When It Comes To Internet Marketing, What Do We Need?

by: Douglas JG Harvey

Are you like me? I have been trawling the internet marketing world trying to find THE internet marketing opportunity that will at the very least provide a living for me and my family. It doesn't have to be anything major (although that would be great!), but it does need to provide enough income on a regular basis to pay the bills.

I would like to say I'm up there with all the better known guru's, but alas it is not so. Maybe I have just not found a good or the “right” product, but this isn't true either! I found more than one excellent product and gone on to produce a self-improvement e-book that has been raved over by those of my friends who have read it. (Incidentally, if you would like to get a copy at no charge, just drop me an email and we'll make some sort of arrangement). So what's the problem? Actually, I know what the problem is – me. I don't know enough. In my field I know a whole load of stuff, but in grabbing the attention of potential customers I could do with some hand holding.

So are you like me? Do you lack knowledge in the area of internet marketing? Do you struggle to get your product seen by those billions of internet users? Do you have a product to get “out there”? Or maybe you are still looking for a product and getting confused with all the hype and tons of emails. I was away for just two days recently and came back to 982 emails! I ended up deleting over 800.

Relating to internet marketing , how many times have you come across the phrase “the money is in the list”? That's all very well but where's the list? There are plenty of “safelists” about but the range of effectiveness is can be really poor. Finding the good ones i.e. those that suite your product, can be challenge.

So where is all this leading? In short we need help! Not just any old help – after all we can all continue to trawl the internet and download gigabytes of information. No, we need personal internet marketing coaching until we actually do make a profit. A personal service that is available for when we have tried everything we can think of. There are plenty of affiliate programmes out there offering all manner of suggest advertising to be placed, but how many actually go the extra mile and offer personal support? Not too many I fear.

I would love to offer you that personal internet marketing coaching service, but hey, I'm still learning! Fortunately for me, I found a guy called Graham Hamer who does provide this kind of service and you can check out the resource box below if you are interested in more information about him and his service, but right now let's try and summarize where the general marketing trends tend to indicate how we should proceed.

1. Find a “niche” - Okay, so what is that? It sounds like something you might find at the end of a rainbow! Actually, it simply means find a topic that a bunch of people share an interest in. The kind of interest that encourages such people to want to gather material relating to that area of interest. What's more, by it's very nature, we are looking for an area of interest that could be considered to be a bit specialized.

2. Figure out where these people hang out in cyberspace – I guess it's not really fair to say “figure out”, but in effect that's what you have to do. As a starting point, you might like to consider searching for your niche topic and the words forum and/or message boards,but it needs to be taken further than that really and such coverage goes beyond the scope of this article. Become a member of and contribute to the forums/boards that you find. Just remember to add words of worth and not simply provide blatant advertising. Instead add a signature that does the advertising for you.

3. Write Articles – It works! The fact that you are reading this article now is part of the evidence. If you need inspiration as to what to write about consider your own problems and the solutions you have found. You may even find inspiration in the forums you visit. Once you have written them, just submit them to the Article Directories and then get back to writing more!

4. Use Safelists – but make them good ones! Personally I use Herculist and TheMadvlad which I find excellent value (they have a free option too, but the paid version gives better results). I should add that not everyone believes in using safelists and that's fair enough. Personally I feel it should be tried before rejecting an opportunity that might actually work for me. A quick tip to use with safelists – open a free online email account. Part of the deal is that you receive emails and you don't want them clogging up your primary email account. Try www.cashette.com or similar.

5. Consider Traffic Exchange programmes – personally I find them time consuming and not at all sure that they are effective as there are ways around not paying attention to the sites that are surfed.

6. Join a matrix - no we are not talking sci-fi here. There is a potential to mail to a lot of people by joining an opt-in programme that expands with your efforts. Take a look at yourluckylist or similar.

7. Get your website listed on the search engines – it's one of those things everybody tells you to do but not something you can do without a bit of research. In effect it means making sure your website is in a format that matches the expectations of the search engines that you want to submit it to. No, they are not all the same – (if only life were so easy!). Watch out for help with “Site Engine Optimization” or “SEO”.

8. PPC (“Pay Per Click”) advertising – It's always your choice of course, but from what I understand to date, this is something to look at later down the line when you have got your feet wet as it were. If you have heard of Google Adwords, then you have heard of PPC. Essentially it is all about paying a bid price on keywords that tie into your site so that when someone searches for that keyword, your text ad appears on the page and (hopefully) the ad is clicked on. If it is, you pay the cost per click that has been agreed. If you don't know what you're doing, you could lose a good bit of cash!

9. Ezine advertising – if you have the budget for it, then advertising in this way can be well targeted, but try and go for solo advertising ( a special mailing to the ezine owner's list) rather than have your ad in amongst other people's which dilutes the effectiveness.

10. Email Signatures – Every time you send out an email there is an advertising opportunity to be had by simply ensuring the email as your little advertising piece at the end of it complete with hyperlink.

This list is by no means extensive but it has provided a start for me and it will for you too. If there is one lesson I have learned from my research so far, it is that you need to dig your heels into the ground and be persistant. Every single “guru” out there started from nothing just like you and me. Let's stick together and show them that we can do it too!

All the best

Doug

PS: References:

1)Graham Harmer - http://tinyurl.com/peyyk

2)Herculist - http://tinyurl.com/o743n

3)Madvlad - http://tinyurl.com/hp9oz

4)Yourluckylist - http://tinyurl.com/ffk92

About The Author
Doug Harvey has a multi-faceted presence on the internet. Aside from being an internet marketer using his own products and affiliate programmes, he is also a qualified lifecoach (visit www.lifesight.net). Predominantly though he has been actively researching for internet support that steers you to making a profit rather than just promoting. The results of his search may be found by visiting http://tinyurl.com/peyyk where personal coaching is provided to make sure users actually do make a profit.

This article may be used without charge as long as it is used in its entirity including the resource information. Copyright 2006 - Douglas JG Harvey.