Newbie help 101 - The Magic Blueprint
- Here are a few things for you to consider and steps to take when getting started online, or regrouping your business after some false starts. It took me a few of those false starts to discover some of these things, and in many cases the answers were right in front of me the whole time.
Step Number One - Find your target market. The importance of this step cannot be understated. One of the key mistakes made by Internet marketing beginners, and too many business beginners of all types, is that they find a product or service they like and decide to market it. That's great, but if you like mud hut remodeling, your market is going to be small, poor, and without Internet connections. Not a good choice for your business.*
If you want to work online from home and be successful at it, you must first research the market. That means find a market that is hungry, better yet, craving something, then feed them exactly what they want.
What they want is important, because people buy what they want even before they buy what they need. Don't believe that's true? Look at all the poor people eating crappy food, living in a crappy house, but watching a really nice TV fed from their satellite and NFL package. Almost everyone you know has bought something they really wanted, even at the expense of something they needed. It's just the way most people are wired.
That is the largest secret to success in business, weather online or off, yet far too many people try to force it the other way. They try to get a product then find the market. That seems like way too much work to me, when there is much more effective alternaitve.
You also have to put yourself in the mind of your customers. What would they want? How would they want it, and how would they see the most value in what you have to offer. Put it another way - how can you seem the most valuable in your solution to their problem, and then actually provide that value, and more? Answer that question correctly, and money won't be a problem again.
How to do research on a niche? There are many ways, but here are some - You can look to see how many magazines there are on a subject. Magazines on unpopular subjects don't sell very well, and therefore don't stay on the market very long. The reverse is true too. Many magazines mean that not only is the subject popular (here is the important part) people are willing to pay for information on it. Typically, it means that people also buy products in the niche besides the magazine itself, since most magazines are advertiser supported and advertisers won't place ads very long if their ads aren't profitible.
The preceeding paragraph is very important. You need to look at markets where people are proven to spend money, preferrably on products or services that you'll be selling. If people are already spending money, half your battle is already won. Competition only means that there are people spending money there now, so don't let it scare you. On the contrary, it means you're barking up the right tree.
Look at the Amazon.com best seller list too. Again best seller means a large amount of money is being spent already.
These may not be the best methods to use if you're bent on trying selling in the Guru dominated, IM product niche. You should be well aware that there are many more niches that are potential gold mines. You owe it to yourself to look for one of these.
After your preliminary research you want to determine one other thing; how much competition is there in your market? While you can make large amounts of money in any hungry market, choosing an under served market is much better, especially if you're just beginning your IM journey..
Remember, you don't just want to find niches people are interested in, you want to find niches that people are willing to pay for information in. It's all about solutions, really. You need to be a solution provider. The more critical the problem or the more people really want something, and the more you can help them scratch their itch, the easier your road will be.
*
A key step in your research is to determine how many searches people are doing each month on the search engines. Wordtracker and Google trends work great for this, and they are free, or have free versions.
You'll want to see how much competition there is in a niche, too. One way is to see how many advertisers there are on Google Adwords for keywords and phrases related to the niche. If there are Adwords ads 5 pages deep in the search engine results pages (SERPS), and you notice that the same advertisers are there, week after week, chances are they're making money, or they would be running those ads for weeks on end.
Another trick is to see how many competitor's sites and blogs there are that rank for the niche related keywords and phrases. You can do that by using Google to see how many results are returned for the term in quotes. For example, if you're looking at setting up a campaign in the fly fishing niche, try a search for "fly fishing rod reviews". That gives a pretty good idea how many competitors there are.
To find out how many of them are really serious about getting ranked for pages about fly fishing reviews, you'll want to see how many of them actually titled their pages with that keyword phrase. To find that use an allintitle query in google, again with quotes. You'd type (allintitle:"fly fishing rod reviews") into the serch box (no parentheses)
For you, a lower number is better, because it means there are that many fewer sites you'll have to beat to get to the top of the search engines.
Step 2
Once you have a hungry target market all researched, you can begin step number 2; find something to sell them. You can choose a product or service, physical or virtual. You really have a few key decisions to make in this step. Always remember however, that you have to know exactly what solutions they want, and questions they want answered.
Online there are many ways to find this out including what questions people are asking in forums, on blog comments, sites like Yahoo Answers, and looking to see what sells best right now on Amazon. As I mentioned before, don't forget A.com.
Do you want to market a product or service?
-The advantages of a product are that once it's created it can be sold by the creator (you?) or any one the creator gives selling rights to, for as long as the marketing is successful. The disadvantage is that it has to be created. If it is a physical product it needs to be stored, inventoried, and distributed.
-The advantage of a service is that it doesn't have to be created. The vendor (you, the business owner) can simply begin providing the service to clients.
Examples of popular services that people that work on line from home online provide are web development, search engine optimization (SEO), marketing, business and/or marketing consulting, copywriting, and accounting / financial planning.*As a few people here at WF have discovered, many offline businesses know next to nothing about this, and will be happy to pay for some expertise, if they see an attractive ROI.
If you choose to market a product, do you want to develop your own product or market someone else's?
Pros of developing your own product -
Your own product will give you complete control of every aspect of it (because after all, it's yours), including pricing strategy, advertising and marketing strategy, the content, quality, and function of the product itself.
Your own product will allow you to retain as much of the profit as you want. You can keep it all or trade some of it away as an incentive for others to market your product by creating an affiliate program. There are many examples of successful marketers giving lucrative commissions if they are selling digital or virtual products.
In fact, this strategy, affiliate marketing, is one of the proven paths to online marketing success (from either side; you can be the affiliate or use affiliates to sell your products. Many successful marketers do both). Paying a portion of the product in exchange for marketing is the way you develop a large, commissioned sales staff. They only get paid when the product is sold, so it costs nothing out of your pocket.
You own it in its entirety. This is the most important aspect of creating your own product. All the other advantages flow from this.
You build the customer list, potentially one of the most valuable parts of your business, especially if you decide selling the business is part of your exit strategy. A customer list is highly valued by others because it is a list of actual buyers, not just leads of people that have signed up for a newsletter to receive some sort of free gift. The free info seekers have value as well, but nowhere near as much, after all they are not proven buyers in the niche.
Here is another secret to Internet marketing success, in fact some would say THE most important one - Your list members can (and definitely should) be marketed to on an ongoing basis. You're building a relationship with your list members that can make you money for years. It typically takes from 5 - 8 contacts with a prospect to make a sale, so don't neglect this.
You'll use a service called an autoresponder to build your subscriber base. When a customer enters their information in a form (usually in exchange for some sort of consideration) they will receive the information or newsletter they requested and the service will add their email to the list and do the list management.
Getting the most out of your autoresponder is an art in itself. The two main ones used by online business owners are GetResponse and Aweber. I use GetResponse and it works very well, but you'll find other warriors say the same about Aweber. Look on the forum for help with this if you need it.
NOTE: Make sure you have different lists for your buyers and your freebie giveaway list joiners. This is known as segmenting your list. The narrower your segments, the closer you'll be able to track variables, and the more accurately you'll be able to target your offers and marketing materials.
Another Note About developing your own product: You have the ability to begin with very limited start up costs, but typically no matter how lean your operation, there will be some marketing costs. Remember something too many new business owners forget; your time has value. Why spend your time doing something you could easily get done for a few dollars, when you could outsource that to someone with more expertise, and spend your time doing something more productive. It took me a while to learn that, but it was a valuable lesson.
Cons of developing your own product -
It takes time to develop your own product
You may not have the expertise or writing skill to develop your own product. You can outsource this if you have the resources, or you can use Private Label Rights (PLR) or public domain content as the basis for your new product. You can modify the PLR or public domain into entirely new content, but always remember to add value.
You have to deal with customer support issues, such as customer service calls, returns, and refunds. This can be expensive and time consuming, depending upon the type of product you develop.
There are ways to mitigate much of this, such as automating much of the CS process, outsourcing phone and other support tasks, using fulfillment centers, using print/produce on demand services, and over delivering content to minimize returns, but such things can never be completely eliminated. The skill at which you address customer service issues will go a long way to determining the ultimate success of your business.
If it's a physical product(s) you may have warehousing, inventory, and fulfillment issues to deal with. Again, you can mitigate some of these issues by using drop shippers, print/produce on demand services, and fulfillment centers.
Some of the disadvantages of actual product development can be mitigated by outsourcing if the funds for doing so are available. For example, you can outsource the entire product creation if you've found a hungry market, but lack the expertise to develop a quality product fill their needs. This will result in a quicker time to market and a (usually) high quality product.
There are many opportunities for outsourcing all or part of the product creation process. You could also outsource the entire thing, or only a portion, such as photography, graphic design, or audio/video creation / editing. If your product is a piece of software, and you're a developer, you could develop the software yourself, but outsource the documentation.
Pros of marketing someone else's product / service as an affiliate - Basically the advantages and disadvantages are the reverse of selling your own product / service.
You have no support issues because you actually don't sell the product(s) yourself, you simply refer customers to the vendor's website and are paid a commission on any sales, or in some cases, leads your referrals generate.
You have the ability to begin with very limited start up costs, but just as with selling your own product, you can spend significant marketing funds. Pay per click advertising is an example of a strategy that can work very well for an affiliate, but can bleed you dry in about a day if you don't know what you're doing.
Cons of marketing someone else's product / service as an affiliate -
You have no control over the product / service you're marketing. Although there are many advantages to just being able to begin marketing without any product development costs or time, or any customer support concerns, the disadvantage of having no control over the products is a major disadvantage indeed.
*
Imagine - You've just spent weeks or months doing all the things it takes to become successful at an affiliate marketing campaign. These include developing and fine tuning your marketing efforts (You have to develop your website(s), put your advertising in place, get back links to your site, publicity, and any other supporting content, test everything, test it some more, and get any marketing agreements in place that you may have supporting your efforts) - only to have the vendor either change the payout (these rarely change for the better), go out of business, drop their affiliate program, or drop you as an affiliate. Ask any affiliate marketer, this happens all the time, for a variety of reasons.
Another disadvantage to being an affiliate is that you have terms you must agree to that restrict how you can market the products. These can be almost nonexistent, or can be very restrictive. For example, they can tell you what keywords you can't bid for in PPC advertising campaigns, what marketing methods you can and can't use, and what the ad copy must / not say.
Using Fulfillment Centers and Drop Shippers -
Fulfillment centers are businesses that do your warehousing and shipping for you. Drop shippers are basically the same thing. They are wholesalers that have products to sell that you can buy at wholesale prices (naturally).
The process works like this:
You have an online store with products for sale
A visitor to your web site finds a product they like and orders it.
The order is processed by your site's back end order processing system, the customer's credit card is charged, and the order is sent to a drop shipper. You can set this up so that the invoice they send has your logo and information on it and that it looks just like it was actually shipped form your facility. After the customer's card is processed the money is deposited in your business bank account by the credit card processing company you use.
These are just a very few of the basics for you to consider when getting started online. There is so much more it boggles the mind, but this is the place to find it. It can seem a bit overwhelming at first.
Just remember to do the one thing that too few marketers do when starting out (or at any time in their business), write an actual plan. You can always change it, but if you have a plan you'll at least be able to follow some sort of map to keep you from one of the other main pitfalls marketers face; getting sidetracked.
I can add much more to this later, but my fingers are a bit sore already. Time for a nice Latte.
Step Number One - Find your target market. The importance of this step cannot be understated. One of the key mistakes made by Internet marketing beginners, and too many business beginners of all types, is that they find a product or service they like and decide to market it. That's great, but if you like mud hut remodeling, your market is going to be small, poor, and without Internet connections. Not a good choice for your business.*
If you want to work online from home and be successful at it, you must first research the market. That means find a market that is hungry, better yet, craving something, then feed them exactly what they want.
What they want is important, because people buy what they want even before they buy what they need. Don't believe that's true? Look at all the poor people eating crappy food, living in a crappy house, but watching a really nice TV fed from their satellite and NFL package. Almost everyone you know has bought something they really wanted, even at the expense of something they needed. It's just the way most people are wired.
That is the largest secret to success in business, weather online or off, yet far too many people try to force it the other way. They try to get a product then find the market. That seems like way too much work to me, when there is much more effective alternaitve.
You also have to put yourself in the mind of your customers. What would they want? How would they want it, and how would they see the most value in what you have to offer. Put it another way - how can you seem the most valuable in your solution to their problem, and then actually provide that value, and more? Answer that question correctly, and money won't be a problem again.
How to do research on a niche? There are many ways, but here are some - You can look to see how many magazines there are on a subject. Magazines on unpopular subjects don't sell very well, and therefore don't stay on the market very long. The reverse is true too. Many magazines mean that not only is the subject popular (here is the important part) people are willing to pay for information on it. Typically, it means that people also buy products in the niche besides the magazine itself, since most magazines are advertiser supported and advertisers won't place ads very long if their ads aren't profitible.
The preceeding paragraph is very important. You need to look at markets where people are proven to spend money, preferrably on products or services that you'll be selling. If people are already spending money, half your battle is already won. Competition only means that there are people spending money there now, so don't let it scare you. On the contrary, it means you're barking up the right tree.
Look at the Amazon.com best seller list too. Again best seller means a large amount of money is being spent already.
These may not be the best methods to use if you're bent on trying selling in the Guru dominated, IM product niche. You should be well aware that there are many more niches that are potential gold mines. You owe it to yourself to look for one of these.
After your preliminary research you want to determine one other thing; how much competition is there in your market? While you can make large amounts of money in any hungry market, choosing an under served market is much better, especially if you're just beginning your IM journey..
Remember, you don't just want to find niches people are interested in, you want to find niches that people are willing to pay for information in. It's all about solutions, really. You need to be a solution provider. The more critical the problem or the more people really want something, and the more you can help them scratch their itch, the easier your road will be.
*
A key step in your research is to determine how many searches people are doing each month on the search engines. Wordtracker and Google trends work great for this, and they are free, or have free versions.
You'll want to see how much competition there is in a niche, too. One way is to see how many advertisers there are on Google Adwords for keywords and phrases related to the niche. If there are Adwords ads 5 pages deep in the search engine results pages (SERPS), and you notice that the same advertisers are there, week after week, chances are they're making money, or they would be running those ads for weeks on end.
Another trick is to see how many competitor's sites and blogs there are that rank for the niche related keywords and phrases. You can do that by using Google to see how many results are returned for the term in quotes. For example, if you're looking at setting up a campaign in the fly fishing niche, try a search for "fly fishing rod reviews". That gives a pretty good idea how many competitors there are.
To find out how many of them are really serious about getting ranked for pages about fly fishing reviews, you'll want to see how many of them actually titled their pages with that keyword phrase. To find that use an allintitle query in google, again with quotes. You'd type (allintitle:"fly fishing rod reviews") into the serch box (no parentheses)
For you, a lower number is better, because it means there are that many fewer sites you'll have to beat to get to the top of the search engines.
Step 2
Once you have a hungry target market all researched, you can begin step number 2; find something to sell them. You can choose a product or service, physical or virtual. You really have a few key decisions to make in this step. Always remember however, that you have to know exactly what solutions they want, and questions they want answered.
Online there are many ways to find this out including what questions people are asking in forums, on blog comments, sites like Yahoo Answers, and looking to see what sells best right now on Amazon. As I mentioned before, don't forget A.com.
Do you want to market a product or service?
-The advantages of a product are that once it's created it can be sold by the creator (you?) or any one the creator gives selling rights to, for as long as the marketing is successful. The disadvantage is that it has to be created. If it is a physical product it needs to be stored, inventoried, and distributed.
-The advantage of a service is that it doesn't have to be created. The vendor (you, the business owner) can simply begin providing the service to clients.
Examples of popular services that people that work on line from home online provide are web development, search engine optimization (SEO), marketing, business and/or marketing consulting, copywriting, and accounting / financial planning.*As a few people here at WF have discovered, many offline businesses know next to nothing about this, and will be happy to pay for some expertise, if they see an attractive ROI.
If you choose to market a product, do you want to develop your own product or market someone else's?
Pros of developing your own product -
Your own product will give you complete control of every aspect of it (because after all, it's yours), including pricing strategy, advertising and marketing strategy, the content, quality, and function of the product itself.
Your own product will allow you to retain as much of the profit as you want. You can keep it all or trade some of it away as an incentive for others to market your product by creating an affiliate program. There are many examples of successful marketers giving lucrative commissions if they are selling digital or virtual products.
In fact, this strategy, affiliate marketing, is one of the proven paths to online marketing success (from either side; you can be the affiliate or use affiliates to sell your products. Many successful marketers do both). Paying a portion of the product in exchange for marketing is the way you develop a large, commissioned sales staff. They only get paid when the product is sold, so it costs nothing out of your pocket.
You own it in its entirety. This is the most important aspect of creating your own product. All the other advantages flow from this.
You build the customer list, potentially one of the most valuable parts of your business, especially if you decide selling the business is part of your exit strategy. A customer list is highly valued by others because it is a list of actual buyers, not just leads of people that have signed up for a newsletter to receive some sort of free gift. The free info seekers have value as well, but nowhere near as much, after all they are not proven buyers in the niche.
Here is another secret to Internet marketing success, in fact some would say THE most important one - Your list members can (and definitely should) be marketed to on an ongoing basis. You're building a relationship with your list members that can make you money for years. It typically takes from 5 - 8 contacts with a prospect to make a sale, so don't neglect this.
You'll use a service called an autoresponder to build your subscriber base. When a customer enters their information in a form (usually in exchange for some sort of consideration) they will receive the information or newsletter they requested and the service will add their email to the list and do the list management.
Getting the most out of your autoresponder is an art in itself. The two main ones used by online business owners are GetResponse and Aweber. I use GetResponse and it works very well, but you'll find other warriors say the same about Aweber. Look on the forum for help with this if you need it.
NOTE: Make sure you have different lists for your buyers and your freebie giveaway list joiners. This is known as segmenting your list. The narrower your segments, the closer you'll be able to track variables, and the more accurately you'll be able to target your offers and marketing materials.
Another Note About developing your own product: You have the ability to begin with very limited start up costs, but typically no matter how lean your operation, there will be some marketing costs. Remember something too many new business owners forget; your time has value. Why spend your time doing something you could easily get done for a few dollars, when you could outsource that to someone with more expertise, and spend your time doing something more productive. It took me a while to learn that, but it was a valuable lesson.
Cons of developing your own product -
It takes time to develop your own product
You may not have the expertise or writing skill to develop your own product. You can outsource this if you have the resources, or you can use Private Label Rights (PLR) or public domain content as the basis for your new product. You can modify the PLR or public domain into entirely new content, but always remember to add value.
You have to deal with customer support issues, such as customer service calls, returns, and refunds. This can be expensive and time consuming, depending upon the type of product you develop.
There are ways to mitigate much of this, such as automating much of the CS process, outsourcing phone and other support tasks, using fulfillment centers, using print/produce on demand services, and over delivering content to minimize returns, but such things can never be completely eliminated. The skill at which you address customer service issues will go a long way to determining the ultimate success of your business.
If it's a physical product(s) you may have warehousing, inventory, and fulfillment issues to deal with. Again, you can mitigate some of these issues by using drop shippers, print/produce on demand services, and fulfillment centers.
Some of the disadvantages of actual product development can be mitigated by outsourcing if the funds for doing so are available. For example, you can outsource the entire product creation if you've found a hungry market, but lack the expertise to develop a quality product fill their needs. This will result in a quicker time to market and a (usually) high quality product.
There are many opportunities for outsourcing all or part of the product creation process. You could also outsource the entire thing, or only a portion, such as photography, graphic design, or audio/video creation / editing. If your product is a piece of software, and you're a developer, you could develop the software yourself, but outsource the documentation.
Pros of marketing someone else's product / service as an affiliate - Basically the advantages and disadvantages are the reverse of selling your own product / service.
You have no support issues because you actually don't sell the product(s) yourself, you simply refer customers to the vendor's website and are paid a commission on any sales, or in some cases, leads your referrals generate.
You have the ability to begin with very limited start up costs, but just as with selling your own product, you can spend significant marketing funds. Pay per click advertising is an example of a strategy that can work very well for an affiliate, but can bleed you dry in about a day if you don't know what you're doing.
Cons of marketing someone else's product / service as an affiliate -
You have no control over the product / service you're marketing. Although there are many advantages to just being able to begin marketing without any product development costs or time, or any customer support concerns, the disadvantage of having no control over the products is a major disadvantage indeed.
*
Imagine - You've just spent weeks or months doing all the things it takes to become successful at an affiliate marketing campaign. These include developing and fine tuning your marketing efforts (You have to develop your website(s), put your advertising in place, get back links to your site, publicity, and any other supporting content, test everything, test it some more, and get any marketing agreements in place that you may have supporting your efforts) - only to have the vendor either change the payout (these rarely change for the better), go out of business, drop their affiliate program, or drop you as an affiliate. Ask any affiliate marketer, this happens all the time, for a variety of reasons.
Another disadvantage to being an affiliate is that you have terms you must agree to that restrict how you can market the products. These can be almost nonexistent, or can be very restrictive. For example, they can tell you what keywords you can't bid for in PPC advertising campaigns, what marketing methods you can and can't use, and what the ad copy must / not say.
Using Fulfillment Centers and Drop Shippers -
Fulfillment centers are businesses that do your warehousing and shipping for you. Drop shippers are basically the same thing. They are wholesalers that have products to sell that you can buy at wholesale prices (naturally).
The process works like this:
You have an online store with products for sale
A visitor to your web site finds a product they like and orders it.
The order is processed by your site's back end order processing system, the customer's credit card is charged, and the order is sent to a drop shipper. You can set this up so that the invoice they send has your logo and information on it and that it looks just like it was actually shipped form your facility. After the customer's card is processed the money is deposited in your business bank account by the credit card processing company you use.
These are just a very few of the basics for you to consider when getting started online. There is so much more it boggles the mind, but this is the place to find it. It can seem a bit overwhelming at first.
Just remember to do the one thing that too few marketers do when starting out (or at any time in their business), write an actual plan. You can always change it, but if you have a plan you'll at least be able to follow some sort of map to keep you from one of the other main pitfalls marketers face; getting sidetracked.
I can add much more to this later, but my fingers are a bit sore already. Time for a nice Latte.
After all, you're probably following a few hundred people already that aren't doing squat for you.....