Over the years, I’ve read thousands and thousands of marketing articles, both online and off. But to this point, I have never read any article that was what I considered to be 100% idiot-proof – meaning even a dunce, moron, or complete idiot couldn’t screw up the process.
So I decided to write such an article. And if you read and judiciously apply the ridiculously simple, but profoundly effective and proven success steps presented in this article, I am 100% convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that anyone can absolutely, positively make money with Internet Marketing.
Why am I so confident in these steps? Because these are the exact same steps I’ve used to build nearly 100 profitable websites of my own, in a very short period of time. Here are the steps:
1. Brainstorm Your Domain Name
This is an important process, so don’t rush it. Even if it takes you weeks or even months to come up with a domain name you’re satisfied with. Take as much time as you need. Your domain name is that important.
I’m a firm believer in creating generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords. For example, NewyorkCityHotels.com or NapaValleyWines.com. Having a generic domain name serves two crucial purposes:
First, it will attract a more targeted audience to your website. A targeted audience will give you a much higher conversion ratio – allowing you to make maximum use of the traffic you receive.
Second, generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords will help with your search ranking. While SEO experts have opposing viewpoints whether or not this actually helps, based on my own personal experience, I can tell you that it does.
By the way, because of the astronomical number of domains on the Internet, you may have to get a little creative in order to utilize your primary keywords in your domain name.
For example, if your first choice, NewYorkCityHotels.com is already taken, try playing around with different variations of your keywords.
For instance, try this variation, HotelsinNewYorkCity.com…or this one, CityofNewYorkHotels.com. Also, don’t be afraid to use hyphens in your domain name. Using this technique allows me to utilize my primary keywords 100% of the time.
It also allows me to use the much preferred .com domain. You should try to use .com domains whenever possible, because most people will automatically put a .com on the end of a domain when they type it into a search engine. This puts you in prime position to pick up traffic from domains in your category that utilize extensions other than .com.
2. Register Your Domain Name, and Forget It
After you decide on a domain name, don’t build your website right away. Register your domain name, and forget it.
Why? Because in my opinion, you should never build a website without having a plan to promote, as well as monetize your website. Develop a well-thought-out marketing plan going forward, then when you build your website, you can hit the ground running.
3. Develop Your Marketing Plan
I’m a member of several small business forums, and without fail, the two questions that get asked most often are:
“How do I promote my website?” or, “How do I get free traffic to my website?” Those two basic questions get asked every single day.
That’s why it’s so important to develop a marketing plan in advance. You need to know the answer to those questions, before you build your website. You can’t get to your destination, if you don’t know know where you want to go.
4. Your Budget Determines Your Marketing Plan
If you have thousands of dollars to work with, then you have many more options when it comes to promoting your website. For example, you can buy ads in offline publication, as well as online publications.
A word of advice: Unless you are an experienced marketer with extremely deep pockets, stay away from pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising will eat up your advertising budget quicker than Usain Bolt breaks world records.
In reality, most people coming online don’t have thousands of dollars to work with. In fact, most people coming online have little or no money at all.
But that’s the beauty of the Internet. Even if you are broke, you can still promote your website effectively, if you know what you’re doing.
For example, you can participate in social media networking, and promote your website via mega-popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a host of other social media websites.
Other free and highly effective promotion methods include article marketing, forum posting, guest blogging, RSS feeds, volunteering your expertise on Question & Answer sites like AllExperts.com and more.
5. Learn How to Implement Your Marketing Plan Effectively
Starting a business – any business without having even basic marketing skills is downright foolish. Competency in marketing is the most important business skill that you can have.
If you become proficient in the art of marketing, it will allow you to become profitable that much quicker. And there won’t be anything that you can’t accomplish.
Some of the greatest sales and marketing books ever written are located right under your nose, at your local library – and they’re free. Do yourself a favor and study the classics. Many of the marketing techniques being used today are based on sound marketing principles established many decades ago.
A few of my favorite marketing books include The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Magic Words That Bring You Riches by Ted Nicholas and How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab.
If you can’t find these books at your local library, you can pick them up for just a few dollars on Amazon.
6. Apply What You Learn
It’s not enough to just read the classics, you have to apply what you learn. Otherwise, what’s the point? That means reading the books more than once – several times if necessary.
Actually, you should read the books as many times as it takes for the information to sink in and become second nature to you.
You should also take copious notes, and practice writing ads over and over and over again. You should give yourself regular written exams on the information in the books, and each time you test yourself, your goal should be to score 100%.
Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? It is. The question is how hard are you willing to work to get what you want?
7. Monetize Your Website
There are a number of ways that you can monetize your website – from selling advertising on your site to affiliate programs. My preferred method is affiliate programs.
Why? Because affiliate programs are completely hands-off for you. No billing, no inventory, no hassles. You simply choose from among the thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, select your program of interest, and promote the living daylights out of it. Then take your checks to the bank…that’s it.
8. Take Your Income to the Next Level
Once you start making $50 per month with affiliate programs, build another website, and start promoting another affiliate program. And when that website starts making $50, build another website and another and another.
Why? Because if you have 10 websites making $50 per month, that’s a monthly income of $500. And therein lies the secret to making money on the Internet.
Why beat yourself up trying to make hundreds – or even thousands of dollars with a single website? Take the path of least resistance. Build a bunch of websites that make just $50 per month. If you can build fifty websites in a year, that’s a monthly income of $2500, or $30,000 a year.
Does your current job pay that much? And the beauty of this method is you can keep giving yourself a raise. If you build another fifty websites the following year, you just doubled your income to $5,000 per month.
And if you can build another fifty websites the following year, you just tripled your income to $7500 per month.
The key to making this method work is building simple, low-maintenance websites. Just add content once or twice a month, and forget about them.
Think it can’t be done? Think again. I’m doing it, and so are thousands of other smart and resourceful entrepreneurs.
9. What About Content?
The key to having a website that other websites want to link to is having quality, content that is relevant to the overall theme of your website. You can either produce the content yourself, import it from somewhere else, or a combination of both.
If you elect to import your content from somewhere else, you can either use free content from article directories like EzineArticles, or you can purchase PLR articles, which I don’t recommmend.
Why? Because hundreds of other people purchased the exact same PLR package as you. So those articles have to be completely rewritten, which is a time-consuming process.
Whichever way you choose to go, just remember, it’s important to have lots and lots of relevant content on your website.
How much content? The more the better. After all, the more content you have on your website, the more often your visitors will return to read that content.
10. Build Your Website
Okay, now that you’ve properly laid the foundation for success, it’s time to build your website. The type of website you build will again depend on the amount of money you have to play around with.
I have a bunch of websites that I paid absolutely nothing for. And I have websites that I paid hundreds of dollars for. My recommendation: If you don’t have to spend money on a website, don’t.
Nowadays, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to get a decent looking website.
But whatever you do, be sure to purchase your own domain name. You definitely don’t want the name Blogspot, WordPress or Homestead in your domain name. It just looks amateurish.
I buy most of my domains through NetworkSolutions.com, because I’ve been using them for years, and I’m comfortable with them. Their domains cost a lot more, but they more than make up for it with great customer service.
That’s something you just can’t put a price on. That being said, I’ve also purchased $10 domain names from GoDaddy without any problems.
One last thing, don’t beat your brains out worrying about SEO. Just make sure your primary keywords appear in your title tag, and you’ll be just fine.
David Jackson is a writer, marketing consultant and entrepreneur. Which online services can you trust? Find out here:http://reviews-by-customers.com
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10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
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10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
It is an unfortunate reality that most people who write books believe that their publisher will always put their best foot forward, to promote their book. In the real world, it does not quite work that way.
Let me put this in perspective for you.
THE PROFIT-LOSS EQUATION IN BOOK PUBLISHING
It is a financial matter of profits and losses. The book publishing world is much different than what many of us believe it is or that we believe it should be.
The average publisher will only print 1,000 copies of a book. They do this because the average book will sell an average of 400 or 500 copies.
When a publisher takes on a new title, it is a real gamble. Publishers are gambling that the books they take on will generate sales of 1,000 copies, and on rare occasions, they can hope for a book to sell a full 5,000 copies.
The book that sells 100,000 or one million copies is extremely rare.
With more than 100,000 books being printed every year, fewer than one percent of those books will see sales in the range of 5,000 or more copies. Every publisher has hopes that one of the 1,000 books every year that will sell at least 5,000 copies is one of the books sold through their publishing house. These are the books that will help the publisher to make a real profit this year.
One publisher told me that he lets his editors take care of the full book editing and development process. And, he said that he will not even pay attention to the book, until the book sells 5,000 copies. Only then will he consider reading the book himself and cranking up his marketing department to try to sell the book to a wider audience.
So, here it is in a nutshell. If you are a new book author, and you would like to see your book get some serious attention from your publisher and the public, then you need to step up to the plate and promote your book in such a way, as you can ensure that your book will sell 5,000 copies or more.
These days, most publishers will put up single webpages offering each of their books to the public. As a writer of the book, you should not believe that this page will be a well-written, well-optimized page on the internet.
Don’t fool yourself… The webpage where your book is offered generally will not get great rankings in the search engines for the keywords relevent to the topic of your book. Additionally, the sales copy will not be set up in such a way as to give much confidence to your potential buyers.
Print book publishers don’t do a good job building online promotional materials for a book, until they put their best people on the job. And, the publisher will not put their best people on the job until they believe that they have a winner in their stable.
As a writer, if you want your book to be anything more than a dust-catcher on your own shelf, you need to learn to be a book promoter also.
HOW TO SELL YOUR FIRST 5,000 BOOKS
As a book author, there are three basic steps that you will want to undertake to promote your book online.
- Set up a domain website
- Promote your book with articles
- Promote your book with press releases
In this article, I am going to take a look at how and why you will want to consider each of these steps.
1. SET UP A DOMAIN WEBSITE
Yes, you need a “domain” website. A free page on Geocities.com or Freeservers.com will not instill confidence with your potential customers. Let’s face it, the most important marketing consideration for any product or service to be sold on the internet today is to build the “trust factor”.
A person, who is being asked to take out their wallet, wants to know that they will get what they have paid for. Free sites cannot be traced to anyone in particular, and commercial websites on the free servers are considered in general to be owned by the fly-by-night outfits on the internet.
We have to give our potential customers the confidence they need to buy products and services from us. And, in order to give our potential customers confidence, we must be willing to spend a few of our own dollars to set up a website.
You can actually register a domain for less than $20 in most cases. Hosting for that domain can be picked up from hundreds of web hosting companies for as little as $10-$20 per month.
On your website, you want to tell readers about your book and why your reader might want to buy your book. On your website, be certain to also ask your reader for the sale, and give them a link where they can buy your book.
Including testimonials and book reviews on your website, will also help you to build interest and trust with your readers.
Sometimes, it can pay dividends to hire a web designer to design the visual template for your website, and to hire a sales copywriter to write your sales copy for the book.
One thing to keep in mind is that not all web designers can write good salescopy, and few copywriters make good web designers.
When you can afford to do so, you should seriously consider hiring a professional to do the tasks necessary to build a nice website and to put good salescopy onto your website. Great web designers will also help you by building your e-commerce system, so that your readers can buy directly from your website.
The professionals do not have to be really expensive. Both can usually be found for a couple hundred dollars. Of course, you could pay more, but you can still find some good people at these rates.
2. PROMOTE YOUR BOOK WITH FREE-REPRINT ARTICLES
Free-Reprint Articles are informational pieces designed to educate the reader about something of interest to the reader.
In an article, your goal is to talk about some topic that is related to the topic of your book. You don’t actually want to sell your book inside the body of the article. Instead, you want to use your article to introduce your readers to concepts that might be covered in your book.
When you reach the end of the article, you want to include your About The Author information (often referred to as your Resource Box). Keep your sales material in your Resource Box, but keep in mind that your goal is not to sell your book in your Resource Box. Instead, your goal is to use your Resource Box to get the reader to your website, then use your website to sell your book.
Many people ask if article promotion will work for them. This is what I tell them.
The ability of an article to produce results for you will depend on your article. The internet is still a democracy in that people will make the choice for themselves whether or not they want to use your article.
Some articles get lots of reprints, some do not. The average outcome is about 40-50 backlinks and multiple publications in ezines.
Poor articles still get an average of ten reprints. Exceptional articles generate in excess of thousands of reprints. The results really do rely upon the article.
(One client of mine has one article that generated more than 5,000 reprints in two years time. This same client has written more than 100 articles. He is a well-known article writer and this fact does help his ability to generate more mileage from a single article.)
Just as important as the article itself, is the author resource box. The article is the vehicle to get your resource box seen. A good resource box offers just enough information to inspire the reader to visit your website to learn more about your book. A good resource box also offers a strong call-to-action to get the reader to your website. Let your website do the selling, but use the resource box to get the reader to your website.
Also, you really should consider doing more than one article over a longer period of time. For example, six articles over six months. Each subsequent article puts your name in front of the publishers who will use your articles. Name recognition will help your overall ability for getting published.
3. PROMOTE YOUR BOOK WITH PRESS RELEASES
I always recommend a two-fold approach to any book promotion. 1) reprint articles related to the topic of the book. 2) Press releases distributed through a system such as http://www.prweb.com.
Press releases are different from an article. A good article will have an educational or informational slant to them. A good press release will be designed more as a news story. A good press release has the most noteworthy news in the first paragraph, the second most noteworthy information in the second paragraph, etc.
Additonally, the press release will provide a telephone number for news reporters to contact you for more information concerning your story, so that they can build their own news story from your information.
Although the premise of a press release is so that a reporter can learn enough to build their own news story, you have to remember that their schedule is tight as well. Build your press release in such a way that it can be used as THE news story. Many people will take your press release verbatum for their own use. They might take only the first paragraph, and then they might take the whole thing.
Build your press release with the hope that it will be used in full. Build your press release with the thought that the reporter may only use the first paragraph.
Be prepared to receive phone calls to answer questions about your topic. And, be prepared when no one calls.
I have sent out more than a dozen press releases myself. I have seen those press releases read thousands of times and used hundreds of times. And yet, no one has ever called me for more information.
IN CONCLUSION…
Book promotion should not be viewed as a one-time event. If you take the idea that I will try this once to see if it works, then you might as well save your time and money and not even try at all.
Promotion is an ongoing process. Nothing will happen until you do something. And then you will need to keep doing something to keep open the possibility of something happening to your benefit.
You need to build up a momentum, and then just keep on running.
You are more likely to get published and to sell books if people recognize your name. And, one-time out will not allow anyone to get to know you.
Book authors who can build up a promotional momentum for their book are very likely to find their first 5,000 sales. And as a general rule, once you have crossed that threshold, your publisher will be more than happy to help you to keep that momentum going.
Author’s Note: This article was originally published here.
About The Author:
Bill Platt is the owner of The Phantom Writers at: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/
He specializes in distributing free-reprint articles to help his clients to promote an online businesses or a book. If you would like someone to help pay for the costs of article distribution, consider the co-op advertising program at: http://www.SponsorArticles.com
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Book Authors: How To Sell More Books And Get Your Publisher Active
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Book Authors: How To Sell More Books And Get Your Publisher Active
Here’s my current “to-read” books:
Are there any other great/recommended books to read that you would suggest adding to the list?
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Good books to read?
SEO has been around for almost as long as search engines have. And for good reason. Everyone wants free advertising. But a lot has changed over the past thirteen years and with SEO gurus charging upwards of $1,000 per month, to small startups, just for maintenance you really can’t call it “free advertising” anymore.
Why is SEO so expensive? Because it’s worth it. Back in the day, you could get top ranking for just about any search term you wanted just by using tricks like keyword stuffing, invisible text and cloaking. Try any of that today and Google will kick you to the curb. (more…)
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Don?t Spend a Fortune on SEO. Be Your Own SEO Guru!
Eric T. Peterson continues showing the practical implications of his visitor engagement metric by analyzing his own website, questioning what he can do to increase the sales of his books to visitors referred to his site by some of the bloggers that are delivering traffic with high engagement but low sales conversion.
Now, I haven’t studied his visitor engagement metric well enough yet to really comment it as it applies to this example, but let’s try some basic optimization techniques to see how those could increase his book sales.
1. Establish a Call-to-Action at the Bottom of Each Blog Post
I’m not familiar with Eric’s clickstream paths, but the first question is, how many of his visitors from the referring blogs are actually exposed to his “Buy My Book” Call-to-Action (CTA). How many actually click to his first page, where the CTA is more exposed, even if below the fold?
The first thing to do would be to add the CTA for the book directly below each blog post, actually building on the blog post to try to directly sell the book then and there. Basically telling them what to do, after they’re done reading the post –> buy the book.
2. Provide Multiple CTA Options
However, as Eric states in his post, a good deal of the visitors entering his site from the problematic blogs actually start the purchase process, but don’t finish it.
He is generating some interest, but not enough to have them to complete the purchase process. And then we still have the prevailing majority that don’t even start the purchase process.
This would demand some testing, but my first instinct would be to go with a soft offer, such as a free whitepaper, and then try to make the sale through the whitepaper and the additional 7-day, 14-day or more e-mail or RSS follow-up sequence.
At least in my own tests adding a free whitepaper offer + follow-up sequence always increased total sales, CR and profits.
3. More Compelling CTAs
Eric does offer free chapters of his book on the first page.
However, to capture more leads, it might work to test offering a full free e-book VS just sample chapters. Usually, I wouldn’t be interested in free chapters unless I was already in the purchase process … but if you give me a “10 KPIs That Make or Break Your Internet Sales” free e-book, I just might budge.
4. Provide Multiple CTA Opportunities
Following the steps above, Eric would put a CTA for the book below each blog post. But to really maximize the opportunities, I would also put a CTA (perhaps a different one, but one that would still lead to the book purchase in the end) in the top right hand corner of the website.
5. Optimize the Purchase Process
- Add more information (sales letter, list of chapters, testimonials, add risk reducers etc.) to the product landing page
- Shorten the sales process to fewer steps
- Make purchase buttons much more visible
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Selling Eric T. Peterson’s Books