[My 5000th Post] Seven Easy-To-Understand Steps To Making Money

Four years in IM has taught me a lot about this business.

In most ways it is no different from a brick and mortar business. The guts are identical. You still need to get people in the door, and convert them into buyers.

Note those two simple steps.

Traffic and Conversion are the two things you need to get good at. Not "master," I didn't say that, but get good at.

Many tactics are lying around to use in the pursuit of traffic and conversion. Don't mistake them for being anything more than they are:

An incomplete piece of the puzzle, and NOT a "business in a box" (no matter how well marketed as such.)

As another marketer pointed out in a different thread yesterday--much to my surprise, as I had pretty much rolled along making the exact same error in my write-up there--learn the difference between a strategy and a tactic.


Now to strategy.

Here, in plain English, are the elements of what you need to build a real business:

1. You need to be able to solve a problem for some people.

2. You need to know where that specific group of people are.

3. You need a way of getting in front of those people, or a way to draw them from where they are to where you want them (ie. your website, forum, landing page, whatever.)

4. You need a method of capturing leads so you can identify and continue to market to them.

5. You need a way of qualifying them as either potential buyers or non-buyers.

6. You need a method of converting qualified potential buyers into sales.

7. You need a delivery method for giving them your solution.

That's the process. Everything else is window-dressing.


I'm not a young guy, so flashing pictures of Ferraris and sunny tropical islands never did much for me. Instead, I share what I experience on the ground in the real world of marketing.

And what I've experienced is that it's a fool's errand to concentrate on the technology.

Figure it out in English (or whatever your native language is) FIRST...then plug in the syntax of how you're going to accomplish that with technology.

Technology is glue. Apply it last.

Lead with it, and you'll end up with sticky fingers and a mess.


Two more relevant posts totally relevant to IM (the first contains the secret about why getting started is SO DAMNED HARD; the second shows you why having a money target is probably the most important thing you can do for yourself--because "as much as I can get" is no target at all and a dead zone for cashflow):

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...1-2-years.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ess-model.html

These posts together are an MBA in startup business. As others have pointed out, you won't get that info anywhere else, and certainly not for free.