Posts Tagged ‘internet_marketers’
In the course of your Internet marketing journey, you might hit the occasional speed bump and find a plateau. You might identify with Josh who writes:
“Hi Andrew,
I’m an affiliate marketer and have been having success with my affiliate marketing efforts, I use PPC and free traffic means (primarily articles) to generate leads.
Lately, my sales have been stagnating…
How can I ensure more stability in my affiliate income?
Thanks.
Josh”
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My answer:
Having worked with a number of Internet marketing veterans, I’ve noticed a couple of best business practises that I’ve seen these successful and experienced marketers use.
There’s the Internet marketers “day trader” mentality that you’d want to avoid.
It’s something I used to do when I first started out – typically seen in behavior like staying logged in to your affiliate account all day and hitting the refresh button every hour to see if more sales have come in.
If you’ve looked at how (more…)
In contrast to the numerous “I am new to the Internet, I have no money and I don’t have a computer (I’m typing this to you at work), I want to make a full time living online as a Super Affiliate. Please advise me” emails I received [Do send me the answer to that because I don’t have a ready answer…], I’ve got a more realistic question this week:
I am willing to learn, I have bought a number of ebooks, and have made a few affiliate sales (about $50-100 worth of commissions each month), but at this rate, I doubt I’ll be able to quit my day job and live on my online income anytime soon. What do you suggest I buy next and how much do I have to spend before I make a full time online income? Thanks!
Here’s a list of what I bought:
[A list of about 5 ebooks follow. I’m guess she’s spent about $300 on them]
Patty
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My Answer:
It’s encouraging to see new Internet marketers take responsibility for their actions and I think the fact that you’re generating sales from your website each month shows that you’re taking consistent effort.
To make the gap between generating “hobby money” (I define this as less than $2,000 a month in online income) and a living based on your online businesses means that you need a couple of ingredients:
Have you defined what income level you’re aiming for? ($1,000? $10,000? $100,000 per month?). More importantly, have you listed the amount of time and resources you’re willing to put into this?
Most new marketers write down a $20,000 a month goal when they start out, and they put in barely 2 hours a week into their business. There’s a serious effort-reward gap in the equation…
An online business still follows the effort -> result equation. You don’t just need to dream big, you need to put in the sweat equity at least in the early stages.
Do your research before you begin. What niche are you going to focus on? Is it a niche market? Is the demand sufficient to sustain your revenue (and profit?)?
Is it a competitive market? Can you compete effectively?
What’re your monetization strategies? A goal of 100 Adsense clicks a day might be a good start, but are they only paying $0.10 a click? Are there affiliate programs available? Would you create your own product?
Once your research has concluded and you’ve decided on your business model, you need to be focused and consistent in your efforts. There was an Internet marketer who built their blog up to about 500 visitors a day, she left for a 6 week vacation and the visitors dropped to about 5 a day when she returned. It took another couple of months to build it up to her pre-vacation traffic level.
- Go Beyond Costs, Focus On Results
Here’s one takeaway from my buddy, Amit Mehta’s post “What’s Your Investment Plan?“, you need to figure out what your expect return or result is from any investment you make…
It’s not just a cost issue, you need to take stock of (more…)
New Internet Marketers should stay out of the Internet Marketing niche…unless they apply some of the following techniques in this video.
Friday Podcast 19 Oct 2007: Stay Out Of The Internet Marketing N
DerekBeau’s blog post: How I Became A Professional Affiliate Marketer
Podcast link:
Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs threw down the gauntlet at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, announcing the launch of Apple’s Safari browser for Windows. The upcoming Apple vs Microsoft battle promises to be more exciting than Microsoft vs Netscape a couple of years ago. But what does it mean for Internet Marketers?
For starters, the Apple browser is pleasantly looking.
In my book, Microsoft Internet Explorer is probably the ugliest browser. Mozilla FireFox is pleasant to work with, although Flock the Social Browser (loaded with Web2.0 functions) remains my favorite (and I’m composing this entry within a Flock window now).
Safari shows promise.
Among it’s features:
- Tabbed browsing: (If you don’t have 30 open windows, you’re not a hardcore Internet Marketer…yet)
- Built-in RSS Support: To monitor late breaking developments and changing content on blogs and social sites
- Pop-up blocking (maybe not such a good idea, since you might want to view popups)
- Enhanced search features
Safari is positioned to be the Apple’s “killer app” with supposed close integration between it’s upcoming pda/phone iPhone, iTunes and Safari in the works. But does Safari really work for Internet Marketers?
Worryingly, Safari has “Private Browsing” which blocks all cookies from being lodged. This means analytics tracking might not be as effective.
Even worse, for affiliate marketers, (more…)
Many Internet Marketers fail to realize that having multiple domain names can be fundamental to your success in marketing your own product or engaged in affiliate marketing. The good news is that with the availability of domain coupon codes and innovative web hosting, you can build a virtual empire easily, even if you’re just starting out.
Let’s look at this scenario:
You’re a new affiliate marketer starting out, and you want to generate some sales. What do you do?
Maybe you could start a free blog at blogger or wordpress.com. If you’re smart, you’ll register your own domain and get your own webhosting, so you’ll have more control over your web property.
But do you stop at just one blog or website?
Not if you want to have massive success in your affiliate campaign.
What’s to stop you from creating 5 or 10 blogs or websites promoting the same product?
It’s not only an opportunity to occupy multiple positions on the SERPs (search engine results pages), but you will edge out your competition if you push them off page 1 too.
Bear in mind, I’m not asking you to post 10 mirror image copies of the same website. That would be very foolish.
Instead if you can generate content easily, tightly focused around that specific niche, for example, weight loss, you’ll create a virtual fortress centered around the product.
The guys on the Wicked Fire affiliate forum have announced the June discount code for domain registrar NameCheap.com where I’ve been buying the bulk of my domains from.
Domains also come with free privacy protection (so your details aren’t easily available).
Here’s some advice regarding domain names: (more…)
The biggest obstacle that will stand in your path as you start and travel along your Internet Marketing journey can be encapsulated in one word: Laziness. Conquering it is key to reaching your money goals.
People keep asking me why I say that 90% of Internet Marketers drop out of the industry within 6 months.
The truth is I don’t have a fixed answer, but on bad days, it seems like everyone else who started out about the same time as me has moved on to:
- Network marketing
- Taken up a 9-to-5 job somewhere
- Doing the “financial trading cycle” which typically involves day trading or forex or options trading
The sad part is that they inevitably hit a brick wall, then look at what I’ve achieved in the last year and comment “Gee, you’re lucky”.
That kind of stings, considering the amount of effort I’ve spent in Internet Marketing, determining a path, building bridges to other Internet Marketers (sometimes taking a 20 hour flight each way) and taking on more than what others would normally do because I want to move along the road further.
So when I hear about the aspiring Internet Marketer who hasn’t taken action because he bought a new laptop and couldn’t figure out how to use it, and didn’t know how to configure his email, it makes me sad. Very sad.
In 2 minutes I informed him that he ought to call Dell and his ISP’s toll-free number and get his problems fixed by the next day.
Allaying blame on an inanimate laptop is tantamount to (more…)
