I Cannot Stand Internet Marketing

Does this title immediately grab you and make you want to read more?  Well it did with me about an hour ago whilst browsing in one of the popular IM forums of which I am a member.

Here is an excerpt of some of the author’s frustrations - “people preaching trickery. Whether it be tricking search engines or people, it’s just not fair.  I suppose if I want to leave one message to whoever has read this far, it’s to remember that there are people behind those sales and profit numbers. There are people that will be putting their hard-earned money into what you sell, and there are people who’s lives you are making harder by trying to make a quick buck.   Every time you claim a system to make $x per month, you raise someone’s hopes – and exploiting their human nature to respond to that hope when you know it’s not possible is just inhumane.”

The person posting had left life in the ‘Corporate Rat Race’ for the next best thing that was Internet Marketing and was lured by what he termed ‘the dazzling claims of fortune.’  In summary and what he was actually saying was that almost everyone in the industry lured people in under false pretences.  Each promised that their opportunity was the next best thing and the author of this post claimed to have tried all these things and not earned a cent.

Now I have written several articles relating to this very thing.  Yes there are sharks out there, yes the internet is full of people making false income claims and yes a clear conscience is not something that a lot of people fall asleep with at night!  On the other hand however, it is very easy to point the finger of blame at everyone else when things do not happen.  Amongst the sharks, there are lots of good honest individuals making money on the internet in an ethical and moral way and I am one of those people.

I read this person’s post with great interest and could relate not only to him but to the many others who responded both with agreeing and opposing points of view.  Ultimately, we are responsible for our own destiny and if you think someone is making false income claims, ask to see evidence of this before you sign up for anything if you have the least suspicion.

‘Must Have’ reads before signing up for any opportunity:-

Why so many people give up on their Internet Marketing Opportunity

Adopting the Correct Mindset to Succeed in Business

Don’t fall for the hype

5 money making niches for 2010 and how you can get the edge

5 money making niches for 2010 and how you can get the edge

Doing extensive research into what is happening in the world of online marketing has led to 5 main areas that are displaying rapid growth and these are:

1. Education
2. Health & Wellness
3. Booze
4. Local, local, local
5. Pets

People ask the question “is there any niches that are too saturated” and that is a very good question.   If you do your research thoroughly and you find that questions relating to a particular niche are continuing to crop up often in various forums or search engines, then you have your answer right there.

The next question you may ask is “should I go wide or deep into the niche”?  Going deep would be something like taking a niche market and targeting it towards a particular group of society, for example ‘Health & Nutrition for older people’ and that would be called going deep in one market.

Going wide would mean doing a little bit in Booze, a little bit in Pets, a little bit in Education and so on.

3 main benefits of Niche Marketing

• Much less competition – you can own and dominate a particular niche subject
• Subject expert – owning a niche means you become that person that everyone goes to for their solutions.  More people will seek you out rather than your competitors
• Faster results – it doesn’t take long to rank well for niche related keywords

If you specialise in one particular area, it doesn’t take long at all to rank really well with the search engines.

Finding a niche and how you can get the edge

Go into discussion forums and find out what the top questions are – note how many  replies there are to each question, note how many times each question has been viewed.  Focus also on the answers that other people are providing to the questions.

One idea from there is that you do extensive research and create an eBook that in turn answers all the questions that people are asking.  I must emphasise at this point that you should never plagiarise anyone else’s efforts.  The content of the book must be in your own words and based on your research findings.

The first step is being able to build a product that people are willing to pay for and that answers their question.

How can I find forums to do research on?

If you go to big-board.com you will find there a directory of message boards that tell you how many posts each forum has and how many members, the more posts, the more active, the more people there are, the more answers you can get to questions relating to your particular niche.

Big-board does not necessarily list all the forums that are out there so what you could also do is go to Google and search for ‘your keyword forum’, for example ‘Honda car forum’ and put this in quotes.  This will provide a ton more message forums within your niche.

You don’t want to get involved with a forum that has only a few posts and even less members as this will get you nowhere.

Another great source of niches is called ‘Top Site’ and one in particular is called Squidoo.   Given that there are thousands of people on Squidoo daily, being ranked in the Top 100 is a big deal.

Another great source of information is hubpages.com and every day they have what is known as Featured Hub.   Hubs are just very simple web pages that people have made that explain how to do something or something they recommend, things like that.  Like Squidoo, you can search hub pages by category.

There’s nothing about hub pages that appears to rate one more highly than the others, the top one changes every day so if you see one that is of interest, make a note because it will soon be gone.

If all the above has given you food for thought, why not sign up here and start BUILDING A WEBSITE.  You will receive a FREE copy of ‘Create Your Own Website by 3.45 this afternoon’.

Stop – do you really know your customer or just think you do?

How well do you think you know who your real customers are?  Are you adopting a totally focussed approach within your business and looking at it holistically or are you content to remain within your niche?

What about asking yourself these 4 important questions:

Who is your target customer?

This is about who your customers really are.  For example are they male, female, do they make a certain amount of money each year, do they make a lot of money, and do you think they’re wealthy, are they middle class, do you think they’re only located in Russia or are they located in the United States or are they in fact world-wide?  These are the kind of questions that you need to ask yourself.

The more you find out about your customer, the higher the chance that you’re going to be able to drill down and know exactly what they’re looking for and you can provide the product or the service or the website that they need.

Where exactly do they go when they come online?

Your target customers are out there right now, because they’re hanging out on some websites.  It’s about trying to find out where they are and getting in front of them.  They’re online because they’re looking for something and this is normally something that they hope is going to change their lives for the better.  For example, if you were selling guides to lose weight and your product enabled people to ‘lose up to 10lbs in 10 days,’ then this is going to change certain people’s lives for the better.

You should visit forums within your niche, find out the types of questions people are asking and position yourself so you are able to provide a solution within this means.

Who is your competition?

This is simply Business 101.  It’s the same thing on the internet as you would do to succeed in the offline world.  It’s also useful to know who your offline competition is as well because it’s only a matter of time before they too come online.

One way of finding online competition is to use the weight loss example above.  If you go onto Google and type in ‘weight loss’, you’re immediately going to see who your competition is because all their websites will come up.  Research those and find out how your competitors and potential customers are using the products and services.

What is your product and how can you enhance your offering?

Is your product a physical product or is it an info product that can provide a solution to your customer?

Think about supplemental products.  Going back to the weight loss analogy; you could offer info products that could help solve their problems, go after their burning needs.   If your online store only sells weight loss products give some thought to what else your customers may buy online.  They may buy work out equipment, additional weight loss guides, running shoes, gym memberships, motivational materials or anything else that could increase their weight loss.  You could become an affiliate of these products so you are able to offer a total solution that meets all your customers’ desires.

To find our more about Trish and how what she does can change your life as it did hers, visit her website at http://www.WealthyIncome4U.com

Forum marketing – generate endless leads in a targeted marketplace

What is forum marketing?

Forum marketing a super simple strategy that almost anyone can use for networking, building relationships and building leads in this industry.  All over the internet there are a vast amount of interesting and free forums ranging from any niche you can imagine, from houses to animals to cars etc.  Network marketing, internet marketing, residual income, you name it, there are forums absolutely anywhere that you can network in.  Not only can you network in them, but you also get a signature file in a forum.  This is like a little ad that displays underneath every single post that you ever make in a forum.  This is one of the primary ways that you can generate traffic and leads from within forums.

A post (known as a thread) relates to something you write; anytime you think of a topic you want to write a short note about or you see topics displayed that you can add benefit to, then you are submitting a post.

Forum marketing is free, takes little effort and is lots of fun because you’re interacting, learning and building relationships.

Some recommended sites

Some forums I can recommend are:

• Richdad.com
• conqueryourniche.com
• warriorforum.com
• Betternetworker.com
• wahm.com (work at home mums)
• homebasedbusiness.com

The wahm.com forum, although by implication may be aimed at a specific audience, is not that at all, there are lots of different types of businesses on there and a variety of threads that you can add value to and promote your business opportunity.

For example, I went into warriorforum for the purposes of adding some value to this article and there are currently 689 people viewing the internet marketing forum threads in there.  What potential is that for you to promote your opportunity?

It’s not all about you and your opportunity though, and if that’s all you go into forums to do, people will get annoyed; you need to go in and add value.  This can be done by educating others, sharing experiences or simply starting a thread on a niche topic that is of interest to you and you wish to gauge the opinions of others.  The main point of all of these is about building relationships; remember people join people not businesses!

The main concept about online marketing and internet marketing is ‘What attracts people to you?’  It is the amount of value that you offer them, the depth of the relationship that you have with them.

How to position yourself when in the forums

This is how you want to position yourself when you’re in any social networking.  You want to promote the team training that you have to offer alongside the team infrastructure.  You want to position the fact that you are plugged into people or that you yourself can teach people how to make money.  It’s that simple – you can teach people how to be a true professional in this industry, how to understand the true marketing principles out there that allow people to generate leads or bring in new business and do all these different things and that you know how to teach that to anyone.  On top of that, you’ve got the whole training platform infrastructure in place so when you’re networking and building relationships and talking to other leaders, you can relate to the unnecessary duplication required because everything is already there.

So, what are you waiting for?  Get out there and start building new and productive relationships within the many forums connected to your niche, promote yourself as a leader in the industry, provide value to others and raise awareness of your opportunity in a targeted marketplace.