I have recently come across a few posts by well-known, well respected marketers and there were a few gems which I thought would be of interest to readers. The first is aimed at relative newcomers to the business and there is some really sound advice there. Without further ado here it is:
Warning: Quite a long post!
“I read a thread on the Warrior Forum yesterday that was started
by a guy who says he has ‘tried everything’ to make money online,
but in 2 years of effort has only managed to make about $100.
Not surprisingly, he was asking if he should give up and go try
something else, or if it really is possible and he has just been
doing the wrong things.
The replies were somewhat polarized. Some people said to carry
on, but to focus more. Others said that Internet marketing
clearly isn’t for him and that he should give up right away.
My own view is that if he truly has only made $100 in two years,
he is doing something radically wrong.
There must be something about the process of online marketing that he simply hasn’t
understood.
Of course, without more detailed knowledge of what the guy has
already done, and how he has done it, no advice can be of use to
him.
In general though, while I accept that there is a learning curve,
I can’t see any reason why somebody shouldn’t be able to make
regular income within 6 months of starting out.
The trouble is that many people secretly don’t believe that it is
possible.
They subconsciously put up barriers in their own minds.
They over think and over analyze everything to the point that
they either don’t do the things they need to do, or they spend so
long on the unimportant trivial stuff that they forget to take
action on what really counts.
I was just the same. It took me a while to ‘get it’ when I
started out and I remember the frustration of thinking that I was
doing everything right but still making nothing, when all around
me I could see people apparently doing the same things that I
was, but making a fortune.
In the end I learned the most important thing of my online life:
that if I thought I was doing the same things as other people and
they were successful with it but I wasn’t, then the problem was
that I didn’t understand the process properly.
Somewhere along
the line I was doing something differently and success would come
when I identified my own error and corrected it.
Making money online is simple, but it isn’t necessarily easy.
None of the steps you have to take are particularly complicated -
so long as you don’t over think them – but there are a lot of
steps and the potential for doing them wrong, or in the wrong
order, is high.
Internet marketing can be defined like this:
Learn what problems people use the Internet to solve and provide
them a solution.
Everything you need to know about online marketing is contained
in those 14 words, but most importantly, in their order.
First comes learning what their problems are.
Most people who try, but ultimately fail to succeed online don’t
start in the right place. They start out by listening to the
worst advice anyone ever gave: go with your passion.
Your passion is only of value or relevance if it solves the #1
question: what someone else is searching for an answer to.
I might be the world’s leading expert on snail mating behaviour
and think it is the most interesting subject known to man. But
despite my total enthusiasm, the chances of anyone ever wanting
to buy my latest ebook on how to breed snails is slim.
There might be a handful of French food enthusiasts, but not enough for
me to start an online empire from!
No. Forget your passions and look for other people’s problems.
Problems come in all shapes and sizes – from curing a disease to
finding a good price for a camera and our objective is to find
one that lots of people share that we can find or create a
solution to.
That is the #1 principle of marketing, whether online or off.
How do you find the problems people have?
Simple – Use Google’s keyword tool. (Google “keyword tool” and it
will be the #1 listing.)
Enter “How to” or “How do I” or “Where can I” and you’ll
instantly have enough problems to last you a lifetime!
The next trick is to decide which ones are worth pursuing! But
that’s a question for another article.
One thing I will say now though is that you must get common sense
on your side and think like a marketer.
For example, one of the top questions people are asking is ‘how
to kiss’.
With hundreds of thousands of people searching for the answer to
that particular problem, you might think that there is a huge
market ready to buy your latest practical e-guide. But think
about it for a minute and you’ll realize that the vast majority
of the people searching for that are going to be teenagers – and
kids don’t generally have credit cards or PayPal accounts.
Even offline marketers make that mistake all the time. I worked
with a company once that gave reward points that could be
redeemed for discounts on CDs. Their fatal flaw was that their
audience was 12-16 year old boys and the redemption could only be
done via a credit card purchase. Wasn’t going to happen!
But carry on down the how to list a little way and you’ll find
that ‘how to make pancakes’ is a very popular search.
Sure, there are endless free recipes online, but you can say the
same thing about chocolate cake too – and there is an ebook that
has been selling well on ClickBank for at least the last 6 years
on how to make the world’s best chocolate cake. (I bought it and
the recipe is almost impossible to get right!)
Could a report or video on how to make the world’s yummiest
pancakes sell for a few dollars? It might be worth a try – and
won’t cost much to find out.
It is a real problem for millions of people and maybe you can
provide (or appear to provide – which is what marketing is all
about) a unique solution.
So, to wrap up, whether you’ve been failing online for two years
or have just started out on this exciting journey, success will
come by getting all the simple steps in the right order. And the
first simple step is to put the other person’s problem at the
very beginning of what you do.”
By Martin Avis http://kickstartnewsletter.com
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