Internet Marketing with Josh SpauldingMaking Money through Ethical Marketing.

5 Steps to Internet Marketing Success

My good friend Mark Mason twisted my arm once again and talked me into doing a recorded call with him for his new PodCast he’ll be publishing soon (July 15th) on his “Late-Night Internet Marketing Podcast.” In that call we talk about 3 Steps to Internet Marketing Success and I liked the idea so much I wanted to write a blog post expanding on what we talked about in the call.

(Go to that URL and sign up for the PodCast though! Mark may not be a full-time Internet Marketer, but he makes a nice extra income online. I won’t disclose his offline income, but it exceeds my online income. So that may tell you why he is a part-time Internet Marketer

It didn’t take me long at all to come up with the 3 most important things you must realize in order to find success online, but once we were done with the call I realized I could have gone on and on and on about those things and I could have added to them.

As obvious as some of these may seem and as often as you may have heard others state the same thing, the following are EXTREMELY important points to understand if you want to find success online!

1. Pick an Internet Marketing Business Model and stick with it - Ask any “newbie” to Internet Marketing what his or her biggest problem is and 9 out of 10 of them will say “Information Overload.” The root of this problem almost always comes from one thing: The person not knowing which business model to adopt and/or trying to do too much at once. It is GOOD to diversify (which I talk about below) but NOT in the beginning.

You need to start out with one business model! It doesn’t matter if that model isn’t the most profitable. You don’t have to do that one model for the rest of your life. But someone who is just getting started is going to have a VERY hard time being successful if he or she is getting confused by trying to figure out multiple models at once, which WILL happen 99% of the time!

Instead, pick one model that seems “doable” and DO NOT even think about another model until you have figured that one out and had at least moderate success with it!

2. Don’t be afraid to invest in knowledge and tools, but be selective - I’ll be the first to recommend a good product. As Andy Beard once stated, Information Products are kind of like outsourcing research and the more knowledge you have the better, but if I’m learning I’m not going to buy every product that is presented to me whether it’s good or not. I WILL however buy every product recommended to me from reputable sources if it is focusing on the business model I have adopted!

The problem is that there are alot of savvy, veteran marketers out there who know exactly what is going through the minds of “newbies” and they leverage that and talk alot of people into buying xyz product when they don’t really need it!

Bottom line: If your business model is Niche Marketing (for example) and a reputable source recommends a good niche marketing product, buy it if you can. BUT if your business model is Niche Marketing and someone recommends a product on PPC, DON’T buy it, you don’t need it!

There are alot of good products out there and you should be investing in your business by purchasing solid products that will help you improve your skills in the business model you’ve adopted, but don’t let smooth talkers get any money from you in exchange for a product that is simply going to confuse you and put you off track!

3. Outsource as soon as you can afford to! - You may be surprised how much work is outsourced by successful business owners, both online and offline. Using myself as an example, I outsource ALL of the design work in my business, most of the technical/coding and writing work and paid services do much of my other work. I’m basically left with writing blog posts like this one, writing emails to my lists and working on future sites and products.

If you do all of your own graphics, coding, writing, product development etc. success is going to take a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time to find you!

I know you may not have much, if any, money to outsource. That’s fine, I didn’t when I started either. But there will come a time when you can! For the first year or two you should be reinvesting every dollar you make back into your business. This will speed up it’s growth dramatically. If you and/or your family is relying on the money you make online and it’s very little, get a job! I know it’s hard to hear that and accept it, but it’s what should be done.

4. Diversify once you’ve mastered that business model - Diversification is job security as an Internet Marketer! If you rely on one mailing list, one adsense account, one Adwords account etc. what happens to your income if that account is suspended or something else happens? It ceases to exist, that’s what happens!

It’s very important to stick to one business model AT FIRST! But once you have at least moderate success with one business model you should move on and learn another! EVEN IF you make MILLIONS with the first business model you adopt, which is unlikely, but possible. I STILL recommend adopting a 2nd and eventually a 3rd and more. You NEVER know what might happen!

I’ve heard of more than one situation where smart businessmen lost 6 and even 7 figure businesses do to their business not being diverse!

5. NEVER give up! - This doesn’t really qualify as step 5. It’s something that you need to understand at ALL times! From day 1 you need to realize and accept one thing. You WILL fail! It’s inevitable. No highly successful person succeeded all the way to the top.

Failure is part of success just like a cough is part of a cold. When you fail you shouldn’t be surprised. You should be happy that you’ve reached one more step toward success.

I’ll say it again: You will fail! You will fail again. You will fail again and you will probably fail again after you failed the first 2, 3, 4, or 5 times.

EVERYONE FAILS! The difference between those who succeed in the end and those who don’t is those who succeed in the end didn’t quit when they failed the 1st time, the 2nd time, the 3rd time or any other time!

In closing I’ll leave you with one of my all time favorite quotes:

“Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls aren’t there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show us how badly we want things…the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough!”

–- Randy Pausch

Those brick walls are the failure we all come across!

img credit: Zara

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Is it Wrong for “Gurus” to Always Sell to you?

Before I even talk about the subject of this post, I want to take a second to recognize one of the best Direct Response salesmen of all time, Billy Mays. Billy passed away last Sunday in his sleep. Billy is one of my role models and should be for anyone who is looking to become a good, ethical marketer. He promoted solid products and although he obviously used some well-known marketing tactics, he was an ethical person and one of the best Marketers to ever live! Rest in Peace, Billy Mays!

Now to the subject of this post. Almost [...] Continue Reading…

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A Big Change in how we Control Internal Linking

Earlier this week a member of my private coaching forum directed me toward a blog post by Matt Cutts, which publicly announced a change that apparently Google had made to their algorithm over a year ago in regards to the rel=”nofollow” attribute, but didn’t publicly announce it until Monday.

In case you don’t know what the rel=”nofollow” attribute is, I’ll quote Matt:

“Nofollow is a method (introduced in 2005 and supported by multiple search engines) to annotate a link to tell search engines “I can’t or don’t want to vouch for this link.” In Google, nofollow links don’t pass PageRank and [...] Continue Reading…

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Why No One Clicks your Adsense Ads

I’m always getting Adsense related questions in my Private Internet Marketing Coaching Forum and elsewhere regarding CTR (Click through rate) and conversion. Many people put up mini-sites, which are monetized by Google Adsense, they promote them day after day, week after week and they make little to no money.

For NON-Coaching with Josh clients the first problem almost always seems to be that they started off targeting the wrong niche in the first place. In other words, they didn’t target a high-paying niche! So instead of earning $10 or more for every 10 adsense clicks, they are lucky to earn [...] Continue Reading…

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How to Run a Flexible, Successful Affiliate Program

If you offer a product or service it’s almost a given these days that you need an affiliate program. If you have a product and don’t have an affiliate program, you’re simply leaving money on the table. But if you offer an affiliate program that isn’t flexible and can’t be tailored to your affiliate’s needs, you’re also leaving alot of money on the table both directly and indirectly!

An affiliate is someone who promotes your product and earns you money with little to no effort on your part. With that being said it’s simply irresponsible (or arrogant depending on who [...] Continue Reading…

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Clickbank Explained - Affiliate & Vendor Pros and Cons

(I am both an affiliate and a vendor with Clickbank (CB) and have been for several years. I receive payments from them twice a month, every month and have been for years, so I do have a great deal of experience dealing with the company.)

Clickbank is by far the largest marketplace for digital goods. If you’re looking for an ebook or report on any given subject, chances are you’ll find it in the clickbank marketplace. Clickbank definitely has it’s pros, but it certainly has it cons too!

This post will address both the pros and cons of using Clickbank, both [...] Continue Reading…

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5 Easy ways to get Solid Backlinks to your Site

One of the best ways to get traffic is from the Search Engines (SEO.) It’s free and if you rank for the right keywords it can have loads of traffic potential. Of course that means you need to build lots of backlinks in order for you pages to rank highly!

Even if you’re extremely knowledgeable in your niche, you still need that initial “push” to get your brand out there. After all, how can someone recommend something or link to it if they don’t know it exists, right?

You need links - But how? Below are 5 ways I do it:

5 [...] Continue Reading…

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Why it Took me Almost 3 Years to REALLY Succeed Online

If you thought I was one of those people who found success online right away you’re wrong. Sure, I was making a little money online in my first year and a decent extra income after about 2, but it took me nearly 3 years to really “MAKE IT” online.

So what was holding me back? You might think it was knowledge - Nope! I had lots of knowledge. Since I was in the Army and had very limited time, you may think it was time. But the truth of the matter is that I could run my business with about [...] Continue Reading…

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$5 Formula (iPod Touch) Contest Winner Announced!

Two weeks ago I started a contest over at http://www.5dollarformula.com/giveaway/ where the 1st place winner will receive a brand new iPod Touch. Well, there it is in the picture. I bought it yesterday. Now for the winner

And the winner is … Glenna Andree of http://gandree.info/

Congrats, Glenna! I’ll be contacting you within the hour regarding shipment details.

The winning entry was from her blog post at http://gandree.info/enter-josh-spauldings-contest-for-a-chance-at-an-ipod-touch/

If you read the giveaway page, you’ll have also noticed that I mentioned this: “… and two other individuals will win a “secret” prize on the day of the drawing as well!” I know [...] Continue Reading…

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Reality Check - My Adwords Account Hacked!

-edit- WOW, talk about good support! I contacted a Google rep approximately 12 PM to report the fraud and by 3 PM it was resolved! Kudos to the Google Adwords team, specifically Katie W.

Just a quick reality check for you. Today I log into my Google Adwords account and find a campaign in there that I didn’t create.

That campaign had generated $1,600.00 worth of clicks to some spam site that were charged to my credit card!

Some loser got my password somehow and although it’s being investigated and that individual is going to sit in prison for a few years, [...] Continue Reading…

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