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Tips for Internet Marketing Beginners and Intermediates
Tips for Internet Marketing Beginners and Intermediates
Internet Marketing is a terrific way to make a living. Selling advertising, products and services online can be a lucrative career and liberate us from having to punch in a time clock and toil way too many hours for someone else who sees the majority of the benefits of that effort.
Working at home and creating an online business can be very rewarding. The initial investment is quite small compared to traditional brick and mortar type businesses which require lots of cash and often the efforts of many.
It’s almost too hard to believe that one person such as ourselves can actually do everything that is needed to be done to generate an income that is equal to or greater than the jobs we strive to liberate ourselves from. But it can be done! And I’m not the only one who serves as proof. I’ve been a one man company for over 12 years now making a full time living from internet marketing.
While it may be possible to carve out a good living on your own, why is then that so many people fail at the internet marketing game??? Well, there certainly are lots of reasons but the one I see all the time is that people are wasting time and getting distracted by all kinds of junk and low return tasks that they fail to focus on the things that really have profit potential. It’s a cycle of sorts that many people get trapped in.
People often look for the PERFECT way to get started. As a result they NEVER get started.
I often get asked questions by Article Underground Members and from subscribers of my newsletter Article Marketing News about how they should do this or that and what about this and if such and such is true then this certainly won’t work or “maybe I am missing something” (I hear that a lot!).
A vast majority of the “getting started” questions come from small business newbies, online business beginners or intermediate procrastinators that are looking for the “magic pill” so they can finally get started or finally make money.
Often the questions I get are quite complex and the inquiring mind will want to know specifically how they should do this or that. This is due to what I call “Over Analysis Paralysis” and is due to information overload! Their brains are stuffed with varying opinions and theories as to how they should chart their course towards a career in internet marketing.
Often, the reason a beginner or even intermediate internet marketer is stuck in “perpetual getting started” territory is because often they try to run before they have learned to walk. Combine that eagerness with the plethora of internet marketing products we are subjected to and it is difficult for many people to focus on the things that really make us the money!
I wrote an excellent article in my internet marketing blog called “The best place to start is at the beginning” and I think it elegantly sums up and describes how to get out of over analysis paralysis and get focused on doing the small simple things that need to be experienced before diving into the deep end.
http://www.mikeliebner.com/internet-marketing/the-best-place-to-start-is-at-the-beginning/
One such hurdle that must be tackled is learning how to build or edit web pages and/or mastering the process of setting up a domain and getting the web pages indexed by the search engines.
The thing I see is that people are seduced by all the advanced techniques and millions of options and instead of picking and choosing simple approaches to get started on, they get sidelined and never take any steps period because they want to do everything exactly the right way.
I can sympathize with that feeling as I myself often want to race past the instruction manual and just get to the meat of it! But hey - those baby steps are essential! You need to learn the simple things first and start at the beginning so you have a good understanding of how things grow from the ground up.
Sure, you may end up outsourcing the building of web pages, or writing of copy, or programming code, but it will help you if you have at least a basic understanding of how those things are done. You’ll get better results from people when you have at least a basic understanding of the process.
As far as building sites and web pages goes, if you are starting out and your goal is to build web sites and get free search engine traffic by getting top rankings for keywords and keyword phrases, it is absolutely essential you learn an HTML editor and master the basics of building a good looking page. I’m not talking about winning any design awards here, or learning how to code menus and rollovers and do all kinds of tweaky whiz bang things - no - in fact - LEARNING TOO MUCH will actually work against you! It will waste your time!
So while all these HTML editors have the potential to design wickedly exciting web pages with all the latest tricks and technology - your goal - if you want to build pages that get top rankings is to create simple effective good looking web pages that people will not barf at when they find them.
Same goes with all the advanced internet marketing concepts. It’s great to learn it all as you develop your business, but the most important advice I can give you is to start at the beginning and to make modest easily attainable goals.
The idea is to learn the basics, make your FIRST small victory (such as ranking top ten on a LONG TAIL keyword phrase with little competition) and then relish in that victory! Believe me - you’ll have far more enthusiasm after you rank for a LONG PHRASE, even if it gets little or no traffic, than if you go after the almost impossible to attain HUGE GOALS first.
So, learn an HTML program, be able to make a nice page. Programs are so advanced these days and do almost everything you need with little effort. Learn how to put your words on the page and upload it and publish. Then learn how to get links. If you’re an Article Underground member you have a ton of tutorials and step by step action plans that will teach you this stuff. BUT resist to go too far too fast.
Go after the easy goals first. Then see what is making you money and start DUPLICATING those efforts!
Not everything is guaranteed. There is no one perfect way to start! There are a million and one ways to make money online! You need to see what works for you. Try some simple things. Master them. Repeat and then analyze what is working and take those small victories and turn them into larger victories.
If you get on the front page of Google for a phrase - then your next goal should be jumping from 10th to 5th place. And then grabbing the #1 spot. And you can do this while you are planting more seeds.
Especially when you are a beginner it is important to throw a lot out there. You need to just hunker down and do it! Don’t get too hung up on the details. Build a web site or two or 3 (or 5) and keep adding new pages regularly. Watch your stats and see what is working. If you have a good stats program or tracking program find out the keywords that are bringing you traffic. Take those words and try to get more similar keywords and related phrases to bring you traffic.
Look at what’s working first - and then send the most time developing those winning small victories. Until you are a master of your niche or area of expertise - don’t bother trying to make LOSERS into winners. Spend time on what works first - then when you exhaust all ways to make small victories into bigger ones, you can go over the DUDS and find out why they did not work.
It’s far easier to turn a small victory into a large one than to take a loser and make it work.
So… it all goes back to the beginning. The best place is to start at the beginning! Make modest attainable goals and start a pattern of winning! When you start to feel like a winner and find that you are the boss and can chart any course you want to achieve success - the bigger victories will start coming your way more frequently!
As always, whether you agree with me or not, please register and post your comments!
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You’re 100% right here - my carefully researched to make money sites don’t pull half as much as my ‘hobby’ site. The reason being honest content that attracts visitors. Because it’s all about allotment vegetable growing (allotments in the UK are plots of land rented cheaply to grow vegetable on) it gets lots of #1 spots on google not only for the keywords you would plan for but for phrases you probably would never find even with a research tool.
Whatever - thinking doesn’t get the cow milked. Milking gets the cow milked
Comment by Johnhson — May 26, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
This is in response to an email I got about this article.
Careful about over analyzing!
“I love to analyze things to death”
OH BOY - that can be dangerous.
Careful! That can be a big time waster. You could have put up 5 pages and at least been playing the lottery instead of finding ways that it will not work.
I too was like that but have learned you will make far more by throwing a lot out there and waiting to see what sticks. Then only work on improving what sticks.
First of all - every page you ever put up is a piece of inventory. Unless you want to start over never ever throw away pages as those always have more value with time than newly published pages. So if you ever redesign a site (I’m not sure that’s a good idea anyways) make sure at the very least you always keep the OLD STUFF on the same URLS. Otherwise you did all that for nothing. Big compamies do this all the time. They write an article - publish it - then remove it. Your web site is like real estate. If you add a room keep it on the lot. Don’t bulldoze it.
I think your projection scenarios are going to work against you. Resistance instead of possibility thinking. I would not bother considering the projections you made.
“My best guess is that each site would probably produce about $100 in revenue during the first year”
They set up barriers and resistance. Sure Mom taught us to be realistic and think of what we deserve but the way the net works is far from the way convenetional business works.
Example:
Publish 1 article a day - tweak it - add long tail keywords - get links and at the end of the year you’ll have 365 articles. That’s if you work slow and methodical.
The way it should work is that ONE of your pages could be a huge HIT. Maybe 2. Maybe 10. Maybe 100.
Same principal as a record company. Put out tons of ok stuff, mediocre stuff and garbage and the cosmos parts and lets Bruce Springsteen get 5 number ones. They know that 1 or 2 artists will make millions and make them profitable. They don’t even expect the other 30 artists on the roster to make a profit. They don’t need to. All they need is one big breakthrough.
You create your own luck. If you work with the intention of getting what you want instead of what you think you deserve or what is realistic, it is very possible you could have a big hit.
What if your article on little known cult Actress Eva Whatever suddenly gets number one on Google and next week she ends up being in a scandal sex taoe with Rosie O’donell and Farrah Fawcett and there you are - riding the wave because you created your own luck.
And that doesn’t just happen with POPULAR names and scandals.
maybe you’re number one for a phrase when a news cycle kicks in all related myspace background pages and the traffic multiplies tenfold… you create your own luck.
And in this biz you do it by creating inventory.
If you can write - write up pages - if you can’t or have limited time - use PLR articles or a combination.
The key is getting more out there and doing what you can to work your way to the top for the words that appear on your pages.
Also - CONTENT - is the key.
As a writer and producer myself I have a huge amount of content. But it does me absolutely no good unless the search engines catalog MY WORDS because no one will ever see it sitting on my hard drive or worse yet not even digited.
Comment by mike — May 26, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
Avery good article Mike! Thanks for sending it to me. What you say is not new but it has to be said over and over due to the high volume noise on the Internet that we call the information overload. It’s so disturbing and it’s good that you give us a kick in the rear from time to time and keep us focused on creating pages with words on.
One thing I noticed in another comment to this article that could be an effective mantra to use in the future. �Work in order to get what you want instead of what you think�.
It’s really the only thing to do.
Thanks,
Olov Forsgren
Comment by forsgren — May 27, 2007 @ 3:50 am
Mike: “While it may be possible to carve out a good living on your own, why is then that so many people fail at the internet marketing game??? Well, there certainly are lots of reasons but the one I see all the time is that people are wasting time and getting distracted by all kinds of junk and low return tasks that they fail to focus on the things that really have profit potential.”
Yes, I think this is the main problem, but for the beginner it begs the question as to what constitutes that which has profit potential. In other words, what overwhelms the beginner is his ignorance, and that is quite understandable. The inability to discern, and the analysis paralysis results from a desperate need to assimilate “enough” knowledge to be able to get to that blessed point. Of course, it is critically important to get rid of the “easy money” opportunist mentality. Only this will assure immunization against copywriting that appeals to the part of human nature that is always looking for the easiest way.
Beginners need to realize that there is more than one way to earn money over the internet; there are many possible business models. What is perhaps needed more than anything else is a good overview of basic business models that have proven to be successful. Most importantly, beginners need to realize that an internet business is a business, precisely. It needs to be taken seriously, and one has to strive to educate oneself in the basics of marketing and selling over the internet, which of course includes the basics of marketing and selling pure and simple.
The beginner needs to educate himself on the elements of:
market research, using keywords for market research, using keywords to determine profitable opportunity within markets, monetization of sites, integrating market and keyword research into the site, different ways of finding targetted traffic (social networks, blogging, PPC, etc.), acquiring and creating content (manual and automated); scalability and outsourcing, etc.
Having a a good overview; knowing what to learn (and most of the best stuff is free); acquiring basic business and online skills; using essential tools–these sorts of things, it seems to me, are what’s important. If you have that in place, you won’t be distracted or confused.
Comment by Jim — May 27, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
It will be more easier to a blog, get top ranking in Google and generate AdSense and affiliate revenue compare with start a website. Blogs are more easier to get traffic and backlinks in general because they updated often.
Comment by lkcheng — May 27, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
I think there is too much hype about how easily Internet Marketing can make ton of money overnight. This has raised the individual’s expectation, only to be disappointed.
In fact, Internet marketing requires hard work, commitment, persistent and determination. Though it is very simple, but it is definitely not easy. Most people fail because they fail to realize that they need to commit and put in hard work before they can profit from it.
Nevertheless, this is a great article.
Thanks, Mike.
Comment by damien.oh — May 30, 2007 @ 10:10 pm
I agree with Jim that beginners should educate themselves first in different marketing and sales strategies. I blog about various methods to make your mlm business successful and those selling Melaleuca products really benefit from it as well. Thanks for sharing the post…
Comment by Diane Voisley — December 4, 2007 @ 9:18 am
This is one of the best posts I have read lately. What a wonderful reminder to all of us, even those who have been doing this for a while, to stick to the simple things that work. I used to over analyze things, and I can see why so many do these days. With so much out there to try it can be difficult to see through the cloud. Thanks for posting such an awesome article. Keep posting such good relevant information and I will continue to come back!
Comment by charris — December 8, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
Personally, I used to think that Internet Marketing was a scam, or that those who were genuinely earning big bucks had some special tricks or formulae that assisted them to success.
Little did I realise after I finally put my feet down into learning Internet Marketing proper, that Internet Marketing is really a science unto itself - not a scam, but really a generic skill for marketing ANY product or service (be it your own or someone else’s) online on the Internet. Essentially, it is the online version of general offline marketing, though it requires both offline marketing skillsets together with online marketing skillsets.
With that, I set out to learn the techniques of Internet Marketing properly. There’s just so much information out there about “marking money online”, some of which is crap and others are scams. So it’s really best to learn tried and tested techniques from Internet Marketing Gurus who are known for their integrity and for their genuine successes in this field.
To this effect, I would strongly recommend the FREE and value-overloaded online Internet Marketing School. For those willing to pay a small but affordable monthly subscription of USD20, the up-and-coming World Internet Academy portal offers superb step-by-step guidance on all the key foundational subjects of marketing online!
Comment by KelvinKong — January 10, 2008 @ 8:46 pm