Newbie needs advice on picking out a decent internet marketing approach from all the noise out there

Originally Posted by cosmokid

Here's a piece of advice I wish someone had given me four years ago when I launched my first website:

Focus on skill building, not mastering a "system."

Because a huge percentage of the "systems" out there will be time sensitive - the methods they teach might already be on their way out and losing power, or they will be obsolete within a few months.

If you build skills, however, then you can succeed in any economic environment (recession or no recession) and be confident that you have what it takes to keep earning good income online.

When I talk about skill building, I'm talking about the basics:

How to set up a decent looking (can be simple) website in html or a Wordpress blog hosted on your server

How to design the structure of the site -- what keywords you'll be targeting, what content you plan to post

How to build traffic to your site - learning how to get good backlinks (which will make or break your site's traffic,) learning how to do some basic SEO (search engine optimization) as you create your pages

And most importantly for someone standing where you are now - deciding on a business model that you can live with.

Keep in mind that when you get into producing your own info products, from the moment of your first launch, you have to be available to provide customer service 24/7. Technically you can get away with responding to customer service problems in two business days, but if you want customers to really be happy with their purchase, responding immediately to their problems is the key.

And that can be a huge disadvantage to publishing your own material.

Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is an AMAZING business model. Right now my business is about 75% affiliate marketing, 25% selling my own ebooks, and 5% freelance writing for clients I've had for years. I'll gradually be moving over to an entirely affiliate marketing-based business model. You have NO customer service to deal with. You work ENTIRELY on your own schedule - researching, launching, and promoting your websites when you want to. You can take huge vacations and if your sites are set up nicely you can have a large percentage of your income be entirely passive.

Example: The other day I went out to lunch in a nice restaurant like I frequently do and when I came back I noticed there was $300 in one of my affiliate accounts. I didn't even know where it came from. Turns out one of my new websites had finally hit a nice spot in Google and I received a bunch of traffic and sales very fast. So basically I earned $300 while eating my lunch!

It doesn't get better than that, believe me!

So.....while writing and publishing your own infoproducts and reports can bring in some nice money over time, at some point you will have to confront the customer service issue. You CAN outsource that part of your business but in the initial stages you don't want all your profits to go toward paying someone to do that for you.

So infoproduct publishing can involve much more "hustle" on the customer service end. Even though I usually only spend less than three hours a month on customer service, I have to constantly check my email to see if somebody needs help. So even though people might never need help with their downloads, you have to be ready to GIVE help - and that creates a burden for you time and energy wise. I hate going out with my friends thinking about how I might have someone sending me emails about download problems - and that's the bummer part of this business. You always have to be watching the store! And it can turn into a prison if you're not careful.

The easiest way to minimize customer service issues is to have an automatic download delivery system in place. Two of the best ways to do this are:

1) Pay e-junkie.com $5 a month. You upload your files to their server. You can create a payment button using Paypal, Clickbank, Google Checkout, and other popular payment programs. When people click on your payment button at your site they are sent to e-junkie, and they receive an instant link to download their product. At the same time they are separately sent an email with the download link. This is a HUGE help because otherwise you have to send download links manually. If you just use Paypal to process payments without a download service, people will often miss the little part of the Paypal page that says "Click here to return to vendor" and you'll receive lots of emails from people saying they didn't get their download. Customer service can then be a bear!

2) Use DLGuard, a great script that you load on your server at your website. It was created by a fellow Warrior and a huge number of people here use it for their downloads. I hear it's another great way to minimize customer service issues with download problems.

Okay, I have blathered on enough! Hopefully something here has been helpful to you.

Best,
Jennifer

PS I also meant to mention that you can publish your ebooks through Lulu.com. They are a print on demand publisher who also publishes physical books, if you ever want to bring out your information as a physical book. But they can handle selling your ebook for you from their server. You don't have customer service issues to deal with then, but they do take a percentage of your income in exchange for doing the extra work for you, I believe.