Help Needed !

Hi Gordon

How much have you made so far?
What actually worked for you, even though not in a huge way?
Who were your mentors?

The IM world has changed a lot over the last 5 years so don't give up now. The majority of us struggled in our early years but saw it through to succeed. You can to!

Some success mentors & systems are:
Chris Farrell
Matt Lloyd
Mark Ling (Affilorama)
Dean Holland
Clickbank University

All of the above have success systems that are newbie friendly & work as long as you take action & continually learn.

There are 100's of others too, many on this forum. I recommend you choose one, don't get distracted, unsubscribe to all other lists & follow it through until you are a success.

Cheers

Hi Gordon,

Well I see Done-For-You and the magic pushbutton riches system hasn't worked out for you.

From the past (at least) six years of experience, have there been any commonalities to take away from the systems you've seen?

1 > Solve a significant problem for a target market.

If you can get urgency in there, so much the better.

The "significant" part means they can buy a product at an investment which supports more than you just treading water. An investment that supports you buying more marketing help.

This is how you get ahead.

The combination of SIGNIFICANT and URGENT in your prospect's mind = willingness to invest heavily to get out of the situation.

I think you've been there yourself.

2 > Have a Lead Generation system.

As you've noticed, you need traffic. You can generate this over time yourself, or you can buy it.

The better you can pre-qualify your traffic, the better...but enough cold traffic will do the trick, too.

The big mistake people make about traffic is they never get a handle on how much they really need.

You can "back into" this number.

Instead of "as much as I can get" or "oooh this solo ad offer sounds good; I'll buy this random 1000 prospect list this one time"...how many people do I need to get into my funnel to generate the sales & revenue I want?

This takes time to figure out. You begin with an estimate and then adjust based on feedback from reality.

Let's say I assume I need 10 sales at $97 every month to make the almost-$1000 I want from this program. (I could use pounds, but you get the point, I'm sure.)

It's the start of this program, so I don't know how much traffic I will really need. But I can guess since I want:

10 sales

I will need

500 opt-ins to my funnel to convert at a hefty 2%

and so

5000 prospects to send to my opt-in page to get a healthy 10% opt-in.

*gulp*

Right?

Most people have never done an exercise like this. The 5000 figure, even though it's kind of pulled out of the air, is still much more realistic than the "as many as I can get" nonsense the bad marketer is trying. They will never, ever get to the 5000 traffic figure that's barely adequate to maybe get the 10 sales down the line--in fact, I bet they don't even get to 500 prospects at the start of their funnel.

Beaten before they begin.

> Have a Qualification system.

Once your prospect has opted in, they need to be qualified for your offer.

Hopefully you were able to pre-qualify at least somewhat with your traffic and opt-in page. You can buy access to opted-in email lists of people who have ALREADY bought a product like yours, though the investment is significant and newbies don't know and/or can't afford this--IMO this is your first big thing to save up for because it improves your conversions so much.

Then the opt-in page copy. This should sort people by those who have the problem your solution fixes, and who don't.

Those who don't should not be wasting your resources by signing up. They should be politely sent on their way. 100% opt-in is not the goal here! Quality over quantity in the funnel. More is not better. More skews your stats and makes you choose incorrect next steps.

Now your email series or further copy has the dual purposes of:

a) continuing to sort

and

b) exciting them to buy via an emotionally-based, logically supported process.

Have a Conversion system.

Here's where the selling takes place. But the job is easy if you've gotten enough good traffic and qualified correctly.

Conversion can occur in different ways:

- web page sales copy

- video sales letter

- application form followed by qualification call followed by sales conversation (could be two or three or even more steps)

as examples.

You can test which works best for your product. Generally, the higher the ticket the more interaction with the customer is required.

But there are always that handful of people who'll buy a vehicle sight-unseen over the Internet...and if you want to sort heavily for that small target market and make your money in a hassle-free, minimal-communication kind of way, go to it.

I hope this has been helpful for you.

The problem I see with what you describe is that your looking for a "system" instead of thinking about this like a business -- which is what it really is.

There is no "step-by-step", checklist or magic button. And you don't build a business by reading the instructions. Every business is different. Every entrepreneur is different. Customers, competition, and technologies change. No system is going to be able to account for that, at least with enough detail that it'll be useful. If you're lucky a system will bring you marginal success for a period of time before the next big thing (Google update, Facebook Edgerank tweak, FCC regulation, etc.) comes around and makes it obsolete. More likely, however, is that you'll just repeat your experience of seeing little to no success at all.

The thing is, however, that business is fundamentally simple: you find a way to provide value to customers, you find a way to monetize that value and you find a way to find those customers. And there are plenty of techniques that can help you achieve all of those things: some of those techniques might be timeless and some might only work for a short period of time; some you can learn from others, and some you might just have to invent yourself. But you have to piece those techniques (or invent them) yourself, nobody can give you an exact plan that's going to work for your very specific situation.

So if you're looking for a one-stop system that puts all of those techniques into a ready-made "system" for making money, you're most likely just find more disappointment. Yes, business requires hard work -- lots of it -- but it's also fundamentally a creative activity. You don't create great art by using Paint-By-Numbers kits and you don't create great businesses that way either.

Given your experience, Gordon, I'd suggest a squeeze-content hybrid model.

Essentially:

1. Determine market.
2. Select appropriate offers.
3. Put together a squeeze page with a blog on the back-end.
4. Grow traffic to the squeeze and to each content article.
5. Setup a sales funnel.
6. Re-market with your newsletter, and feed the blog.

If you start off with "free join offers," you'll start earning quicker. To drive traffic, and save money, use a combination of free traffic sources such as social networks, forums, and PDF sharing depositories.

What you have there is a solid little model. You'll make money very quickly from your funnel, especially with free offers, and you can re-market higher ticket offers. What you'll essentially be doing here is growing a business. You're growing a list and growing traffic to your content. Nice simple business, cheap to setup, easy to run, and with bags of potental for the short and long term.

Wish you all the best!

Tom

Start creating your own brand.

Like another poster mentioned, it's not the system. It's you.
There are people making money with all the systems you failed at.

Sometimes you have to be honest with yourself about whether you did everything it requires to make it successful, or were you just throwing money at the problem hoping someone would click your link.

My suggestion is to start create your own brand. That is where the long-term value is at. Build a tribe of people who follow YOU as a person, and sell them whatever will help solve their problems (whether that is coaching, an affiliate product, your own product, a biz opp, a network marketing company, etc.)

(here are some next level steps):

step 1: start a blog

This is your home base. All your content creation will go here, as well as your about me section, and any pages that promote your products/services/coaching.

Go to Hostgator or Bluehost, get hosting and a domain, and install WordPress. That process takes all but 10 minutes and you have your blog setup.

Learn the basics of WordPresss (not hard). There are tons of free videos out there.

Step 2: Build Your Email List

Building an email list with targeted prospects is the #1 way to create a fortune online.

Here's how it works:

- people visit your site
- they like your content, they want more, so they opt-in to your email newsletter
- you start to send them emails daily, but you don't sell to them in every email. Some emails are links to your new content (blog posts, videos), some are inspirational stories, some are case-studies about your products.
- your followers start to know, like, and trust you, so they buy from you

Step 3: Get more traffic

Once you have your system in place (blog --> collect emails --> email autoresponder --> build relationship --> sell) then you focus on scaling up and getting more traffic into your funnel.

Wow! you really got a lot of knowledge in different areas. I would suggest you focus on just one and stick to it until it becomes a moneymaker. Anything of value that you create can be marketable so just start and finish it. Then dive on to a next money maker.

Good luck but don't count on it. You got to take massive action.

Hi Gordon, I can feel your pain.

You may have tried many different things and didn't have much success (if any) with any one.

Your mindset regarding what you may have tried by calling some of them Pyramids won't help. I get the feeling that you are referring to the [make money niche].

You can never become successful with something that you don't feel good about yourself.

The ONLY person that needs to be sold (on any of these ideas) is you.

It doesn't matter what you are trying to accomplish, whether it's selling a product on Amazon, Click Bank, I tunes or even a make money business opportunity.

Success in all of these things comes down to the same thing...

It's a process.

A process that you learn how to generate 'targeted' traffic, leads and how to 'convert' those leads into sales.

Suggestions:

1- I suggest that you pick (1) product and 'stick' to it.

2- Traffic Strategy: Pick (1) that you feel you can do, learn it and 'Master' it.

3- Consistency: The only way to learn is by Doing. You will make mistakes along the way, learn from them, adjust and then correct them.

But you need to be 'consistent'. That is the only thing that ever worked for me.

Lastly...

How much time to do you devote [daily] to your IM Business?

1 to 2 hours per day can help you get results in 6 months or a year from now.

If you need results faster, 4 to 6 hours (or more) per day doing IPA's (income producing activities like traffic generation).

Training and personal development are needed (daily) for success but they have to be done in your 'down time' like listening to audios while commuting ETC.

Good Luck and I hope things turn around for you.