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7 Lessons I Learnt Whilst Losing Thousands Internet Marketing
By Alan Cutler, Sat Dec 10th
SEVEN LESSONS I LEARNT WHILST LOSING THOUSANDS INTERNET MARKETING By Alan Cutler - alan@leadershiptalks.com This is the story of a novice internet marketer who has spent amiserable, frustrating and expensive twelve months learning thelessons of selling on the internet - the hard way! However, hebelieves that he has turned the corner and is now lookingforward to, at least modest, future profits. That person is me,and I would like to share my experiences with you in the hopethat your journey will be less painful than mine. I am certainlynot suggesting that the lessons I learnt are definitive, norwill they apply to every one else who embarks on a campaign ofinternet marketing. I am merely recounting what happened to meand the problems I encountered.
My journey started in November 2004 when I attended a conferencewith a speaker who was, by his own admission, an internetmillionaire. He, like me, was a professional speaker but he haddiversified into selling his products and services to thisworld-wide market. Like many of my colleagues, I had previouslyheard bits and pieces about internet marketing and I was hungryto learn more. It is true to say that I was captivated by hisstory and, especially, by the rich pickings that he said wereout there on the net, for relatively little time and expense.'Make money in your sleep' was a phrase he used. I was inspired- well, who wouldn't be by the prospect of working at home for afew hours a day whilst watching the money flow in 24/7! I boughthis pack of tutorials, ebooks, CDs etc for $500 - my firstinvestment in this Brave New World. Interestingly, I write this article the day after attendinganother meeting that had a speaker again telling us how easy itis to make serious money on the internet. Whilst I do not doubtthat such people indeed do make a very good living forrelatively little effort, believe me, it is not easy! Makingmoney selling products or information on the net is not a quickfix! Like any new business (for that is what it is), it takestime and effort to learn all its intricacies. Unless you have aproduct that people want to buy; a web site that sells iteffectively; and a means of driving lots of people to it, youwill end up throwing good money after bad. Hence my first lesson Lesson No 1. Do not believe all you hear from internet expertswho tell you how easy it is to make your fortune. It isn't! Let me continue my story. So, off I went on my new venture. Ieagerly read the information that I had just bought, along withlots of other advice and guidance from internet marketers. Manyrecommended additional software that would make selling on theweb more effective. I took their advice and bought some of theproducts they championed, for example a programme for makingattractive website banners, and another that promised to produceamazingly effective sales pages for the website that I was toproduce. However, the banners I made were far from attractiveand when I sought advice from the company I bought the softwarefrom, they failed to reply. As for the sales page generator, itdid teach me some good lessons but was far too inflexible andrestrictive so I soon reverted to writing my own copy. What I did not realise at the time was that the internetmarketers who were recommending these products were affiliates:they received a commission from every sale resulting from theirrecommendation. I now know that affiliate marketing is bigbusiness and can produce significant income flows. In fact, letme put my cards on the table: I am going to recommend twoproducts to you later in this article and I will gain acommission if you take my advice. However, these are productsthat I truly believe in and have been extremely helpful to me. Ibelieve that they are worth every cent to someone serious aboutmaking money. You can, of course, take my word for that, or not.At least I have been up-front about it! Lesson No 2. Beware of advice from 'experts' who may be moreinterested in making money as an affiliate than in helping you. Of course, to make money in any business you have to have aproduct that people want to buy. What was I going to sell? Well,I have always been fascinated by quotes - words of wisdom fromthose who can add so much meaning in so few words. Indeed, myfirst book is entitled 'Leadership Quote Unquote' and contains ahost of quotes from, as my publisher added to the book cover,'world figures - the famous, the infamous and the downrightdastardly!' Imagine my excitement when I researched how many people werelooking for quotes on the internet. Google estimated that over5,000 people every day searched for an appropriate quote. Iestimated that if I sold my book for $25 and one in a hundredpeople who clicked on my website bought my book, I would make$369,014 profit a year. Wow! Even if only a modest one in threehundred bought it I would still make $61,684. Wouldn't you beexcited by that income earning potential? To cut a long story short, whilst lots of people do regularlyseek out appropriate quotes, I now know that very few areprepared to pay for them! Why should they, when they can getthem for free on other websites? I am now just about breakingeven with this particular campaign - a situation I am preparedto accept for the time being as the website does provide me withother spin-off benefits. However, I have subsequentlydiversified and am now selling a number of other informationproducts, using a different website for each - some moresuccessful than others. Inevitably, not all sales campaigns willbe initially successful, hence you have to continually fine-tuneseveral aspects of the marketing process to gradually improvetheir effectiveness. Lesson No 3. It might sound obvious - but make sure that yousell something that people want to buy. Note: The purpose of this article is for me to share myexperiences with you. It is not designed to be an internetmarketing tutorial. I am not, therefore, going to go into detailabout technicalities such as website design, Google AdWords,Google AdSense, market testing, copy writing etc. That said if Ihave whetted your appetite and you do want to learn more, emailme at alan@leadershiptalks.com and I will send you a free ebookall about creating successful sales websites, entitled 'TheThree Page Site Builders Manual' ( I make no money by doingso!). Also, if you are really serious about creating aprofitable internet marketing campaign consider checking out thespecialist guidance of Perry Marshal, especially his ebookentitled 'The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords'. This is oneof the two products that I really believe in and that Imentioned previously. A link for you to learn more about him isprovided at the end of this article. The next step on my journey, having deciding that selling quoteswas to provide the basis of my pension fund (!), was to design awebsite to sell my ebook. The most well-known website designsoftware, and the one that was recommended to me, was MicrosoftFrontPage so that is what I bought. Unfortunately, I found it tobe extremely confusing, frustrating - not at all user-friendly.I did make a website but it was far from professional. In fact,a friend of mine who is a successful internet marketer politelycommented that he would certainly not buy anything from a sitelike mine! He went on to tell me that he had recently discovered a newwebsite design programme called XSitePro that is two thirds theprice of Front Page and infinitely easier to use. In fact, hewas in the process of redesigning all his many sites using it.Having faith in his advice, I shelled out $197, bought thesoftware and was absolutely blown away by it! XsitePro isdesigned specifically for people who sell on the internet. It isso easy to use that I am now churning out professional-lookingwebsites in less than half a day - and they work. In fact,having not sold one of my ebooks for weeks beforehand on myFrontPage site, I launched my new site, using XSitePro, and soldone within half an hour. I could hardly believe it! Hence, my fourth piece of advice. I make no apologies for beingso direct - if you want to produce easy websites that sell,click on the link at the end of this article and check outXSitePro. The link takes you to a web site that I have made totell the world about, what I believe to be, the best web sitedesign software available today. Lesson No 4. Don't waste you time with other website designsoftware, buy XSitePro. So, once you have designed your website, you will need toensure that your potential customers can find it. Essentially,you have two choices: work hard at driving it up the searchengine rankings or pay for the privilege by using GoogleAdwords. Perry Marshall's ebook 'The Definitive Guide to GoogleAdwords' goes into great depth about making the most of Adwordsbut, essentially, you bid to have an advert promoting yourwebsite featured on the right-hand side of a Google search pageas a 'sponsored link'. However, you only pay when people clickon your ad. Most experts will argue that using Pay Per Click (GoogleAdwords) is the best way to promote websites of limited sizelike the ones internet marketers use to promote their products.And that is what I did. Unfortunately, though, I did not pay sufficient attention tosetting up my sites. I accepted Google's recommended dailybudget; set my pay-per-click rates too high; advertised in toomany countries and advertised in its content network as well asits search network. Perry Marshall's ebook explains all thesesettings in fine detail. I only wish I had bought it in theearly stages because I ended paying much more than I needed to. So, I had set up my Google AdWords campaign and was up andrunning - but was not selling any products. I was, however,getting hundreds of clicks a day, so was ever hopeful. My wifeand I then went away on holiday and I put my internet marketingcampaign out of my mind, in the confident knowledge that when Ireturned my In Box would be full of orders. Imagine my horror when I returned to find no product orders buta $700 Google AdWords bill. It doesn't take much time toaccumulate those costs when you are getting hundreds of clicks aday; you are selling no products; and your daily Google budgetis set at $50! The lesson here is crucial. In the early stages at least, youMUST keep a close, daily eye on your Google Adwords account. Astime goes on and you have fine-tuned your account you can leaveit for a day, or two, but initially you must not let it get outof control. Lesson No 5. Keep very close control of your Google AdWordsaccount in its early stages I mentioned previously that you must fine-tune your ad campaignif you want to maximise its sales potential. The critical factorhere is the Click Through Rate (CTR) - how often people click onyour ad when it is displayed on a page of Google search results.If your ad features 100 times when people enter, for example,'inspirational quote' as a Google search term and two of themactually click on your ad the CTR would be 2%. Improving the CTRis important to maximising your sales potential. This is a very detailed process where specific changes, forexample trying out different ad formats or even using capitalletters in certain areas of your ad, can make a real differenceto your CTR. Perry Marshall is an accomplished expert on usingGoogle Adwords and I have, personally, learnt a great deal fromhis ebook. Lesson No 6. Work hard at fine-tuning your Google Adwordscampaigns to maximise their CTR and, if your website and yourproduct are attractive, your revenue will gradually increase And so to the last lesson that I have learnt. Going back towhere I started, I have realised that making money on theinternet is not, as I told
my wife, 'the pot of gold at the endof the rainbow'. However, I do believe that there is seriousmoney to be made by people like me who are prepared to work hardat ensuring the three essential elements are in place, namely: *A product that people are looking for and are prepared to buy*A website that is effective in selling that product *A salescampaign that directs people towards your website Personally, over the last twelve months, I have struggled on allthree counts, and have thus paid the price. However, I havelearnt my lessons and am confident that I will now begin to reapat least some of the riches that definitely are out there on theWorld Wide Web. I have been told that my experiences are not unusual. Surprise,surprise: contrary to what some internet experts tell us, veryfew people strike gold immediately. It takes time and a lot ofhard work and determination. It does not surprise me, therefore,that many people who embark on the journey as I did, fell at theearly hurdles. My final lesson, and piece of advice, istherefore to ensure that your internet strategy is sound andthen work hard at making it successful. Lesson No 8. Don't give up - make it work.
Here are the links for the two products that I am happy torecommend. To see the website I made to promote XSitePro, pleasego to www.diy-websitedesign.org. To check out what PerryMarshall can teach you, please seehttp://perrymarshall.com/cmd.php?pg=305720 . Being a professional speaker, should you wish me to deliver apresentation developing the content of this article to yourcolleagues or company, please contact me onalan@leadershiptalks.com Copyright Alan Cutler 2005 This article is written by Alan Cutler. Permission is granted tocopy and use it for any purpose as long as it is not amended inany way. About the author:Alan Cutler is a motivational speaker and writer with two bookspublished to introduce and develop his unique approach foraspiring leaders - The Leadership Jigsaw. Contact him atalan@leadershiptalks.com or www.leadershiptalks.com
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