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Starting Our First Real Online Business

by jhtay
7 replies
Hi Guys,

First post here. My friend and I have dabbled in internet marketing with limited success thus far - mainly because we have been caught on the SEO bandwagan and haven't had any success with it.

We decided to focus on what we were good at, and we have been working on the sales letter and product of an interviews preparation guide for medical school. We have put in a lot of work to make it valuable, and tested it among our peers to ensure its very different from what is on the market, and that it has great value to our readers.

At this point of time, most of our information is coming from the 4 Hour Work Week and The $100 Start-Up. We decided to raise a sizeable capital of about $1000 USD thus far to make it a real viable project, with the bulk of it to go towards advertising.

I have two main questions which I hope to get some advice from you guys from:

1) Firstly, what books or resources are good for us to get our toe in into paid advertising in the quickest possible way

2) Secondly, will it be better for us to hire a advertising agency instead to take care of this for us, and whom would you recommend for this particular job.

Thanks a lot for your help guys. I greatly appreciate it.

Regards,

jhtay
#business #online #real #starting
  • Profile picture of the author Irmscher
    Originally Posted by jhtay View Post

    Hi Guys,

    1) Firstly, what books or resources are good for us to get our toe in into paid advertising in the quickest possible way

    2) Secondly, will it be better for us to hire a advertising agency instead to take care of this for us, and whom would you recommend for this particular job.


    jhtay

    1. Paid advertising has A LOT of hurdles and BS - that's my own experience. Try Site Scout and Traffic Vance if your budget allows.

    But be advised that most paid traffic sources SUCK badly - either crap traffic quality of traffic or very low volumes of searches on the profitable keywords. Some will just rip you off, like for example most of the BuySellAds offers - they just pump in their website with the fake traffic to game the system and sell worthless banner space.

    The best way to go in the long run is Organic Traffic IMO


    2. There are very few agencies that will guarantee any results, most of them work at an hourly rate.

    Site Scout is kind of self-service platform which may be the best for you at this time.
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  • Profile picture of the author karlmay1980
    An ad agency could be good, as they can help you plan and track your campaigns and probably save you money even though you paying them a fee.
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  • Profile picture of the author Maruelle
    try free classified ads sites. They can be a big help
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  • Profile picture of the author Bill Hugall
    You could simply go to webmaster in your niche and ask them to do what is called a solos ad to their list. Meaning that you pay to rent out a mailing on their list. Very good very targeted and with a niche like yours you should be golden. Also these same site may have banner ad placement to make some extra cash. Ask about their rates and get a banner up on their sites. Unlike a previous post I think that paid traffic is the way to go.
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  • Profile picture of the author jhtay
    Thanks for the advice guys,

    I am thinking along the lines of Google Adwords seeing we have some vouchers, maybe Facebook advertising to certain demographics of students.

    Do you guys have any recommendations on agencies we can look at to hire, or ebooks or reports that we can refer to?

    Cheers
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    • Profile picture of the author Hilal Shakarchi
      If you want to outsource, you can post a job at elance (www.elance.com) and see if it works out.

      As for me, I'd get a list of forums where I can promote my business and write a few articles and then outsource (verify that the person is capable of writing good articles) and concentrate on some other part of the business. On Elance there are alot of companies/individual that will market your website for a reasonable price.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Originally Posted by jhtay View Post


    First post here. My friend and I have dabbled in internet marketing with limited success thus far - mainly because we have been caught on the SEO bandwagan and haven't had any success with it.
    That is why I never relied on the search engines to get me traffic. I know that some people are and that is the only way they drive traffic. While it may work for some, it will never work for others no matter how hard they try.

    Too many new guys and ladies are being taught this strategy and it is wrong in my view.

    I would learn all the strategies that I can on how to drive traffic online whether it is paid or free.

    Video marketing
    Article marketing
    PPC.
    Solo ads.
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