At What Point Do You Become Qualified To Market To The IM Niche?..

When you stop wondering whether you're qualified.

Hi Daniel,

C makes a good point.

I would say a person is qualified to go into the IM niche not when they make money/get results, but when they are able to make money/get results consistently with the same method.

All the best,
Michael

There's such a simple solution to this conundrum...

Leverage authentic experts in the market you want to sell into.

The problem with newbs going into IM is not one of qualification, it's a problem with their choice of business model.

If you position yourself as an authority or expert - and you're NOT - you're doomed.

If you position yourself as a SOURCE of expert information, you have marketable value, regardless of whether or not you have any mastery of the topic.

B

If you see yourself as a provider of value, you can always test your offerings against the market. Let the results i.e. whether or not you get a sufficient number of customers, the number of refund requests etc be your guide. If the numbers stack-up, then you are qualified.

Will

The only experience you need to sell to the IM market is just by doing IM, which is easy to do right out of the gate. Marketing 101 is to solve the problems in your target market, right? Why not do that simultaneously to doing the research?

Here's how I do that in any niche, but it definitely works in IM:

Step 1: Go to niche-centric forums. Hopefully more than one. Register.
Step 2: Look for the newbie questions being asked over and over that make the vets all mad and bitch about how people need to learn to search.
Step 3: Start a blog and use those questions as subjects. The answers are usually right in the thread.
Step 4: Go beyond - take the question and cross pollinate it to another forum. Get their answers too.
Step 5: Link to the blog in your sigs.
Step 6: Put an opt-in box on the blog.

The content you produce this way simultaneously teaches you the vital marketing info you need for that niche, but it also lets you use that to create authority for yourself basically simultaneously. The content is relevant because it's actually made of what they REALLY want to know.

The content is also largely organically SEO'd, because it's built around the actual language of the niche. Your site is already getting an authority boost because of the backlinks to it FROM those topical forums. More so than if you were getting backlinks from other non-related places.

Then, if you really want to take it over the top, whenever those same questions get asked again, answer briefly, then link to the now growing "pillar post" on your blog with all the info. Now you're getting even more direct traffic out of the effort.

That's the "works in any niche" approach, but for IM specifically, it's even more highly suited, because A. we have a bajillion products on sale, and B. you can be an affiliate for all of them.

So in addition to the above route, you could do this:

Step 1: Buy a product.
Step 2: Create a blog.
Step 3: Actually take the course/use the product you bought, BUT...
Step 4: Record your steps and results AS YOU GO, directly into the blog.
Step 5: Put an opt in on the blog.
Step 6: As you're creating the content, look around for places you can link in - other blogs, forums, etc.
Step 7: When you finish, decide if the course was good or bad.
Step 8: If it was good, reduce all the blog posts to excerpts and turn it into a membership program to read the full posts. Offer it as a bonus and promote the course you took.
Step 9: If it was bad, say so and offer an alternative product instead. You can use this to basically decide for you what the next product you buy will be. Do that and start over.

With the above, even if you end up with a suck product, you've still built some VRE, which will gain you some authority, and even if the site can't recommend a good product, and doesn't make a dime, you can always use it to juice up backlinks to your eventual successful one.

When you get a few of those under your belt, and you have a few products you're well versed in, make your own. Sell it to your list.

I recently had this discussion with someone about this. I do much
better DOING something and doing making money, than TEACHING
someone how to do what I do to make money.

It's a whole 'nother skill set to teach people and, mentally it's very
draining explaining concepts and methods I use to make money b/c
it's repetitive, I'm a little impatient...and I get frustrated when they
can't grasp the simplest of concepts I DO understand.

Far easier to DO than to SHOW for me. For others, far easier to
SHOW than to DO.

Maybe it's best that way...

Other than that, in response to the OP...I don't judge
when someone is qualified to teach Internet Marketing.

It's common to compare someone who does brain
surgery to an IM (or some other profession where train-
ing of some kind is required).

Face it. I would NEVER want to give someone a shot on
operating on my brain if they havn't PROVEN themselves
qualified to do so...but the two professions are totally
opposite of each other so there can not and is not a
comparison to be made.

One is subjective and the other objective.

One requires mental work, the other more physical.

I think of JohnChow and how he got his start in IM talking
about being new and making money after learning how to
promote, package, and sell his experiences...he got good
at marketing while sharing his experinece with people.

So, I'd say it's okay.

If this question had been "At What Point Do You Become Qualified To Market To The Dog Training Niche?.." what would your answers have been and why would they be different?

Like anything, there are different levels of knowledge that people need to teach different groups of people. If you're a good teacher and you know a little bit, you can start teaching newbies now. But you probably can't go out and do $5k/day consulting.

Saying something like "if you're wondering, you're not good enough" is kind of stupid. Because there are clueless idiots that think they know everything but haven't made a dime. There are also people that make a killing but would never think of themselves as a teacher.

When you can provide real value to your subscriber, and you are absolutely sure that taking action on the stuff will make them money, or give them the insight or experience to help them in their journey.

This is the question only you can answer, nobody else

So ask yourself can I provide enough value to my prospects online business? If the answer is yes you are ready to go.

The advice I tend to give folks is, "Learn marketing! Do marketing. Become good at it and make it a goal to keep getting better at it."

Why? Because oftentimes, it doesn't really matter what the niche you're marketing to is. As mentioned above, you can always interview an expert or even buy good quality PLR for any given niche, so you don't have to be an 'expert' in it to be able to sell and make money from it.

But without solid marketing to back it up, you won't be able to sell anything.

IM is an interesting niche in many ways. It's probably one of the few niches, in my opinion, where you almost have to be somewhat good at doing what you're selling, i.e marketing.

Or...I guess you could hire a marketing manager to do it for you. Wait, what the hell was I talking about anyway...

I think it depends on the position you want to take...

If you want to position yourself as an expert and be able to tell everyone that this is good or that is good, you will definitely need to have more results and at least be nearly at the level of having great expertise...

However, if you want to take the position of a learner, say for example you create a blog about your starting journeys as an internet marketer, and along the way you find some great courses or software and you recommend these to your list based on your personal experience... You can market to the IM Niche as well...

So, I think it depends on your business model and the position you take of how you are going to market to the IM Niche... If you're someone who doesn't know anything and pretends he does, that's not good... But if you're someone who doesn't know anything and openly says so, your customers will understand and they will accept you as they might be a target market who are looking for people similar to themselves

I thought everyone on these forums was an IM guru! =p Joking aside their are obvious shames here where people, even on these very forums, tend to think they are experts and are only trying their best to just take your money. Their systems don't work, if they did everyone would be using them and you would see more positive feedback from their users. But there are plenty that do because just look at how much beneficial information that is available here.

I think that once you have created a system that does work and you have proven that you have made money consistently then I think you are good to jump into the IM niche.

-Jay Vance

There's two issues here - there's knowing your IM stuff so that you have a solid information base from which to teach.

And then there's knowing how to teach.

Being a good teacher is a completely different skill - in any field. IMO if you really want to stand out in marketing to the IM crowd don't spend most of your research time on different IM methods - spend your research time on learning how to TEACH instead.

Come up with learning systems that empower your students - so they get your stuff, read it and can start effective implementation straight away. If you do that you'll be very successful.

You're qualified as soon as you can show results and teach how you can replicate them...