What I wish I had known when I first started in Internet Marketing…
At the core of making money online is 2 things: traffic & conversions.
Without traffic to your sites you’ll never make money.
And all the traffic in the world will do no good if it never converts.
Learn all you can about these 2 things. Become a jedi master at these.
Build an email list and you’ll be able to dramatically increase your traffic and conversions. My email list is a great source of traffic for me. I also use it to increase conversions for things I am selling/promoting.
Partnering with others can help you build your list quickly, which leads to more traffic and conversions.
Partnering with others can help you get more traffic.
Partnering with others can help you increase your conversions, build your credibility, and build your brand.
Build a network of people who are good at things you are not.
Build a brand.
Every web page you build should have a purpose. It may be to get people to opt in to your list, sell a product or whatever. Before you build a page define its purpose and that will define how you should be build/layout the page.
Test, test, test! Think your squeeze page converts as well as it can? You’ll never know until you test.
Be remarkable. Do something that gets people talking about you. Seth Godin explains this well in an 18 minute video:
http://www.nickstraffictricks.com/seth-godin-sliced-bread-and-other-marketing-delights/
Presentation is everything. The best prooduct doesn’t always win, but the best presented product frequently wins.
Read the Warrior Forum frequently. Everyday people post gems that will help you be more successful.
Ask questions. Ask lots of them. Just remember specific questions get specific answers. If you ask something like “How do I make money?” you’ll get answers like Sell stuff or Make a product and build a list. These are not very helpful to a newbie.
Play nice. Sounds cheesy but a little kindness goes a long way. Be nice to people who are jerks too.
Take the time to learn a few basics on the topics: HTML, CSS, SEO, copy writing, buying a domain, how to host your domain, FTP.
Treat others the way you wanted to be treated. If you want to be paid for your hard work then don’t look for ways to cheat others so you can save a buck.
There are lots of people making money online. Read what they are saying but more importantly watch very carefully what they DO. It’s their actions that are lining their pockets with gold.
There is a ton of money to made connecting people with other people or products.
Sites like myspace, facebook, classmates, etc connect people with other people.
Sites like ebay, craigslist, amazon, half, froogle, etc connect people with products.
Sites like Warrior Forum, google, wikipedia, digg, cnn, etc connect people with the information they’re looking for.
Read More about connecting people with people/products/information
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/how-to-make-mon.html
Don’t re-invent the wheel!
The idea is simple: Don’t work really hard figuring something out when you could look at someone who is really successful at this thing and do what they do.
If you want to have a top ten rank on Google for the search term Poodle Manicures then search Google for Poodle Manicures and take a close look at the sites that come up in the top ten. These are your competition. What kinds of things did they do to get ranked so high. (i.e. How many pages do they have? How often do they update their content? How many incoming links do they have? How long do they have their domain registered for?)
Continue learning online and offline. I just finished the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini. This incredible book changed the way I see marketing. I read it because it was recommended by several people on the Warrior Forum. If you don’t what to read, ask for suggestions.
Take action. Reading more books/forums/etc won’t do any good if you never take action.
Focus on thing and do it well. (One of my biggest failings! I am easily distracted.)
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What do YOU wish you had known when you first start in Internet Marketing?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I wish I’d gone live early with good enough, and refined, rather than when “near perfect”. It takes a long time to build the profile and waiting too long to start can hurt.
And just to re-emphasise you point. You need to act. Too much analysis and nothing happens.
Good thoughts Dave.
I wish I’ve learn internet marketing 5 years ago when I have more time and energy to learn and act ana learn. There’s so much to catch up now.
Thanks for your blog Nick, it helps me a lot.
I’m happy to help.
I wish I’d have started earlier. Like about 10 years earlier so I could have evolved along with this business of internet marketing. When people used to buy into an affiliate link before we had to build a relationship with people. Now the learning curve is so huge.
The learning is huge but the current opportunities are great.
If you have great content it can spread faster than ever. Whenever I post something really useful to twitter I get traffic within seconds. And it can spread like never before.
Social media has changed the game.
I am totally new at Internet Marketing. I haven’t found my step here yet. Somehow, success as an Internet marketer still eludes me. I have to spend a lot of time of the internet building trust and traffic to my blog and that’s the downside. I am going to implement all the things that apply to me and see where it goes.
Thanks, Nick. You have been the usual – wonderful.
I started in early 2005 and then stopped due to several personal problems..now starting again.. I hope it will work now. My problem is or was .. I am a perfectionist.. it sometimes is too time consuming..I spend time on useless things.
I am trying to control that urges.. and spend time on what is really required.
Hi Nick, I have gone down to the usual route of buying lots of IM stuff, getting distracted everywhere, then finally realising all you really have to do is find a niche and dominate it. Your advice has been spot on. I thank you. BTW, I see that for a novice ‘Oxfordshire Accountants’ in the comments above already apply anchor text, something that many forget. With my own ‘bookkeeping’ connection and their ‘accountants’ keyword, perhaps this particular blog page is worth a tiny bit more authority on this niche! Anyway, thanks again for what you do