Some advice for someone getting started please?

First of all hello and welcome

As you will see I am new to this forum too, although I have been dabbling in IM for a couple of years.

In my opinion far too much credence is lent to keywords and Google rankings. Of course it is great to be on page 1 and it will of course bring traffic to your site but it isnt the only string to the IM bow.

A strong marketing strategy should include article writing, social media activity, forum activity, a healthy mailing list and affiliate program. Add a blog to that as you are set. Of course you have to actually put the plan into action and not spend hours worrying over your web page design to the extent that the marketing suffers. That has been my mistake (plus choosing a niche that isn't very attractive ... death and dying).

I am not sure how technical you are, but I discovered that installing a wordpress blog using Fantastico was easy and got me a web presence in less than 10 minutes. The great thing about Wordpress is that it has so many add ons and templates you can make your blog more individual. Even if you decide to go with a full blown website, it wont hurt to have a blog as well and the main thing about a self hosted blog is it will give you a web presence while you research your options without the restrictions associated with sites like Squidoo and Blogger.

As for your product development, I am sorry I cant help there, but am sure others will, there seems to be a massive skill base here.

Hope you love it here as much as I do (Oh and dont do what I am doing .. procrastinating by reading forums)

A: In my opinion, keyword research is important. You can identify keywords used by a group of people with needs and problems relevant to those keywords. You can also pinpoint keywords which are relevant to the immediate needs and urgent problems of a group of people more than willing to buy products/services/content which could provide them with benefits in terms of solving their problems and satisfying their needs. You can then pinpoint keywords which are the actual ones used by people in a particular market group when they are ready to purchase such products/services/content, opt in to receive beneficial content/products/services, download content/products/service brochures or click ads (CPC) and complete offers (CPA) as well as become your affiliates and sell your products/services for commissions per sale. At this point, you can identify competitors offering the same target market group with similar products/services/content and determine the benefits lacking from their products/services/content and incorporate those lacking benefits into your own products/services/content to offer the target market group added value not found elsewhere. You can then learn about the strength of your competitors, where they market, where their backlinks and ads are found, etc. Then, you can determine which heavily trafficked sites and pages accept content contributions from users with links and banner ads. You can also pinpoint site owners with massive mailing lists of responsive people included in your target market group. You can negotiate affiliate offers, content exchanges for ad placement on their sites/pages/newsletters, private ad space rentals and so on.

A: Most hosting service providers have helpful sales, tech and customer support agents. You can ask them in detail.

A" Is it a .NET, C++ or C# application? I don't quite understand your hesitation, if you're referring to a desktop app which could be sold on the Internet, or a desktop app which can be converted into a Web-based app, because, in both cases, it can be done, initially for a fixed membership/consumer base which you can ramp up as you earn since you'll be able to hire other people with suitable skills to help you out by then.

A: In my opinion, info or advice is something which needs to be analyzed, compared against facts, incorporated with inferences, tested, test results compared and analyzed then reformulated to constantly improve it for optimal benefits for everyone involved and again observed for perpetual development. If you have time, you can read my sig below to learn about how I started without a website, without keywords, without a business email domain, without anything even remotely close to an info product from an IM guru or god or whatever (not that I'm saying these couldn't be helpful, just my experience), without any capital investment other than my own time and skills, without an office but just our house, without SEO/SEM/IM knowledge, with just me and my wife, without virtual assistants, a year after being gunned down twice, permanently rendering me as a totally blind 23-year old father and husband living in a developing third world economy.

No. If you are that far down the list traffic is going to be slim to none.

This part depends on your niche and if those page views from other sources convert.

Does your niche have a related forum that will allow you to promote your site? A lot of forums aren't IM friendly. Don't think you can just sign up at any ol' forum and pimp your stuff.

Article marketing for traffic works for some while others use it as a source of backlinks. It's not my cup 'o tea.

Problem here is you are at the discretion of the person making the spam or not call. If they are having a bad day, didn't get laid last night or simply don't like the font your using they can flag you as spam faster than you can say I'm an expert with a PHD! Using blogger or a free host is a use at your own risk decision. I wouldn't leave my money maker in the hands of another especially when picking up a domain and hosting are so cheap. Most new marketers can get the cheapest plan available and upgrade when they need to.

Honestly, it's idiot proof. I still have accounts with godaddy so I'll give my girls a shout-out. If you're going with a wordpress installation, they have an easy button for that. There are plenty of people here (and previous posts) on how to set stuff up.

The advice of getting a mentor is highly recommended. I do not know where you are based but you can look for a local Warrior meeting in this forum. Socializing with other Warriors would be one way to pick up knowledge and get advice.

You have come to the right place to get the knowledge for internent marketing. There are some very good WSOs for really low $$ and so it is well worth getting some of these to help you get started quickly and help you decide which method best suits you to begin with.

The problem can be; you can be spoilt for choice but considering the thousands I have wasted in the past before I came here, I would say the the offers you get between $5 and $27 here are excellent value and worth snapping up even if you do not use them all (which will happen again for me). I am looking forward to trying out some new techniques as these offers are teaching.

Depending on your budget you will find you can get cheap hosting and websites built for you here or directed to outsourcing. If you have a good idea and want to implement it fast and do not have the technical knowledge yourself then I would say get it going and learn where to get things outsourced. I would say that this is better than sitting on a good idea while you learn the technicalities to do it yourself. Some of the most successful internet marketers cannot do the basic technical stuff themselves.

Thanks for the replies.
I have been thinking some about a mentor, though before i seek one out i want to try out my current plan for a short while, with the next step being to abandon blogger and set up my own site.

It's as of currently Ruby and RubyProcesing and intended as a desktop application, i've never written code for anyone else or intended the code to run on any computer other than mine, so wrapping it all up into a nice user friendly executable in addition to finding some e-retailer/shopping system to sell it via and whatnot feels like quite a challenge. Of course i know it can be done, but as to how much time and effort it will require i'm clueless, and i'd rather not start to focus entirely on a 10 month project now thinking it's a one month project. Of course i have to start working on it to ever get it done, but i'd prefer to have short term projects done before the long term ones.

I guess that at my current stage, doing is better than planning, a bad start is better than no start after all.