This is how I make money online as an internet marketer. I wish to pour my heart out and hold nothing back. Can I guarantee that after reading this you will go away and make a ton of money? – no – simply because my results are not typical and I don’t know you and therefore have no idea if you are going to use any of the techniques described here.

The opinions expressed are mine and based, not on theory, but my experiences as an internet marketer – real ‘coal-face’ stuff.

I challenge you to answer these questions…

How long have you been trying to make money online? How much time have you wasted?? How much money have you spent that has produced little or no results???

Here’s my answers to the above as of December 2012…

1. 7 years

2. 7 years

3. More than I care to own up to but not less than $20,000

In December 2012 I had had enough! Never give up on your dreams? – well that’s all fine and dandy but eventually after your nearest and dearest has pointed out a thousand times that wasting all that time, money and effort and getting nowhere is pointless and just plain stupid you begin, reluctantly, to agree.

I began to make a list of all the things that I was spending money on – membership sites, hosting services, etc etc. The idea was that when the list was complete I would spend a day closing all that stuff down, end of online marketing career. Perhaps I would turn to banking or politics – actually I never got that desperate.

One email, received around that time, set me on a slightly different course and here is how my approach to internet marketing looks today.

Here is what made all the difference for me.

Before you even begin the process of how to make money online you need to get your mind set sorted out. Don’t dismiss this stuff as mumbo jumbo or some kind of new age psycho-babble – it just plain works. It is too large and important a subject to cover here but I would advise you to read Maxwell Maltz’s book ‘The New Psyscho-Cybernetics” I found it truly life changing.

My other hero in this area is Bob Proctor.

Once you have sorted out your mind-set and tapped into the power of your subconscious, It is time to move on.

You must decide on the kind of marketer that you wish to be.

You have one great asset that only you possess that you can use to create a unique marketing plan. That asset is YOU. You are different to everyone else and you should celebrate that difference by presenting yourself to the world. Not everyone will resonate with you but enough will, if you are open and honest, for you to make a very good living online. You must become the person you want others to be.

You will find that you will attract people to you that are like you. It’s just the same in the ‘real’ world – if you are a middle aged person most of your friends will be too. You cannot be all things to all men but you can be you and that is all you need for a successful on or off line business. Never pretend to be something you’re not or copy the style and mannerisms of someone else. The net is becoming a video based medium and if you attempt to be anything other than yourself, especially when making videos, everyone will know that you are a phoney in seconds!

The most successful online markets

If you have not decided what market you want to be in I can tell you that there are three that consistently generate huge sales.

Make money. Everyone wants to make more money.

Self improvement. Everything from weight loss, fitness, playing better golf, self healing to the area of mind and spirit. When you start to think about it there are thousands of markets and products in this category.

Relationships. How to save a marriage, how to find a boyfriend/girlfriend, relationships with your children, dating sites etc. etc.

The Product
My advice is not to create your own product especially when you are beginning your online career. It is time consuming and can be an expensive process. Imagine after months of burning the midnight oil and giving your credit card plastic fatigue that, when launched, the world just does not want to buy your product. Result? you retire battered and bruised telling everyone that this making money online stuff just doesn’t work and that internet marketing is not for you.

Instead become an ‘affiliate’, that is sell someone else’s product for a commission. You can get your campaign underway quickly, sometimes in hours. Not all will work but if, say, one in five does then you have made a valuable discovery that has cost little money and not too much time.

There are many sources of products. Two of the better known ones are ClickBank and Commission Junction.

Always capture leads and make a list.

Your customer base and your relationship with it is the life blood of your business. Getting someone to buy something from you without having a record of at least their email address is a terrible waste. The people most likely to buy are those that have already bought from you.

In order to compile a list and manage it you will need an auto responder service. This does involve a monthly or annual fee.

Positioning

How you position yourself is vital to your success. You can promote the same product that thousands of others are doing and yet generate more sales than the majority of those other affiliates by doing what the others are not. You see most will use the ‘affiliate tools’ provided by the product owner, and in particular the landing pages which means that, as far as the prospective buyer is concerned, there is nothing to choose between buying from a hundred different marketers because, in truth, there is no difference.

You should generate your own, unique, landing page which explains the gift that you will supply, free of charge, if the prospect gives you their first name and email address. If this sounds difficult, it isn’t, there are lots of ways of doing it.

By being different to everyone else in every step of your marketing process you are positioning yourself as a unique, one-off expert, a very powerful position to be in.

How you acquire leads is important.

There are lots of ways of generating traffic that can results in valuable leads and eventually sales that are free. I cannot go into great detail here about these methods but they include…

Running a blog
Writing articles and distributing them throughout the web
Writing guest posts for other peoples blogs and websites
Making videos and distributing them to video hosting sites
Posting and commenting on social websites like Facebook and Twitter
Commenting on relevant forums
Having a link in your email signature

Obviously, all of the above would have links back to your landing page (best) or blog.

It can be argued that there is no such thing as free traffic. You either pay for it in time or with cash.

Paid traffic

Not all leads are equal. You will have no problem finding people who will supply you with thousands, even tens of thousands of leads at very low cost. 99% of these are junk, usually a mixture of non-existent email addresses or those of folk who haven’t the slightest interest in buying anything online.

You can generate your own leads by surfing the net and find blogs, ezines and other websites where the owner collects email addresses by using an opt-in box. Opt-in boxes are those small areas of a site where they ask for your email address and perhaps first name. This means, of course, that these site owners have a list of subscribers and may offer ‘solo-ads’. This means that, for a fee, they will send an email that you have compiled to their list. That email message will include links back to your landing page. Obviously the sites you approach must be in the same market as you are.

A way of speeding up this process is for you use a service that supplies lists of these solo-ad providers

Social Media

I’ve already pointed out that you can generate free traffic with Facebook and Twitter and others but you can also do paid advertising on Facebook. You would have an ad pointing to your ‘fan’ page. Here there would be a video, ideally you explaining the offer, and an invitation for the visitor to click on a link that will take them to your landing page.

PPC

Pay per click is something that most folk shy away from and for a very good reason. Google’s PPC service, especially for the lone entrepreneur, has become very expensive and I would advise staying away from it. The good news is that there are others PPC networks that are effective and a great deal less expensive.

Classifieds

Advertisements that appear in both off line, newspapers and magazines, and online, blogs and websites.

Video

This is the future of online marketing. Making a video and putting on You Tube and perhaps your blog is free but it is important to realise that there are many more video distribution services that you can exploit.

Marketing techniques
You might be interested to know that the value of people on your list is worth about $1 to $3 per month each to you. In other words if you have a list of 500 subscribers you should have a monthly income of around $500 to $1,500. 2,000 subscribers should equal $2,000 to $6,000 per month and so on. Obviously this is a rough guide and I can’t guarantee that it will work for you but I and many others have found it to be pretty accurate.

I’m sure that you have heard the expression ‘the money is in the list’. If that were true then spammers would be billionaires. Building your list is with good quality leads is, of course, very important but equally important is the way you treat that list. Establishing a solid relationship with your list by giving them real value is how the money is really generated. You must constantly have the mind set of ‘what can I do for my subscribers – how can I help them to achieve their goals?’ Remember the people on your list are not just email addresses they are REAL PEOPLE.

Also bear in mind that they are on other peoples list so you better be ‘special’.

R.I.A.

Frank Kern is one of the worlds leading internet marketers and he talks about R.I.A., results in advance. The core of the method is that you must identify exactly what it is that the prospect is trying to achieve, have a product that fulfils that need and in your campaign funnel make it plain that you understand what hurdles that the prospect is likely to meet and that you know how to overcome them.

By the time the prospect gets to being offered the product he already sees you as the helpful expert and so when it comes to the point when you recommend the product it is more likely that he will buy than if he had been pitched to ‘cold’ on day one.

The triangle of cool.

Bit of a silly title but it does work.

Tell your subscribers that you have made a new video, posted on your blog and that they might want to check it out. That video should be you talking into the camera. You may want to make a point employing a whiteboard or perhaps using a power point or screen shot type of presentation. The important thing is it should be from you. Concentrate on providing information rather than selling anything. Do this on a fairly regular basis, remember you are there to help!

Most of the marketing techniques that we have covered here will not work if no one opens your emails. So here is a list of dos and dont’s…

Don’t email every day – I email around twice a week unless there is a special event or launch happening.
Send out your email between 6 and 8 a.m. in accordance with the prospects time zone.
No weirdness. I would add to that don’t try to be too clever or cute.
Be casual in your emails. As I keep saying this is all about you being YOU. Talk to them not AT them.
Use hyperlinks instead of url’s. Hyperlinking is linking copy not simply presenting a long and often ugly url.
Finish emails on a happy, positive note.
Always have a call to action. Not necessarily a link to buy. Could be ‘watch this video’ or ‘check out this free tool’ It’s about ‘engaging’ with your subscribers.

You must have a clear ‘why’. This is a subject that would need an article at least as long as this one but it is essentially about having very clearly defined goals, writing them down, reading them every day and having your subconscious programmed in the correct way so that nothing can prevent you from fulfilling your dreams.

The marketing methods that I have described above are those that I use every day to make money online.There are many other ways of generating traffic, and hopefully sales, but I feel comfortable detailing only those that I employ every day and find to be successful.

Internet marketing is a fascinating business but one that needs to be studied and worked at as hard as any other way of making a living.

Lawrence Stainbank