If I knew then what I know now - let's help the newbies

I don't know whether or not I could be considered a newbie but I definitely get stuck on this.

I think that is exactly my problem right now as a newbie

Dee, great idea for a thread!

I would have spent less time chasing the money and more time finding ways to provide value and give people what they're already looking for. Once I really "got that" the money started flowing a lot easier.

Wendy

EXACTLY.

however no matter how many times you tell people they still do it.
i did. but now i have written a small book about that exact topic.

kinda got it off my chest.

phew,

now on to real work.

rob

Pretty much.

Wow, so very true Gary. Great advice!

Wendy

When you say this, what do you consider "success"....any money at all?

I'm just getting started here and I gotta admit, it's not very motivating to hear that it will most likely take at least 6 months to make any money at all. I REALLY hope what you said here is just your opinion and not the norm.

So ah, Keith, what was the mistake you made?

Dee

This was my downfall too. Starting to think of yourself as being in business rather than goofing around 'trying' to make some money online forces you to take it more seriously and complete projects to the point where they are profitable.

I also made the mistake of not getting into a mentoring program. It took me two years to learn myself what I could have picked up in a few months from a good mentor.

As a newbie to both this forum and the world of IM, I'd just like to say thanks for these tips, they have certainly made me think in order to get myself up and running.

Dawn
(P.S Sorry for the N/A everywhere - I'm currently on a PC that has most common sense things disabled on it )

Mistermint, you mentioned that your biggest mistake was not cloaking your affiliate links properly. Thats the area that I am starting to look at right now. What do you suggest as the best way to cloak affiliate links??

Biggest mistake was buying the "next big money making guide" and was wasting all my money but never taking action. Many of the guides actually out there will work if you stick to it, that's just the problem though. Taking action is the first big hurdle but then you have to keep yourself from getting distracted by the next "guru" craze over the next big guide.

Just stick to a system and don't read any of your emails, this is what I finally started doing and I found myself getting a lot more work done.

Never, ever, ever try to game the search engines. As many resources as you can throw at Google in at attempt to game them, they've got more to throw right back at you and send your sites to page 7 gazillion hell.

Treat the search engines right and they become your best customers.

Also keep in mind: search engine robots don't have Credit Cards or PayPal accounts. Your visitors have those and the only way you can get them to use them is to offer value on your sites.

No matter what niche you market in, your traffic is looking for information. Information to make a buying decision, information to justify a buying decision or information to cancel a buying decision. Information.

Offer that and the search engines will reward you and your traffic will buy from you.

It's called "just freakin' DO IT!" because if YOU don't, nobody else will do it for you.

Work towards making it happen....best of success to you!

I just read Steven's post and noticed that he's posted over 12,000 posts. I can't even imagine...what an accomplishment.

* Get your landing page up immediately -- before you have a product ready -- and get that list going.

* Don't skimp on trying to find a free solution for everything. You're reinventing the wheel and you're wasting time that could have been spent on creating a product or marketing. "Time is money."

* Don't get distracted every time you see a new business model or WSO. Stick to your projects and see them through. Once they are off the ground, go ahead and start something else if you are so inclined. But don't neglect something for the sake of something else.

* Don't over-analyze things to the point where all you are doing is research. Get busy on those blogs, sites, ebooks, audio, vidoe, whatever.

I also want to thank all of you for posting words of wisdom to those of us that are new. I am having a difficult time not getting stuck in the research, research, research rut. I just feel like there is so much I don't know. Perhaps this is where having a good mentor would be beneficial.

I too am stuck in the research mode. I feel as if everything has to be perfectly planned right down to the last detail before I launch my campaign. Thank you for letting me know that I am not alone in feeling a little intimidated. I WILL have a campaign up and running by the end of this month.

Aha! A question I actually know the answer to! lol this just means to put your keyword phrase in the title. As long as you keep the phrase intact, then yes, you should add words around it to make a better title. For example, if your long tail keyword is "train a dog to fetch", you could make a more interesting title like "10 ways to train a dog to fetch like a pro".

I agree with this right here. The biggest mistake you can make is being busy and not productive. (someone else said that earlier as well).

My mistake was distractions. My email was set to alerts, my IM window would keep beeping. My Skype, Iphone updates, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. were all keeping me from getting geared into work. And as soon as I did get geared, something else would distract me again.

Don't get distracted. Turn everything off, (including the phone) set a timer, and do not stop for a smoke, walk, snack, etc. until that timer goes off. Block your sites from showing up during that time, (gmail has this built in) and just WORK!! You will find yourself getting things done in hours what used to take you weeks.

And set goals. Have direction. And of course....

HAVE FUN!!!!!

Clarissa reminds me of another point.

If the techie stuff is getting you down and you're just not understanding how to do it or you don't have the time to do it:

* stop beating yourself up about it

* stop wasting time trying to learn it

* all of the time you are wasting could have been spent doing something more productive

* outsource it so someone who knows what they are doing can get it set up for you

* this frees up your time to do whatever you are good at -- creating products, marketing those products, etc.


You don't have to be a jack-of-all-trades in this business.

Another mistake I made was avoiding setting goals and breaking the goals down into action plans. (How many times have I told our business plan clients they need to do that lol) I'd have it in my head but not put it on paper

Then I'd get distracted and not do what needed to be done to achieve a goal.

Right now I'm working on breaking into CPA. I'm a writer so promotion through articles isn't difficult for me. I selected a CPA offer in weight loss because I can write weight loss articles in my sleep at this point. I came up with a set of action plans that i do every day.

Every day, I write an article. Post it to my blog. Ping the post. Socially bookmark the post using socialbot or onlywire. The next day I submit it to ezinearticles, articlemarketer.com and use articlebot. I use my keyword phrase as the link to the blog in the author bio. I research the next day's keywords for the next article and so it goes.

I like static sites better than blogs so my personal finance sites get the same treatment. I found a CPA offer. Write an article using the keywords in the title of the article, once in the first paragraph and once at the end. I upload the article to my site using the keyword phrase in the meta title of the html page, in the meta tags, and as the <h1> title. I ping and bookmark. Submit it to ezinearticles and so forth.

Every day. It takes about an hour and half. And it works. I'm getting paid for CPA leads and I've doubled the traffic on two of my sites in about a month.

Dee

I didn't read all the treads so someone may have already said this, but I would have spent less time trying to make a bad niche good. I would have sent a couple hundred visitors to a product page in a niche, if I didn't have a sell I would have been looking for another niche and product.

Clint

Clarissa said: dee do you write the blog post about the cpa offer or something general and you just put the cpa link in your resource box when u submit the article to ezines?

The blog/website is focused on the cpa offer. I'll use weight loss as an example. I'll write about the product in pretty objective terms. What it is, how it works, why it works, benefits, and a bit about the negative aspects. The CPA offer is in the blog post/web page with text links and with small banners.

I link to my blogin the bio box of the article using my best keyword phrase. I want my blog/website to pop up on the first page when anybody searches for that keyword phrase.

The article uses a different but very related keyword phrase. I don't use the same one because I don't want my article competing with my blog/website. I'd much rather have people go right to my blog/website than to my article and then to my blog/website.

Dee

Hi Lyn,

A business model is basically what type of business you are trying to create and run. It's how you are trying to make money online. For example, creating adsense sites and driving traffic to them to generate clicks and earn money as your primary business is one model. Another model is creating niche sites and blogs to drive the sale of affiliate products. Another is creating and marketing your own products. Yet another is driving traffic to CPA offers. Another could be a service business such as ghostwriting. And the list goes on...

A very common mistake people new to marketing make is trying to do it all and learn it all. I was guilty of it myself for years, I had more projects going at once than I could even keep up with. It all looks so appealing because there are so many people out there making tons of cash doing it but the big aha is that none of them would be making that kind of money if they tried to do it all at once. They pick one thing to focus on and get really good at, then only once they have that down and are making good money doing it do they look into related models.

Pick one model such as affiliate marketing, or product creation and pick a method to promote it such as article marketing or social networking and get really good at that. When you break it down like that you only have a few things to learn to make money. For instance if you are going to use article marketing to drive traffic to your blog which then promotes affiliate products, you only have to get good at writing effective articles, spotting good affiliate products, and posting to your blog. Basically just become good at writing. Then once you have that down and you are getting some results, try adding more traffic methods such as social networking, etc one at a time until you are getting all the traffic you need. This may seem like it will take longer but the fact is that you will start getting results faster if you concentrate on little things until you have them down. Once you are making good money at affiliate marketing then maybe go into product creation by creating a product on affiliate marketing teaching others what you have learned.

An analogy I like to use is throwing rocks. If your objective was to knock a hole in a wall, do you think you would get through that wall faster by throwing a hand full of rocks all at the same time and hoping they hit it hard enough somewhere to put a hole in it, or throwing one rock at a time and getting really good at hitting the same spot over and over until a hole forms?

I'm not saying the examples I gave are the best to start with, just saying whatever method you are most interested in, get good at that first before you even think about doing anything else. Most methods work if you get good at them one at a time.

A great tip that helped me is that when you are reading your emails or surfing the latest greatest sales pages, or whatever, don't pay attention to anything that isn't going to pertain directly to what you are doing right now. If you get sidetracked on the newest guru gadget, ask yourself "Is this going to help me right now to get better or faster results with what I am currently doing?" If the answer is no, move on and forget about it. It will only become more noise in your head confusing you more. You can't implement everything at once so why learn it all at once?

I hope this has helped some, I know I tend to be a bit long winded. If you have more questions feel free to PM me.

Hi Jim,

Probably the best Adwords product I have read is Perry Marshall's Ultimate Guide To Google Adwords. It will teach you everything you need to get started in Adwords and it's a good read. It will also teach you how not to lose tons of cash in adwords. You can pick it up at Amazon for around 20 bucks.

Hi All,

This is a very interesting thread. It would be great if ll the newbies and beginners like me would drop by and see some of the good advice given here.

From reading through the posts, the main points seem to be:

• Have the correct mindset, dedication, and focus
• Learn what you need to get started....then get started!
• Build a business plan so you have direction.
• Find something which works for you. Not only in terms of your product or method of promotion, but also in terms of whom you listen to and the help/subscriptions you purchase. It's easy to be swayed by the latest offer. (ref: another post in this thread "...find a mentor and Do what you are told!")
• Accept that perfection will only come from revising, rewriting, tweaking and repeating.
• Accept that failure should breed success. So true in this business. When you have that failure, that's when the mindset and dedication need to click in. "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again"

I would also like to add a comment about how much time it all takes. I don't mean how much time it takes to be successful, but the time you need to spend on a daily basis, even with just one IM project in place. Be warned, you will need to commit a substantial amount of your day to your IM efforts. There is no doubt that time input is heaviest at the beginning of your project, as you research and research and find yourself up against lot of brick walls.

Cheers,
Tanika

Mavis,

Have you found paid dvertising to be the best source of traffic for you?

I assume you also use free methods like article writing etc...and of course building you list along the way.