Internet Marketer, Graduate Student, Radical Dude.
Posts tagged making money online
10 Years Til Expertise…
Dec 3rd
I was sitting in a graduate class tonight when the professor said something interesting…naturally, I logged on to share it with my readers. Here’s what he said:
Research suggests that becoming an expert at chess takes about 10 years. What’s more, other research has shown that this 10 year time period applies to other domains. For instance, it takes about ten years to finish undergraduate, graduate, and a post-doc. After all that schooling, you’re finally an expert! More >
Content Sites and Website Flipping
Dec 1st
I haven’t posted in a few days due to being completely overloaded with ideas. If you frequent WarriorForum.com at all, you’ve probably noticed how much incredible free content is there. And if you have ever read about a great method and not taken action, shame on you!
So what have I been up to? Well, yesterday I bought and setup 3 brand new websites. Three sites! That’s a lot for one day More >
Content Sites – Admitting My Weakness
Nov 26th
I feel like complete honesty is necessary – after all, if you can’t trust me to be honest then how can you trust me?
When I’m writing a sales letter, this would be the “damaging admission” section. The moment when you let down your guard and reveal yourself as human. You tell your lead, “Hey, I’m not perfect.” This psychological tactic lets your reader connect with you on a deeper level, and can win you a lot of business! But that’s not the lesson for today. You can learn more about damaging admissions later…
Today I’m here to admit my own weakness in this whole Internet business. When you get into Internet marketing, the first thing you realize is: wow, there’s a lot of ways to make money online. This realization either becomes your trap or your gateway to making real profits.
- If you see all those opportunities and start flailing your arms, swatting at them, trying to grab up as many money-making methods as possible – you will fail! You will spread yourself too thin trying to learn it all. And in the end, you won’t be good at any of the methods. Chances are you’ll end up that guy that knows a lot about marketing, but doesn’t have any results to show for it.
- If you see the variety of methods and settle on one (maybe two), you stand an excellent chance of becoming the master in that area. You can learn everything about your business model, dominate it, and apply it over and over again to different niches.
I found my method, and I’ve been dominating for a couple years now. But it’s time to expand. It’s time to look outside the box, and find ways to boost my existing income streams. Sure, I could always just create more products in more niches. But that gets old after a while. I know my strength is in ONE LITTLE TINY NICHE. And I make a killing there. So now I want to increase my market share in that niche.
My biggest weakness is content sites!
So what, you say? Who needs content sites when you can just put up a sales letter and forget it? Well, if you want to own your market, you need to provide value-add to your clients or customers. You gotta give them more than they ask for. And sometimes, providing that value to potential customers can win you new business.
Well I suck at creating and maintaining this kind of content. And that’s gotta change. For 2009, my plan is to put together a small network of content sites around my niche. These sites will act as a resource for existing customers, a place to gather opt-ins and build my list, and a portal for expanding the scope of my entire business.
There’s my early New Year’s resolution, and my damaging admission for the day. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in my comments. Any encouragement is welcome, too.
And maybe you can learn something from this post – what’s your biggest weakness? What’s stopping you from maximizing your profits? Identify and eliminate it. If you put down a road map, you will have an easier time getting from Point A to Point B.
Good luck, and happy early Thanksgiving!
Close Your Wallet – Open Your Eyes (Get More Educational ‘Bang’ For Your Buck)
Oct 23rd
One of the more disturbing trends I see in Internet Marketing is what I call the “perpetual learner.” If you’ve spent any time talking to supposed IMers, whether @ a seminar or on WarriorForum, you have probably met people that fall in this category. Let me break it down for you:
“3 Characteristics of a Perpetual Learner”
- A truckload of IM products. This can include piles of books, shelves full of binders, CDs of audio/software/etc., and an external harddrive packed w/eBooks.
- Comprehensive knowledge of upcoming product launches, as well as an archive of every past product in the industry.
- Complete lack of personal results (they don’t make $$$)
I know – not everyone w/a bookshelf of material is a perpetual learner. Some of the best marketers I know have tons of resources in their office. I have tons of books/audios! But the difference lies 100% in the results and the application of that knowledge.
So why are so many people buying, buying, buynig all the time – and never applying? Because IM has become such a buzzword, such a golden parachute, in the last ten years. You want to learn how money is made online? There are millions of products out there offering you manure by the pound!
And people buy it – all of it!
So today I’m going to reveal my #1 technique for cutting the bull and picking up marketing knowledge. Here it is:
STOP buying products now, start analyzing how these gurus are selling you their brain waste.
That sounds harsh – and there are marketers out there w/genuine gold to offer you. But a lot of it is BS. The real knowledge can be plucked freely from a good marketer’s materials – the same sales letters they send you to in every email. And here’s the kicker – often times the advice they sell you isn’t even used in their own materials.
Prime example: 42 Split Tests
At the top of this sales letter, you find a quiz question: Which bg color converts 31% better than the others? The answer is at the bottom of the sales page.
If this bg color was the golden ticket you and little Charlie were looking for, wouldn’t it be used in the very sales letter you were reading? After all, they have the secret – why not apply it?
Well the funny thing is, this marketer chooses white for his BG – not even on the list of quiz answers! So what color is “the best,” performing 31% better than the rest? Robin’s egg blue! So where is the robin’s egg blue on this page? On any of this marketer’s other pages?! On anyone’s sales pages?!
It’s not – so what’s up?
What real lesson can you pull from this sales page? Well for starters: he prefers a white table BG and a white page BG. If it didn’t convert well for him, he wouldn’t use it. You see, the best marketing lessons on the web are right in front of you – for free.
So quit buying all the step-by-step, launch formula, whatever crap – you’re doing more to support the guru lifestyle than you are creating your own income streams. Open your eyes, print out some popular sales letters, and pull some real knowledge out of all the hype.
It costs less and it makes more ($$$).
