Help Out A Frustrated, HARD WORKING Newb!

First you need to stop jumping around. Just because something is not working, does not mean it is dead. If you like the weight loss niche, then stick with it. But, you have to find cheap ways to break into such a competitive market. Keep researching, and get a proper sales funnel set up. Youtube videos by themselves are not going to do. You need a funnel.

Yeah that does sound good.

Giving a solid idea and sticking with it.

Sounds to me like your mobile idea was working you just ended up running into some technical problems. How much are you selling the mobile sites for each?
I have an inhouse designer at Flippazon that is wonderful with mobile sites. He has a huge portfolio. If you want to know more just pm me.

Have you had a passion in any of the niches that you tried? Or is money purely the motive?

I thought you said that you were a HARD WORKING newbie? No offense, but what you have described isn't hard working. Not nearly hard working enough to succeed at IM.

You seem like a dabbler. And being a dabbler has nothing to do with the time spent on a project. You could work your butt off for 2 weeks straight and see massive results. Or you can spend two months spinning your wheels, but not doing enough to move forward.

I think you should take "Momtraders" up on her offer. Sometimes a critical and unplanned meeting with the right person can skyrocket your possibilities of success.

Much Success,

JoeMack

KKll78 said what I thought and what I still need to hear to this day. Like yourself I have many interest but if you think about it for a second each WSO or idea we get on this forum is like a business plan and like most businesses they need time to develop and work out the kinks.

We have to resist the urge to jump to something else once the rush of doing something new wears off. Stick to one thing and make it work.

Thanks for all of the responses you all.

I really think we're well on our way to
providing great value for some newbs

I began trying to sling weightloss products just like you. If you are passionate about your niche then you passed step one.

I see that you are trying to succeed in internet marketing (especially in the weight loss niche), but life here is not as easy as you think. You do have a right attitude to succeed on your own, but you need to learn what are the things that have gone wrong, jot it all down on your notebook. Take your time to read all of the mistakes that you have done in internet marketing, try to plan fixing it! Failures are normal, but gives you the complete advantage to fix all of it (just like you missed shooting free throws until you convert one and again and again).

If you had a lot of passion with the weight loss niche, you certainly need to dedicate a lot of time and effort to figure out how you can succeed with this one. There is always a learning curve about internet marketing, so deal with it.

Good luck!

Jeff

I would like to suggest that, you must stick with this for next 8 months. It means, the product does convert. Avoid PPC for some time and move through free traffic method. Tip, make several bonuses.

Hi!

I'm also a newbie and I can honestly say that without my coach I would still be running around like a "headless chicken". I was very close to giving up when I applied for her coaching as I burning myself out with "information overload" (like in the picture). LOL!

I would recommend to build your list from the start.. When you promote affiliate product, also put optin form on your site and offer free gift or else.. This will help you in long term

Sunk costs are killing you.

Here's your goal. You don't really seem to have a passion. Find one. Find something you WANT to spend all your time doing. Find that PURPOSE in your business.

Until then, your goal is this: build something that might make money as quickly as possible, then move the hell on and leave it run.

Do not lose sleep over what product to promote. Do not worry about your domain name. Do not make a cost-benefit analysis of different affiliate programs. Just set something up and walk away.

Now lose sleep and worry and make your cost-benefit analysis for your Really Big Thing that your business is going to be all about. Initially, it's "what is my really big thing?" and then you'll eventually figure it out.

Think about it. You sank thousands of dollars worth of time into each of these niches, and you got nothing. Hard work doesn't guarantee a return. Fast work has a better NPV. Just make something work. Anything. PLR you bought off Tradebit for $1.50, with a $5 buy button on it. Whatever. Get that up and running in twenty minutes and you've got profit from the very first sale.

Hell, buy a hundred of those and start your own PLR membership site. Release two a week for a year. Charge $20 a month. The average member will quit in four months, but who cares? You make $80 per subscriber for $150 worth of PLR. Two subscribers = profit.

It's just like "buy low, sell high" - start fast, run long. The "run long" part is what matters most. You can buy high just fine, so long as you know you can sell higher. You can start slow, too, if you know you can run longer.

Automate. Use systems. If you still don't have your passion figured out in a year, guess what? You've become an automation and systems expert. Write down what you know. Use all the data from that year of not knowing what to do. Nobody else has that data.

Bluntly speaking, if you have been doing this for a year and you are not making any money, it is because you have chosen not to.

Look back over your choices and understand (a) what they were, (b) why you made them, and (c) how that meant you weren't going to make any money.

If that was a bad choice, it's too late. You know what you did wrong - now just don't do that anymore. If you do it again, hey, again - too late. So don't do it next time.

Eventually, you'll learn. But start out understanding and believing that you can do this (a monkey could do this), developing an awareness of what you are doing and how it affects you, and finding the direction you're going to go in the long run.

EVERYTHING depends on your method of visitor acquisition. Are you focused on organic traffic, PPC or both?

I see you created a bunch of Youtube videos, but you need traffic.

My suggestion is stick with your passion, "weight loss niche." Perform thorough keyword research and make multiple keyword based sites. Don't limit yourself to self hosted sites. Make plenty of quality web 2.0 that either drive traffic to your primary sites, or drive traffic to affiliate offers (with your aff. link of course .

If you are depending on organic SE traffic then G is the big driver, BUT you must realize that every website now has a short half life (except the big payouts .) You should be prepared to constantly create web properties and see them go up in smoke. Anyone on this forum claiming otherwise is either lying or delusional.

Keep at it, and you'll find what works!

All the hard work in the world will not do you any good if you do not........ FOCUS.

I don't mean to sound harsh but that's the crystal truth. The earlier you realize this, the better. I was in the same boat as you. When I started to focus, things started happening. When I lost focus, things unraveled. See how that works out? Focus is the key.

Rob Jones is someone you may want to team up with. He has one of the keys to success. It is his mind set and he found a way to get great success from a very small list. He can make $2000.00 profit from a list of only 200. He has a coaching program too. Rob likes to relate at another level. I know he has a software that he has used for three years that he developed. I bought it on W.F. at a steal. The bonuses are worth a mint and they are free. If you can learn his mind set and fineness you will not fail. He found short cuts in those 3 years that he shares. The WSO is Viral Conversion. He uses lead funnels. It was easy to install the software as a WP plug in.

Here is what I learned from doing Magic tricks many years ago. I could do the trick very well, but I was missing what only a coach can deliver to give you the finer points.

I was convinced that he had this special skill as he gave specific details that were on the fine points that most people miss. It was an aha moment for me.

Don't just do the magic trick. Learn the finer points of the same trick. Whole books were written on finesse alone. Even Rob Jones got coaching and used it to get a start. We all need it. Be careful abought coaching though. Some guys use it to make them money where as Rob wants you to make money. He is just a regular nice and smart guy that knows his stuff. Good teacher with a passion.

For YT...click my sig...its free and good info that still makes me cash...

Like many others have said, you have to work on one project and be persistent if you want to see positive results. If you are selling something that is in demand you will make money when you will understand how to approach your audience.

There is competition everywhere, a fierce and discouraging competition. You have to do something special if you want to have the public attention.

First of all, congrats on taking action...you can pat yourself on the back for having taken action and hit the first set of speed bumps that every new business goes through. The good news is that most people don't even take the action you have taken.

Now, a couple of points:

1. How much traffic over 1-2 months did you send to each of your projects - your own ebook site and then the CB site?

2. What is the exact topic and title of your ebook. Ebooks are actually pretty simple to master given that they either WORK or they don't. I have been at infoproduct marketing for a LONG time, in every case I can pretty much tell in the first couple of hundred visitors to my sales page if the book and/or website is going to work. I may tweak the site and try once more, but if that isn't working, then I go with a different title/topic. It may be the exact same content, but the title and sales copy can make all the difference in the world. So, if you threw traffic at a page with your ebook and nothing happened, then you need to try some additional copy and make something happen.

3. I would not usually start with YouTube videos,. What I would do very systematically to generate new traffic is:

a) Start my own blog posting keyword rich, valuable (doesn't mean long or deep) content each day. One of these each week or every few days can be a video, to which you embed in your blog and get more traffic bang for your buck
b) Find some top forums in your niche and post responses daily with your signature, that alone can bring a few dozen unique visitors to your site in the beginning
c) Uncover a list of 30-40 of the top blogs and websites in your niche and offer the owner a free review copy of your ebook in return for feedback. After you have feedback, you ask to use positive feedback as testimonial, negative feedback you can act on either to improve your product or improve future versions. Finally, those who gave you positive feedback, ask if they will promote/endorse your product to their list as a partner turning them into affiliates OR if they would either interview you or review your product on their blog. Either way you get traffic and/or backlinks
d) Write a press release and submit it to various free and paid directories for both immeidate traffic, syndication as well as backlinks and ranking improvement over time

These are just some ideas...the key is to get the right combination of ebook topic and sales letter and you WILL begin to see the sales materialize.

Jeff

The first thing that's important to note, is that even though you didn't earn a full ROI, you were able to generate revenue from your weight loss ebook, which means you attained some level of success with that niche.

Sometimes it may seem like when one thing isn't working, to try something else, but I recommend sticking with a niche that has shown promise, and then tinkering with your marketing strategies to amplify success.

For example, you sold 2 ebooks at $27. Did you have to pay for traffic in order to reach these sales, or were the conversions made through free traffic? You can always try ranking for low-tail keywords, or keywords that demonstrate a decent search demand, but not too much competition. Working on SEO, is one of the ways you can optimize your site to improve traffic, without having to have to pay for the results.

The downside however, is that it just takes a lot of manual effort in order to be effective. Also, it's always wise to create .html pages on your domain, using the keyword that you are targeting as your page's title. e.g. if you are trying to get hits for the term 'lose belly fat', you can create a page on your site as follows:

yoursite.com/losebellyfat.html

Now on this page, you can have an information article, and then a main link back to your landing page where you sell your ebook. You may also want to try building a list, this way you can have future attempts at marketing to visitors who have landed on your website. The main goal of the page once you have it up, is to build backlinks back to your site, using that same keyword as anchortext. This can be done through social bookmarking, or article marketing, and even through link exchanges.

Without delving too deeply into SEO though, I would also recommend you considering other factors, such as improving conversions. 2 sales at 27 is good, but do you think you that you may have converted 5 sales if the price was 17? Sometimes it's these simple changes, that can end up earning you more revenue in the long term, although you may have not initially recognized this.

I would go back to whatever project that has shown the most promise, and then begin optimizing, and further building that site. If you have already made results, don't quit if you think its not working. Many times, you just need to change your approach, or just some of the variables behind your efforts, to amplify results even further. Do you have an affiliate program for instance? If you can find people to send traffic to your offer for you, it will lower done on your advertising costs.

Anyway, I hope this post encourages you to continue to take action. Feel free to send me a PM if you have any specific questions, maybe then I could help you more.

Dan,

You have gotten a lot of great feedback to your post; there is more than enough information for you to get a successful campaign going.

First let me say that I have not yet rolled out an IM campaign; but I have done much research and studied a university marketing program. So, I feel that I am qualified to give some input not based on personal experience but through much in depth research.

I think that first you need to be sure you have something of "Great Value" to make a free offer that will convert your website visitors into a lead. You will require a landing page to acquire their email address. Build a list and nurture that list like they are your milk and honey supply, lol.

Then follow-up with a series of emails; some emails must simply be educational with no hard sales - but it is important to include some kind of call-to-action in every single email. Then some emails must go for the sale. The idea is to build trust and an expectation of value through your educational emails to 'make the sale.'

Headlines, including email and ad headlines are vital to get attention and interest. Also good valuable content that is both interesting and valuable to your target market is vital. Be sure to research how to write great headlines.

There is also an art and science to matching ad/email copy to your landing pages. Much training available on that topic if you search the internet. The wording of your call-to-action is also vital for conversions.

You could research on the "sales funnel" and make sure you have included content for each phase of the sales funnel in your campaign. Sales funnel can also be thought of as the phases of the customer buying process.

All buyers go through a buying process; and in order to convert more visitors into leads, and convert your leads into customers it is vital to lead and nurture them through that process with valuable content and resources.

Good luck with your IM business!

I think what can help you a lot, is to build an email list. Many visitors will not buy your product when they first visit your websites.

But, by adding them to your email list, you can provide them with very helpful information, and promote your same product as much as you like.

If you treat your list well, they will more then likely buy it, and any further products you promote later on.

Im also doing this.. promoting websites by building relationship with the clients. that would be a great factor so we can make a sale..

As many other Warriors have mention already, it seems that you are doing too many things at the same time. You will want to stay focus on doing one project at a time. Once the website is created, it will be more logical to stay focus the majority of the time on traffic generation activities.

Did you try going to weight loss sites like myfitnesspal and sites like that? Then you can post in the forums and have a link to your book in your sig and on your profile. Did you also try using social media? I would also spend a little money on driving traffic to your site. If you are passionate about it and offering something unique and wonderful, I would keep going for it!!

With most things you have to get TARGETED traffic. This is usually from the search engines. Either that or you need somebody really legitimate with a large following to push what you're offering.

You are probably working too hard and trying too many niches at the same time. Maybe focusing on just one or two would be better. It's great that you have a lot of good will and desire to succeed, though! Best of luck!

Hello all, I was wondering if there are any seasoned veterans on here that would be willing to help a newbie understand how to create a membership site? I would need info from the beginning such as web site slection, setting up to get paid, cancelations and things like that. Can anyone advise?

Sounds like both your niches were very broad niches. You need to narrow it down. You can do weight loss but have to find a way to hit it where the searches are not in the millions and below a certain level.

Maybe do reverse physchology,

You can not lose weight unless........

something like that maybe.

I did fitness but it was in the late ninetys and got tired of trying to keep up.

something like this. I mean you don't have to go low but I found those in about 45 seconds.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about your experience so far. Nobody hits the ground running and this is actually one of the more difficult careers to get started in. Put less of an emphasis on profit expectations right now and just work on your skills. Everything you do will probably be a little bit better than the last thing you did. Eventually you'll match up against the competition.

I would say that by entering the niche market on your topics is a mistake unless you are in it for the long haul. Exactly as you have experienced, market penetration in a saturated enviroment is extremely difficult. If I were you I would look at something new and exciting and dominate that market. Niche advertising is very tricky and often frustrating. It does take a lot of time and effort. Stay away from paid advertising until your site gets ranking and income coming in.

Your on the right path just don't give up. You are not going to succeed the first time. It takes doing, learning, doing again to be successful at something.

Sounds like you were on to something with your own ebook you sold. What I personally would do is create myself a landing page (squeeze page) around my ebook. I would not give them the whole thing but entice them by offering something of value in my book for free in exchage for their name and email.

I then would have my full book or product as an front end offer tied maybe to the thank you page or a upsell on the download page.

You then can build a list and market backend products to your list.

As far as succeeding with a web business it all comes down to traffic and conversions.

Traffic is easy, its taking the time to optimize to get the best CTR or click through rate.

Find one or two traffic strategies that you feel you would enjoy and stick at it. Don't expect floods of visitors straight way but even if you can get 50 a day to start out with thats plenty.

The internet is no magic solution but a great tool to get in front of people from our living room if you are willing to put in the time.

Seems like a very niched product that you're pushing, why not do something that is a bit more broad so you can expand your market to different businesses.