Complete newbie wanting to learn internet marketing badly!

Clarity is a HUGE part of IM success. I hope this post brings some clarity. It's so simple when you know it -- and darn difficult when you don't! I owe my mentors a world of thanks for bringing this clarity.

IM is actually pretty simple: you can sell only one of two things:

1. Products
2. Services

That's it!

And selling products or services online happens in the same basic way for everyone, no matter what they're selling:

Traffic > Opt-in page > Autoresponder series (or e-zine) > Sales page

That's it! It's just that simple. (We IMers tend to overcomplicate things.)

But no matter what your niche is, or whether you're selling a product or a service, do you know what your business model is?

A business model is the framework or skeleton of your business. Essentially there are three types of online business models:

1. Membership-based model

A membership-based business model allows you to build a community of people (your members) who are as passionate about your subject as you are. Your membership fees can be monthly or annual, but either way, you're building recurring, passive income.

There are a lot of resources and information out there to help you build a membership-based business if you're interested in doing this.

2. Product-based model

Selling products allows you to maximize your time and effort by selling items over and over again. This can be hard goods or it can be information products. Information marketing is it's own business model under the product-based model. Information marketing allows you to take your brain to the bank by creating a product ONCE based on what you know and selling it over and over again.

3. Service-based model

Selling services can be great for 1) generating quick cash (as in the case of article writing or video producing) and 2) establishing your expertise and getting testimonials.

However, in the long run, your goal should be to offer services at a PREMIUM. The biggest advantage of IM is LEVERAGE. You're able to leverage your time, money and expertise exponentially online. We all have just 24 hours each day. Time to get ruthless about what you expect for those hours you spend in IM each day. Expect more of yourself and more from your business friends, clients, partners, etc.

What results are you getting for those hours you spend online each day? Ultimately, your services should be at the bottom of your funnel and cost the most since they involve your time and personal attention. (We all have a limited amount of time each day.)

The fun (and confusion) comes in with all of the endless mix-and-match possibilities of the above models. If you're just starting or still struggling to make money, keep it simple:

Affiliate marketing falls under both models. You can choose to market either products or services as an affiliate.

Pick just ONE!

1. Pick ONE niche. (Something you're interested in and know something about.)

2. Pick ONE target market for your product or service. (Who will buy what you're offering? The more specific you are, the more you narrow it down, the more successful you'll be.)

3. Pick ONE business model.

Now that you're clear about what business you're in, FOCUS! (And stop buying any info not related to your niche and target market, period!)

F -- Follow
O -- One
C -- Course
U -- Until
S -- Successful

And remember: build a list, Build a List, BUILD A LIST!

In IM, it's easy to put the cart before the horse. Take a deep breath, step back and consider what type of business you REALLY want. Don't worry about getting traffic or buying that expensive traffic product until you know 1) what your business model is, 2) what niche you're in and 3) WHO your target market is!

Successful business people will tell you that MARKETING is more than half the effort that's needed for success anyway. So pick a niche, target market and business model. Then spend most of your time and effort marketing it.

If you DON'T have a solid plan or system, THAT'S when it's hard. A good system will shave YEARS (and save you big $$$) off of your learning curve

That's why I recommend investing in at least one good, comprehensive IM course (or mentor who will give you such a system) instead of jumping from one $37 e-book to the next. A lot of people here complain about not being able to make any money. But neither are they willing to invest in their business. (Buying a random bunch of $37 e-books doesn't count.)

The best thing I ever did was invest in a comprehensive IM course aimed at REAL business owners, not just other IM wannabes. Yes it was $1500. (It's no longer available.) But it was truly some of the best A-Z IM info I ever bought. Everything else I've learned (from the $37 e-books) since has simply been plugged into this system.

My two best recommendations for phenomenal IM training programs are Ali Brown's Elevate program (ElevateBizTraining.com) and Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula (ProductLaunchFormula.com)

Get a solid plan or system and then work the plan!

Hope this helps!

Michelle

There are 2 niches right there. If you are an experienced fisherman you could create a fishing blog and promote fishing products on your site. You can also review products such as poles, lures, and other fishing gear. The fishing niche is full of hungry buyers that want to be the best. It's all about the big catch. You can also find affiliate products on Clickbank to promote. Build a mailing list within your blog and promote to your list.

The same goes for raising chickens. Research these two niches I am sure you can find ways to profit in these niches.

Best of luck!

First of all, thank you for saying so much about yourself on your first post.

Well it seems that you got information overload. Let me give an advice my friend..

For 2 years I was jumping from one method to another, got so overwhelmed
and never managed to complete anything.

I liked all the methods but all I was doing was nothing.

find 1 method that you feel it'll work and work on it. find something
YOU WILL ENJOY DOING.

If you find a job (niche) that you love then you wont have to work at all.

And the secret is to FOCUS ON ONE METHOD.

Good luck my friend

Great info in this post -

First off, welcome to the journey and one of the most important things I would tell you is to have the right expectaions that this will take time ( I see you mentioned that in your post ) but wanted to reinforce it.

Having the right mindset is a huge key. And I'm not just talking about being positive. I'm talking about being coachable and taking action on the things you learn.

A lot of people make the mistake of becoming full-time students and never implement. You need to make mistakes AND learn from them.

Once you decide on your area of business focus, you should figure out what traffic method you want to focus on...and FOCUS on that. Content, article, video, social media, etc...

Don't make the mistake of doing one for a few weeks, and then trying another and then another. You will get no where. Pick something that interests you (video as an example) and start learning how to master that.

Last thing I will say is don't make the mistake of letting your ego get the best of you. Nothing wrong with trying to learn things on your own, in fact it's one of the best ways to learn, BUT when you get stuck get help. Ask for help.

I hope that helps!

Take the "IM" elements out of it and its nothing more than a normal business

1. Have an Idea
2. Make the investment (Time or Money)
3. Set yourself apart from competitors
4. Supply the Best Customer experience possible
5. Profit

start small and grow, there is no need t dive into the deep end if you cant swim.

you identified 2 niches that you were intrested in and 2 types of marketing. So where can you seperate yourself? What can you give me as a customer? Are you an expert? While IM is easy, it can be overwhelming. Just go one step at a time with it.

this is YOUR business and you need to work to make it successful.

WF is awesome and people will help any way they can, Just ask. We're all here to help one another.

Great advice Nightengale. WorkingProgress should do just fine if he/she follows your advice.

I thik it's all about learning the basics, if you know that then the information overload won't be a problem.

You can take up blogging but you'll still need to drive traffic and have an offer to sell, and Seo isn't the most reliable.

The basics are pretty simple:
-> Set up a sales funnel
-> Drive targeted traffic to that sales funnel
-> Test and tweak until it becomes profitable

I know this might seem a little vague, but if you have read a good amount of posts on this forum you should have an idea what this is all about.

Right...

No offense, OP, but I seriously doubt you're currently at the stage to be considering setting up a membership site or even embedding aWeber into a squeeze page.

So, despite the well-intentioned advice, why don't we give you a model you can actually do, eh? The trick at this point:

Prove to yourself that you can make some money.

It's terribly important for a newcomer like yourself to do just do that, make some cash. Part of your brain right now is in doubt: can money be made, can I make money, are these people just selling dreams? You need to demolish those doubts. And the only way is to . . . make some money.

I'll give you a really simply system. Some of us are making over $100K a month with this, those who've scaled it up, but all I suggest you do is hope to make 100 bucks a day.

1. Join a CPA.
2. Choose an email / zip submit offer.
3. Buy a relevant domain.
4. Get cheap hosting.
5. Install Wordpress via cPanel.
6. Make a simple 1-page review of your CPA offer.
7. Make simple videos in Windows Movie Maker
8. Learn how to rank videos based on keywords
9. Upload.
10. Upload 5 videos a day or more.

You'll have to do some research on those 10 steps, of course, I don't have time to explain them, but trust me on this: They work.

Those email / zip submits pay you between a buck and 12 bucks. Most pay around the 5 buck mark (until you start shifting traffic). So at 5 bucks a pop, you only need to send 20 joins a day. With some hard work, a newbie can do this within 30 days.

Research:

1. CPAs
2. Making simple review page in WP
3. Ranking videos in YT, Google, Yahoo, Bing.
4. Writing ad copy.

Work hard and you'll make money with that.

GRM

Affiliate marketing usually does not stand alone anymore. Blogging and affiliate marketing can go together. Use the blog to draw traffic and monetize it with affiliate programs.

Buying traffic for affiliate offers is another option, but extremely high risk for newbies.

The best thing you can do right now is think of a site/service/product/whatever that you wish was yours and then research what it would take to build something similar. If you can name something I'm sure the forum can tell you the basic steps to take.

Hi there, Workingprogress

There's some good advice in the responses already. I think you're making a smart move looking into making an income online.

Lots of the responses are focused toward selling something. You can also give away free information and monetize a site through ads. Google Adsense is one of the most well known examples. There are plenty of others. You can also (and I recommend in most cases) blend all of these. Banner ads, CPC ads and affiliate programs. This helps you earn from your traffic in multiple ways.

I wrote a blog post about how to earn money by blogging but I don't want to spam this forum with links so if you're interested just click the blog link in my signature.

Here's something else for you to consider. If I were in your place and had a sense for adventure (I'm not sure how your anxiety would deal with it, or what your anxiety is about) I would seriously consider getting on a plane, bus or driving down to Naples, FL and getting a job serving in a decent restaurant. Snowbird season is here, and it's going to be a big one because of all the weather up north. Servers can make $200-300 per day in season (Now through April) and right now everyone is hiring. Many places no experience is required, just a good attitude and being able to be presentable.

That's a short term $ in your pocket idea. While you're doing that since its service industry you won't have to work too many hours to make the $ and you can work on your own projects in the mean time.

As far as your ideas for things online. Chickens are cool. I want to have some one day. But what can you sell online that people buy for their chickens? Not much. Maybe you can connect to some people who are preppers and sell them all sorts of other stuff but it's not a direct connection. I think it's a soft market and personally would stay away from it because of the amount of work and not very large return potential.

What's fishing like in KY? Is it big year round? Do you have the time and money to buy products, test them out and write quality content about them? I think this is a huge market, but quality, knowledgeable content is absolutely the key.

You might also consider putting your anxiety to work for you. A site / blog about your path on working through anxiety and natural remedies you're trying - which work and which don't - be it breathing methods or supplements etc. I think it would make it really easy for you to share the message and connect with people on other forums, blogs, etc. This is part of who you are it sounds like, so sharing your real life experience is authentic and makes it easy for people to connect with you.

Whatever ideas you come up with, just make sure it's something you really want to do and will stick with. I've failed on that myself just because I had "shiny new toy syndrome" and all it did was cost me time, energy and money.

This is just my ideas from what I know. Some of these other methods to earn $ may work well also, but I'm not familiar with them. I'm not saying don't look into them too.

Lastly, don't go spending a ton of money on anything at this point. You can seriously get started with your domain name and a website for around $5/mo with a quality hosting provider. You can get enough info online by searching or asking questions. Buying anything right now is going to be a waste of $ for you. Learn first, generate income and then consider paying for more education.

Good mourning everyone. WOW at all of these responses. I really hope I can get something going here with all of this information. I'm going to spend some time reading and trying to soak all of this in. May even print some off and read over it that way. I will be responding back soon. Thank all you all so much for taking the time comment in my thread. I'm looking forward to the days to come and hope i can get something started

If anyone has any other suggestions then feel free to comment. thanks everyone!

Great post. I really liked all of the valuable info here and would like to thank everyone 2. I'm born and raised in Kentucky as well & can relate to the situation you are in (though I'm at work right now). The sky is truly the limit if you have the right niche/right audience & would recommend the fishing niche if that is something you love to do anyways. Just get somebody to help you build a good website & use adsense, amazon, related ads & maybe even clickbank to make money. Add 3-4 articles a week for 6 months to a year & you should start making some sales. This is the true way to make money online along with the tips listed above & if you "focus" on one thing long enough, it will pay off in the end

Invest on 3 main things:
1 Domain
2 Hosting
3 Autoreponder

Next is to figure out what solution you can provide your market (assuming you already know your market) like an ebook, video or freebie in exchange for them to give you their emails and become subscribers.

Have your autoresponder have about 10 followup emails giving more solutions to their problems, using your affiliate products.

Now here is where it gets tricky because people dont buy products, but people buy people they trust.

Having said that, its very important to build relationship your subscribers then giving them what they want can be free and upselling them what they need to make their goals a success becomes easy.

This is simple basic marketing.

Joe

Hi workingprogress,

Two of the best pieces of advice I've read are two things I would also suggest.

They are:
1) Use one or both of your hobbies/interests as the niche(s) you will work with, at least in the beginning. Go to Clickbank.com, do a bit of research, and find some good products that relate, and promote them as an affiliate.

You'll want to start out first by becoming engaged in conversations with people of similar interests, on forums about those interests.

After you build a little rapport with the group(s), then you can gently ease into recommending things that you promote as an affiliate ("Hey, I found something you guys might want to check out")

You should be sure to read the rules of those forums, so you don't break their terms of service by blatantly posting affiliate links. There are free courses you can read, to tell you the best way to go about the whole process (again, research).

This method will put you in that desired position of doing something you love ("find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life").

2) Focus on one thing. The number one thing that keeps people from getting anywhere at making money online is paying attention to ALL the offers that marketers are constantly coming out with, that tell you that if you buy it, you'll make lots of money.

That might even be true, but if you don't stay focused on one thing, you will most likely get nowhere.

By the way, the fishing niche is big. If that's what you love doing, get involved with some forums about fishing, and take it from there. Once people come to see you as 'one of the guys' they'll be open to suggestions you make about products. In fact, they will appreciate them.

Lastly, keep in mind something a very wise man (Zig Zigler) said: "You can get everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want."

So it shouldn't feel like 'selling'....it should feel like recommending something good to a friend, something you know they'd like and/or benefit from.

You say you're a newbie. If you're unsure of all that's involved in working online, then you definitely need something to bring you up to speed.

Send me a private message, and I'll tell you about a free video course that will educate you about everything you need to know before you dig in.

Best wishes for you to turn your situation around.
Phil Wilkinson

I suggest you choose a niche first that you are passionate about and start a blog
like on blogger.com and write on some topics about the niche and sign up
with affiliate networks like Clickbank and search for offers in your niche,
You can then put your affiliate links on your blog. You can then share your blog
on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter etc

Jens is right.

Start with the basics. In Internet marketing the basics is called a sales funnel. Check out http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...step-step.html

I want to thank everyone for the advice that's been given here. I'm taking my time and reading this carefully and trying to understand it. Hopefully I'll start getting some ideals for long and won't be so confused with this stuff. I'll be posting back soon with some questions. Thank you everyone for trying to help this clueless newbie.

Hi, welcome to the worriorforum

You are going to be offered a lot of advice, and different methods from this thread, and they might all sound attractive.

A lot of newbies jumps from one method to method, starting over every time, and eventually not really getting anywhere. So my advice to you is this:

Pick ONE method and stick to it and work CONSISTENTLY to reach your goal, and never give up!

It is a great tribute to the awesome people that make this their frequent stomping grounds. Here is to you all Warriors!

Your best bet is to stay away from clickbank products as your teacher. Do not spam emails or social sites for quick sales. And don't quit your regular job until you are able to due to your online business.

You do want to hang around this forum to learn from real marketers. Opt-in to lists to see how the funnels work (not to buy) and look for a mentor that can take you by the hand and show you how to get from point A to point B with proven results.

Hi and welcome to the forum!


Basically, just follow the advice of Nightingale and you'll be fine!


Pick one niche. Use one method. Stay focused and work on it untill you succeed. It may take a month or it may take a year but you WILL get there if you stay focused and TAKE ACTION!


Best of luck!


-Martin Sand

And this is the precise problem with IM. There's so much of knowledge, formulas, tips and information, that you get lost in the maze and just keep moving in circles. As Nightengale said in the opening comments, clarity of thought is a must. Otherwise you are going nowhere.