The Fast Track to Internet Marketing

I know that there are many of you out there who have spent money getting your website set up and now you cringe at the prices quoted to you by these companies that call or email you with promises of top ten results on the search engines for your main keywords.  Is there a cheaper alternative? Of coarse there is.  

 I realize that you’re on a fixed budget for your site. And as you may have already found, there is a lot of garbage out there on the internet relating to website marketing. When I say garbage, I’m talking about information that is incorrect.

Have you heard of the story about the monkey in the cage near an airport?:
Whenever an airplane would fly over, the monkey would go nuts banging around in his cage trying to scare the plane away. After the plane was gone, the monkey was sure that his actions are what made the plane leave. Well, much of the information out there is produced in a similar way. Webmasters will do something such as make a few changes to their site, and just because they start getting results, they think it is because of the changes they made, when in reality, it may have had nothing to do with whatever they did. It could have just been that Google or one of the other search engines just finished an update and so their site started showing up for more keywords.

I started out on the internet around 2000. It took me 3 years before I made any significant money on the internet. I had to learn everything by trial and error and I was much like that silly monkey near the airport. A couple years ago, I ran into a fellow that is now my marketing mentor. He’s been at this a lot longer than me. One day I found one of this fellows sites and I submitted my website to his directory. Shortly after I did that, he starts sending me these free automated emails with helpful website marketing tips. After trying a few, I was convinced this guy knew what he was talking about. So, when he came out with his marketing ebook, I was one of the first in line to buy it. It cost me $97 and it was the best $97 I have ever spent. I learned more in the 5 days it took me to read his ebook than I had in all my years marketing on the internet. He pretty much gives you a blueprint of how you should market your site along with tons of helpful tools and resources to help you do it. I’ve put a link to his site on my commercial site at http://outersports.com/page.html?id=23&chapter=0 . If you sign up for his free newsletter, he’ll give you plenty of helpful tips, but he never really gives you the meat of it all. He couldn’t or he would never be able to sell his ebook.

So. . . .  you can spend countless hours(or years) trying to figure it out by yourself, or you can take the fast track by reading his $97 ebook. The money you will make as a result of reading and implementing the infomation in it will more than pay for the $97 book. If you decide not to buy it, you are certainly welcome to email me for suggestions. I personally have  helped two of my brothers start highly profitable ecommerce sites now, and I don’t mind sharing what I’ve learned.Darron

Some Q’s and A’s About Internet Marketing

I’ve had this blog up for a while now and I’ve had many people asking me about internet marketing. I’ll share some emails that I’ve been going back and forth with the past few weeks:

Question:
Darron: I’ve got a drop shipper, and my website should be complete in less than a week (via Yahoo Store Wizard).I’ll be selling housekeeping carts, moving carts, etc. WHO SHOULD I use to market my goods? I want to be listed in the search engines. I have seen quotes ranging from $99.00 dollars per MONTH. to $1500.00 to “consult” me on how to market my website? Can you help? I’m leary of the Pay Per Click tool (maybe because I don’t know much about it). Any recommendations on how to/who should market my website once it’s up? I’m on a very limited budget. Thank you so much for all your free help!!!!

Reply:
Marie,
The least expensive(free) way to market your site is through getting links to your site from other relevant sites. You can read an article on my blog about it here: http://myonlinebusiness.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/linkbacks-how-important-are-they-part-1/ . Let me know if you have any questions after reading the article.I forgot to mention that I would totally stay away from companies offering to market for you. Especially the ones that contact you by phone or email. 99% of them are ripoff artists. Google actually provides a wealth of information about marketing your website, including a list of recommended SEO companies. You can check it out here: http://googlerankings.com/

Question:
Darron,Hello. Can you tell me how to “register” my site with Google?
I went to the Google ranking site. I couldn’t understand the results provided after I typed in my url. I’m lost. Now that my website is up and running, it doesn’t seem to show up anywhere. How can I register the site with Google?

Thank you.

Reply:
I actually haven’t written part 2 of the article yet. I’m sort of slacking when it comes to my blog. One way to see if google has indexed any of your pages is to type into the google search bar: site:yourwebsite.com Just substitute “yourwebsite.com” with your website. If nothing shows up in the results, then Google hasn’t found your site. If Google hasn’t, then you can go here to submit it: http://www.google.com/addurl/ .

Let’s Get Down To Business.

I can’t count the times that I have met a new person and at some point in speaking with them they have asked me what I do for a living. When I explain that I operate my own home businessselling stuff on the internet, the conversation usually turns into a question and answer session with me offering tips and suggestions on how to get started with a home based business on the internet.  So, since I’ve had so much practice in offering suggestions about starting an online home business, I’ll though I’d go ahead and put those suggestions in to words on this blog.

One of the first things that I always suggest to future entrepreneurs is to pick an area that they love or are interested in. This might sound like common sense. However, many people that want to start a home based business think that they need to sell what pays big bucks regardless of how interested they are in it.  I personally don’t recommend this approach.  In business, there are good days and there are bad days.  If you choose an area that you don’t enjoy,  then it is hard to stay motivated through the bad days and the likelihood of just quitting altogether is much higher.

The next thing that I highly recommend is to focus on a NICHE.  One of the definitions of niche is “A unique role of an organism in a community.” This pretty much fits the definition that I explain to people. You should find your unique role in the business community that you choose to be a part of.  Uniqueness is what helps a business to succeed.  It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be different than the rest. And obviously different in a way that will make your business attractive to your customer base.  Finding your niche also makes it possible to market your product effectively. When I first started my online business, I tried to sell auto parts, computer accessories, sporting goods, and outdoor gear.  All from the same website.  Unless you are a complete marketing genius, this is not a good approach. I soon found that I could not effectively market so many different products. So I narrowed my product base to outdoor gear. Outdoor gear was still too broad. I left all of the outdoor gear products on my site, but I focused all of my marketing efforts on one specific area and it has had tremendous results. The area that I picked was “thermal underwear.” If you do a search on any major search engine for “thermal underwear”, you’ll find OuterSports.com on the first page. You’ll also find OuterSports on the first page for other phrases like “men’s thermal underwear.” Until I completely narrowed my focus and found my niche, I was never really able to make a noteable profit from my online business.

Now, before I wrap up this post, let me share a few tools with you that will help you research whatever ideas you have for your work at home internet business. When I say ideas, I’m really referring to keywords. Keywords are the words that people type into a search engine in order to find what they are looking for. If your site doesn’t have the right keywords relating to what you sell, then you won’t get the right customers visiting your site. Overture and Google provide free keyword research tools. These tools will give you an idea of how many times you keywords are searched for each month. This will help you determine how much demand there is for your product or service. They also list other keyword phrases that contain the keywords you entered. The Google tool goes a step further by giving you synonyms for your keywords so that you can find other relevant keywords that you hadn’t thought of. Once you have an idea of what you want to base your internet business on, you’ll want to use the paid keyword research tool Wordtracker. Wordtracker gives you the largest list of related keywords along with invaluable data and statistics on each keyword. Wordtracker has different plans to fit your budget. I use the one day plan for $7.96 so that I only have to pay to use it when I need to use it.

So, if you are thinking of starting an online homebased internet business, you’ll want to use these keyword research tools first so that you can get an idea of how much demand there is for you product or service.