The following is a guest post written exclusively for this blog by web marketer Mark Healy:
This is for newbies who are not sure where to start or what to do to get their online business up and running.
Here are the step by step instructions, so here goes:
Step 1. Find a hungry market, find their biggest problems and offer them a solution to one of those problems.This can be in the form of a product or service. I personally would stick to either the health, wealth or relationship markets and pick a sub niche within that.
Step 2. Create a product of your own. This could be an e-book, audio or video product.
For creating video I recommend using Camtasia Studio and for audio use Audacity. Just plug in your mic, create a presentation on “6 steps to losing weight,” etc. (adapt to your niche) in Office or Google docs and press record on Camtasia.
Here is something I recommend for those just starting out: as you won’t have any influence or experience, why not interview an expert in your chosen niche. You can find them on Google, Amazon, Clickbank and authority blogs and of course the Warrior forum (for the internet marketing niche).
Now, from experience, here is the key to getting experts to say “yes,” and this has worked 60% of the time which is very good. Keep in mind that it’s always about what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you when you deal with them.
So how could you motivate them to say “yes” to helping you?
1. Offer them the full rights to the interview so they can sell it themselves.
2. Tell them it’s extra exposure for them and free publicity.
3. Tell them you will distribute X amount of copies in Y amount of time. They may how you intend to hit those numbers, so be ready to do so.
4. Tell them they can promote their own products and services in the interview.
This will hit hot buttons in them and get them to say “yes.” I have done this countless times. What I love about this technique is newbies can use and ride off of somebody else’s experience and create branding by association. This gives you leverage in the market you’re in and gets your name out there.
Step 3. Ok, so you have got them to say “yes.” Next, arrange a time for the interview and do the interview over Skype, recording it using Pamela for Skype. It’s around $30 — real cheap and it’s a brilliant product. Get a Snowball mic from Amazon for $60 and you’re up and running.
(You can also do 10 interviews and bundle them as a package. Sell a box set of 10 DVDs and recycle the content for your memberships site.)
Step 4. Create your sales materials. For ease, I would do a sales video. If you’re new and find this intimidating, I would do a sales letter — just mimic other successful sales letters out there in your marketplace and adapt the best elements to your niche/offering.
Step 5. Put your sales letter or video on Clickbank. It’s like $49 one-off set up fee, and you’re up and running once approved in a few days,. They also have a built-in affiliate program so affiliates can start promoting your product.
Make sure you set the price of your product for $10, a low price point packed full of amazing value. This builds massive trust right on the point of sale at the beginning, and your customer is very, very happy. This sets you up for later upsells, etc.
At this stage you’re not thinking about profit, but in getting the customer. Build your customer database first: that is key. The profit is made on the back end.
Step 6. Get Traffic to your sales page/video
I am always testing traffic techniques in my business daily, and I am currently testing solo ads. I will let you all know on the results from this.
The following traffic strategies have worked well for me.
1. Digital point forum. Sign up and after 25 posts you can go to the cheap stuff section in that forum and post a link to your squeeze page to get subscribers to join your list.That particular internet marketing forum gets a lot of traffic daily, and I have had lots of daily sign-ups as a result.
2. Getting on page 1 of Google with any keyword. This is the way I have used to get on page 1 of Google with any competitive keyword:
What you do is write a press release (or get a professional to write it for you) and submit to free press release sites such as 24-7pressrelease.com or pr.com. Now here is the crucial point. Your title needs to have your keyword phrase once and the summary and your first paragraph need to have your keyword phrase at least once maybe twice in them.
News stories have authority, and anything newsworthy with an angle to place your product or service can be great. Also look out for hot topics and seasonal events: can you attach your product to any of these events? Valentine’s Day is perfect for your dating DVD/Ebook, etc.
3. eBay Traffic. I get lots of customers daily on eBay. Now there is something I have to say with this. I don’t make my money on eBay; I offer a really cheap $1 product on eBay to build my customer database only. When I ship them out the physical product (normally a CD/DVD) I send it in a 2 DVD closed case, and the other DVD promotes my back end product for $297.
The back end is where the profits are, and as the price for the first product is so low, you get tons of buyers quickly into your income funnel. The great thing about eBay is high quality buyer traffic; they are searching for products to buy, so are qualified customers.
4.Integration marketing. This is so powerful, I can’t begin tell you.
What you do is you search for people in your market that holds the traffic like forums, companies on page 1 of Google, popular Clickbank sites, people with huge mailing lists, etc. and you go to them and ask them if they will promote your product/put your advert on their “thank you” page/autoresponder sequence/blog, etc. in exchange for a commission + extra added value.
What I mean by extra-added value is, you need to offer these people more than just commissions for them to promote your product. They won’t promote your product if there is nothing in it for them. Every one just offers commissions, and it does not work.
What I do is find out what they really need, and offer them something in addition to the commission.
In the past I might have offered to rewrite their sales letter or moderate the forum/blog for them for 1 hour a day. Then you see if the extra time it’s taken you to do that task is compensated by the sales you’re making from that activity.
You should be integrating your marketing daily to get maximum results, and it leverages your time and effort as affiliates and partners are driving the traffic, not you.
Final tips: use Google docs to store your documents, and have manuals for every process in your business. It’s a brilliant way to leverage your time. Record everything step by step. I also suggest using Dropbox for backing up your files too, it’s excellent and you can access your files from any computer with an Internet connection.
Anyway I hope this helps some people to make sales and build your business.
All the best,
Mark
To check out my latest product click here.