Free Internet Marketing Advice For New Marketers
I just recently joined Warrior Forums a few weeks ago and am very impressed with the community here. Although I do not have time to contribute on a daily basis, I will definitely contribute when I can.
In the last few days , I have read quite a few threads about people that have quit their day job to become an Internet Marketer and are now going broke and some are even facing bankruptcy. I personally hate to see this and I feel very sorry for the people that are in this situation. I think a big reason is that people are misinformed and are not guided in the right direction.
Another large problem that the Internet Marketing community is facing is that the FTC is really starting to regulate online businesses of all sorts. New online marketers are starting to get shut down and some even fined for unethical business practices. If things don't change soon, all internet marketers will be forced to fill out tons of paper work before starting an online venture which nobody wants to do.
So this is what I am going to do. I am going to give a short, informative tutorial that is intended to help ALL internet marketers. I am going to gear it towards new marketers that are confused and can't seem to find the help they need but the more experienced marketers should gain some value out of this as well. If you are someone who has quit their day job and are running out of options, please pay careful attention.
I am not doing this to try and make a profit off anyone. In fact I am not even going to try and sell you anything. This is completely free and is only intended to help you. I enjoy helping people and feel that if everyone gets the right guidance the marketing community will thrive and create many new opportunities.
The fact is, it is very difficult at first to make money online (no matter what anyone tells you). It takes a lot of hard work, persistence and dedication to learn the ropes and find a suitable niche market. I am going to explain the core fundamentals as well as teach you a few of the tricks I have learned over the years. If you are not willing to put any work into it, don't even bother reading this and go buy a lottery ticket.
I can promise you that the information I am going to give you is accurate, honest and will point you in the right direction. I am sure other experienced marketers will vouch for it as well. Consider this a free e-book
I will start off with my story.
My name is Ryan Smith and I am currently 21 years old. I live in Calgary, AB, Canada and am a full time Internet Entrepreneur. When I was 16 I made a blog through school just talking about sports which was my main hobby. What I would do is after a game (hockey, baseball, football etc.) I would right a blog post about what I thought of the game. I would also upload some of my favourite sports clips from around the internet. It started off that it was just my close friends that knew about it and they would comment on each of my posts. Then they would tell a few friends and slowly it started to expand. I then decided to put adsense on it and actually made a little bit of money right away. (few bucks here and there). I started going to forums and telling people to visit my site for daily sports updates and started to get a small community within about a month. My adsense cheques started getting bigger and eventually I was making around 30 - 40 dollars a day which was quite a bit of money for a 16 year old in high school.
I thought I had the internet figured out and my plan was to create more blogs. I knew that this was going to be my career and started to drift away from school. Then I made the biggest mistake in my life and decided I no longer needed high school and dropped out.
I started 4 or 5 new blogs all on different subjects and instantly put adsense on them. Since I was working on so many different things, I did not update my blogs as often and would just make up content. Eventually I started to lose people following my blogs and my adsense cheques slowly declined until I was only making a few dollars a day agian. Forums started banning me because I would spam them with links to my blogs and soon I had no more traffic.
I did not know what to do and knew I had made a huge mistake my dropping out of school. I spent many sleepless nights worrying about my future and developed a bad case of anxiety.
I ended up getting a job at a mechanic shop as a labourer and worked there for about 8 months. Every day I seen 60 year old men grunting and aching as they crouched under trucks. It was evident that they hated their lives and they always told me that I was stupid for taking the career path I did. They encouraged me to go back to school but school just wasn't in my interest. I went through a state of depression and avoided all of my friends and family. I was disappointed in myself and felt like I had already failed at life.
When I was 17 I was on eBay buying things I didn't need and noticed that there was a large price difference between different sellers selling the same item. I didn't understand how that was possible so I started to really look into it. Sure enough I found tons of items that had different prices from different sellers.
Since I needed a pair of sunglasses anyways, I purchased the cheapest ones I could find and got them for a low price. I then became a seller and pretty well copied the ad of the original but raised the price 10 dollars and put it back on the market. Within a day the item sold and I just gave my customers address to the original seller and kept the extra 10 dollars. I started doing this a few times a week and was making pretty decent money. I quit my job and started doing it full time. After about a month I was making around $500.00 a day. I started working 30 hour days (literally) and would only sleep for 5-10 hours in between. I was constantly watching auctions and testing out different sales copies. The best part about it is, I never had to touch a product. I could do it all from my computer. (a few never sold and I ended up having to pay and keep the products).
At my peak I was making about $1500.00 a day and I was only 17 years old. I learnt a lot about internet marketing and was writing my own ads for the products. Doing this taught me the core values of internet marketing.
After about 6 months of doing that, I was tired of being the middleman and wanted to sell my own products to make more money. Many people were catching on and doing the same thing on eBay and the market started getting saturated.
I started looking around for useful products I could buy in bulk and sell for cheap. I found a website where Chinese factories posted products and anyone could buy from them. I decided that I was going to get into the health and beauty industry and sell self help products. I found a Chinese company that sold natural health products (pills) and would label and bottle them as well.
I designed a label and ordered 2500 bottles of Gingko Biloba. (memory enhancer) . I used a black bottle with a bright silver label to give it an aggressive look. I had all bottles sent to a fulfilment center in Florida so I did not have to handle the orders. I designed my own website and made a solid sales page.
I mastered Google Adwords and had many other different advertising techniques. I also utilized affiliate networks to get like minded people promoting my product. By the time my 18th birthday came around I had already grossed over a million dollars and put around $300, 000 in my pocket. I leased my first office and hired a team of 4 people. And that's were it all began.
I starting selling many other different self help products and entered many different markets. (hair loss, diet, anti-aging, herbal teas, etc.)
Today I am in various different industries and have become very knowledgeable on how the internet works. I employ a team of 26 people and am making a very decent living.
I understand the struggle of making money on the internet. I know that it doesn't come easy but when it does come, it is very rewarding. Unfortunately I never had a mentor to show me the ropes and therefore I made many mistakes that not only costed me a lot of money, but lots of time.
I see the mistakes that many new Internet Marketers are making. A lot of successful marketers try and profit of the newbie's instead of helping them and don't realize it affects them in the long run.
Since so many internet marketers are given wrong advice and take the wrong path, they end up using unethical business practices to promote their products. This is starting to give our industry a bad reputation and people are becoming very sceptical when buying anything online. Internet Marketers are focusing on short term profits instead of long term because people are telling them to.
I have seen some examples in this forum of people that were told they can easily make millions of dollars online. A lot of these people quit their jobs and now no longer have money and some are even facing bankruptcy. I have a lot of sympathy for these people because they simply were pointed in the wrong direction.
These struggling internet marketers end up panicking and most set up fraudulent websites to try and steal money to pay their bills. It's a vicious cycle to be involved in and can be hard to get out.
Can you really blame these people? Sometimes yes but most of the time no. You have to blame the people that wrongly taught them.
Internet Marketing is starting to get a bad reputation and the FTC is really clamping down. If current trends continue, it could be very hard for internet marketers to continue making a living and set up new businesses.
Something needs to change.
I am going to share with you some of the techniques I have learnt over time as well as a few of my core values.
What Makes A Good Internet Marketer?
The first thing you need to understand is that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. It's a proven fact. There is no business school or E book that can teach some one to be an entrepreneur. It's impossible.
Entrepreneurship is something you have to find deep within yourself. You need to dig down inside and "light the fire" inside you. You need to motivate yourself and rely ONLY on yourself to do so. You cannot expect someone else to motivate you. Your friends will most likely doubt you because nobody likes to see someone succeed. All humans are programmed to love the exact same thing. Money.
Nobody likes the thought of someone getting money when they are not. It makes them jealous as well as makes them feel like a failure themselves.
Many people will tell you that you have a bad idea and it wont work just because they don't share your vision. Your vision can only be seen by you. When you have a dream, it is impossible for someone else to be able to clearly see the same dream. (even your spouse, brother, mother etc.) No matter how hard you try and explain your vision to someone, they will not understand it 100% which will raise doubts in their mind.
That being said, sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea. I have seen many people spend thousands and thousands of dollars they don't have chasing a dream that logically doesn't make sense. No matter how many people tell them it wont work, they continue investing more time and money at the expense of themselves and their families.
Before you start chasing a dream, set boundaries for yourself and make sure you never cross them. If an idea isn't working after 6 months, maybe it's time to change it up and start on something else.
How to make money online?
The internet is the largest marketplace in the world. There are unlimited possibilities of ways you can make money online.
Some of the most popular ones are:
-EBay
-E Books
-Affiliate Marketer
-Sell your own products
-Create a blog or informational website and sell ad space
I am not going to go into detail about each of these markets, but if you are interested in learning more, feel free to PM me.
The question I get asked most often is "how do I get leads to my website".
There is really no "secret formula" that will work with every website . What may work for one product, may not work so well for another. That is why you need to experiment with many different traffic techniques until you find the one that is most effective for your specific product or service.
The most practiced way to get traffic is SEO. SEO is great because it is free and can bring in very targeted traffic from the search engines. Many new marketers struggle with the basics of optimizing a website and are intimidated by they hype on how difficult SEO really is.
The fact is, SEO is really not that hard. It does take quite a bit of time but if done right, can be very rewarding. Here are a few tips on Optimizing your website:
1. Research what keywords you will be targeting using many free SEO services. There are plenty of free tools available on the internet that can give you the information you need. You do not need to buy a "magic SEO software" because it is most likely the same thing as the free services on the web. Try to target long tail keywords. Instead of "weight loss" try "loosing weight fast this summer". High traffic keywords such as "weight loss" are very competitive and you probably will not get within the top 5 pages.
2. Have keywords in mind before writing your content. With that in mind, do not put your keyword in every second sentence. Although this may get you better rankings, your message will not make sense and it will sound spammy and pushy. A healthy keyword density is 2.5 - 5 percent. If you can achieve and maintain this, you will naturally start ranking higher and start receiving targeted traffic.
3. Do not put irrelevant high traffic keywords into your website just to get traffic. If you are selling shoes and rank high for keywords like"Ipad" or "Nude Girls" you will frustrate many people. Someone who is mislead to your website will just click away and have a bad taste of your company. Next time that person is looking for a new pair of shoes, they will probably just avoid your website.
4. Have a company blog. The best way to get fresh content that the search engines love is to create a blog on your website and update it on a weekly basis. I am surprised by the amount of people that do not do this since it has so many great benefits. When writing your blog, do not try and sell your product or service. People see and read enough sales messages throughout the day and are not interested in reading more in your blog. Talk about things that people would actually want to read. Make it more personal as opposed to professional.
5. Get back links. I have seen thousands of programs that can promise an X amount of quality back links that don't deliver or won't help your SEO ranking. When building back links, try and find a relevant, high traffic website that already ranks high in the search engines. Don't try and get your established competitors to post links to your site because they will most likely not. Instead, find informational sites that are related to your offer and send them an email. Let them know that you will post a link back to their site as well.
6. There are companies out there that will optimize your site for you and get your back links but it is usually expensive. If you find a website that is promising you the first page of Google for $10.00, chances are they are just going to take your money. In my experience a reputable SEO company that will give you good results will cost around $1000.00. If you have that kind of money, I would give <a href="http://wpromote.com">Wpromote.com</a> a try.
Another effective way is to pay for your traffic through PPC and similar advertising companies. PPC is very targeted but it is expensive and depending on your product, you may not see a high ROI. I have ran many offers using Google Adwords and have had mixed results. Some campaigns will bring me a 6% conversion rate and some will bring me a 0%. It all depends on what you are offering and how you are selling it. Squeeze pages and eBooks tend to not do so well with PPC. Many marketers will waste thousands of dollars on PPC with no result.
My advice to you is if you are going to try PPC, DO YOUR RESEARCH. I would not recommend any eBooks on Adwords since you can get all of the same information on the internet for free. Also, always test different ads going to different landing pages. I usually start with 5 ad campaigns that would appeal to me and try them out. I then change the two campaigns that are performing the least and try and make them more effective.
Since Google Adwords has the largest reach of all the networks and has "laser line" targeting capabilities, it also has the highest price. There are plenty of other reputable PPC networks out there that can target your audience for much cheaper. A few of my favourites are Pulse 360 and CPX Interactive. These networks are very strict on who they take and if your not an established player in your industry you will probably not get in.
Another effective paid traffic source that is much cheaper is Sphere Marketing Group They sell targeted potential customers for a set price which is a great way to get a few quick sales. My conversion rate using them is not as high as it is with Adwords or Pulse 360 but it is 10 times cheaper and I always turn a profit.
Another great way to get traffic is by article marketing if done right. There are plenty of free article directories out there including <a href="http://articlebase">Article Base</a> and <a href="http://ezinearticles.com">Ezine Articles</a>. When writing your articles, don't make them spammy. If you write an effective article that is enjoyable to read, the reader will usually click on the link in your signature to read more on that topic. Articles that have your company link every paragraph will not be as effective.
I am a strong believer in outsourcing tasks that you are not good at or don't have the time to complete. There are thousands of companies on the internet that offer services that just don't deliver. I am going to list off a few companies that myself and other marketers have found effective that will help you become more successful in internet marketing. These are not affiliate links and I am not affiliated with any of the companies that I list. These are only to assist you if you need it.
SEO tools: (keyword analyzer, keyword competition etc.) http://tools.seobook.com
PPC (established companies): Pulse 360, CPX Interactive
Paid Traffic: Sphere Marketing Group
Email Marketing: iContact
SEO Service(if you have the money): Wpromote
Press Release: Pr Log
I will be writing another post similar to this that will through ally cover email marketing and ethical business practices. Depending on the comments I get from this post and my next one, I may share a few more tricks I have learnt in my years of Internet Marketing. I am willing to help anyone who is willing to help themselves. If you would like some advice, feel free to PM me.
Thanks,
Ryan
In the last few days , I have read quite a few threads about people that have quit their day job to become an Internet Marketer and are now going broke and some are even facing bankruptcy. I personally hate to see this and I feel very sorry for the people that are in this situation. I think a big reason is that people are misinformed and are not guided in the right direction.
Another large problem that the Internet Marketing community is facing is that the FTC is really starting to regulate online businesses of all sorts. New online marketers are starting to get shut down and some even fined for unethical business practices. If things don't change soon, all internet marketers will be forced to fill out tons of paper work before starting an online venture which nobody wants to do.
So this is what I am going to do. I am going to give a short, informative tutorial that is intended to help ALL internet marketers. I am going to gear it towards new marketers that are confused and can't seem to find the help they need but the more experienced marketers should gain some value out of this as well. If you are someone who has quit their day job and are running out of options, please pay careful attention.
I am not doing this to try and make a profit off anyone. In fact I am not even going to try and sell you anything. This is completely free and is only intended to help you. I enjoy helping people and feel that if everyone gets the right guidance the marketing community will thrive and create many new opportunities.
The fact is, it is very difficult at first to make money online (no matter what anyone tells you). It takes a lot of hard work, persistence and dedication to learn the ropes and find a suitable niche market. I am going to explain the core fundamentals as well as teach you a few of the tricks I have learned over the years. If you are not willing to put any work into it, don't even bother reading this and go buy a lottery ticket.
I can promise you that the information I am going to give you is accurate, honest and will point you in the right direction. I am sure other experienced marketers will vouch for it as well. Consider this a free e-book
I will start off with my story.
My name is Ryan Smith and I am currently 21 years old. I live in Calgary, AB, Canada and am a full time Internet Entrepreneur. When I was 16 I made a blog through school just talking about sports which was my main hobby. What I would do is after a game (hockey, baseball, football etc.) I would right a blog post about what I thought of the game. I would also upload some of my favourite sports clips from around the internet. It started off that it was just my close friends that knew about it and they would comment on each of my posts. Then they would tell a few friends and slowly it started to expand. I then decided to put adsense on it and actually made a little bit of money right away. (few bucks here and there). I started going to forums and telling people to visit my site for daily sports updates and started to get a small community within about a month. My adsense cheques started getting bigger and eventually I was making around 30 - 40 dollars a day which was quite a bit of money for a 16 year old in high school.
I thought I had the internet figured out and my plan was to create more blogs. I knew that this was going to be my career and started to drift away from school. Then I made the biggest mistake in my life and decided I no longer needed high school and dropped out.
I started 4 or 5 new blogs all on different subjects and instantly put adsense on them. Since I was working on so many different things, I did not update my blogs as often and would just make up content. Eventually I started to lose people following my blogs and my adsense cheques slowly declined until I was only making a few dollars a day agian. Forums started banning me because I would spam them with links to my blogs and soon I had no more traffic.
I did not know what to do and knew I had made a huge mistake my dropping out of school. I spent many sleepless nights worrying about my future and developed a bad case of anxiety.
I ended up getting a job at a mechanic shop as a labourer and worked there for about 8 months. Every day I seen 60 year old men grunting and aching as they crouched under trucks. It was evident that they hated their lives and they always told me that I was stupid for taking the career path I did. They encouraged me to go back to school but school just wasn't in my interest. I went through a state of depression and avoided all of my friends and family. I was disappointed in myself and felt like I had already failed at life.
When I was 17 I was on eBay buying things I didn't need and noticed that there was a large price difference between different sellers selling the same item. I didn't understand how that was possible so I started to really look into it. Sure enough I found tons of items that had different prices from different sellers.
Since I needed a pair of sunglasses anyways, I purchased the cheapest ones I could find and got them for a low price. I then became a seller and pretty well copied the ad of the original but raised the price 10 dollars and put it back on the market. Within a day the item sold and I just gave my customers address to the original seller and kept the extra 10 dollars. I started doing this a few times a week and was making pretty decent money. I quit my job and started doing it full time. After about a month I was making around $500.00 a day. I started working 30 hour days (literally) and would only sleep for 5-10 hours in between. I was constantly watching auctions and testing out different sales copies. The best part about it is, I never had to touch a product. I could do it all from my computer. (a few never sold and I ended up having to pay and keep the products).
At my peak I was making about $1500.00 a day and I was only 17 years old. I learnt a lot about internet marketing and was writing my own ads for the products. Doing this taught me the core values of internet marketing.
After about 6 months of doing that, I was tired of being the middleman and wanted to sell my own products to make more money. Many people were catching on and doing the same thing on eBay and the market started getting saturated.
I started looking around for useful products I could buy in bulk and sell for cheap. I found a website where Chinese factories posted products and anyone could buy from them. I decided that I was going to get into the health and beauty industry and sell self help products. I found a Chinese company that sold natural health products (pills) and would label and bottle them as well.
I designed a label and ordered 2500 bottles of Gingko Biloba. (memory enhancer) . I used a black bottle with a bright silver label to give it an aggressive look. I had all bottles sent to a fulfilment center in Florida so I did not have to handle the orders. I designed my own website and made a solid sales page.
I mastered Google Adwords and had many other different advertising techniques. I also utilized affiliate networks to get like minded people promoting my product. By the time my 18th birthday came around I had already grossed over a million dollars and put around $300, 000 in my pocket. I leased my first office and hired a team of 4 people. And that's were it all began.
I starting selling many other different self help products and entered many different markets. (hair loss, diet, anti-aging, herbal teas, etc.)
Today I am in various different industries and have become very knowledgeable on how the internet works. I employ a team of 26 people and am making a very decent living.
I understand the struggle of making money on the internet. I know that it doesn't come easy but when it does come, it is very rewarding. Unfortunately I never had a mentor to show me the ropes and therefore I made many mistakes that not only costed me a lot of money, but lots of time.
I see the mistakes that many new Internet Marketers are making. A lot of successful marketers try and profit of the newbie's instead of helping them and don't realize it affects them in the long run.
Since so many internet marketers are given wrong advice and take the wrong path, they end up using unethical business practices to promote their products. This is starting to give our industry a bad reputation and people are becoming very sceptical when buying anything online. Internet Marketers are focusing on short term profits instead of long term because people are telling them to.
I have seen some examples in this forum of people that were told they can easily make millions of dollars online. A lot of these people quit their jobs and now no longer have money and some are even facing bankruptcy. I have a lot of sympathy for these people because they simply were pointed in the wrong direction.
These struggling internet marketers end up panicking and most set up fraudulent websites to try and steal money to pay their bills. It's a vicious cycle to be involved in and can be hard to get out.
Can you really blame these people? Sometimes yes but most of the time no. You have to blame the people that wrongly taught them.
Internet Marketing is starting to get a bad reputation and the FTC is really clamping down. If current trends continue, it could be very hard for internet marketers to continue making a living and set up new businesses.
Something needs to change.
I am going to share with you some of the techniques I have learnt over time as well as a few of my core values.
What Makes A Good Internet Marketer?
The first thing you need to understand is that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. It's a proven fact. There is no business school or E book that can teach some one to be an entrepreneur. It's impossible.
Entrepreneurship is something you have to find deep within yourself. You need to dig down inside and "light the fire" inside you. You need to motivate yourself and rely ONLY on yourself to do so. You cannot expect someone else to motivate you. Your friends will most likely doubt you because nobody likes to see someone succeed. All humans are programmed to love the exact same thing. Money.
Nobody likes the thought of someone getting money when they are not. It makes them jealous as well as makes them feel like a failure themselves.
Many people will tell you that you have a bad idea and it wont work just because they don't share your vision. Your vision can only be seen by you. When you have a dream, it is impossible for someone else to be able to clearly see the same dream. (even your spouse, brother, mother etc.) No matter how hard you try and explain your vision to someone, they will not understand it 100% which will raise doubts in their mind.
That being said, sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea. I have seen many people spend thousands and thousands of dollars they don't have chasing a dream that logically doesn't make sense. No matter how many people tell them it wont work, they continue investing more time and money at the expense of themselves and their families.
Before you start chasing a dream, set boundaries for yourself and make sure you never cross them. If an idea isn't working after 6 months, maybe it's time to change it up and start on something else.
How to make money online?
The internet is the largest marketplace in the world. There are unlimited possibilities of ways you can make money online.
Some of the most popular ones are:
-EBay
-E Books
-Affiliate Marketer
-Sell your own products
-Create a blog or informational website and sell ad space
I am not going to go into detail about each of these markets, but if you are interested in learning more, feel free to PM me.
The question I get asked most often is "how do I get leads to my website".
There is really no "secret formula" that will work with every website . What may work for one product, may not work so well for another. That is why you need to experiment with many different traffic techniques until you find the one that is most effective for your specific product or service.
The most practiced way to get traffic is SEO. SEO is great because it is free and can bring in very targeted traffic from the search engines. Many new marketers struggle with the basics of optimizing a website and are intimidated by they hype on how difficult SEO really is.
The fact is, SEO is really not that hard. It does take quite a bit of time but if done right, can be very rewarding. Here are a few tips on Optimizing your website:
1. Research what keywords you will be targeting using many free SEO services. There are plenty of free tools available on the internet that can give you the information you need. You do not need to buy a "magic SEO software" because it is most likely the same thing as the free services on the web. Try to target long tail keywords. Instead of "weight loss" try "loosing weight fast this summer". High traffic keywords such as "weight loss" are very competitive and you probably will not get within the top 5 pages.
2. Have keywords in mind before writing your content. With that in mind, do not put your keyword in every second sentence. Although this may get you better rankings, your message will not make sense and it will sound spammy and pushy. A healthy keyword density is 2.5 - 5 percent. If you can achieve and maintain this, you will naturally start ranking higher and start receiving targeted traffic.
3. Do not put irrelevant high traffic keywords into your website just to get traffic. If you are selling shoes and rank high for keywords like"Ipad" or "Nude Girls" you will frustrate many people. Someone who is mislead to your website will just click away and have a bad taste of your company. Next time that person is looking for a new pair of shoes, they will probably just avoid your website.
4. Have a company blog. The best way to get fresh content that the search engines love is to create a blog on your website and update it on a weekly basis. I am surprised by the amount of people that do not do this since it has so many great benefits. When writing your blog, do not try and sell your product or service. People see and read enough sales messages throughout the day and are not interested in reading more in your blog. Talk about things that people would actually want to read. Make it more personal as opposed to professional.
5. Get back links. I have seen thousands of programs that can promise an X amount of quality back links that don't deliver or won't help your SEO ranking. When building back links, try and find a relevant, high traffic website that already ranks high in the search engines. Don't try and get your established competitors to post links to your site because they will most likely not. Instead, find informational sites that are related to your offer and send them an email. Let them know that you will post a link back to their site as well.
6. There are companies out there that will optimize your site for you and get your back links but it is usually expensive. If you find a website that is promising you the first page of Google for $10.00, chances are they are just going to take your money. In my experience a reputable SEO company that will give you good results will cost around $1000.00. If you have that kind of money, I would give <a href="http://wpromote.com">Wpromote.com</a> a try.
Another effective way is to pay for your traffic through PPC and similar advertising companies. PPC is very targeted but it is expensive and depending on your product, you may not see a high ROI. I have ran many offers using Google Adwords and have had mixed results. Some campaigns will bring me a 6% conversion rate and some will bring me a 0%. It all depends on what you are offering and how you are selling it. Squeeze pages and eBooks tend to not do so well with PPC. Many marketers will waste thousands of dollars on PPC with no result.
My advice to you is if you are going to try PPC, DO YOUR RESEARCH. I would not recommend any eBooks on Adwords since you can get all of the same information on the internet for free. Also, always test different ads going to different landing pages. I usually start with 5 ad campaigns that would appeal to me and try them out. I then change the two campaigns that are performing the least and try and make them more effective.
Since Google Adwords has the largest reach of all the networks and has "laser line" targeting capabilities, it also has the highest price. There are plenty of other reputable PPC networks out there that can target your audience for much cheaper. A few of my favourites are Pulse 360 and CPX Interactive. These networks are very strict on who they take and if your not an established player in your industry you will probably not get in.
Another effective paid traffic source that is much cheaper is Sphere Marketing Group They sell targeted potential customers for a set price which is a great way to get a few quick sales. My conversion rate using them is not as high as it is with Adwords or Pulse 360 but it is 10 times cheaper and I always turn a profit.
Another great way to get traffic is by article marketing if done right. There are plenty of free article directories out there including <a href="http://articlebase">Article Base</a> and <a href="http://ezinearticles.com">Ezine Articles</a>. When writing your articles, don't make them spammy. If you write an effective article that is enjoyable to read, the reader will usually click on the link in your signature to read more on that topic. Articles that have your company link every paragraph will not be as effective.
I am a strong believer in outsourcing tasks that you are not good at or don't have the time to complete. There are thousands of companies on the internet that offer services that just don't deliver. I am going to list off a few companies that myself and other marketers have found effective that will help you become more successful in internet marketing. These are not affiliate links and I am not affiliated with any of the companies that I list. These are only to assist you if you need it.
SEO tools: (keyword analyzer, keyword competition etc.) http://tools.seobook.com
PPC (established companies): Pulse 360, CPX Interactive
Paid Traffic: Sphere Marketing Group
Email Marketing: iContact
SEO Service(if you have the money): Wpromote
Press Release: Pr Log
I will be writing another post similar to this that will through ally cover email marketing and ethical business practices. Depending on the comments I get from this post and my next one, I may share a few more tricks I have learnt in my years of Internet Marketing. I am willing to help anyone who is willing to help themselves. If you would like some advice, feel free to PM me.
Thanks,
Ryan
Please do not use affiliate links in signatures
Because it is the right thing to do