How To Catch That Elusive Wealth - A Few TidBits I've Learned In The Past Decade

Warriors,

Roughly ten years ago I was banging my head against the wall because I was barely making over $100 a month trying this online marketing thing. I had been at it for months, owned a few courses, even spoke to a few well-known marketers over the phone, yet those elusive profits never seemed to come my way.

I can empathize with many people when they write here that they've been at this IM thing for a long time and haven't seen any success, as they define it, yet. I'm going to share with all of you EXACTLY what turned it around for me and I'm not just going to share just MINDSET stuff (though it's critical) I'm also going to share a couple things that anyone can do if they set their mind to it.

One immutable truth that I've learned in business is that you can give people the best system or course in the world and only a few will run with it and make it work. Yes, there's a lot of garbage out there. Yes, you sometimes have to buy a few courses in order to get the whole "big picture", but ultimately it's we who are responsible for our own actions.

Here's some of what I've learned over the years and I truly hope it helps at least one of you:

Tidbit #1)). Niche Research Made Easy

I own a lot of courses on how to do niche research, some of them good, some of them not so much. After being involved in a variety of niches there are some that will aways be profitable: weight loss, exercise machines, anti-aging products, dating (how to find a mate), pets, weddings, etc. Why? Because new customers are being born / made every single minute. Even if there are a ton of competitors there's always a way to differentiate yourself.

I was told not to jump into the dating niche back in 2004 from a well-respected marketer because his logic was that if he couldn't make it work there was no way I could make it work. Well, that didn't make sense to me because I saw advertising for dating products targeted to men in Playboy, Maxim, and yes, the Internet. Somebody was making money!

So I found a few affiliate programs to dating ebooks, sent some PPC traffic to them, and though it took about 2 months, I finally found one that converted well enough to make me a little profit (it was under $100 a month but it was something!). Notice how this took a lot of work and did not happen overnight. But during those two months I learned A LOT about PPC marketing.

Today when I want to decide what niche to jump into I come up with a handful of niche ideas and then use a keyword tool to come up with some basic keywords. I then type that keyword into Google, Yahoo, and Bing and I see if there are people advertising. I do this with SEVERAL keywords so I can see if there is a pattern. Today you have tools that can do all this for you, there are countless threads about them so I'm not going to mention them here.

People don't believe me when I tell them this is how simple I've made my niche research. Once I decide on a niche / market, I perform some pretty intense market research (buying competitor's products, joining their lists, checking out their affiliate programs, etc.).

Lastly, I've found my most profitable niches by simply asking people what their hobbies and interests are.

Tidbit #2)). How To Compete In Virtually Any Market

Distribution Channels can make you rich. That's not hyperbole but a fact. I compete in one very competitive niche simply because the top companies in that niche do not release effective press releases. In fact, they rarely have any press releases.

So after I conducted my basic niche and market research, I released a few press releases with the guidance of a PR expert. I did this once a week for about 1 1/2 months (again, notice this was not a fly-by-night test) and then my phone rang with an offer to appear on a UK reality show! But what was just as good as that, if not better, was the traffic I was getting to my low-tech squeeze page. Sales weren't great but I was making sales.

You can compete in a lot of niches if you simply write 2 articles a day, consistently. I'm not going to get into the specifics because there's a lot of article marketing info in this forum already. That's only one distribution channel. You can compete in a lot of niches if you buy small amounts of traffic, find the right conversion mix, and then slowly scale it up. Whoever said you have to buy 1,000 or 10,000 bucks worth of advertising? You don't.

I see a lot of people talk about article marketing, but I've never seen anyone talk about grabbing a copy of the 2010 WRITER'S MARKET and driving traffic to their website writing content for offline publications. It's not easy, but it's also another distribution channel. For those of you that are not afraid of selling yourself and your product and don't mind doing a lot of leg work to get the word out there, RadioPublicity.com might be another way for you to get the word out.

Here's a real gold nugget for you: if you want to succeed in competitive markets have a better back-end strategy than the other guy. In the dating niche I now market over 30 products to my list over a period of 6 or so months. Most of them are not even mine (ten are, the rest aren't). I sometimes take a loss on the first or second product, depending on what distribution channel I'm using, but I know I'm going to eventually make a profit! I give my list great content in the form of articles, podcasts, and free reports (hint: people love short reports that give out USEFUL information).

If you don't have at least ten products in your back-end funnel you're insane. Granted in some niches you might not need to do this, but no matter what niche I'm in I go OUT of my way to do this.

Tidbit #3)). Focus Your Efforts On Incoming Producing Actions

My first year in IM I spent at least 20 hours a week on things that didn't make me money. I spent too much time reading and research. I spent too much time on forums. I spent way too much time playing around with my websites (blogs didn't even exist back then).

What I should have been doing is finding markets, testing them, creating products or marketing other people's products (affiliate marketing), promoting my websites each and every day I was working, and I would have seen success much sooner. To be honest, there were days when I would just stare at the screen because I thought I didn't know what to do next. Looking back, I did know what to do, I was just letting fear and uncertainty hold me back.

Tidbit #4)). Get Rid Of The Noise

This one is also huge. "Noise" is anything that can distract you from what you need to get done that day. In my case, ten years ago, I stopped hanging around negative people. I literally stopped watching television. I dumped the unsupportive girlfriend and I spent less time with family members who thought I was crazy. It was very hard for me to not go out on some Friday or Saturday nights with my friends because I knew I had to keep a self-imposed deadline. When you want freedom bad enough you will do nearly anything to get it.

I actively began looking for others in IM to learn from and that made a huge difference in my life. Sure, I got burned just like a lot of people here, but that didn't stop me. I just kept on going.

I knew I had enough IM products in my hard drive, so I stopped buying more stuff and focused on what I already had. I knew it would be months before I bought any more courses because I had not applied what I already had.

I've got a ton more tidbits and I'll write some more later, but this should be a good start. Everyone in here has the ability to make money. A lot of it. You just have to focus on the right things.

RoD

P.S. Don't forget to donate blood! Hospitals always need blood donors. It's easy, painless, you get free juice, and you can possibly save someone's life.