The Silent Avatar Speaks

Internet Marketing can be one of  the most effective ways of making money and running your own business online  as you need very little money to start your online business (compared to traditional brick and mortar business) and providing you apply constant and consitent effort in a year or two you can become a wealthy person.

Well, what do you need just to start making a considerable profit online through the internet marketing?

To be successful in internet marketing you should combine three main elements:

1. Find services and products that a lot of people need or require which is not inundated by competition (find a niche)

2. Find a place to endorse these products, this assumes any form of landing page (a web site, forwarded domain, a blog or squidoo lens)

3. A source of visitors or targeted traffic (that means, that people you know are searching for the product or service you may be offering).

The first question you may ask is how to find such product or services?

One way is to try EPC, which stands for Earnings Per 100 clicks or affiliate network where you commonly can find information such as gravity that is a measure of a product.

If you manage to find a product or service with a high EPC or gravity you can for sure suppose that if that product is so popular among the buyers, a lot of people require and need it.

So if you discovered this, you can safely connect your targeted visitors to this product or service and drive them to buy it in order to make income.

But in order to do this it is necessary for you to have a form of landing page of your own. It can be a web site of a seller whose product or services you endorse or you can also use your own pre-sell landing page where a useful information about your products or services are represented, so that your potential buyers can make an informed choice.

This stage of the process is very important, because supposing that the prospects are targeted you still have to help them in making the right choice. To be able to do that you do not have to be a salesman.

Actually, most people browsing the web looking for services and products and what they are really looking for is useful information that helps them to make a right decision. If you provide your potential clients with useful information on the product and services you are marketing they need you are more likely to have more sales as they will be no longer searching fro other information and buy your products.

In some cases the landing page made by a seller will do the whole job and you just have to make a redirect, but if it is not the case, you have to make an extra value by setting up a place (website, blog, lens) where the visitors can get information they are looking for to make sure that they have chosen the right way.

Have you ever put up a questions what is internet marketing in simple words? You do not require any knowledge of specific online entrepreneurial terminology to answer that. Internet marketing is about conquering a bigger part of the online market for your product.

One of the most crucial elements in the successful internet marketing plan is to make sure you get web traffic from search engines for the keywords in your niche; thus you will provide a stable inflow of targeted visitors for your products online.

Nowadays we are living in the world where information makes life easier.

That is why if you are properly armed with the information in your topic you can rest assured that you will in any case find the way out from any bad situation. So, please make sure to track this blog on a regular basis or – an ideal solution for you – sign up to its RSS feed. In such an easy way you will have a direct shortcut to the latest informational updates here. Blogs can be helpful, you just need to understand how to use them.

I’m the silent avatar and I have spoken

Tags: Internet Marketing by the silent avatar
2 Comments »

If you’re into Internet marketing then maybe you can relate to to the title of this post….( or am I just being a touch sensitive to others marking shite loads of money straight from the wallets of “newbies”, and anyone else looking … looking …. looking … to make a quick buck? (sorry successsful online business).

Let me explain…

My email inbox has been (yet again) bombarded with product launch emails.

If it wasn’t Mike Filsaime’s Traffic Fusion at $1495 (oops $1497) , it’s Rich Schefren’s Guided Profit System (at $2495.. oops $2497), or how about …

Look.. I’m not saying that these “systems” are not worth what they are asking for.. but either people are being crazy and digging deep into their wallets until they hit their credit card/s (Ker Ching),  or I’m just a tad disillusioned with the whole “up the ante lets rake in the money while we can game”.

In the space of 3 years I have seen product launches go from $97 to $497 to now $1497 and Rich’s latest offering at $2497!

Put your wallets away.. there is nothing that these guys can teach you that you can’t find by some diligent surfing of the Internet. Yes.. It may take time, but how about putting that $2497 into a BIG advert in your metropolitan paper and see what that gets you.

How about thinking strategically about where you spend your money for your online business?

How can this money be best spent right at this time to move me towards where you need to go?

$2497?

Think about it… a shite load of PPC! Just monitor your competitors, their ads, and see if the same ad keeps coming up week after week, after week. If it does? Just duplicate it with your own branding. Look.. no one keeps paying for PPC if it isn’t working.

$2497?

How about paying a crack SEO dude to really ramp up your site and get the traffic flooding in?

$2497?

Rent a Billboard for a week (or how ever long it gets you), in the most prominent spot in your city and stick your web address on it (and a “tease offer”.

$2497?

How about outsourcing all the stuff you’ve never finished, never got around to, always wanted to add to your website, or have them blog like crazy for you, submit articles, research a niche? Hell for $2497 I could bring on board an outsource from from some far flung land that is prepared to work for months for me for that sort of money.

$2497?

How about hiring a PR dude to get you to speak at a Wealth Building Conference? (not for the faint hearted but definately doable).

$2497?

For that I could catch a return frlight from Australia and knock on Rich Schfren’s door and bug the hell out of him day and night until he sat down with me and talked turkey.

Now for all those reading who like to spend money on “Personal Development”, I say “You go girl!” (or guy). I am definately an advocate for learning more of what you need to know about yourself, your self sabotaging patterns, and if you need to pay $2497 to find out what your constraints are then go for it.

Hell..  wel KNOW what our constraints are TIME and MONEY. But I’ll give you the link to shoot on over and sign your self up if you really want to…

You can do it here: https://ssl2.strategicprofitsystem.com/gps/

For $2497 I could get a one on one with someone like Rich Schefren for .. hmmmm.. maybe an hour or two.

Do you think I would pick his brains to bits.. do you think I would tell him what I want to do and then ask him “How do I get there”.

Do you think I would have a list of questions..take a recorder… video… do the whole shebang (and even take ‘em for lunch is that’s what was required?)

But you know what?…..

Do you really need to know what you don’t know?  Or … do you just need to know that you don’t know, and get someone who to find you the information you don’t know?

It reminds me of a story I read once.. it was about the guy Ford.. (you know the one.. the guy who made the first car.. the “Model T”). The story goes like this…

Henry Ford (congrats to those who got it right), wagered a bet with a friend that he could answer any question his friend put to him and get the answer right.

The friend accepted the challenge, and up for grabs was a considerable amount of money…

The friend asked him the question (insert your own wildly insane, hard as you can, bet you don’t know the answer question ’cause it doesn’t really matter what the question was he was asked).

The point is this…

Henry Ford picked up the phone, called his personal assistant, told him the question, and said get back to him with the answer.

Touche! Mr Ford!

Did he NEED to know the answer? No.

All he needed to know was how to find the answer, and he only had to pick up the phone and he had his answer. Do you get it?

You work hard for your money.. damn hard. Make it work for you, and stop making others wealthy, because now you know.

PS. This post comes with a disclaimer. Rich Schefren is the only man who I have got up at 4am in the morning to join a live video seminar he was hosting. The man’s a legend. However  he relies on people not to think about what else their money could buy. His list is so big, his contacts so far flung, his wealth (well.. I’ll leave that alone ’cause we know he’s not short of a dime) that he has at his disposal people just like Mr Ford had.  In a nutshell he has gotten rid of his constraints to building a successful business by finding out what he needs to know and then getting others to do the groundwork for him. How on earth do you think he manages to conduct workshops, teleseminars, run Strategic Profits, do product launces, and the thousand and one other things this guy does?

$2497 for the Guided Profits System?  Now it’s a choice not a “must have”.

I say.. Ease up fellas.. our wallets are not that FAT (and I’m not about to make yours fatter).

Of course, if you agree or disagree you comments are always welcome

Sphinn

Tags: Advertising, Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, Web Design by the silent avatar
No Comments »

Just like most people these days we all have an opinion. Opinions are are agreed on, and at other times they are de-bunked as a load of hogwash.

Irrespective of whether you agree or don’t it’s irrelevant, because opinions are based on knowledge (or lack thereof).

I’ve been watching the Internet marketing circles for some time now. Watching people like:

Mike Filsaime
Rich Schefren
Eric Houmlund
Derek Gehl
Keith Wellman
Michael Rassmussen
Dave Guindon
Tim Brocklehurt
Craig Haywood
Joe Vitale
Tim Brocklehurst
Jeremy Gislason
Jim Cockrum
and a plethora of other marketers sending email after email touting their latest launch of products, systems, software, e-books (you name it).

Just yesterday I received 15 emails from various marketers. Some advising their newsletters are ready to read. Some talking about “old pizzas”(?), updating their affiliates, and others launching new products.

The truth is internet marketing relies on people like you and me to BUY. After all that’s what internet marketing is all about. Using strategies like good sales copy, good products that solve problems, video “how to’s”, revealing “secrets”, and all the while shelling out our money to support the “gurus” raking in the money.

What few tell you is it has taken years of increasing their knowledge, getting the right people to mentor them and researching their respective niche to get where they are.

I watched a video today from a guy called Joshua Shafran telling me how he will spend around $100K this year on his education alone (just to keep an edge on the market).

Sheesh! I don’t know about you, but spending $100K when you are paying the mortgage and feeding yourself or your kids just isn’t in the same ball park as what most of us have to spend. I would be more inclined to BUY a successful website with that sort of money!

The success of Internet marketing relies squarely on the shoulders of other internet marketers feeding the cash cow (aka you and me).

No doubt all of us are guilty of buying ebooks, software, systems, and signing up as affiliates to earn some extra cash, but.. have you noticed how you ended up with LESS money than you started with? (just look at your credit card statement if you think not).

And no doubt there ARE Internet marketers who have made their fortunes. People like Mike Filsaime who came out with Butterfly Marketing (yep I brought that one). Stompernet SMARTS (Dan Crowther), Affiliate Project X by Chris X (Yep brought that one too).

I could go on and on about how many product launches there has been, and how many gazillions each of these marketers has made. But I won’t. You already know they are successful. You helped them.

But who’s helping you?

If you have lots of money to splash around, sure you can buy the latest, greatest product to hit your inbox. Problem is there are new products coming out every other day, and they all scream “my product’s the best.. forget the rest”. Their sales copy will be so convincing, you start to get agitated thinking about the potential of the offer, and the difference the extra money will make.

So what do you do?

Well.. here’s my opinion from having been knee deep in internet marketing long enough to know what works and what doesn’t.

Read on and I’ll tell you my humble opinion…

1. Don’t keep buying e-books, software, joining membership sites (ad nauseum).
2. Pick ONE subject you want to explore and become an authority on.
3. Make sure your subject is in a niche.
4. Look for a problem which needs solving within the niche and brainstorm a way to fix the it. It might be an e-book with info, software, a series of videos (though some of the videos I have seen are like MGM productions and must have cost a bomb to put together).
5. Find mentors (people you can bounce ideas off, play devil’s advocate, encourage you.
6. Write out what your plan is for your niche and stick it on your monitor where you can be reminded of it every day.
7. Don’t so much as look at anything which is not related to your niche (trust me.. you wil be tempted to click a link, be taken off track and curse yourself when hours have passed and you haven’t done a thing that day to move you towards your goals).
8. Keep focused on your niche.. keep looking for a problem to solve.
9. Rinse and repeat with a different niche (but only if you can be as enthusiastic about the niche as you were the first time around).
   

Along the way you are going to have to learn a lot. A hell of a lot. It’s not a simple as executing the the steps above and money will roll on in. They are just guidelines to success.

You will need to learn how to put up a mini site. You will need to learn how to write good sales copy. You will need to know about social bookmarking, web 2, SEO, Keywords… the list just goes on and on.

What’s wrong withInternet marketing?

Well nothing really. It’s working very well (testimony to the millions that exchange hands each year).

The problem is the with the people feeding the cash cow. They are the ones who need to change their focus from “I’ll try anything”, to “I am going to focus all of my energies on XYZ and become an authority (aka Maven). I’m going to stick with it, forsake all the other tempting offers which come my way and remain focused”.

Making a success of your online business is about doing something better than anyone else. You cannot be all things to all people. Find your niche. Let it consume you until you are such an authority that you become known for your expertise.
Then you will have a real business. Not just a mini site flogging an e-book.

The choice is yours.

Tags: Business Tips, Internet Marketing by the silent avatar
No Comments »

It struck me this week how operating an online business is just like a relationship.

We start out full of enthusiasm and potential for what can be and very quickly we find that what we thought would move us towards out goals just doesn’t seem to be working.

Often times we head off along one path only to find that we reach a “dead end”, and things stall or worse end up moving us away from where we want to be.

So what’s the answer?

Well… just like a relationship  where we go to next is just a matter of choice.

We can throw our hands up and give up in frustration that what we are doing is not working, or you can educate yourself on what will work (based on those that do) if you apply yourself and work with known success formulas.

Online business can be just as fickle, just as frustrating, and just as quirky as a relationship. Knowing and applying what gives the results you want is the key to success, and educating yourself allows you the best opportunity for success.

Of course relationships involve a coming together of personalities, values, and shared common interests and goals, just as operating an online business involves clear goals, sharing information towards a common goal, and creating a distinct personality for your site.

Success is simply a choice. When you fall down you get up. You try something different. You model your business on other successful online businesses. You apply your focus towards what you do want, not what you don’t want.

Get to know how to nurture and grow your business, doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Attaining loyal customers requires freely giving information which visitors appreciate and assists them. It requires letting your visitors know what you have to offer. It requires being diligent to their needs and wants. It requires delivering – even over delivering to win their heart and affections. It requires offering personalised service making them feel “special”. It requires your focus.

Yes.. operating an online business is just like a relationship. You reap what you sow. For some it comes together quickly. For others it takes some time, and all the while you are mindful that if you don’t keep meeting the needs of the visitor, just like a partner, they can turn away from you and look elsewhere. Worse, their opinion of you can be far reaching and seriously undermine your chances of success.

So the key is to have a critical look at what you are doing with your business to guarantee its success.

• Are you giving your online business the attention it deserves?
• Are you mindful of the needs and wants of the visitor you want to attract and keep?
• Are you maintaining a personal relationship?
• Are you asking for testimonials and seeking referrals to encourage others to buy based on the good experience of others who already know you?
• Are you keeping abreast of your competition?
• Are you keeping up to date with the latest strategies to assist with your success?
• Are you providing value for money?

Plan for success – “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”

Just like a relationship if you have a plan for your success and diligently apply your plan which moves you towards what you want you will reap the rewards.

Tags: Business Tips, General by the silent avatar
No Comments »