Content Marketing Training – Okay, so you’ve heard so many times that one of the easiest ways to get content for your site/blog is to go to an article directory (Ezine Articles for example), search for a relevant article within your market, and then simply copy the article and paste it into your site.
No doubt that’s EASY!
I’ve noticed a lot of people, or more specifically Internet marketers, talk a lot about things like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as if it is THE MOST important thing in the world. I know they want to get traffic now, but is it just a matter of traffic all the time?
Read on…
Now if you don’t know what SEO is, SEO is simply the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks on the first page of Google or any other search engines for a particular set of keywords.
So let’s say that you have a website about selling anti-virus software. Essentially, what you want to achieve by doing SEO work is to get your website showing up on the first page of Google when someone types in “buy anti-virus software” (without quotes) in Google.
You might think that this is a fantastic way to get visitors to your site.
And it is. No contest about that.
Getting visitors when they have voluntarily typed in a keyword phrase related to our website is of course good news for us as website owners, since they are seeking what we have to offer.
They’re already interested in the subject of “anti virus software” and they’re looking to buy it with their wallet in their hands. That means you don’t have to educate them about the importance of having an anti-virus software and why they should buy one.
The education part is already done for you there.
How do you know?
Because of the fact that they typed in the phrase “buy anti virus software”. Notice the word “buy” there? They won’t want to buy it if they weren’t sure of what “anti virus software” is all about, wouldn’t they?
While you may have achieved number 1 ranking for this keyword phrase, what good is number 1 ranking if you can’t convert your visitors? 
There is simply no point in having a huge influx of visitors if you can’t make them do what you want them to do.
In other words, you have to know and be VERY sure what your goals are. What do you want these visitors to do once they’re on your site?
Do you want them to click on your Adsense ads? Or do you want them to click on your affiliate link which leads to a leading anti-virus software company? Or maybe you want them to subscribe your anti virus newsletter that delivers tips and the latest updates related to combating computer virus?
Whatever your goals/objectives are, you need to define them first before you do all the hard SEO work (or any traffic generation work) that is going to bring all that Google traffic to your site. Otherwise all that traffic will go down to waste as you don’t even know what your goals are.
Make sense?
Now at the start of this article I mentioned that a lot of marketers are so “addicted” to SEO as if it is the most important thing/skill in the world (I may be a little exaggerating here… but I’m sure you get my point).
But achieving that all important 1st position in Google for your targeted keywords really won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to utilize your traffic well.
You have to start thinking about the bigger picture like this: “Okay once visitors land on my site, what do I want them to do? What is my ultimate goal?”
Take this blog for instance. At the time of this writing, this blog is ranked number 1 for the keywords “Internet business make money online”, which also happens to be one of the keywords I’m targeting.
When visitors come to my blog, my goal right then and there is to convert them to subscribers.
I have 3 mechanisms in place to do this:
1. There is an obvious opt-in box to the top right of this blog (on the sidebar) enhanced by a glaring red rectangle surrounding the submit button to make it stand out.
2. A slide-up opt-in box (aff) appears from the bottom of the blog. If you’re a returning visitor, you’ll see this in action for every 3rd revisit. (By the way, this slide-up box has increased the subscription rate of one of my sites by 78.43%).
3. There is the “What would Seth Godin do WordPress plugin” which displays a message box to new visitors and ask them to get my FREE report “How To Earn Your First 100 Dollars Online” (which also pulls them into my list). Visitors returning to this blog after the 5th time would not see this.
But is this my really, really ultimate goal?
Of course not! What good is there to have subscribers if you can’t convert them into… errr….well… money?
But at least my goal when new visitors reach my blog is to ask them to enter their name and email address so that I can follow up with them on a consistent basis to build beneficial and trusting relationships, as well as to sell them products and services related to Internet marketing or Internet business.
Since I know that most people will not buy my products when they’ve just landed on my site because they don’t who I am, my realistic goal is just to have them subscribe to my newsletter, and then sell to them later on.
So in essence, when a new guy lands on my blog and he subscribes to my newsletter, I have achieved my goal (at least at that level).
The ultimate goal is to sell related products and services to my subscribers, be it my own products or affiliate products which I believe will help them.
The end result?
I make Moolah (Money) of course 
Now that I’ve made clear that you need to set what your goals and objectives are for your site before you go out there and get traffic now, the next thing you need to do is to PREPARE before you go out there and try to drive visitors to your site.
After all, simply by knowing your goals is not enough, you need to PREPARE on how to achieve your goals.
And we will take a look at the preparation phase in part 2 of this article, so stay tuned…
I sincerely invite you to give my GOLD Coaching a RISK-FREE 14-day trial.
(you get to receive $488 REAL value of Internet marketing gifts for FREE too…)
When it comes to the subject of creating products or services, many marketers make the huge mistake of creating the product or service before doing some due diligence first.
By due diligence I mean doing research to determine if the products or services they offer have some kind of demand or not.
This scenario – where marketers create products and services before gauging if there is any demand at all for their products – is most likely because they are simply too excited to get their feet off the ground and to get the ball rolling…
…not forgetting to mention also that most of these people are beginners who have just started to learn how to market online.
After all, every successful Internet marketer out there always advocates taking massive action!
If all they do is simply learning without taking any action, they’ll get screamed at. Now that they have taken the courageous first step to actually get the ball rolling, nobody wants to buy their products/services.
So these action-takers can’t totally be blamed can they?
Whilst the aspirations and desires to make a profit marketing products and services is great, one needs to take into account the demand for the kind of products or services being created.
It is simply useless to be creating a perfect, fantastic, super duper powerful product when nobody wants to use it.
So the first step you need to do when it comes to creating products or services to market (both online and offline) is to first determine if there is any demand for that product/service.
If there is no demand or if the demand is very, very little then you should not develop the product/service.
If there is substantial demand, then you can get started on getting your product or service created. 
One effective way I’ve discovered over the past few years to gauge the demand for your product or service is to find out what problems people want to have solved. This means that these people not only have problems, but they want these problems to be solved.
The more desperate these problems the better for you as a product or service owner. 
Why?
Because people will be more ready to shell out their money to fix desperate problems. For example, let’s say I’m about to go on a first date next week and I have these huge ugly pimples on my face. In this kind of dire situation, I’d happily shell out my hard earned money to get fast solutions so that I can have a neat and clean pimple-free face.
Now, one way to see what problems people are having is by visiting forums. After all, forums are places where people with the same interests (and problems) hang around!
Let’s take the above example where I’m in the VERY dire situation to get pimples cleared fast.
Go to Google and type “acne forum”. Look through the sites returned by Google.
As a rule of thumb, look through forums that have the following criteria:
1. Alexa Rank
Alexa rank is simply a measure of how much traffic a site is getting. It is not the most accurate thing in the world, but it gives us a picture of how well a particular site is doing in terms of traffic relative to other sites.
If you haven’t installed the Alexa toolbar on your Firefox browser yet, then my advice is to do it now. The toolbar is Free and it’s a great tool to add to your Internet marketing arsenal.
Go to Alexa
Click the “Get Sparky” button and follow the simple steps to install your Alexa toolbar.
When looking for forums, strive to find those with Alexa rank less than 1 million. The less the Alexa rank the better.
At the time of this writing, Yahoo has an Alexa rank of 1, Google 2, and YouTube 3. This means that Yahoo is the most visited site on the planet, Google the second most visited site, and YouTube the third most visited site.
2. How Many Members Are Registered At The Forum
The more registered members the better, because you can gain more insights to the different problems faced by these members.
This way, you can read through the posts to find potential big problems that your product could cater to meet the needs of these people who are desperately seeking solutions.
Strive to find at least 5000 registered members. The more registered members the better.
3. How Many Page Views Are There?
When you land on a forum homepage, typically it will have sub-forums. In our acne forum example, you could have sub-forums on different sub-topics.
For example, using Google I found this acne forum, which is further categorized into sub-forums:
You can see that there are sub-forums on “acne treatments”, “adult acne”, “acne scars”, etc.
Go into one of the sub-forums:
You can see that one of the posts has a VERY high page views (4,524) as seen above. This would be a great thread (post) to browse through to find potential problems these “acne people” are having.
Generally speaking, the more page views the better.
4. How Many Replies Are There?
The more replies to a specific thread (post) the better for you when doing research to discover problems faced by these people.
Why?
Because more replies mean that the topic being discussed is more popular than other topics.
When time is limited, strive to read those threads with more replies first. If time permits, then you can, of course, browse through other threads as well.
In this article, you’ve learned how to discover potential problems people have using the power of forum research. Once you have a rough idea about their problems, you can even post a thread in the forum asking if they would be interested in such and such a product or service, which of course is the product or service you will be offering to them in the near future.
In the next article, I’ll be covering how to market your product or service to these people, which is called effective forum marketing.
Stay tuned…
If you have been doing any kind of marketing on the Internet, be it in the sports niche, weight loss niche, games niche, or any niche out there, you should be familiar with the promotion strategies and tactics product owners undertake to promote their products and services.
Things like pay per click (PPC), joint ventures (JV), setting up affiliate programs, advertising, social networking and bookmarking tactics come to mind when talking about promotions.
These tactics are known as Active Promotions, and *almost* everyone does them.
Product owners use these methods.
So do affiliate marketers when they promote affiliate products.
There is, however, another promotion method that can help increase your sales revenue but that is heavily underused by product owners and affiliate marketers.
This method is known as Passive Promotions.
So what exactly is passive promotion?
To illustrate this, let me give you an example.
Suppose a guy named Alex reached your sales page that sells a $20 ebook that teaches him how to lose weight significantly. Interested by your offer, he bought your ebook.
Upon completing the purchase (after paying), he is immediately brought to a page where you upsell him on an audio course that consists of 5 professionally recorded interview sessions with 5 weight loss experts.
These 5 interview sessions are in the form of 5 audio CDs, and he (Alex) can buy it with a huge discount since he is already a customer who has already bought an ebook from you.
Alex gladly took up the 5 audio CDs offer.
Since Alex is now your customer, you placed him in an autoresponder series.
Two weeks later, your autoresponder system follows up with him, this time making him an offer to a home study video course that teaches him how to have the perfect body anyone dreams of.
Again, he took up the offer.
Do you see where I’m going?
This is called passive promotions.
Without actually doing any kind of active promotions like PPC, JV, and setting up affiliate programs for the last two products (5 audio CDs and video home study course), you have managed to sell those products to Alex.
You were able to do this by doing passive promotions.
To put it simply, passive promotions mean that you do not directly promote products and services through regular ways such as those mentioned above, but instead you promote them by making offers on places such as the customer thank you page, free opt-in thank you page, autoresponder email series, etc.
Heck, you can even offer them on your competitors’ sites.
How exactly do you that?
Well, first of all, locate people within your niche (market) who are already selling some kinds of products or services.
This method would work better if these people are affiliates selling other people’s products, but nonetheless, it would also work even if these people are product owners.
Contact them and offer them to sell one of your products at a discount on their thank you page or in their autoresponder email series for their customers.
Now, I know some of you might be thinking: “Yeah that would work if they were affiliates. But if they were product owners, why would they want to create additional competition for themselves?”
My answer to that is: “Well, you are asking them to sell your product once someone has already bought from them, so it’s not like this person will buy your product and then decides not to buy their product (because he or she has already bought from them in the first place).”
To make this work even better, here are 2 tips you can use:
1. Look for people who are selling only 1 product
You may not notice this, but there are a lot (and I really do mean a lot!) of people who sell only 1 product in a given niche.
I’m not kidding!
If you don’t believe me, keep your eyes open and start paying attention starting from now on. Subscribe to their list and see for yourself. Most of time, they only have 1 product to offer.
By targeting these people, they would be more than happy to offer your product to their customers, since if they hadn’t collaborated with you, they would not have earned any additional income.
2. Look for people who are selling products that are in different price range as your products
It’s easier to persuade people to sell your products to their customers if your products are in different price range than their products.
It can either be cheaper or more expensive, and both would work well.
After their customers have already paid for their products, they can either offer an upsell for your more expensive product or a downsell for your less expensive product.
If your product is in the same price range as their products, chances are the customers will view your products and their products as similar (even though this may not be the case). When this happens, conversion rates for your products will drop.
So which method are you currently using more to sell products and services? I’m betting Active Promotions eh?
Start doing some Passive Promotions today as well!
Newbie trying their hands to make money online are often confused how they can actually “make money online”.
They often ask themselves questions such as: “Where exactly is the online money at and how can I take advantage of this opportunity and make some money myself?”
If you are one of these beginners, I would recommend to you that the most straightforward and simplest way to make money online is through ads marketing or ads monetization.
What exactly is Ads marketing or Ads monetization?
Ads marketing or Ads monetization simply means that you earn money by selling advertising space to advertisers.
As simple and straightforward as that!
Traditional newspapers and magazines, which have been around for ages, make money by selling advertising space.
In the online world of Internet Marketing, it is practically the same. You can make money by selling advertising space on your website.
To successfully sell advertising space, you need to:
1. Set up a website of your own
Currently, the easiest way to set up you own website is by using a blog. I recommend using a WordPress blog if you have a little money to spare to buy domain and hosting. However, if you have no money, you can also set up a Free Blogger blog.
To find out more about setting up your WordPress or Blogger blog, you can grab my FREE report “Your First $100 Online” just by subscribing to this blog on the top right of this page.
2. Put in valuable content to your blog on a consistent basis
Now that you have your blog set up, the next thing you need to do is to put in valuable content to your blog.
Now pay special attention when I say “valuable content”. You must give valuable content that is beneficial to your blog readers, not just some rubbish and low quality content that you simply copy from another blog and paste it into your own blog.
By entertaining your blog readers on a consistent basis with valuable content that is useful to them, you make them happy they are more likely to return to your blog in the future.
These readers are also likely to recommend their friends to your blog if they feel they have benefited by reading the content on your blog.
The more people who know your blog, the higher your blog’s traffic, which lead us to point number 3…
3. Drive traffic on a consistent basis
Creating great content on your blog is terrific, but you need to do some promotion so that people know your blog exists in the first place.
There are a number of ways to drive traffic to your blog:
- write articles and submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles and Go Articles
- if you have some budget, you can use PPC (pay-per-click) advertising like Google Adwords
- social bookmark your blog’s content on sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Digg
- participate in 1 or 2 forum discussions related to your niche
- trackback to other high profile bloggers’ posts from your posts
- comment on other blogs in the same niche
4. Finally, make money by selling advertising space on your blog
When your blog is visited by a lot of people (hundreds or thousands) daily, you are ready to sell advertising space on your blog to make some money.
You can do this by selling advertising space directly without the help of third party vendors by putting up your own “Advertise here” page on your blog.
Some people, however, don’t want the hassle of handling the administration work of receiving payments, setting up and activating/de-activating ads, etc.
If this is you, then you can always enlist their help of third parties such as Google Adsense or Adbrite. They take care of all the administration processes, so all you need to do is just collect money if there are advertisers who want to advertise on your blog. 
If you’d like to REPLACE YOUR JOB FAST with a profitable Internet business, be sure to check out my GOLD Coaching for a mere $1.
Running an information business can be really profitable if you know what you are doing.
Especially with the help of the Internet, things are really a lot simpler and cheaper. Talk about digital products like e-book, mp3 audio lessons, online video tutorials – all of these can be downloaded to your computer in a matter of seconds and minutes.
Still not convinced about running your own information business?
Well that’s okay because I have 6 great reasons why you should start an information business today :
1.
Look at the Internet. People are online searching for information. They are hungry for information.
Using the Google Keyword Tool, below are some results I found when I used the keyword phrase “how to” to search for relevant keyword phrases:
how to cook
how to draw
how to video
how to cite
how to dance
how to deal
how to dress
how to fish
how to hack
how to kiss
how to lose weight
how to make money
how to make out
how to make paper
how to network
how to paint
how to play guitar
how to tie a tie
how to type
how to videos
how to write a letter
how to books
how to braid
how to break up
how to build a deck
how to burn dvd
how to change oil
how to cheat
how to cook chicken
how to copyright
how to crochet
how to cut hair
how to date
how to do magic
how to download music
how to shave
how to smoke
how to commit suicide
How to type? How to download music? How to shave? How to smoke? – I bet you didn’t think there are actually people out there going to Google searching for these kind of information, did you?
And how to commit suicide? Well now you know there are even people who want to learn how to commit suicide before they actually attempt to do it
My point is: the information business is huge, real huge. As can be seen from above, people are looking for all kinds of information.
2.
Look at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon.com books section, Clickbank, or your local bookstores. What are they selling?
Of course they are selling information !
Need I say more?
3.
Very high profit margin (we’re talking hundreds of percent here) 
!
Say you’re selling information products in the form of e-books, mp3 audios, and online video tutorials. So your costs are your expertise and experience for creating the content in these products, domain and hosting (very cheap), some advertising costs if you have money (if you have no budget it can be free as well).
And to produce 1 e-book, or 2 e-books, or 100 e-books, or 1000 e-books, the costs are virtually the same as you “technically” do not have to produce them, since they can just be downloaded from your website.
What about mp3 audio lessons and online video tutorials?
Yes they, too, do not have any additional production costs, so to speak.
So you’re “technically” making 100% profit! Gosh, what kind of business can allow you to make 100% profit?
Even if you deliver your content in CDs, DVDs, or printed materials, you’re still making high profit margins.
4.
You work once and get paid on it forever!
Yes, get paid on it forever.
Your website is your salesman doing his job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week non-stop. He doesn’t need any rest, and he simply can’t fall sick.
And better still if you’re selling digital products, since almost everything can be automated. Your customer goes to your website -> he orders your product -> he puts in his credit card details -> he download your product from your site. And all of these sales processes are done and completed while you are on your vacation or while you sleep.
If you’re an employee working for someone else, you are trading your time in exchange for money.
If you’re a self-employed consultant with some kind of specialized skills, you are also trading your time in exchange for money.
There are only 24 hours in day.
The point is: when you run an information business, you are LEVERAGING on systems to work for you. Because of this, you can sell 10 information products to 10 different customers simultaneously.
5.
You can work from anywhere in the world (yes just like you’ve heard many times before, you can even work in your pajamas).
As long as you have a laptop and an Internet connection, you can run your information business from anywhere in the world.
This is not a dream; it’s very much a reality. The question is, how motivated or how bad do you want this dream to become a reality?
6.
It takes very little cost to start an information business.
You can start for as little as $100 to $1000. Compare that to running a brick and mortar business. You have rental costs, maintenance costs, electricity costs, staff salaries, inventory costs, capital.
Can you start to see how low cost this can be? And yet it can bring in returns up to 100%
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