Clueless Newbie Needs Advice on New Program

Hi Ted

I am sure some more experienced marketers will come along and give their opinion soon but I just wanted to point out the thread by "Big Mike" called "time to stop theorizing and start engineering" http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...gineering.html - you might find it useful and perhaps you can start doing some article marketing for these products which link to the main site whilst at the same time building a list of subscribers and testing your methods as he suggests in the thread, at least that way, if you eventually decide to ditch this, move on (whilst learning from the experience) you will, hopefully have some to move on with, as in the beginnings of a list.

I personally would stop throwing any more money at it until you have tried a different approach.

Sorry that is not more helpful.

Sue

If it's a cookie-cutter website then you might want to consider
halting your AdWords campaigns, there is probably too much
competition for the same products and it's impossible for your
site to stand out in the search engines with duplicate content
and meta keywords.

Plus you may be engaged in AdWords/AdSense arbitrage.

You must assess whether AdWords is worthwhile or if you are
wasting your resources, as well as the arbitrage situation.

Do you at least have control of that domain name and is that
your AdSense account?

If so, are you making any AdSense money???

You can give article marketing a try along with some other free
promotion methods, many of which can be found on this forum.

In light of your willingness to make lemonade from lemons, you
are sure to succeed at something eventually

Honestly, until you have an idea of what works and what doesn't, you should probably consider halting your PPC account with Adwords, it may hurt you down the line, financially and in other ways.

Can you get a refund for your $400? I understand you need to take a risk, and spend money to make money, but it looks like you just got a junky offer.

It's really late where I am, so I apologize if this is brief. If you are confused on anything I say, feel free to PM me, I'm slow to reply but I'll get to it, if not, just look it up on the forum:

This is the basic success plan to starting to make money online, and one thats worked for most people (within 1-3 tries, not everyone works it the first try). I apologize if it seems basic, I'm not sure on your background:

1. Learn about "keyword" research. Marketing is just that: "finding MARKETS". As a beginner, you may be hard pressed to make money in certain markets, and it's easier to start a little small. I don't have any strong particular advice, but learn as much as you can about "keyword research" and "long tail keywords". Don't be afraid to enter a tough market, but realize that a smaller one may be easier to start in, and more to your liking.

2. Research "squeeze pages" and "landing pages". The way you have it set up, is that odds are, your visitors are just thrown right onto your page, and have the option of either buying something, clicking on an advertisement, or leaving.

Your customers aren't really even being sold anything. It's like shoving someone into a store with no sales people, no signs, and a hard to find cash register. A sale might happen, but it may not be likely, especially when there are so many choices (leaving the page, clicking on a link, clicking on an ad) etc.

A "squeeze page" is a page that is designed to get your visitors email address and name (and more if necessary, it often isn't). Once you that information, you can send them more information, and this drastically helps to close sales and make money. This is one of the main reasons I'm making the amount of money I am. Generally after someone gives you their information, they are moved to the "landing page" (or sales page depending on the market).

A "landing page" is a more friendly version of what you already have. It helps people make a buying decision, gives them some information, and encourages them to buy. Look up how to write reviews for these products that help them sell. This is all information available right here at this forum

3. Once your visitor has gone from the squeeze page, to the landing page, they are usually directed to the sales page, which would be the pages you have now (after clicking on a book link from your main page, it takes you to a "salespage").

You already have the sales pages written, and they looked like the basic stuff. Do you see now how many times you have a chance to profit from a visitor before they even make it here? Now that they are here, you can email them, they have seen your landing page and have gotten information and a good review, and now they get to read the sales letter and make their decision.

4. Learn what an "autoresponder" is, and why you need to get a service that provides it. There are free services, but HONESTLY, JUST USE AWEBER.COM OR GETRESPONSE.COM! These are the most recommended for a reason! And they are pretty cheap to get started.

Basically, an "autoresponder" is the service that actually collects your visitors information from the "squeeze page". This is the service you use to email them about information, offers, etc. You can also have your autoresponder set up to automatically deliver messages.

This is important, because often people won't buy from something, until they've heard it or seen it 5-10 times. So, if you write a 10 part autoresponder series, that over the course of 10 emails, gives information, reasons to buy, success stories, testimonials, reviews, whatever it takes to encourage someone to buy, you have that many more chances to sell your product. Again look up more info on this.

5. Now that you basically have a system set up to get leads, sell the visitors on your idea, and then to finally sell them the product (and if not, contact them in the future with your list!), it's time to look at traffic.

With no traffic, you have no sales. Many marketers (even "gurus") forget that traffic is just as important as how effective your selling skills are.

I recommend a thing called "Article Marketing" and "Bum Marketing" (mostly the same idea). This form of advertising is basically free, minus the time it takes to write the articles. You'll be basically be writing articles about your market, and at the end of the article, you'll include information about yourself, and a link or two back to your website. Learn why keywords are important here.

This gets you visitors from people who read the articles, plus, other marketers can use your article for content on your site. So you have people reading on the main site you submitted it, other sites that borrowed it, and google recognizes that link to your website, and helps you get higher in the search engines. It's a lot to take in at once, but if you research it, it'll get clear pretty quick. A few guys here are making hundreds of thousands a year writing articles.

You'll probably want to send the traffic from your articles to your "squeeze page". This is called "building your list". I have a list of about 35,000 subscribers in a home improvement niche that is making me almost $10,000 a month profit, and I barely have to do anything. Many people say that the "money is in the list". It's not the only place money is, but man, its certainly there!

6. By now, you should have a fair idea of why keywords are important, how to use article marketing to get visitors and help rank for keywords, and how your sales process works (opt-in, pre-sell, sell, sell again).

If your system is working pretty good, it's time to step up and get more traffic. There are a lot of ways to go about this, and some are pretty tricky, so you'll certainly want to hit the books and learn about the various methods.

There is of course PPC, like Adwords, and Yahoo and MSN programs as well (sounds like you have an idea of what these are). I could write a library on how to effectively use each one, but hands on is the best teacher (especially if she's cute! just kidding, it's late and I'm rambling), so you'll want to learn as much as you can, and see if you can build your list and make sales.

There are options such as Co-Reg, where visitors signing up for a "squeeze page" similar to yours, also have the option to join yours at the same time. This is a pretty hard one to pull off, so make sure you have a good sales process.

There are also other free methods of getting traffic, such as "Joint Ventures" and "Social Sites".

A "Joint Venture" is a broad term that means two similar-minded marketers get together and try and make each other money. Generally, it means you'll agree to exchange traffic with each other, or trade links on your landing pages. This can be tricky depending on your market. Some have tons of JV opportunities, some have little. Frank Kern has lots of good information on this, as well as several other people.

"Social Sites" (this is in my words only, so not internet police please) are sites like Digg, YouTube, StumpleUpon, Facebook, Craigslist, sites like that. Each one offers its own guidelines, and different tricks and techniques to drive traffic. This can be tricky, or easy as hell depending on your markets. My markets generally don't call for it, so I avoid it, although I have had great success in it, I find it very inconsistent.

7. If you aren't making sales, then you need to look at why you aren't. First off, you need some kind of visitor tracking software, or program. Most web hosts come with Cpanel, which has Awstats, which will do the job basically. You can also use stuff like Google Anayltics.

This is basically called Test and Tuning, and "Split Testing". If you aren't constantly testing your system, you'll never know if you could be doing better. The owner of this forum is quoted as saying "Testing is the only true guru" (or something very similar).

You'll want to get around 500-1000 visitors to see if you are able to make sales. Too little visitors and you may not know if it was just unlucky, too many visitors and you may have wasted time. Have friends go through your sales process, starting right from the article (or link, or ad, or wherever it starts) and see what they say, see where you may have lost them. Sometimes you may have forgotten something, or gotten something out of order that just messed you up.

One of the most important things is your sales letter. This is the final thing (generally) between a visitor and an immediate sale. Some people get paid $20,000+ for just 10-20 pages of this stuff. Hell, I've been paid $5,000 before to write 15 pages of sales copy. It's powerful stuff, learn it! This can be a broad and time consuming thing to learn, but I recommend it.

Try little tweaks. Anything you can think of, just come to the forum and search for conversion increasers, or sale-killers. Sometimes the silliest things can prevent a sale, and sometimes even sillier things lead to a sale.

8. Make money, and keep expanding!

This is the basic idea to making money on the internet, as I see it:

You find a market.
You find a product, or make one.
You create a sales process, from beginning to end.
You drive traffic, free at first so no risks.
You see if it converts, and what you can do to make it convert.
You test and tune to make it better.

It sounds like you already have money, and if not, see if you can refund whatever you bought, it looks and sounds like garbage. It'll cost ~$20 or so monthly for the autoresponder, $10 or so yearly for a domain, and $15 or so monthly for hosting. Not a bad price to pay consider what could potentially happen.

Is it easy? Hell no, or everyone would be doing it. Is it possible? Hell yes, thats why a lot of people are making money with it!

The next few things I say I feel are things you should take to heart, as I've seen them true hundreds of times:

1. You will fail. Maybe once, maybe twice, maybe 50 times. But at some point, something you do, will simply not work. You need to figure out when you've done everything in your reasonable power to salvage it, and then move on. As you move on, "failing" might be the difference between $5,000 and $10,000, but either way, cut your losses and move on.

2. You will learn more from other people directly than you ever will from a book, or a video, or a course. Go to seminars about marketing, meet up with marketers, if you can, don't email, phone, and start a conversation! Send PMs, start a facebook and invite marketers.

WHO YOU SURROUND YOURSELF WITH OFTEN DICTATES WHO YOU BECOME. If those people are smart and successful, it will rub off on you.

3. When you find something that works, bottle it up, and re-create it over and over again. Obviously don't put your eggs all in one basket, but if you know a system that works, keep trying it until it breaks!

Learn how to "outsource", and get other people to do your work for you.

4. The 80/20 rule. Most times, 80% of your results are achieved from 20% of your actions. Learn whats working and whats not, trying to fix it, but focus on whats really working until you can't take it any farther.

5. Have fun! If you don't like marketing from the start (when you make a few bucks profit at least), then odds are you won't like it. It can be very hit and miss, unreliable, unpredictable, and sometimes downright annoying. A LOT of people just AREN'T cut out for it, like it or not. The people you see making millions, for the most part, really like what they are doing. Competition, success, greed, personal improvement, they just like it.

And finally, one of my favorite quotes of all time:

"Don't ask for less problems, ask for more skills".

When I first started, I couldn't even upload a website or do any coding at all, so I had to get friends to do it, or pay people. Who knows how much that cost me and held me back. Who knows.

Damn, sorry for this out of control ramble, it is way too late here!