No Bull Guide To Internet Marketing

Hello!

It's not rocket science making money on the Internet. Once and for all I'm going to give you a basic plan you can use to work from. I'm not taking you by the hand, but this is basically the advice you'll get in countless high-price courses distilled into one e-mail :)

The Secret:

You just give people what they want!

But... you can charge people for this priviledge.

(Or you can also give it to them, and earn from it in other ways)

You can create this `thing` that people want, or you can get someone else to make it for you.

Or you can take a ready made solution and provide that to potential customers.

But first - of course - you need to find out exactly *what* they want!

You see - there's no secrets. You can write your own cheque if you find or make a product that solves a common problem, as long as there is enough people with this problem. It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

Make sure the people with this problem are aware of your product and you're laughing all the way to the bank!

----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------

1.Discover a common problem and provide the solution:

There are many ways to find out. If you have an e-mail list, simply ask your subscribers if there's anything they need help with, or if there's anything they have problems with.

You can also look in web forums, to see the kinds of problems people are facing.

Finally look to current trends. Use a site like Google News to see if current affairs presents an opportunity, or look at Google Zeitgeist, Lycos Top 50 and Yahoo Buzz for ideas - they list the top searches in various categories for their respective sites. Technorati will show you what's currently hot across thousands of Blogs.

http://www.google.com/news http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzz_log http://50.lycos.com/ http://www.google.com/zeitgeist http://www.technorati.com

Sometimes you can even skip this stage since other people have already researched what sells. For example, eBay offer a list of their top selling items, as do Amazon, and many other commerce sites. Do better than the current top products but in the same market to `hijack` their sales...

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf http://www.amazon.com/top-sellers

Examples: A common modern problem is the worry about terrorism.

Old established problems include health, money, career, and relationship problems.

2. Provide a Solution:

Basically *information* is the solution. You can of course find a physical answer to certain problems but the cost and complexity of developing these can be out of reach of most home business people.

Information is easy to create, easy to sell, and easy to transport. Over the Internet it can be as simple as downloading a file, usually an e-book or report.

You can create this solution yourself. Research the problem and find answers and procedures that will help solve it. The Internet is a great source of answers, yet people are willing to pay for the convenience of having these answers presented to them in an easily digestible format.

If you don't think you can write/create this product yourself you can get someone else to do it for you. It's an open secret that there are many people who can create graphics, sites, books and software for you at a price much lower than you'd think. Just look to sites such as eLance, ScriptLance etc. Prices can be cheap because the solutions often come from countries such as Russia or third-world areas where wages are much lower. Take a look at Mike Filsaime's "Outsourcing Secrets", a free guide about this:

http://www.netpreneurnow.com/outsource.html

http://www.scriptlance.com http://www.elance.com http://www.rentacoder.com

Hint: Just looking at requests other people have posted can give you plenty of ideas...

If there are already books or guides that would suit the market you're aiming at you could form a Joint Venture with the rights owner and sell it for a percentage, perhaps through an affiliate program, or you could use the existing work as research for your own. If the work meets certain criteria, usually that it's over 75 years old, it could be in the public domain. In this case you are free to sell it as your own.

Example: write a guide about saving for retirement, dealing with health issues, keeping your family safe, or any one of a number of other topics. It doesn't matter if these subjects have been covered before - you can always put a new spin on it.

3. Make sure the people with the problem can find your Solution.

In essence this involves promotion. This is THE single most important part to running a successful website.

The best kind of visitors are people who already know what to expect, they are known as `qualified visitors`. They may come to your site from an article, a link on another site, or a link or paid ad at a search engine. With luck these visitors may even be so hungry for a solution to their problem they will be `pre sold` and order immediately.

To get qualified visitors to a website you need to ensure that anyone who would be interested in your product would be able to find it. The first port of call is the main Search Engines, which nowadays can be boiled down to Google and Yahoo. You need to ensure your page(s) are `machine readable`, i.e. contain text content, so the Search Engines can make sense of them. You should also use services like Googles Adsense Tool, WordTracker, and the Overture Suggestion Tool to find relevant keywords that people would use when searching for a site like yours. When you have your keywords liberally use them in the main page content of your website.

Discover hot keywords at these links: http://www.netpreneurnow.com/wordtracker.html http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

Another good way to get traffic is to ensure your link is displayed wherever your potential customers would congregate. This could mean swapping links with similar sites, paying for ads on similar sites, or posting messages (with your link) in forums and messageboards. You can also advertise `offline` by placing ads in local businesses or in newspapers/magazines were appropriate.

Finally, e-mail advertising still works well. You can purchase ads from e-zines that cover your topic, as well as build your own list by offering something of value (like a report) at your sales site in exchange for the visitors email address.

A great method of getting your site `out there` is to write articles, based on your product, that include your link. You then submit these articles to the various article directories across the web. This makes you seem more of an expert in your subject as well as providing links back to your site.

As well as traffic that comes direct from your link these links back to your site also increase your position in the Search Engine listings, so it's an important and ongoing step while promoting..

Finally don't forget word-of-mouth promotion. Happy customers will be happy to recommend you, and free `toys` such as e-postcards or free books (perhaps a subset of your main product) will often find their away around the web rapidly.

All this works well to get interested people to your site. Once they are there, it's the job of the copy - the text on your site - to convert these visitors into buyers. A good sales site will always be 100% focused on getting the visitor to take action - usually to buy your product. There is a science to writing good sales copy and there are countless books on the subject. Essentially you need to state the problem, offer your solution, and appeal to the visitors wants and needs. Other useful tips include providing a guarantee, making it easy to order, and using a clean, readable design to focus attention on the text.

It's always a good idea to collect the visitors e-mail address whether they decide to buy or not. This enables you to follow up on your original offer at a later date in case they don't purchase on the first visit. To get an e-mail address offer something of value that is sent to them when they enter it.

That plan above really IS the "secret" to profiting online. Of course, I haven't gone into great detail on each step - I'm leaving the nuts-and-bolts stuff up to you. If I covered every little step I'd expand this report into a 300 page book, and - of course - charge for it :-)

Luckily there are some existing products that can take you by the hand and lead you step by step through every stage.

I recommend The Marketing Dashboard from Marlon Sanders, or his massively expanded course The Action Grid.

The Marketing Dashboard was launched last year and it's now at a lower price but still contains the same great content. With this the entire process mentioned above is presented in a step by step, point-and-click interface. So you simply do task 1, then task 2, etc. At the end you'll have a fully researched and created product.

For more information visit: http://www.netpreneurnow.com/dashboard.html

The Action Grid is more expensive than the Dashboard and it's designed for those *really serious* about making a LOT of cash with their business. It shows you how to build "high ticket" products, that you can sell for $297 to $999 or more a pop!

To see that just go to: http://www.netpreneurnow.com/actiongrid.html

Thanks for reading,

Stuart Reid NetpreneurNow.com

P.S. This isn't the ONLY way to make money on the Internet but in my opinion one of the best. Set up a string of successful sales websites providing strong products to busy markets - sometimes known as Niche websites - and you'll be hard pressed to find another way to make so much money so easily.

About the author: This article is (C) Stuart Reid. You can distribute this article in any form on any media as long as this resource box is included and all links remain unchanged. For a free ezine, access to our massive Members Site, and tons of resources for Internet Marketers visit: This Internet Marketing Site