So this week we’re back to the mistakes headline, and I’m going to share some of the things I’ve been through that mean I know how to spot a scam, and explain the hard lessons I’ve been through since I started looking at ways to use the internet as a cash machine.

Matrix Marketing

Way back in ~ 2002 when I was very green behind the ears I was daft enough to believe that “spillover” and “pre-launch” were the keys to my success. I mean if I was prepared to pay $19 per month then surely other people would do the same, and if they each tell 2 other people this time next year I’d be a gazillionaire.

Now I did manage to find people who were newer to the internet and just as daft, but I did learn the hard way that a fool can easily be parted from their money. I don’t know if this is still the case, but one of the companies I invested in called me up and sold me on a 4 figure coaching programme that would ensure I became their top affiliate.

This coaching turned out to be perhaps the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever bought – even worse that the millionaire march homestudy by Keith Wellman! This is perhaps a generalization, but I would say that the sole aim of these sites is to get people on a “suckers list” and grab as much cash as possible.

Key message, stay clear of anything where the main feature is a matrix.

Note if it is a true MLM company where a product is being sold and you get a share of anything the people you bring into the business sell then it can be a viable model, but just be careful if they cold call and offer you extra training.

Affiliate Marketing Is Easy

I mean I’ve bought this product, and all I’ve got to do is drive traffic to my affiliate link, and keep hitting refresh as the sales will be coming in thick and fast.

These products were all the rage a few years ago when you could find products in the clickbank market place and direct link via adwords paying $0.01 per click.

Then 2 things happened, the quality of clickbank products became very poor (refund rates of > 50%), and adwords policy changed.

Cue the rise of social media, and products telling you to set up review sites and how easy it is to get your affiliate links retweeted, liked, dugg, stumbled, or lately it’s all about being pinned.

Sadly the trouble with most products claiming to teach you affiliate marketing is that the person behind the site is relying on you to follow the steps and send traffic to their salespage and build up a list of customers who will be bombarded with similar hard sell offers for “magic bullet affiliate success”

What happens here is that a group of individuals with low morals will again target the newbie and try the hard sell tactics to extract as much cash as possible. For example the initial report requires some software developed by an ex KGB officer who knows the exact keywords to open Fort Knox, but for today only he’ll let you have access for $97.

Again, not all affiliate marketing products are out to rip you off, but you if you read a salespage and you don’t know what the product is going to teach you then it’s time to close the browser. Note if closing the browser gives you multiple pop-up discounts it confirms you’ve done the right thing.

List Building

So you’ve realised that matrix marketing is bad, and that affiliate marketing is just full of people who send you emails wanting you to buy more products on affiliate marketing, so you decide that success looks like a big mailing list.

Now the trouble is that so far all you have is a collection of affiliate links, so what do I need to start listbuilding?

The simple answer is an aweber account and a way of adding the code they give you onto the internet. It sounds so simple and sometimes I think I should have been a computer geek rather than a scientist.

So if you’re not really a technical person you need to spend time on youtube, learning basic skills like registering a domain, picking a hosting company, uploading files via ftp, editing html, creating download pages, and all sorts of other stuff that may make your head explode and lead you to quit.

Note: To help you I set up this gig at Fiverr where I can become your favorite geek, technical stuff should stop you.

==> For-$5-I-will-do-any-of-the-small-technical-tasks-that-are-holding-you-back-from-internet-marketing-success

Branding

The trouble here is that if no-one knows who you are, and the type of person you are, they why would they buy anything from you? Logically this makes perfect sense, when you’re out shopping on the main street and a chugger approaches you walk to the other side of the street, and if the phone rings with a with-held number at tea time you don’t answer in case it’s someone wanting to sell you switch energy supplier.

As humans the natural instinct is buy from people we know, like, and trust. So how can we achieve this online?

Simple, become part of a community, and make friends who share the same interest as you.

For example I’m taking part in John Thornhill’s one month mentoring programme, and so far the first week is all about setting up a blog such as this to share your ideas and thoughts on internet marketing.

He’s also set up a facebook group and encourages everyone to make friends and learn together. I’m pretty sure that later on I will be made to crate a product and possibly release it as a WSO. The support and commitment of following a proven course where I’ve seen so many success stories will be enough to get affiliates on board.

Lastly this relies on you having the courage to use your real name and personality in building up your own brand. In this age of social media and companies downsizing having your own website and being able to freelance is the best insurance policy you can have.

Investing In The Wrong Things

Did you notice how when I started out I was looking for magic bullets. It wasn’t until I actually stopped and listened to the advice on forums rather than posting affiliate links that I started to see some success.

Taking the time to learn html, wordpress, installing membership scripts, listbuilding, branding myself in Traffic Exchanges and Safelists, and blogging are all skills that mean I’m no longer a newbie marketer looking to quit.

In fact my passion is to help people getting started avoid all of the scams and build a long term asset. Like I’ve said I know what I need to do, and I need to visit the Nike school of marketing to “Just Do It”

Overall I guess what this final point tells you is that you should never quit. Sure you will have times when you hate your computer and no-one is buying the products you recommend, but if you have passion and a big idea then invest time and money into making it happen.

You must have some skill or service that other people want, so look at becoming a freelancer and get paid to work and have customers coming to you for recommendations rather than pushing products at someone you’ve never met before. Even better compile a list of common problems and sell the solution, this is the age of digital information after all.

Thanks for reading this far.

Andrew

So in this post I want to talk about how a company formed recently has taken the world of Traffic Exchanges by storm and generated a membership called ClickTrackProfit that now has over 30,000 members.

Lesson #1 No Hard Selling

If someone knocks on your front door or calls your house phone and the first thing they do is start trying to sell you something, what do you do? I tell them to shove off (or something ruder if I’m in a bad mood), so why is that so many people online think that it’s cool to start selling on first contact?

Sure the guys at TimTech do try to sell you upgrades, but it’s always done via video, with an introduction, and then a here’s why it would be cool if you purchased this from us today…

Also with the amount of traffic they generate / buy across the Traffic Exchange network they could build crazy downlines in anyone of the scam sites that constantly plague this industry promising push button wealth for a single investment. They stand tall and regularly tell people at the daily TELive (4 pm EST) to promote yourself first and opportunities second.

In fact whilst I was typing this post I was distracted by this post from Jon Olson, read the comments section and you will learn an important lesson – Why I don’t care about building Downlines

Lesson #2 Basic Branding & Networking

So from the first lesson you know it’s time to get personal and start promoting yourself first.

The perfect way to do this to use AdKreator, which funny enough is also a TimTech company

Here’s 3 different pages I’ve created

Chalkboard squeezepage for Headline Report

Leadership splash page

I love CTP Blog Post (may change the link to this new post now)

Notice how in each of these I make sure I’m branding myself as an expert in areas such as Headline Writing, Leadership, and trying to attract other members of ClickTrackProfit to this blog. If you spend more than 10 minutes surfing you will constantly see hundreds of people promoting ClickTrackProfit, and subtly I’m branding myself and by having my own badge means that I can get some of these 30,000 members onto my mailing list.

Doing this sort of self branding first is something that will benefit you long term vs being given a load of affiliate links and told to drive traffic to these links. Should a programme your promoting go bust or stop working then you’re left with nothing, and all the hard work you put into traffic generation is generating leads and sales for someone else.

Next time you see someone advertising themselves take a minute to write down their name, and if you see the same person on multiple occassions in the next week find a way to get in touch, and talk about the great job they’re doing branding themselves.

This first contact and longer term friendship based on a common interest could lead to all sort of great things happening. For example I bet Patrick Griffin didn’t think he would publish a book with Justin Ledvina when he first joined ClickTrackProfit!

Lesson #3 Stay In The Game

 This is the exact opposite of all the salesapges that are aimed at pulling on your emotions and getting you to part with your credit card details and earning bucketloads of cash by using automated software developed by a russian programmer who will make your content #1 in google before you’ve even posted it.

At ClickTrackProfit you will learn a concept called +1. Basically you pick a sensible target and use it to create slow but steady growth in your business. In the world of Internet Marketing you have certain overheads that you will need to pay each month, these are called evergreen products. For example I get paid by Aweber each month as I recommend it to you the readers of my blog and put it in multiple downline builders and my viral reports.

Like all good business owners you’re first objective is to break even, and then work on the growth using the +1 strategy. So if I set myself a target of 30 new subscribers each month, and achieve it, the next target is 60 per month, then 90 per month, and so on.

If you don’t have your own blog / product / service then concentrate on evergreen products and crack the break even phase so that when you do move onto the next phase you have a good network of people to support you in the next stage and help you launch your own little bit of the internet.

Lesson #4 Don’t Accept The Status Quo

 This means that you need to stand out from the crowd. I think that almost all of TimTech read business books from the top thinkers in the world of business, and one of the most common theme’s is the Purple Cow concept from Seth Godin.

When advertising do something unique and different. The best way of being unique is video, in this world of high speed internet and mobile technology you can get your message across, and if you give that message with the logo of the company you’re promoting on your forehead it will definately get attention.

*golden nugget” I should have done this for the login lesson I recorded for ClickTrackProfit.

If you do see real results and have something you think is worth sharing with the entire membership and you’ve taken the time to network at TELive and in the chat functions then you stand a good chance of being able to share your ideas and give yet more social proof that the training inside ClickTrackProfit will work if you spend the time to take action on it. Like everything else if you ignore it and do nothing then you will get the result of nothing squared which is nothing!

Lesson #5 Have Fun And Sell Things You Enjoy

Everyone has the ability inside them to create and sell information over the internet.

I know lots about safelists and listbuilding, and doing geeky things such as installing membership scripts, and I can install an aweber form on your website so quickly I can do it for just $5!

Don’t get hung up on selling internet marketing products, most of them are rehashed crap. The real power of the internet is that it gives you the chance to become a superstar just by doing the things you love. Many of the lessons within ClickTrackProfit all have this underlying message, do the things you enjoy, help others, and then find people who will pay to learn from you. “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuck will give you the inspiration to get started blogging and start sharing your ideas.

Create quality content and then find a way to monetize it, if you try to create content to make money it will generally backfire and read like you’re selling rather than sharing.

Graduation

To complete the school of TimTech you also need to visit the Nike school of Marketing – JUST DO IT!

 

We’ve all heard the phrase “The Money Is In The List” but how can you actually start list building and see profitable results? Well first of all you need to find someone to learn from, and understand the basics rather than trying to re-invent the wheel from scratch.

Next time you find a website where you find yourself adding your email to an opt-in form bookmark the page, and take the time to reverse engineer the process, and see if the list owner has a good marketing funnel, and if this marketing is someone who you could learn from.

In all honesty I have followed many brilliant list builders over the years, and my style involves part of them all, and this post covers most of the basics.

What Is The Lead Magnet?

What are you getting in return for your e-mail address? A pdf report, audio, video, blog updates, newsletter, free chapter of a book, pre-launch of a new product? Will you be able to do something similar and use it to generate your own list?

So many people fail at this first stage, if you want to build a list you need to invest time and effort into creating something of value. Don’t be afraid to spend some money at this stage, the better quality lead magnet you produce the easier it will be to convince people to enter their name and email address.

Look at the page you’re away to enter your email into, do you know exactly what your away to download, and did you know that people over at fiverr can create awesome ecovers in < 24 hours.

The Technical Stuff

To build your own list you will need to invest some money and have your own website, or if this really scares you then invest in a service such as Adkreator which allow you to do everything you need without any html or ftp knowledge.

Have a look at the page, how has it been put together? Does it have graphics that draw your eye’s to the opt-in button, take a screen capture of the page using a snipping tool, and save it in a swipe file. Once you’ve joined the list ask the owner how they created the page, were they using special software, or a template?

If it’s a video squeezepage, how are they hosting the video, did it autoplay, how long was it, and was it a slick powerpoint presentation or simply the list owner talking to a flip / web camera?

Now you’re ready to press submit it’s time to see which autoresponder company is being used, and study the process. I personally use aweber and the double opt-in page they provide. They provide a video page which will explain how to confirm your email and ensure the list I’m building is valid.

Other companies are available, and not everyone will use double opt-in, the entire process you set up is entirely up to you. Just remember that although single opt-in may make your list appear to grow faster, it won’t be can spam compliant and the deliver-ability of the follow-up may be lower as typo’s and false email address’s will bounce and harm the long term value of your list.

Lastly remember that if you’re using aweber and have a screen capture of a form you want I’m available for hire at fiverr

The Marketing Funnel

Watch what happens next when you hit confirm. Where are you redirected to, are you given clear instructions, are you presented with an offer, a blank page or even worse a page that has nothing relating to what you thought you were getting in return for your email?

Personally I use this page – http://www.buildabiggerlist.com/NickelMania/offer.html

It thanks the new lead for taking the time to confirm, gives me the chance to introduce myself, and lets my new subscriber know that I will try and sell information products to them. This is important as I don’t want a list of people who are never going to buy an information product. If someone decides to immediately unsubscribe because I’m trying to sell them information then it’s no great loss as I know a smaller targeted list of buyers is better than a large list of people who just want free information.

Not everyone will agree with that last point, but as you’re building your own list if you’re not comfortable selling straight away or it doesn’t fit the niche you’ve targeted then do your own thing. Even if you send them directly to a download page I would do some branding and at least a mild cross sell.

Branding can be as simple as linking to your social media profiles, and the cross sell is a banner advert underneath for an affiliate programme that matches / compliments the content of your lead magnet. Don’t use flashing banners for over hyped crap, take some time to think about the first impression.

The follow-up / broadcast messages

The great thing about an autoresponder is that you can preload it with content that will go out automatically. How you use this is entirely down to you, and what you feel comfortable with. If you ask over at the warrior forum you will get hundreds of different responses, some will tell you to send a message every day for the first week trying to sell a product / service, others will tell you to send pure content every third day for a month.

My own preference is to have a couple of preloaded messages relating to the lead magnet, and use the broadcast button when I have something I feel is worth saying. I also strongly advice against just using the copy & paste email marketing that was prevalent a few years ago during the boom years of the product launch.

If I see the same email in my inbox from 2 marketers I immediately unsubscribe from both, if they can’t take the time to write an honest reason on why I should buy the product it shows they’re just treating me as a cash cow.

Similarly if I don’t hear from a marketer for 3 months and they start pitching again I’d want to know why and what they’d been doing in the missing period?

The power is in your hands

Anyone who is prepared to put in some hard work and learn some basic skills can generate a list and sell information products. You will make mistakes, but the key thing to remember is to learn from these mistakes and keep on going, if you stop and give up then go back to working a job.

 

As the title of this post says I’ve got a difficult message to give you.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but internet marketing is a business, if you decided to set up an offline business and spent all your time just sitting waiting for customers to find you then how long before you would go out of business? I’ve been in clothes shops where the sales assistant is too busy texting on their mobile rather than asking me if I need any help? Guess what, next time I go past this shop it has gone bust!

Don’t think that because an online business has a low initial cost and almost no overheads that it’s any easier. You need to overcome multiple failures and learn from your mistakes to become successful.

Now the hard work doesn’t have to be 16 hour days, but it need’s to be the correct action at the correct time. For example if you buy products / services then make sure you take action. I’ve lost count of the unused products on my hard drive or the pile of DVD’s and stupidly over priced (4 figures) homestudy courses in my garage.

So I’m pleased to tell you that I’ve taken massive action and set up 2 new gigs on fiverr. Putting an information product in front of people looking to spend $5 is the same as getting a mobile kebab van outside a busy pub at closing time.

Let me know what you think of my gig?
==> http://fiverr.com/7-guaranteed-ways-to-generate-traffic-to-your-squeeze-page

Don’t use lack of technical knowledge as an excuse. You can set up a gig like this without the need for hosting, your own domain, or any sort of merchant account. Heck, you can even join the work hard gang and sell advertising space on your forehead for $5!

Remember that you just need to get over the first hurdle and start selling information products. If someone is trying to sell you an easy push button solution then just walk away and invest your time and money in learning business skills.

Lastly it’s important to remember that you need to set yourself some sensible goals of what you want to achieve and break them down into achievable targets. If you want to earn $1k per month then learn how to make $30 in a day.

Don’t jump in an expect immediate results, imagine being in front of the bank manager and thinking would they lend me money if I was an offline business? The reason offline business owners make so much money is they’re prepared to take the high risks required, and put plans in place to keep that business running smoothly.

Apologies for the hard word’s, but someone needs to make you look in the mirror every now and again.

Andrew