Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving, but it’s long time to get serious about your marketing efforts here. Just like the retailers offline figuring this is their time to make 40% of their sales, in essence the same is true for us online.

This time of year there are probably more “Giveaways” than any other time of the year. This is the time that you truly can build your list. One Giveaway I joined has 100 contributors. If they promote to each of their lists and each list only has 10 subscribers, that’s 1000 people getting notification that this is going on. Now just between you and me, we know that these people have more than 10 subscribers, so imagine how much free advertising that can be. Each giveaway usually has their own rules. Some run contests with prizes for the most referrals. Others pay cash, etc. Any way you go, it’s a worthwhile venture.

The first thing you need is a product. If you don’t have something of your own you have put together, such as an ebook, etc., there are plenty on the web. A lot of them are free. Just make sure they have Private Label Rights and or Master Resell Rights so you are free to give the item away, brand it your own, etc. You need to read the rights of each product as the licenses sometimes differ from product to product, but for the most part you’re pretty safe with Private Label Rights.

Once you have your product, the next thing you need is an autoresponder if you don’t have one already. I personally use Aweber, but there are a few good ones. Some others are Response Marketing, Constant Contact. Just google “autoresponders” and compare services and prices. Also be sure to check reliability.

You need to set up your autoresponder with a “webform” for getting people’s names and email addresses. Once you get this set up in your autoresponder, you can get the html code to put on a landing page, or sales page. People see your product, click it, go to your landing page that tells them about your product, they enter their name and email, it bounces back to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder sends out a link for them to click on in their email to verify the email address. When they do that, it should take them to a Thank you page that you have created that has a link for the free gift download they signed up for, or your autoresponder sends a link to their email where they can recover their gift.

This is the first time I have ever done this. It took me 2 full days to get it set up. I pretty much let everything else slide but I figure the time was well spent. The product I offered is valuable to all kinds of people, not just internet marketers and I’m confident my list will start growing soon. For the people who sign up for this particular product, I know what I need to send them in the future. A much more targeted market which will be a lot easier to market to.

If you want to check it out, this is the one I joined. This lady is super helpful and has a whole pdf you can download that gives all sorts of pointers, etc. along with the rules. Just click on the banner below.

If you would like to contribute, it’s not too late. Just click on the link and you’ll go to the contributer part.

http://www.myladywebsgiftgiveaway.com/go/ldbeams/jv/

Your potential customers can’t hear you. With the average person exposed to anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand ads a day, you need to make sure you stand out. You can’t be vague in your messages to your customers. You must make sure you are reaching your target audience, and then make sure you are communicating the benefits of your product to them. You need to get potential customers interested enough in your message and your product to reach out to you. To visit your store or Web site. Then you can develop a relationship with the customer, which is the first step in the selling process.

How do you effectively communicate with your potential customers and make sure that you are heard, seen and read above your competitors and other advertisers? Target your market. Decide who you want to reach with your marketing efforts. Define as much about your target customer as possible. Is this person (or people) men or women? What age group do they fall into? Do you want to narrow it down further by occupation or lifestyle? What about the area they live in? If you have a clear idea of who you are trying to connect with, you’ll have a better chance of actually connecting with them while you create your marketing messages.

Market to a broad audience. Act as a specialist by targeting your market, but deliver your message broadly. If you are marketing a dermatologist’s office, yes, you want people with skin problems so you market to their general doctors, but who else could use a dermatologist’s expertise? You could use postcard marketing and mail some informational full color postcards pieces to a cancer center. With skin cancer on the rise, market to cancer centers, supermarkets that sell sunblock and you can get more generalized from there.

Speak directly to the customer. Tell your prospects their needs and wants. Tell them how you can fulfill their needs and wants, but focus on them, not you. Focus on how you can help them with a solution. Show how you’ve helped others just like them with similar problems or wants.

Talk about your benefits, not just your features. People don’t care about the newest technology. They care about how the newest technology will help them. How will it be a benefit in their lives? Meticulously define your benefits and the best way to communicate them to your customers. Will you save them money? How? Give an example of how your product or service benefitted someone else.

Complexity does not impress. Don’t convolute your message with big words, industry jargon or long sentences. People understand simple words in simple formats. Don’t try to impress by throwing in words they’ll have to look up – no one will. You could “complicate” things by mailing out full color postcards – the color is enough interest to draw the customer in. Your simple message will do the rest of the work.

Come up with a catchy slogan. A slogan is a phrase that expresses something about a benefit or feature of a product or service. Burger King for example uses “Have it your way.” This clearly states that you can have your food any way you want it. They exist to accommodate you.

Get feedback. Show your ads or copy to friends, family or co-workers before you let the world take a look at them. These people are part of your world, and could be in your target audience. Getting their opinions can make your ads so much better. If you have the resources, use a focus group of your target market and use their feedback to make changes for the better.

Provide easy-to-understand information. Use words that your target market will understand. This applies to everything from your postcard marketing campaign to your Web site. Clearly label your Web site address, your business address and phone number, and any other information the customer needs to know. Include any instructions needed, like directions to get to your store. If your store is online, sometimes people need instructions to get there also.

One particular way to  build your list is to join a Give Away event. In a real sense, it’s a huge way of conducting an “ad swap”.  If you have joined any of the Give Away events I’ve listed on the “freebies” page, you might have an idea of how it works in general. If you have no idea of what a Give Away event is and how it works, let me explain.

Give Away Event Explained

Basically, a group of mailing list owners partner together and pool in their individual gifts in one limited-time event. Each participating partner contributes a gift to the event. The gift can be a free product, membership pass, or a product he is already selling (if he is

kind enough to offer it into the event). The participating partner prepares a Lead Capture Page where he gives the gift in exchange for the subscriber’s email address. In other words, in order for a visitor to download the digital gift, he must opt in and subscribe to your mailing list. When the gifts are pooled together into one event (site), every partner will then send an announcement about the Giveaway event to their own mailing lists. The result? Lots of visitors to one event as a collective effort of several participating partners! With so many visitors downloading gifts from one focused event, it is a true win-win situation. This is because the visitors get to download several free gifts for their own use and every partner gets to build their own mailing list! Many times these gifts come with some form of resale rights that let you give it away, sell it or whatever the rights stipulate.
There Can Be Some Problems

For starters, a lot of Give Away events often require the potential Joint Venture partner to have a minimum of at least 1,000 subscribers in order to participate. Therefore, if you do not have that amount of subscribers or

more, there will be a lot of giveaway events you will be excluded from. You could set up your own Give Away event. You should probably have the idea of paying your Joint Venture (JV) Partners a decent percentage of commissions for every successful One Time Offer sale. You might also want to know which partner is doing well in referring subscribers to your event and who isn’t, so you’ll want a way to track.

Usually, the one who runs the Give Away event wins the most in terms of subscribers and One Time Offer sales, if any. However, this is where the second problem is: if you don’t have any programming skills, you can kiss this idea “goodbye”!

A third problem is that big time Give Away event runners often suffer these throughout the start, run and end of the event: sleep deprivation, stress and lots of hard work! In fact, in some ways, being a participating partner can be even more appealing to most list owners even though the reward is proportionally smaller in terms of success, new subscriber counts and sales, if any.

If you have a decent gift to give away, and you’re set up right, and the giveaway has a lot of partners mailing to their mailing lists, you have a good chance of getting a good targeted audience to your mailing list.  This is especially true if you have a specialty niche that your gift is connected to, so when people want to download your gift you know they are interested in what you have to offer.

Put that website up, and they will come… NOT! And even if they were to come looking for you, standing on the street corner, shouting your name, will you be ready to respond? If you’re starting a business on the internet, you better fall in love with Internet Marketing.

Bill Gates has been quoted in 2000 saying “There are 2 kinds of businesses going forward: Those who have an internet presence and those who are out of business.”

Let’s face it, you must become knowledgeable about the internet. There is so much to learn and it seems like you’re just getting a handle on it, when something new comes along. In fact, unless you already enjoy having marketing experts on your team, you will need to make marketing your new love.

Marketing is more than advertising. Marketing is much more. It’s who you are in the marketplace. It’s what you represent. It’s what folks think when they think of you. Marketing is the way you compete for brain space. It’s your message. Most important, marketing is your road to wealth. If you are waiting for folks to find you, you will go broke. If you get in front of the people who are looking for you, and you communicate in a way that is compelling, you win. Marketing is the art of getting in front of those people who are looking for you and communicating in the language that they want to hear.

So here is the deal: Fall in-love with marketing. Make it a game. Keep score. Develop the marketing skills that will take you where you want your business to go. I believe strongly in finding a mentor in whatever area I want to master. I find the best for my current education level and my ability to afford them and study. I do what they do. And I make a point of learning from multiple sources. If you can’t afford to study personally with a mentor, read their books, listen to their programs, get on their email list and get busy.

The great thing about internet marketing is the tons of free information and strategies available. You can begin by searching out every marketing guru out there reading the free materials they offer. By starting with the free education, you learn the vocabulary and strategies that are currently available on the internet. I don’t recommend buying anything initially. Take a look at all the offerings and work to get your head on straight about what is available vs. what you need in your business. I make a point of subscribing to a number of internet marketing newsletters. I download Podcasts, those audio shows that are free for the download. I watch videos. Don’t forget to take advantage of our “free resource” page to get you started.

While I don’t do everything that is suggested, I find that the constant exposure to new marketing ideas keeps me fresh. I understand that marketing doesn’t come naturally to me: I must learn my game. This is a free and gentle way to keep myself thinking about marketing.

The Difference Between Autoresponder Programs and Autoresponder Services

An autoresponder of any kind is vitally important to your Internet business. If you have gathered information from the internet at all, you have undoubtedly signed up for a newsletter or something where you entered your name and email address to get something from the site. When you did that, you more than likely got an instant email message in your inbox with a link to confirm that you signed up. This is usually from an autoresponder, which just like the name implies, automatically responds to data input. Many newcomers to the Internet marketing arena are not aware that there is a vast difference between an autoresponder program and an autoresponder service. Not knowing the difference, they often purchase the wrong type of autoresponder, and find out too late that they have wasted money on a program that is useless to them.

An autoresponder program is a program that is set up on your web server. This is usually a free autoresponder that comes with your web hosting account. It usually is your site email account. With a lot of them, the most you can do is set them up to respond the first time someone submits their information, but then after that you’re on your own. Some people don’t like the autoresponder programs that come with their hosting accounts so instead, they use an autoresponder program that they have more control over. They will purchase autoresponder programs or scripts that must be installed on their web server.

Other people are quite happy with using an autoresponder service. This is a service that is usually paid for on a monthly or yearly basis. The fees are ongoing, and everything is browser based. In other words, you can set up your autoresponder messages and manage your opt-in list through your web browser – just as you can with an autoresponder program that is installed through your web hosting account. The difference is that the service runs on the autoresponder service’s web server – not yours or your web hosts.

Beginners are usually better off using an autoresponder service. These services are very easy to understand and to use, and no technical knowledge is needed to set things up. As a newcomer to the field, however, you might be concerned about the costs of an autoresponder service. If this is the case, you have the option of signing up with a free autoresponder service.

Free services make their money by placing advertisements in each autoresponder message that you send out. Sometimes these ads appear at the top of your messages, and sometimes they appear at the bottom. Some of the free services are simply an enticement to purchase the professional version, and have many of the more advanced features, such as tracking, disabled.

One autresponder that a good percentage of the “gurus” in internet marketing use is Aweber . When you visit their home page you can get the info on pricing, etc. Their pricing is based on how many subscribers you have per month and goes up as you build your list. They just added a bunch of email analytic tools to the service and will even let you take it for a test drive first.

Another very popular autoresponder service is GetResponse. They are a little cheaper per month and claim to have more tools than the other autoresponders, but since Aweber added so many new analytics, I’m not so sure.

The thing about using autoresponders that make it worth the money you spend on them is your emails are more apt to get to your customers instead of to their spam folder. Another great thing about them is you can do a “broadcast” where you write one message and send it to your whole list all at the same time. This is very much a time saver as you don’t have to load up everyone’s email addresses one at a time. Whichever program you choose, if you don’t have some way of capturing names and email addresses, your leaving possible customers on the table for someone else.

I wanted to write a little something about one of my pet peeves when it comes to internet marketing.

As you can see from my “about me” page, I admit I am a relative “Newbie” when it comes to internet marketing. I try to drink in all that I can in advice, services, etc., but one of my pet peeves is when a “Guru” sends me

1. an email where their links don’t work properly or it’s the wrong page
2. or they send me to their site and it doesn’t work properly.

I don’t buy too much stuff anymore because I have gone almost completely broke and I have a ton of stuff sitting on my harddrive I haven’t even used yet. Yesterday I went to a site where the offer was just to cheap and to good to pass up, so I punched the order button. Nothing happened and after 3 tries I went away. They lost the sale.

One of the first questions that comes to my mind when I get an email or go to a site where the links don’t work is “how are they going to teach me when they can’t even get their own stuff working right?” I think that’s a valid question, especially if they’re trying to get my money.

Whether you are building a website, blog, “one time offer” page, when you’re done, go to the site as a visitor would and check your links to verify they are doing what you want them to. To me this is one of those “kindergarten” rules of Internet Marketing.

I personally usually email the person and let them know what’s not working right, but a lot of them have email addresses that go to a “noreply” autoresponder so they will never get the message. If you’re trying to earn money from your site, there will be a lot of people that don’t bother to tell you and you end up wondering why you’re not making any sales. I have a ton of email to check and by the time I notify someone their links don’t work right, I’ve already moved on to something else. Many times I don’t bother going back and that person has lost me

1. from their list
2. left my money in my pocket instead of theirs

Whether it’s a "free report", software, or an article, almost everything has a license attached. You will see PLR, MRR, Creative Commons, etc. It’s good to know about each of these so you don’t get yourself in some kind of trouble.

1) Creative Commons License

If you see that something is covered by a Creative Commons License it usually means that while it’s useable by the public, the author of the works, be it writing or images, etc. has a list of what you are or are not allowed to do with the stuff they’ve created. To quote Wikipedia,

The Creative Commons licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

2) PLR- Private Label Rights

Private Label License tells you specifically what you can or cannot do with a product, article, etc. Some let you republish with your name on it as if you are the creator. Some let you republish but only if you leave everything in tact as you received it. You need to go through the list to verify how whatever you have may be used.

3) Master Resell Rights

Master Resell Rights are pretty much just like it sounds. They are usually more expensive and while there is still a list of dos and don’ts, the product is pretty much yours to do with what you want. In most cases you can rebrand it as your own, you can sell it and keep 100% of the money, etc. A lot of times there are restrictions on how you give it away, as the author doesn’t want the value of the product to disapate.

4) Public Domain

Many times it’s hard to tell what is Public Domain and what is not. You need to do your research here. A standard rule is that anything written prior to 1923 is public. Also, usually on the bottom of an article etc. it will tell you about any copywrites.

One thing you don’t want to do whether you’re just getting started or been online for awhile, is wind up in court over stealing material. Also if you write something or put something really good together, you may want to copywrite your own stuff to determine how people are allowed to use it.

Remember, Save your work often! One of the reasons this blog has been neglected for a few days is I didn’t follow my own advice. I lost an almost completely written post with links, etc.

They used to say in sales "you need a gimick". In Internet Marketing, you need a "niche". A niche is something you specialize in, something like your own little corner of the world.

While you may be interested in "dogs" for example, that term is much to big, so you would want to narrow it down a little. Maybe you are interested in selling "dog collars" or "dog training". You need to do a little research to find an area where people are searching, but there isn’t a whole lot of information to serve those people. One of the places to do this is google’s own "keywood tool". It is a free tool that you really need to get familiar with anyhow, for when you put "keywords" into your website so people can find you. For now we are going to use it to research our "niche".

If you go to Google’s Keyword Tool, you put in the term for what you are planning on specializing in. Google will return a bunch of terms and a small graph for each one showing how full that particular niche is. It also gives you the number of searches for the last couple of months. Ideally what you are looking for is a bar graph that is about half full with a lot of people searching the term. An example may be the term for "dogs" is full, but the term "rhinestone dog collars" has a lot of searches, but the bar graph shows very little competition. So you may want to dedicate a site completely to "rhinestone dog collars from around the world" something like that. You need to narrow down your area of expertise when deciding what product to bring to market.

Other places to check out when wanting to see what people are searching for is Alexa.com, which will give you the top 100 searches and your own search engine. They all have a catagory for checking out what the top searches are from the people that use that particular search engine. I will let you know right up front that after the usuals, YouTube etc., a good portion of searches are either about celebrities or porn. You just need to wade through it.

Once you’ve found your "niche" and are deciding on what to name your website or blog, you may want to take the following into consideration.

Update: Read the post after this about finding your "niche" before reading this post. Sorry, kind of took them out of order. 

Once you’ve got a plan and decided whether to build a website or a blog, you will need a domain name and webhost so people can find you. Many webhosts include the domain name for free with their hosting packages. I myself use Omnis.com because when I first started building websites, that is what the instructor used and recommended. Their webhosting is pretty cheap ($5.95) and they offer a free domain name. The things I like about Omnis are:

1. It’s extremely reliable. They are up they say 99.9% of the time. In all of the time I have used them, they have never been down that I know of. That is very important.
2. They give you Unlimited Storage
3. Unlimited data transfer, etc.
4. They offer the first 30 days free to try it out.
   

The things I don’t like about Omnis are

1. It uses a File Manager to manage the "behind the scenes" stuff. Most tutorials and programs that you will come across are set up to use a "C-Panel". For me, being a non-techy this has made some things harder than neccessary.
   
2. It has "site builder" as it’s website builder if you don’t want to build from scratch. It’s a really great and easy tool, but they only let you build 3 pages for free. You have to pay extra for more pages.
3. I don’t like their help program. It’s like an "open source" from around the web vs. being specific help program for Omnis.
4. They’re customer service isn’t very helpful and seem rather condescending if you don’t know what they know as far as how things work.

The original webhost that I was with when I took over my first website was Lunarpages. I was so inexperienced that I didn’t understand how to use a lot of the great stuff there and thought the C-Panel was very scary. I probably should have spent more time learning my way around. The thing I don’t like about Lunarpages is:

1. It sets limits on storage, etc. It’s quite a bit and they say you’ll never use it all, but I don’t like the idea if something goes extremely right and I get a ton of traffic, my site could quit or break down. I know the average website uses very little bandwidth etc.
2. They offer a 30 day moneyback guarantee vs. just letting you try it free for 30 days.

The things I like about Lunarpages are:

1. It has so very many useful and easy features.
2. It’s cheap, especially right now because they have a special going.
3. You also get a free domain name
4. It has the regular C-Panel vs. File manager which is usually easier to use with a lot of software programs and tutorials

Another Webhost that is making big onto the scene is Go Daddy. If you watch Nascar at all you’ve probably seen a lot of their ads as they sponsor a car. I really don’t know much about this service as I have never used it. I know their prices have gone up a bit since they’ve grown so much. Just be sure and compare services side by side to see what you’re getting for your money.

If you google "webhosting" or "domain names" I’m sure you will find a ton more. One tip I read recently is to not get your domain name and your webhost in the same place. I don’t know why this is, as I have never had a problem and you can move your domain to another webhost at any time you wish. (Verify that with whatever service you use).

Also, when choosing a domain name, stick with the .com. Most people are used to using it and it will keep your visitors from landing at another site by mistake.

Once you have your domain name and webhost, you are ready to upload your website files to your server and go live!

Getting Started

The first place to start like anything you do is with a plan. No matter what you’re planning on doing or selling on the internet, just like in brick and mortar life, you need a plan. This place looks really cool and appears to have everything you need for free. Startup Business School I myself have not used this site, but plan on going back and checking it out in more depth after I get done here. A great blog about planning and strategies is here written by the guy that started Palo Alto Software. Just be careful where you get your information. One site I went to offered free business plan templates, but you had to go thru all this sales BS, apply for 3 offers, etc. etc. You don’t want to go there. Another thing to expect is what ever you do online, any time you take an offer, you will have to supply your email address so they can add you to their "list". It doesn’t take much before your email is overflowing with "special offers". Most the time you can unsubscribe pretty easily.

You also need to think about what your goals are as you are writing your plan. You know the old saying "if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?"

Website, Blog or Neither?

You’ll probably see a lot of headlines about how you can make tons of money on the internet "an you don’t even need a website". Pretty basically it’s true that you don’t have to have a website. What you can do is "partner" with people, selling their stuff and using their webpages. These people are called "affiliates". They pay you a commission for selling their stuff. You need to

1. Keep track of what they owe you
2. You still need a way to capture everyone’s name and email address to build your own "list".
3. The tools for selling their stuff is usually the same thing a million other people are using to do the same thing.

The bottom line is you still really need to have a "home". So after the planning comes how you are going to take your place on the internet.

The Website

I had products that I sold offline that I wanted to move online, so I started with a website. (You can see it at Beamish’s Brass Tacks ). The thing about a website is it’s more work to update for fresh content, but it does give you a pretty permanent web presence. It’s also yours so no one can tell you what to put on it or how to run it.

The greatest place I’ve found for learning HTML code is The Hidden Vault. It’s very basic but has both video and writing and provides a great way to see exactly how code works. Every time you make a change you can see it. It’s really terrific for the most basic beginning.

After you get used to playing with that, then you can go on to more in-depth tutoring. One place to go is Build Website 4 You and another terrific site for learning to build your own website is the Website Wizard. His first step is to buy your domain name, etc. which I don’t agree with, but it is a pretty comprehensive step-by-step. I like to have a plan, the website ready to go so all I have to do is load it on whatever server I choose, and then get my webhost and domain name.

The Blog

The fastest, easiest and cheapest way to get up and running is by using a "blog" for your website. The platforms are free and you can change content every day if you wish. The one thing about a blog is that you do need to add fresh content often, so pick something you know a lot about, feel passionate about, and feel like you could write about forever. Just in case you are really a newbie, a blog is a web journal. It’s like a journal you would write in often, only online for the world to see.

The two most popular platforms are Blogger and Wordpress. I personally have never understood it, but for some reason Google likes Wordpress when it comes to rankings, even tho Blogger is a Google product. One thing I should warn you about Blogger, especially if you’re planning on selling anything is they do have a tendancy evidently to lock up your blog. I just read 2 bloggers yesterday that moved their blogs to Wordpress because Blogger had arbitrarily done that to them. You have to fight to get it back up, proving you followed their Terms Of Service, and it’s a big hassle. Eventually what you want to do is have your blog on your own domain. This too is easier to accomplish with Wordpress.org. To get started for free and fast tho, just go to whatever platform you choose and sign up. It’s that easy. Another up and coming platform is Live Journal.

The best resources I could recommend is a free report Easy Blogging. You can download it and have for referring back to at anytime. The best website to learn everything step by step in my opinion, is Problogger. He has a 31 day lesson plan for building your blog.

The Beginning Stages

As with anything new, the beginning stages are the hardest and take the longest on the learning curve. As you get going the things you do will take less time and my posts will get shorter. LOL. If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them. Also if you find any resources you like, please feel free to share those also. I still have a lot to learn myself!