Internet Marketing With Affiliate Program

Posts Tagged ‘Internet Marketing Promotion’

If only I had stumbled across this article when I was just starting. What a difference it would have made.
But, that didn’t happen. I got a horrible start.
Fortunately I stuck with it! Lots of people give up right here. I’m embarrassed to admit how bad of a start I got…but I’m going to tell you about it. Maybe it will save some newcomers to Internet Marketing the waste of money and time I went through.
When I first noticed Internet Marketing (IM) it was on my computer at home and I think I had typed into Google something like this… “how to make money with computer” or similar.
I wasn’t ready for what happened next. How could anybody be?
Google came back with a first page of results (about 20) all practically shouting headlines like “Make 300 Dollars per day with Our FREE Website!”
There’s thousands of these offers and a LOT of them are just set up to take advantage of people who need money for any reason.
Well, I fell for one. I think it was called (it’s gone now…funny) “Incredible Wealth Membership” Lets call it IWM for short here.
For $49 dollars it offered me a FREE website worth $297 just for signing up.
I couldn’t lose! Anybody would buy 300 dollar items for 50 bucks! So I did.
I can’t believe I was ever this gullible but what else would explain it?
Here’s the short version of what happened. I can hardly write this but maybe it will end up being somehow theraputic.
I paid the $49 Bucks. Then they told me I had to go to this Domain Name/Hosting outfit. I honestly didn’t know what that was.
After quite a bit of confusion I had a domain name and a hosting plan purchased. It cost me about $100 bucks. But IWM told me they had hundreds of folks making darn good money…daily, with this website. And, now I was only in it a hundred and fifty dollars.
I hid this from my wife.
Now, remember that IWM had promised me great support. I would need it! But I didn’t get it. I had to deal with them by way of “support tickets” and it took me quite a while to get that worked out. I mean it! I didn’t have the technical experience to make getting support easy!
I started to smell something fishy, but I remembered they had a money back guarantee, so I felt ok… but uneasy.
I wanted to see my website! It wasn’t there however. There were still things I had to do to get it up and running, so to speak.
I got an email with “source code” in it and an instruction I will never forget.
They said (I’m not kidding-they knew I was a total newbie)…”Just upload the source code to your URL with an FTP package!”
I stared at that instruction for some time and started getting mad. I had no idea what to do. I was a total beginner and they knew it. They said they were going to make it easy for me but, instead, it was practically impossible. For me anyway.
After a bunch of back and forth that took days I got them to upload it for me. Both sides were a little irritated by now.
After a bunch of other little hangups I had a website I could access but no way to alter or change it in any way.
Get this, the website sold memberships to IWM. Oh, my God…I suddenly got the picture.
I was expected to sell unsuspecting newcomers this thing that had caused me so much trouble AND that I knew virtually nothing about! I was out!
I asked for my money back and they became unresponsive and I never did get it back. At least two weeks had gone by with me getting nowhere but mad, and them getting my money!
I called the Domain/Hosting Company and asked for a refund. They said they could not refund the domain fee ($25) and that there a non-refundable set up fee for the hosting ($25) that would be deducted, also.
I just wanted out.
It’s at this point that I’d like to say that what happened there is actually common. In the last two years I’ve learned a lot of lessons…and this is one of the lessons that I have learned.
Everyday, thousands of newcomers to Internet Marketing wash up onto the shores of the “Make Money Online” world. Ninety percent or more never make it further. They waste time and lose their money into the pockets of those scavengers who will pick them off and look for their next victim, fast. It’s huge and it’s every day.
But, and this is where it gets good and where I got to soon after my bad start.
I realized that there were any number of “programs” out there that would gladly take my money and give me an ebook. But only a few of them were really any good.
You see, Internet Marketing (sales by means of the internet) has (like all businesses) it’s own technical language, it’s own jargon, and it’s own methods and, until you know what those are you are a prime prospect for people who just want to separate you from your money.
There are actually a lot of people in this business who are genuinely concerned with imparting a good education to those who want it. They’re also in it for the money, but not in a bad way.
I eventually found my way but it was hard and longer than it had to be. Also my education in Internet Marketing was far more expensive than it had to be.
Luckily I ran across what amounted to be an Online Internet Marketing School! I joined it. I’ve had lots of education and training in my life and a lot of what I am is the direct result of that.
In this school I learned it all. The jargon, the techniques, the big picture. I didn’t make any money but I learned how it is done.
I also learned that you need to know your stuff at least a little bit before you can start to find your way. That shouldn’t surprise anybody but I am constantly impressed with how little I knew at first.
Now, I am up and running with an online business. I look back at what was impossible two years ago and now I see a lot of it as easy.
I guess two years isn’t so long but I’ll bet a headline like “Try Really Hard for Two Years and You might Make It” probably wouldn’t sell well.
Now I know a dozen ways to make money online without much setup at all. I even teach people to do this now. I never thought that would happen.
In conclusion, I have to tell you, that the best way to get a good start in Internet Marketing is to avoid getting a bad start in the first place.
Thank you,
Riley West

There are a lot of folks out there that will tell you how to make money on the internet. My advice? Don’t listen to them.
A little background. In 2006 I knew a lot about sales and marketing, but I knew nothing about the tools of the internet. I jumped on one of those “Earn 300 Dollars a Day Following This Easy Step-by-Step Plan” packages and wasted a lot of time. But I came to my senses…after losing some money.
I sort of knew what I wanted to do even though I had never done it. I wanted to sell downloadable information ebooks. I had already bought some and saw how that went and I just liked the sales process…and I still do.
I think the reason that selling info products is so attractive to me is because I was in the furniture business for 30 years. I had grown tired of warehouses full of physical inventory. The internet looked good!
But I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know what to do. And, if I knew what to do I didn’t know how to do it. I had to get past that stumbling block. And if you are anything like I was when this first caught my eye…you aren’t ready, either.
So what do you need to know to make your way in Internet Marketing (IM)? This article covers ten skills that will make your career in Internet Marketing a lot easier.
By the way, you haven’t been told this before. You don’t have to be an expert in the “ten skills” this article covers. You just need to know your way around in it. That’s one of the keys to getting rid of that whole overwhelmed feeling that nails us all at times.
First, you have to get to know the the language used here. I found a good online internet marketing school and put myself in there! I studied and learned and I think that had a lot to do with my sticking with it after my horrible start. (If you search article directories for Riley West as author you can laugh at my horrible start. The title is “How to Get a Good Start in Internet Marketing.”)
The second thing you have to learn is how to put up a simple one page website. Don’t panic! It’s easy. Once I got over being intimidated by the thought I just got into it and banged one out. The first website I made was pretty bad. The second a little better. Now I have done 40 or 50 and my sites work just fine. I keep them simple.
Using a webpage editor isn’t much more difficult than a word processor is to learn. You’ll see how it’s sort of the same thing. Just do it! You’ll be proud of yourself.
The third thing you need to have is a domain name and hosting. That’s simple too! Your domain name is your website internet address (URL) and your hosting company is the outfit that puts your files on their servers that are hooked up to the net.
Fourth, the autoresponder. Sounds odd but isn’t. All marketers use them and it seems that most use an outfit called Aweber. This ingenious software allows you to stay in communication with your website visitors by email and increases the odds of you making a sale by quite a bit! It’s a known statistic that the average sale is made on the 7th or 8th contact.
So, if you want to be way below average in sales just DON”T use an autoresponder! Without an autoresponder you’ll only make one contact and you won’t have their name! Automatic followup. Very effective and easy too…once you have worked through it.
The fifth item necessary for success in IM is a keyword tool. Use Googles keyword tool. It’s FREE, it’s easy to use and it has excellent tutorials. Google is a huge company on the net and they have many things for you, most of which are FREE! Try to beat that. Get familiar with Google. You’ll be glad you did. Another thing I recommend is Google Analytics, also free. But that would make eleven and this is the “ten” list.
Sixth skill to acquire – Traffic Generation. It’s absolutely critical. The most professional salespage will not produce if no one sees it. But not just anybody. You want “targeted traffic.”
Here’s the example I like. If you are selling a dog training program you’d want people with dog problems to see your offer!
The internet allows us to drive the correct traffic to our websites. That would be people who want to buy what you have to sell. There are dozens of ways to drive targeted traffic to the right offers…you just have to study traffic generation for a while. Then, pick a method to concentrate on. Stick with it until it works. They all work, you just have to get it right.
The seventh thing you’ll want is a way for people to buy something from you. I mean pay for it. Give you money! There are many ways. A simple way is Paypal. It’s what I use. Just open an account. It’s FREE! They charge you a little transaction fee per sale. They handle it all.
I think for number eight we should start a blog. You can use Blogger or Wordpress.org, since they are free, but I recommend against it. If you don’t have your blog hosted on your own account then you don’t have full control. Get this… Wordpress.org doesn’t allow affiliate links or selling! And we are Marketers! So, remember, wordpress.com hosted on your own hosting company is the way you want to go.
Blogs can be low maintenance traffic generators! When you write about your topic you will include certain keywords that will cause your article to come up for someone searching on that keyword or phrase.”
Google spiders like blogs. I do too! So my setup is that my main site is a wordpress blog hosted by a company I chose. My blog is surrounded by salespage websites with links to the posts. An elegant solution. Try it!
It looks a little like a solar system. The Blog is in the middle and the salespages are the satellites.
The ninth skill you’ll need is FTP. File Transfer Protocol. Don’t panic. It’s easy. At first I uploaded files to my site by hand, one at a time, the hard way because I knew how to do that. Don’t even bother learning the hard way. Use FTP. By the way, the one file at a time by hand method is very cool when you want to make a small change on one page. I can correct a typo in 2 minutes. I just go right in there and correct it.
There are two very good FTP programs that are FREE! You cannot beat that price. Cyberduck or Filezilla. My guess is that when they are free you can call them anything you want!
The tenth thing I think you need for a simple start to this business is a course of easy lessons that are designed to bring you from totally new to making money. I know…lots of people say they can give you this. I have only found two and I looked long and hard.
These are the ten things I did. These skills made it possible for me to set up money making info-websites and a blog. I could have done better, though. I spent too much time studying and not enough time settling down and sticking with one thing.
That’s what I’m doing now. I’m sticking with it. I’m moving it forward every day. My goal is to have my little operation making enough money on a regular basis that I can hire an assistant. There’s my goal. What’s yours?
Thank you…I’ll see you at my blog.
Riley West – An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.