Internet Marketing Magazine

The God’s Honest Truth About Internet Marketing
Copyright 2011 by Willie Crawford

As I survey the landscape of online marketing, I find some
things that I see… very disturbing. One of the most
disturbing is the tendency for marketers to NOT give you
the full truth in an effort to get you to do what they are
certain will help you.

Despite what you may believe, most “internet marketers”
that I know are honest and caring people. Many have
discovered ways to earn a nice living working from the
comfort of their homes. They now want to earn a living by
teaching you to do the same.

The problem that these marketers encounter is that most
of their prospective customers are very skeptical, but at
the same time full of hope. So, the marketers tap into
deep emotional dreams rather than relying upon the
prospective customers’ judgment.

I titled this article “the God’s Honest Truth About
Internet Marketing” not to imply that you haven’t been
getting the truth all along from many marketers. I WILL
point out that many marketers have been giving you
“half-truths.”

They have only been giving you part of the picture
because they knew that to do otherwise will usually
lead to your doing nothing. They only gave you the part
of the picture that they calculated that you needed to
know to make the decision that they desired.

My 20 years spent in the military taught me the “need
to know” concept too. Security and survival often
depended upon not sharing confidential information
with too many people. So, I understand exactly what my
fellow marketers are trying to accomplish, and why.

However, I believe that you can handle the whole truth.

So, let me share just a few facts with you here, and
then I’ll continue in Part 2 of this article.

Truth #1: Earning a living online is not as easy as
your would like to believe. Think about it… if it
were THAT easy, everyone would quit their day jobs and
start online businesses.

The laws of economics prove that if anyone is making
an exceptionally high profit in any niche, it will
attract competitors… and will continue to do so
until the market reaches equilibrium… that point at
which people will no longer be drawn from other options
in disproportionate numbers.

The easily observed fact that the rest of the world has
not all quit their day jobs, and rushed to the internet,
shows you that it’s like any other business, and not a
magic button.

So, you need to come to the table prepared to put in
some serious effort if you plan on building an online
business.

Truth #2: There are people earning six, seven, and
even eight figures running online businesses. At the
same time, there are a lot MORE people not earning a
penny online. The difference is that some took the
time to actually LEARN what works. A tiny percentage
figured it out on their own, but a much higher
percentage of successful online marketers learned from
others who had already blazed the trail.

A while back, I did an informal survey on the Internet
Marketing Warriors discussion forum. I asked how many
people there would be happy earning just $100 per day
online… if they could do it consistently and have to
put in only 1-2 hours per day doing it.

The not-to-surprising answer to my survey was that
the vast majority of people responding were not earning
a mere $100 per day, and would love to learn how to do
that. Think about it…

Most of the people on the most popular forum in the
internet marketing niche were not earning even $3000
per month in their online businesses. Things have not
changed much since that survey.

Incidentally, I took that information as validation
that the world wanted to know some simple, proven
ways that they COULD earn just $100 per day online.
So, along with 18 co-authors, I wrote an ebook where
we shared exactly how we did that. You can find that
ebook at http://20Ways.org

Truth #3: You generally need to be instructed in
how to do any endeavor. Most of us learn to do most
things by having someone teach us, or by watching
someone else do them.

You would never go into any trade or profession in the
offline world without getting properly trained first.
Even if you were just taking a job as a clerk at a
local convenience store, you would expect to be trained
HOW to do the job. So, why would you expect things to
be different in the online world?

Plan on having someone else show you the ropes, or
anticipate a steep learning curve.

Even the path to having someone else teach you is
fraught with danger. That danger is largely due to
a tendency for many in internet marketing to “fake
it until you make it.”

That is, those who haven’t achieved any real online
success will often pretend to be successful in order
to make sales to you. They reason that if you don’t
believe they are already successful that you won’t
be interested in what they have to teach/sell.

That assumption is partly true, but it’s true only
for those who choose to teach others how to build an
online business… before they have done it.

The solution for those starting online businesses who
notice that “Catch-22″ is simply not to get into that
niche. Instead, you get into a niche where you are
actually an expert… or more knowledgeable than your
prospective customers.

Here’s the thing… when you get into one of those
OTHER niches, you often have a lot more potential
customers, those customers spend more, and since you are
doing something that you really enjoy you are less
likely to burn out.

So plan on spending a little time actually thinking about
and researching the niche that you will build your business
in!

Ok, this article is getting long enough. We’ll pick
up with Part 2 tomorrow. For now, read back over what
I’ve shared with you and ask if it doesn’t make 100%
sense.

I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

————
Willie Crawford has been operating an online business since
1996. Semi-retired, he now spends much of his time teaching
aspiring online marketers proven tactics for building their
own businesses. Discover Willie’s best affiliate marketing
insider techniques in his step-by-step how-to instructions
at: http://InsiderAffiliateTraining.com/lessons/

This is a video which explains the difference between broad match, phrase match and exact match in Goolge Advwords.

The Truth About Guaranteed Visitors Coregistration Leads
and Cheap Advertising

Finding reliable ways to generate web site traffic that will actually convert to something useful is the age old question of almost every web site owner on the Internet.

There are a handful of common techniques that are known to be reliable method and new methods come and go as the Internet changes. But finding out which one works for you without spending tons of money and time can be a difficult task. If you want a web site that produces sales it is vital to find a reliable method of generating visitors without breaking your pockets.

Unfortunately, The different types of advertising methods and shady advertising companies coupled with the high costs of ads in general, its difficult to determine what works for your business without falling into some type of money pit.

Working in web analytics and lead generation for two large direct marketing companies, I was able to  experiment with almost every type of advertising you can find available on the web.  As a result I gained a solid understanding of what will produce results and what is a complete waste of time, resources and money.

One thing I found is that many advertisers try to allude you with advertising that  boasts high numbers of visitors or email recipients, so it is important that you  don’t become a victim of these empty promises. Traffic ads that claim to reach thousands  or even millions of people are usually sold in the form of email campaigns, coregistration/email  leads or “guaranteed visitors”.

I often asked to see some of the sources of these campaigns and there was always some sort of explanation as to why I could not see a page with my ad or be seeded in the email campaigns. This didnt really make sense. When I place an ad in Google Adwords, I can see it in searches night?

So to help you avoid wasting time and money, lets take a closer look at some of  the advertising methods you will want to avoid.

• Unrealistic Email Campaigns – If you want a true targeted email campaign to a true opt in list from a reputable Online Advertising Agency, expect to pay about $2500 and up. Anything  less is probably a false promise or simply SPAM email advertising with the  exception of a solo ads in bonafide ezines.A solo ad is and email ad sent to a responsibly maintained email list.  Targeted Solo ad list owners can be hard to find, but sometmes you can buy ads  for around $200, sometimes less. Most of these lists will not be a larger than 50,000 and may go up to 100,000 at most. These are great sources of leads because the list owners have a relationship with their subscribers which gives the publication and your ad more credibility.So if you see an offer to advertise by email to millions of people for $200, Its probably not your best choice. I even had one company take $125 of my own money to send out and email ad to 1.5 million people. I never recieved  any traffic and I Never got any confirmation the email was sent. As a  matter of fact, I never heard from them after I gave them my money!

• Guaranteed visitors – This is probably one of the worst forms of advertising you can  get if you even want to call it advertising. I really don’t know where most of it  comes from, but I have seen software and “scripts” that actually hit your  site and make it look like you are getting visitors. I would pretty much  stay away from this type of traffic either way.The reason companies boast a large numbers of visitors and email recipients is to get your mind away from the fact that the advertising doesn’t work. The next step is to send you bogus traffic or send your email ad to some type of SPAM list, if they even send it at all. Its easy for an advertising companyto sell you on exposure rather than what the campaign will actually produce.

• Coregistration email Lists and leads There are many different ways to obtain email leads and one of those ways is to flat out buy them. You will find many comanpanies selling coregistration leads, but there are two main problems with this type of lead. You have no idea how these leads are generated and many will say they never requested your inforamation in the first place.The second problem you will have is trying to send a message out to all of your leads at once. Theare are some autoresponder companies that you can use to  send a message out to your leads, but the most reputable ones, namely Aweber and Getresponse will not let you import these leads.If you do find a company that will let you broadcast to these leads, your deliverability rates are  usually much lower than if you use a more reputable company. Building a list this way is not impossible, but it is definitely not as easy as advertising companies would have you believe.

The explanation of each type of advertising can easily save you thousands of  dollars to months or even years of wasted effort trying to get something to work. I think the golden rule is, if an offer says you can reach millions of people at a time,99.9% of the time its  too good to be true.If you want  to know the best ways to advertise, stick to methods that will bring you high  quality traffic and focus on turning that into something you can use.