Not A Newbie Anymore - My Top Tips If You Are Just Staring Out in IM

It seems i get the urge to update my warrior forum blog once a year
So... as the last two blog posts i did were from a time when i would have called myself a newbie i decided to write some tips to help others just starting out that i wish i had known at the beginning.

1. Learn how to do proper keyword research.
It doesn't matter what form of IM that you choose to do, the keyword research is absolute key to being successful or spending time for very little return.
Affiliate marketing, Offline, Domain or site flipping or any other form of IM can be profitable as long as you are aiming for the right keywords.
Invest some time to learn from tutorial videos from Market samurai and micro niche finder to learn how to use them properly and there are some really good tutorials about the metrics on niche profit classroom and from Shane Melaugh

Market Samurai 40 day trial is available through Ed Dales 30 day challenge and you can get an extended 40 day trial for Market Samurai here

Learn about buyer keywords, use product names and to make your life a lot easier at the outset you might want to geo target to UK, Australia or other countries. See my video here on using the Google Keyword tool with Market samurai for a good example of this.
Webcomp Analyst is another great tool that can be really useful when doing competitor analysis.
I use webcomp analyst a lot before entering a market or before i decide on a CPA offer or clickbank product to build a campaign around.
It's a major eye opener and ultimately time saver if used correctly.

Don't buy every product that comes in your email

One of the biggest drains for newbies is being seduced by the next magic bullet.
I dont just mean financial drain, it can be a major emotional drain too if you are not careful.
If you are starting to find yourself getting bombarded by sales messages every day in your inbox then you need to balance what is educational to you at the moment and what is going to cost you money and ultimately your time. It's best to use a separate email address for IM mailing lists and filter the emails and the mailing lists themselves.
If you find that a particular mailing list subscription is doing nothing more than sending you sales message after sales message then unsubscribe as these people do not have your best interests at heart.
There are some marketers who will try to blast you as hard and as fast as possible because they know that's when you are hot...the best time to make sales is when someone first subscribes and when their interest is at a peak...most good marketing brains know this but some are more determined than others to get you to buy and believe it or not if you don't they really don't want you on their list so they don't care if you unsubscribe.
It's nothing personal...there are many different personality types and i tend to avoid those that are too aggressive and offer nothing of substantial value in exchange for my time.
Some really good people to follow are:
Jason Fladlien, Kim Roach, Shane Melaugh, Jack Humphrey are some of the most genuine marketers out there...If i missed anyone out feel free to ask me to add them
It's best to try and learn one topic of interest at a time then move on to the next area for education.
This can be a really tough thing to do if you get easily seduced by sales letters. If you are like that then you need to start looking at the process rather than the product. Look at what they are doing and the sooner you learn some of the basics of copywriting the sooner you will be able to recognise the methods used rather than being seduced by the hype.
Some of the sales letters are so good that the buy button gets clicked before you get time to properly evaluate if the product is right for you at the time. What i did was force myself to wait for 24 hours (regardless of the scarcity tactics and great bonuses for buying immediately) and if i still felt that i really could be doing with that product now then i would buy it.
You will be surprised how many products you will not buy doing it this way. It worked for me and saved me a bunch of money, time and overwhelm.
One more tip...do not buy from a sales page that isn't clear what the product is. If they have bullet points that say what it is not rather than what the product is then that's a good indication of what to avoid in my experience.

Learn Automation
I remember a product that was costing $2000 and i could've afford to buy it. It was something that i really wanted, so I decided to sign up for the affiliate program and i knew if i could make 2 sales then i could afford the product for myself.
What i didn't know (as i was very new) was that i was competing with marketers who knew how to automate and get their sites on the first page of the search engines quickly and easily.
I spent hours manually creating a wordpress site, squidoo lens, hub page and some more web 2 sites and made no sales.
Tools like Senuke make a huge difference if used correctly.
The tools i would recommend are:
SEnuke, Magic Submitter, Scrapebox, Profile link robot and SEO link robot.
Yes there is a learning curve to using them but its well worth it as you will see if you take the time to learn them along with how to do keyword research correctly.
Learn how to use Scrapebox, learn SEnuke (take the free 7 day trial and watch the videos on how to use it) and if thats too expensive for you then Magic submitter is cheaper and SEO link robot is a one time fee and is a decent automation tool.
Automation tools are only as good as the hands that are operating them, you need to spend some time learning some basic backlinking strategies and learn from your success of what's working.
Whatever market you are in you need to focus on building a list. Learn how to use wordpress, learn how to use some plugins that will give you instant backlinks and get an optin form on your sites with a free giveaway.
The wordpress classroom is a really great site that is low cost but packed with value through video tutorials and they have a great forum too.
The last time i looked it was only $10 per month and is a great learning center for newbies.
Recommended plugins...
Start every wordpress site using SEO core tweaks...this will help you tweak your site for some of the key jobs from the outset, once its configured and you have tweaked the site then disable the plugin as it can conflict with others.
SEOpressor, WP Syndicator, Digi List Builder, web traffic genius RSS plugin and use all in one seo plugin to start with too as its easier than some of the more advanced SEO plugins for optimizing your meta tags.
Do a search on google for "best seo plugins for wordpress" and you will get some good info on what other plugins to use...many of the best core plugins that you should be using are free.

The last point is to take action.
I know, i know... i heard it many times too as a newbie and it sounded like a daft thing to say, but you will be surprised how many newbies can stuck with educational themselves and buying products, that they don't even test what they are learning. Marketing online is about content and getting that content on the net is the only way for people to find your pages and for you to make money.
Saturate your market with good quality content but do it intelligently!
Monetize your site through CPA banners, clickbank or adsense to start. You can get plugins to help you display adsense and clickbank ads with very little technical skills, just do a search for them through the "add new" plugins page in wordpress.
Don't think that you can just learn and not take action. It doesn't work. You might end up being really knowledgeable but ultimately poorer for the experience!