can be very successful even with out a large bankroll if you can devote the time and effort to learning. Good luck.
I think buying a guru course is a great idea, you need a road map. But, there are many free courses online. I think you can get one free at johnchow.com. The reason I say buy at least one is because you will be able to see how the order process is done. Take note of each email the "guru" sends you and any other products that are offered to you. I have learned that you can learn more from how they get sales than the actual information that is in their books. Good Luck.
First, thanks for sharing some thoughts and ideas with me. I bought a course and have started reading through the materials and working through the steps in the plan. My criteria for buying a course was pretty basic. Not too expensive since I expect much of the information to be available free but from a name at least well known. Regarding which course I bought, I think I probably shouldn't put that here in the thread. I don't really want this to be an endorsement of a package. I'll tell you via PM if you want to know but if you buy it too please do so through my affiliate link. Quite frankly I can use all the help I can get! Now on to the experience so far. The insights in the package have been a little better than I expected. Or more accurately the coherentness of the the thought process and presentation. (Is coherentness a word?) The recommendation of the author is to focus on affiliate sales first as the easiest entry into internet business. (As opposed to direct product creation.) My instinct is to want to own the product but I am going to follow the plan. (I had already started working on a product previously but will delay that now.) So, per the advice of the guru I identified a market niche and chose my initial product to plug. This is really where the information felt lean to me and where I have been stuck before. I find it really difficult to choose a product to sell. To my untrained eye, many of them look about the same. The sales pitches are all the same ugly pages with lots of calls to action, testimonials, and some free thing to sign up for. I get it... That must be the proven style. Makes it hard to tell what is crap and what isn't though. (Let's face it, they all look like crap even if they sell.) I looked through clickbank and chose one that seemed to be popular. I figure it must sell to some degree and probably will continue to exist for a while if it is doing well. That may not be sound reasoning. I am concerned about heavy competition but feel that the risk of a weak vendor in exchange for less competition is probably taking a risk in the wrong area. Actually, niche selection is tough for me too. The depth and degree of competition is pretty intimidating in every area that seems to be strong. (Which makes sense.) I suppose I could choose something in a micro-niche but that seems harder to evaluate an opportunity for. I didn't feel like the information for choosing a niche was that helpful. Mostly "look on ebay, amazon, etc. for what people are willing to pay for and do some basic keyword research to see if many people are actually online looking for info" for that niche. Maybe that is really all you can do but I would have liked to have more specific advice on evaluating what I found through those sites. Any tips from readers here? I'm going down the road with what I have so far but will certainly be looking for future product niches and would like to know how to do a better job... The advice on buying a domain was OK but also left me with a feeling of having to essentially guess. That might also just be how it goes with domains since so many are taken. I stuck to .com and got one that I hope will work well for the system and the future. A question that is still in my mind is, "Should a domain just be for the sale of one product or does it make sense to use a page under it if the domain is decent?" For example, is selling something at www.example.com/product way worse than selling directly on www.example.com? In my thoughts right now I like the idea of using the main .com as an opt in and info page for a more general opt-in list that would apply to the first product but potentially others in the same market area. My idea would be to promote multiple products in the same area and then use 1 list for my long-term communication after the product-specific follow up runs out. (Though right now focusing on the first product is all I will be doing.) A final comment on actually doing something. I agree with testmkt that lack of execution is probably the biggest reason for failure. (Really in everything I suppose.) I hope that the pressure of these updates will keep it from being my reason for failure. Thanks again for your thoughts and wisdom. Please keep it coming! Korak
Hi Everyone... I lost a lot of time over the last week or so being distracted by the rest of my life. Looks like I'm faltering on the "execution" piece of the puzzle which so far is as predicted my biggest challenge. Keeping on moving forward though. Since my last post I've gotten clearer on the guru's method's and mindset and have revised my own thoughts on my original product choice. (Moving away from it and then back to the original choice again.) Right now I'm working on my squeeze page and following an example provided in the materials. It is a very minimalist approach but I like the idea that simple is better than complicated. Any thoughts out there on whether a squeeze page should be short and sweet or should instead strive to answer the likely objections of the visitor? I'm using Aweber for my opt-in email list management. They force double-opt-in but that doesn't seem like a huge barrier. The truth is that I don't know that though. I wonder how much of a difference that will make in my conversion of visitors to list members. Obviously it must decrease it to some degree because it cannot increase it. I hope it isn't a large negative... Well, that is my update for now. Will finish the squeeze page and then move on to the thank you, verification messages, and from there on to the auto-responder series for those who sign up. Any advice on this post or previously raised questions will be very much appreciated! Thanks! Korak
Double opt-in's aren't a negative at all, by doing this you are fully legally protected which leads to a higher quality mailing list customer base.
Hey, check out carlocarb.com. He'll give you a free report, just simple back to the basics. It's what the professionals use, that I've met. Not name-dropping, but having talked to and attended two of MattBacak's courses, I know what he uses. This is his same plan thing.
Hey Everyone... It has taken me a lot longer than I expected to get to this point but I have most of my pages fnished. Well, finished is too strong. I have them adequate to begin advertising. Basically, a squeeze page, thankyou for signing up page, and an email confirmed page. I also have a 5 email follow up series set up in Aweber to try and reinforce my sales message and hopefully lead into an ongoing relationship with subscribers for futher offers and information. It has been more work than I thought it would be to get to this point. The pages are so simple looking I didn't think it would take much but I really did struggle with it a bit. Wording, layout, etc. And that is even with basically knocking off the guru's look and style! So now, I am on the cusp of putting together a marketing plan and strategy to drive traffic to my squeeze page. I'm curious about how the guru will recommend doing that. Since all I really have is a squeeze page, SEO is out unless I'm posting other pages for that with links to the squeeze, etc. Curious about what is working for other people to drive traffic to a squeeze page. What do you use? Seems like the big challenge of the system will be the marketing portion. Will the advice be good? We'll see... I'll post my traffic stats here once I actually start trying to drive it. Another question for anybody who happens by this post... Do you use Google analytics to track traffic or is there something better? For now I figure I'll start with Google unless a better option pops up...
My Marketing Plan - The guru recommends a multi-front attack on the market making use of PPC, article-marketing, forum participation, and at least one other free method. Right now I'm thinking about using Google and a minor player for PPC. (Maybe NBCsearch since I have a deal that promises $100 in free clicks.) My idea is to budget 20 bucks for each and once it is gone see how the conversions go... If they are profitable or break-even I will turn up the budget of course. If not, tweak and try again... For free methods I'll sumbit articles to directories, use Squidoo or Hubpages (Squidoo seems to be down today so thinking Hubpages looks like the way to go.), and I'm trying to figure out how to tie a blog into the mix in a way that will accomodate more than one squeeze page. How do I write a blog focused enough to drive traffic to that page without making all that work useless for future, different promotions? The guru's information was pretty sparse on these areas. Article marketing info is enough to work with but other than that the rest of the techniques are named but not really explained with any kind of approach in particular. Good thing I have DigitalPoint!
It's been a while since I posted in here. Thought I should... I'm still pushing forward with my efforts and have started building an email list. Right now, I'm just working through PPC in adwords and trying to really educate myself in there. To be honest I'm feeling like it could take a lifetime to really get good with their system, ad-writing, split-testing, keyword discovery, etc. My feeling though is that PPC is such a basic and integral part of the online marketing space that I had better take the time to really understand it and get good at it. (Preferrably without burning too much cash in the process before breaking even and becoming profitable on the spend.) I had originally planned on starting with article writing but bumped PPC ahead in terms of where to invest time because I viewed PPC as having a shorter time span between effort and results and figured I could add article marketing afterwards. If anybody reading this has adwords tips that they wish they had known from the start please post them here. You might save me hours of my life! Think of all the good karma that must get you...
First, ive used around 4 of these in last 4 years and followed the instructions exactly, they work for the first few days and then go dry..... Its woth a go though, you just have 2 keep updating your info....
Next update... I'm feeling good about my PPC campaign now and am turning my attention to conversion. Let me rephrase that... My PPC has gotten to the point where while I'm sure it needs more work, I feel like poor conversion is my bigger problem. I'm just about to look into using the conversion tools through Google and would love some advice on taking advantage of their testing tools for different pages. Looks a little confusing based on a preliminary read. Also, this thread is pretty stale now and I'm wondering if I should bother to update it... Anybody care one way or the other?