Internet Marketing Newbie – It Takes Money To Make Money
April 3, 2010 | In: SEO
Its a fact that around 95% of newbies fail at Internet Marketing. The No.1 reason they fail is due to not doing one little thing, TAKING ACTION… They all have a wealth of knowledge on the internet to learn from, most dabble in 4 or 5 different methods. But that’s the problem, they only put 3 or 4 hours of actual work into each method and don’t see the money poor in like all those “make $10,000 by going to bed and dreaming about it” ebooks promise.
Since the methods didn’t work like they had hoped it would, they go back to forums and waste another few days reading every post, searching for that one flawless method that will solve all their problems. This type of behavior is commonly refereed to as “Analysis Paralysis” in IM circles.
Believe me I know exactly what its like because I wasted my first 2 or 3 years in IM doing just that. I knew all the IM methods, could mentor a guru but never actually put any of my IM knowledge into practice and I didnt TAKE ACTION.
Nothing is free with IM, do you think your time is worth $0/hour? The less you invest with currency, the more time you will have to invest to make up for it. E.g. The minimum award wage in Australia is around $18.00/hour, im not a good writer so it would take me around 45 – hour to write an informative 500 article, so around an $18 article. I can go on freelancer.com and have articles written for $1.50 – $2.00 each. So to invest $50 and have 30 articles written, that would have taken me 3 days to write, so it is a great investment.
The articles are definitely an investment, if you cant at least double, triple or quadruple your initial investment for them, there is seriously something wrong.
Few tips that might give a newbie a better chance of succeeding in IM.
1. Break free from the analysis paralysis and TAKE ACTION, good way to start is by banning youself from forums, they are very addictive and waste tremendous amounts of time reading info that you have already read before and your only really getting money making tips from newbies that are in the same position as you. If you want to learn real techniques, download an rss reader and subscribe to some gurus IM blogs that focus on the method you enjoy most, e.g Article Marketing, Blogging, Video Marketing, List building, etc, etc.
2. Make sure you focus on one project at a time. You spread yourself way to thin when you are trying to market using all the methods youv learnt at once. Your 100% better off starting one project and finishing it, then working on 5 projects at once and completing none of them. – This was my second biggest issue as a newbie, head was bursting with ideas and I wanted to get them all going asap but never actually finished any of them.
Are you a Newbie thats read about so many different marketing techniques, that you have no idea what marketing path to take?
3. Iv been doing IM for over 8 years now and have mentored a few people. The one method I teach them when first starting out that never fails when done correctly and has proven itself over and over again, is good old bum marketing (article marketing). A mistake a lot of bum marketers make is giving away their precious origional content to the article directories for a bust of traffic without stamping their name on it.
The correct way to do it is, invest the $9 on a domain name and the $4/month on hosting, install wordpress and publish your own articles first. Wait a few days for Google to index you articles then go to the big daddy article directory, Ezinearticles.com and submit your articles there, link the article back to the same Article you published on your site with anchor text that contain the keywords you are targeting with that article, this will make your article appear as the origional copy and prevent it from being filtered out in the Google dupe content filter.
Ezinearticles are very strict on article originality and uniqueness, they will accept it if its only been published on your site first but will deny the submission if its been published to 5 – 10 other places before hand. Now search google for a list of the top 10 article directories and social media sites e.g. Squidoo.com, hubpages.com, scribed.com wordpress.com, etc, etc. Now publish your articles to all of them, dont stress about the Google dupe content filter, just make sure that you change the title of the article with each submission and maybe write a unique intro to each article, this is all thats needed to avoid the Goog Dupe Con Filter.
Remember every article thats submitted has to link back to your original article with keywords that you are targeting, which is usually the title of your article. If you are unsure what anchor text is, heres a quick example. Articoolz.com is an article directory, if I wanted to link to that site from my article, instead of linking to it with its name “Articoolz.com“, I would link to it like this, “Article Directory“. The anchor text is the phrase “Article Directory” while the link still points back to Articoolz.com.
Anchor text from a backlink is much more descriptive than a link URL on its own, this inturn helps Google determine what niche your original article is targeting and what keywords it will rank the article for, since the anchor text from the articles submitted to the directories matches your original article title, Google has more confidence in ranking the article higher for those keywords. The article post title will become the words displayed in the search engine listings.
For people that cant get their head around the importance of obtaining backlinks to gain higher rankings, I will try and put it in a style of Laymans terms, this could be interesting. Imagine if all the websites targeting a specific keyword were to have an election to determine Google rank, each backlink to a site was considered a “Vote” towards the site in the election. In 2004, if your site had more votes than your competitors site, your site would have always been ranked higher than theirs, Google wasn’t as smart then and votes where more evenly valued, this ment you could get 10,000 backlink votes to your site and dominate a niche overnight. Ahh those where the good old days when you could rank for any keyphrase you wanted. You may remember how awefully untargeted and spammy the search results were back then as well.
Google has since devalued the power a backlink has in the ranking algorithm on its own. They now have focused a lot more on the authority and trust of the sites that supplied that backlink.
Looking at the backlink as a vote once more with the addition of trust and authority factor. Lets say, there were 2 websites ranked 1 & 2 for the keyphrase “Best Dog Training Guide”. No.1 ranked site has 100 votes and No.2 ranked site has 1000 votes.
You maybe shocked and wonder how that can happen when No.2 ranked site has 10X more votes.
No.1 ranked website obviously has obtained votes from more powerfull (high authority) sites. E.g. The President, the pope, the Queen and 97 other saintly people vote site No.1 as the best dog training guide, but site number 2 has managed to get 10x that number, obtaining 1000 votes from terrorists, rapists, murderers and a heap of other unsavory type people.
Obviously if you were to choose whos opinion you trusted more, you would go with the President, the pope, the Queen and 97 other saintly peoples opinion. So even though the other site has 10x as many votes, Google still chose to trust the minorities opinion over the majority. This is known as trust rank. You see this all the time now when analyzing the SERPS. There is no way you can convince me that PageRank isnt worth anything anymore.
Google simply trust the judgement of the President (high authority site e.g. CNN.com) and hold his opinion in much higher regard than a Terrorists (malware website) opinion.
In 2004, the rapists and murderers vote held a similar value to the Presidents. Since the rapists and murderers where a lot easier to get votes from, this is where many blackhat and even whitehat SEO’s went to source their backlinks. Creating software to run day and night, getting links through blog comment spam, doorway site networks, torrent sites, etc, etc. Thank heavens for the nofollow link, the SERPS are much cleaner and now the sites that carry real value rank the highest.
I hope that doesn’t make the whole backlinks and SEO theory even more confusing, I think it might have, im even confused, hehe.
So at the end of this stage, you should have each of your original articles appearing on 10 – 20 high authority article directories and Social Media sites. Remember each time you submitted the article, you used a different title, targeting the long tail keyphrases (4 or more words in the title). Never ever use the short tale (any less than 3 words) in an article title. The more words in your title, the less competition there is to rank against for that keyphrase. The less words, the greater the competition. A longtail keyphrase “Where Can I Buy a Cheap Sony Playstation” is also going to convert into sales 10X more often than short tail keyphrase “Sony Playstation”. More is not always better when it comes to website traffic. Laser targeted traffic that have their wallets out is the key.
HUGE bum marketing tip for everyone. Your article titles should mirror what you would expect people to type in Google to find what you offer. Don’t try to add fancy words and humor. Your potential customers are looking for a solution to their problems and you have the solution they are after, don’t make it hard for them’
Here is a quick example of a bad phrased article title “It’s Friday Night! Will You Get Lucky? ” nobody would search that keyphrase. They would search it from their point of view instead, “It’s Friday Night, Will I Get Lucky”. That simple little tweak of the title can be the difference between ranking for a keyphrase with much higher search volume and not ranking.
Final step is to join up to 10, 20 , 50 of the best social bookmarking sites and bookmark every single article you published on your site and every article that was published to the other directories and social media sites, all the trust and authority of the social bookmarking links with flow through to your articles which inturn will flow through to your site. The largest social bookmarking sites like stumbleupon.com and delicious.com get a huge amount of traffic so bookmarking is very beneficial.
www.incansoft.com has the best bookmarking software that I know of, called SocialBot, there was a WSO on warriors ages ago, selling it for $7, if ya want to automate bookmarking go to that forum and search the WSO section, also remember to close your eyes when you go there coz its easy to get seduced by all the “make $10,000 while taking a crap” WSO’s that are published to take advantage of the big dreaming newbie.
Finally in conclusion, With the initial investment of $15 for domain and hosting, $50 for 30 Articles, you have leverage what you had to the maximum. Created a website that you have full control over, 30 articles published to 20 authority sites each, ranking for indervidual keyphrases that people search for 20 x 30 = Articles = 600 keyphrases = 600 high authority backlinks to all areas of your website with targeted anchor text. Large amounts of traffic flowing through those links to purchase your solution to their problem. Those 600 articles each been bookmarked to 50 of the top Bookmarking site. Each bookmark is indexed in google, (50 x 600) + (50 x 30) = 31,500.
So thats around 31,500 references to your site that are indexed in Google, all leading back to your site, announcing that you are the authority in your niche and to pay attention Do that once a week, after 3 of 4 months when Google gives new domains more trust, your site will have that much authority that you will rank on the first page of Google for any article you post.
Now you have a truckload of traffic, its time to monetize the website, but I have wasted to much time here already and I doubt many of you would have made it this far down my post. Sorry for the long one.
What niche would you guys target in this situation? How would you monetize the website?
16 Responses to Internet Marketing Newbie – It Takes Money To Make Money
Game
April 3rd, 2010 at 6:53 am
Thanks for the excellent article, I am currently in the middle of promotion of my new site and found the article useful in relation to marketing, online promotions, I must admit i do go to bed dreaming about my site and often wake up with the site in my mind.
I suppose the only way to look at it is do not stop until you make it, no matter how long it takes.
John
April 3rd, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Wow….great article. You’ve got me all inspired. Bookmarked and now off to getafreelancer.com to gets some folks to write me some copy. Cheers.
SouthAussies.com
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Hi John, im glad you enjoyed the post, even if it was a bit all over the place.
Knowing it has inspired at least one person to take action, reevaluate what their time is really worth and to build from that has made it all worth the effort to post.
Good luck with outsourcing some of your work, you will be amazed how quickly and dramatically a small investment in content will build upon your online endeavors.
Remember to leverage your content to maximize its power.
Also a good quote to remember when it comes to outsourcing “Hire Fast, Fire Faster”, If the freelance writers aren’t up to scratch or are taking to long, fire them and get another. Plenty to take their place.
If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Aaron
MarketingSolutionz
April 4th, 2010 at 5:24 am
Great article I found it to be very informative even have being in marketing for 6 years this is very valuable information for newbies in the industry……..GREAT JOB!!
Bernard
April 4th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Hi John, thanks for your fantastic article it was great to have some info that was local and without the hard-sell. I have (maybe foolishly!!) committed to an expensive IM package. Even though I have watched most of the yidoes and tutorials I cannot get any traction and I feel lost. Are there any sites or resources that you are aware of that can benefit me…I’m drowning in options and just need , forums a little direction and mentoring
john
April 4th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Thank u For The Great information
Helped Me Out A Lot
SouthAussies.com
April 5th, 2010 at 6:31 am
Hi Bernard,
No hard-sell here mate, iv was sucked into 1 or 2 ridiculously priced IM packages myself back in the day. Very easily done when there is a new IM product launched by a so called guru. Most gurus get their sales copy written by master copy writers. These copy writers know what words fit together perfectly to trigger a persons subcontious into buying, its also known as “hype”. They hype their products up that much your sure its going to make you a ton of money. Their methods probably would work and make people a ton of money if people did exactly what the product details. Unfortunately only a very small percentage of people that purchased IM products actually make a decent amount of money with them. You might be surprised to hear the majority of people that purchase these courses never finnish reading or watching the videos and some dont even start.
IMO nobody can learn internet marketing overnight, in a week or even 6 months. Yes, you could have a very basic knowledge of how to generate a living online in a week but there is no way you could quit your day job to put that knowledge into full time practice. I now look at IM like any other trade or career. 13 years of school to learn how to live. Your an apprentice carpenter for 4 years before your qualified to build a house. 7 years of university study before your a physician.
IM is just like the general schooling system. There are grades, different levels of knowledge to be on before you can put it all together and make it work successfully. The gurus that launch these products and courses don’t tell you what level of IM knowledge you should be on before you can be successful with their products. You couldn’t expect a year 1 student to be successful in year 6 or a year 6 student to be successful in year 12 (Senior year for the Yankees). Its the same with IM.
I hope im not bursting anybodies bubble here because IM is the best job on earth. Seriously, what beats making money while you sleep and not having to get out of bed to go to work in the mornings? not much.
The lost feeling – Its very easy to get info overload when your starting out online, so take it easy and don’t try to take in to much info to quickly. Take a step back and decide on 1 path to take, ill repeat that, 1 path to take.
Bernard, ill try help you decide on that path. Just need a little more info from you. From what you have seen and learned so far, what type of IM interests you the most? What are you passionate about? what are your hobbies? The last two might sound like strange questions but its helps tremendously to try these in with your IM, its a motivation thing. From here I will be able to give you some great resources and even mentor you a little myself.
For your own well being im not going to suggest any forums just yet. They can be dangerous places that fill your head full of conflicting information, he said she said syle.
Don Murphy
April 5th, 2010 at 7:10 am
Hey John:
Great Article…It will be of much help in generating traffic to my websites.
Thanks
Bernard
April 8th, 2010 at 12:36 am
Thanks for the feedback…good to know I’m not alone in the gullability stakes!!
Lilke you indicated in your great article I’ve been through a lot of information and believe that I have grasped the basic concepts. I’ve also looked at some of the good quality information provided at the clickbank web-site. My gut-feel is that I need to take on two projects. The first would be supplementing the work blog..which is just being completed and learn how to drive traffic to it. The financial benefits may not be large ( I’m a tax accountant, and the market for work is geographically limited) but I am enthusiastic about what I do to help people. I could possible build on existing skills and maybe write articles, prepare podcasst materials etc
The second project could be an affiliate-based exercise …which I would be more mercenary about. Hopefully the skills I developed would be mutually beneficial
Am I being too optimistic?
Thanks for your cheery comments
South Aussie
April 19th, 2010 at 2:41 am
Hello again Bernard, Sorry for the late reply mate, I have been extremely busy the last few weeks and it doesn’t look like slowing down any time soon. Its always a good thing to be busy though.
You can definitely try your hand at 2 projects at once if you can think you can handle it, but like I said in the article make sure you don’t put a lot of effort into both projects but never actually finish either. This is what held me back for years when I first started out and it also a huge reason why the majority of newbies don’t succeed with IM. Since your a tax accountant, your obviously pretty switched on and good with analysis and problem solving. This is just what you need to make it in IM, add the ability to work long hours to build your IM foundation with little initial profit and mind power to take action and not just dream about it, and you’l be set.
Since your keen to write articles, you are one up on the majority of IMers. Most are like me and consider writing articles a huge, boring, time consuming chore. I don’t have the writing skills to enjoy it and it takes me for ever. That’s why I outsource my content and spend my time working on the tasks I enjoy.
The IMers that enjoy writing are the ones that are killing it in every niche. Most searches performed online are done by people trying to slove a problem. Can be a problem of any type. E.g. “how to calculate sales tax?” , If you produce some high quality content that offers a great solution to their problem like some easy to follow steps and insert a sales tax calculator which you could find a script for online, for free.
This would be sure to act as link bait, because many other sites would link to your post simply for the use of the calculator, visitors would keep returning to your site to use the calculator so you can build a relationship with them. Everyone always says content is king online which is not quite right because anybody can write a 400 article that provides little benefit in solving a problem. It should be that “Unique Quality Content is King”, Just offer more quality than your competitors and you will always win out big time.
If your going to write about Taxation, take your time with the articles you write since your the educated professional in the matter. Don’t rush them just to get quantity. Ultimately you want the best of both worlds, quality and quantity. Simple solution is to outsource from freelancer.com to get the quantity and rapidly build the size of your site, while you write the quality content to get the backlinks and reader base.
Since video is super hot right now, you could be a little different than your competitors and do screen capture video tutorials answering all the Tax based questions people most frequently ask. If your good at speaking clearly and fluently, this would possibly be the better option out of the 2.
You are definitely not to optimistic, its soooo simple if you just TAKE ACTION and do the work.
Good luck with what ever you have chosen, let me know how you go and feel free to ask me any questions you may have and ill do my best to answer them.
Aaron
Katie Patel
May 6th, 2010 at 8:16 am
if you have a lot of articles or content on Hubpages, you can really get lots of traffic and in turn you can make lots of money from it.;’*
Internet Marketing Newbies • Leveraging Your Content « Double Internet Marketing
June 11th, 2010 at 5:11 am
[...] this link: Internet Marketing Newbies • Leveraging Your Content Comments [...]
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February 24th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
Though I’d recommend an article marketing site that I found, for those that like to do article marketing.