Internet Marketing: My Ph.D. | Letters From Dan

Marketing to non-customers

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Business, Customer, Do it yourself, Google Places, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., marketing, Small business, Yellow Page
Posted in An Internet Marketing Journal

No matter how many small businesses we meet with, not everyone will use our services. Some companies really just want the DIY Internet Marketing tools. Others want to hire us but really have a hard time expending any money whether it be marketing dollars or cash register receipt tape.

It’s these companies that we’ve decided to serve better. We’re in the process of creating content for our newest venture http://onlinemarketingedge.com. OME, as we call it, will be a do it yourself site. The goal is to provide the tools to small businesses that they’ll need to turn the internet into a revenue center.

Since some companies are really DIY oriented, our products are going to be easy for them to navigate. For instance we just created a 30 page “how to dominate Google Places” report. It goes through everything from how to find out if a page already exists for your company to -once it is set-up- how to encourage customers to leave great reviews there.

Internet marketing is a whole new world to most small business owners. In fact, marketing for some of these small businesses is getting the fax from the Yellow Pages and initialing it for them to print it. That’s it. Sometimes you’ll find a company that regularly advertises in the local youth baseball stadium Program, or ValPak kit. But most just find everything in the internet world to be foreign and a bit scary.

But that brings us to the importance of what we’re doing, which is why we’re doing it. How many people come into your store, visit your website, call your 800 number, take a free sample, call and ask a question, or any other activity that doesn’t involve them buying something or “becoming a customer”?

And how many of those people do you ever see again?

The bottom line is this . . . those people have already raised their hand and have declared they’re interested in what you do. They might not be in the buying mood – but they’re interested. Some of them want what you’re offering but it just might be too expensive for their state of mind. Does that mean you should dismiss them?

We think not. Despite wanting to serve those customers in our traditional method, we’ve decided it better to be of service period, than nothing at all. So our DIY site is that. It’s our chance to be of service to those who just weren’t ready.

To some extent we do that now with Dan’s Notes, which you can subscribe to here. That’s a collection of internet marketing tips and ideas from my weekly meetings. But it’s not exactly a “how-to” guide. OME will be the how-to. It will be the step-by-step, screen shots, 1-2-3 how-to document that will get them from nothing to nothing less than famous.

In providing this kind of information, we hope the knowledge we provide our new DIY customers will be enough to move the nickel, someday. But if it isn’t – perhaps they’ll appreciate the help. Who doesn’t need prospective future clients who are already – appreciative? But most important of all – there’s no better way to get a prospective customer to come back than to give them what they need . . . now.

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Getting Website Traffic – Stuff You Don’t Hear About

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: ashton kutcher, conversion rate, followers, internet gurus, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., minute traffic, rate statistics, relationships, spotlight, traffic tips, video series, willie crawford
Posted in An Internet Marketing Journal

So Darren and I are putting together a video series called 10 Minute Traffic Tips. You could ask why I suppose, but I don’t think the answer is very sexy. Darren came up with the idea, well then I really liked the idea. So we decided to do it. Yep, that’s about it.

So at the NAMS conference, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity and shoot some video with website owners that you don’t see in these kinds of tutorials. My goal was to find real website owners who were able to garner massive traffic to their sites. I wasn’t so interested in the likes of Willie Crawford and Lynn Terry – but not because they’re not interesting.

You might say they’re two of the most sought after interviews or relationships in internet marketing. And they’re both sincere, genuine and interesting people whose success is hard to deny. But I really didn’t want to be another gawker, another coat tail. When you’ve attained success like that – how many interviews do you get asked to do?

I would like our series to be more about traffic tips and less about me trying to ride the tails of success to climb my own ladder. If our readers demand that, I’ll take that demand to them and show them with legitimacy, that our intentions are honorable and customer-driven.

Our series will feature some very high profile internet gurus because we all want that nugget, but the bulk will be the little guys who’ve amassed massive traffic out of the spotlight. When you’re not in the spotlight, your name doesn’t help your traffic – it must be gotten other ways.

Ashton Kutcher, for example, what can you learn from his “traffic methods” that really doesn’t boil down to star power? I’m not saying he’s not savvy. . . but I am saying how can his “conversion rate statistics” be translated into stats the Anyday Man can follow? How many no-names announced they wanted to beat Oprah to 1,000,000 followers? And then how many of them actually did?

So keep your eye out for announcements on our upcoming series. You’re going to learn things no other course has even touched. For example we’ve already interviewed someone who purposely created a video to go viral – and then amassed 60,000 actives in her database. How about someone else who’s mastered guest blog posting to the tune of 4,000 extra hits to her website the day any of her guest posts come out. We’ve also spoken with people who use SEO, affiliates, syndication and more.

It’s fascinating to do the interviews. Wait till you have 10 minutes to watch them.

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NAMS 4 – A website owner workshop

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., Marketing and Advertising, NAMS, NAMS 4, Niche Affiliate marketing System, Niche Affiliate Marketing System Workshop, website owner workshop
Posted in Niche Internet Marketing

Hey hey, NAMS 4 is coming up this August. This website owner workshop is a perfect opportunity to learn from experts. If you’ve had questions about Google AdSense, affiliate sales, creating your own products, increasing traffic or even how to use a virtual assistant – this is a great opportunity to grow.

This website owner workshop begins on Friday morning (yes, you have to take the day off) and continues through Sunday afternoon. We’re talking about 200 people who are working toward financial freedom through their on-line business. It doesn’t get better than that.

Crazily, even though the workshop is packed with real “experts” and internet savvy gurus, I guarantee you’ll learn as much from the other participants as you do from them.

I’ve gone to the previous 3 workshops and have propelled my business 100x what I was doing before. From that I’ve even joined a “mastermind” group which has further propelled the learning. And having lunch with people whose actions have brought them 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000 visitors a day has been enormously helpful.

I can’t begin to tell you about all the things you’ll learn that you’ve never even considered before. Typically on Saturday there’s a session everyone attends about creating your own product. And in that 90 minutes, not only do we create an audio product, but we also create a website, sales video and give out affiliate links that pay a 100% commission. Within 90 minutes you’ll see how to go from nothing to making sales. That’s an education all by itself.

Have you ever considered teleseminars? I bet you have and decided it wasn’t for you. But what if you could learn how to turn a teleseminar into 30 other products, how to turn it into a membership site? a book? a real cd people can order (managed by someone else)? a giveaway AND have it increase your traffic and sales. I tell ya! the sky is the limit.

So come to NAMS 4. Prepare to be dazzled with things you can do while you’re there, things you know you’ll do when you get home and ways to make money from your current business that never, ever even crossed your mind.

If you use the coupon code NAMS4MAY – you’ll get a significant discount on the registration price. Go to the NAMS Registration page and see for yourself. I can’t think of a better time investment.

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Mistakes in internet marketing: conversion rate

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Business, conversion rate, Google, Indiana, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., Michigan, online conversion, Pay per click, PPC conversion, Promotion, Web Design and Development
Posted in Common Marketing Mistakes

One of the biggest mistakes in internet marketing is failing to understand the true nature of your conversion rate.

Conversion rate is such a lousy term, but for many business owners it has come to mean profit.

Unfortunately, businesses that want to provide you with internet marketing services will use the term conversion rate to get your attention and sell you services. But that’s precisely what you don’t want to hear.

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Lessons From the Niche Affiliate Marketing System (#NAMS)

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., mazes, NAMS, Niche Affiliate marketing System
Posted in Niche Internet Marketing

Ever get in way over your head? Did you come out unscathed? That’s what a lot of people at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System are feeling this weekend.

Hold that thought. . .

Saturday morning Mark Hendricks spoke to the group as a whole. What was probably a bit strange to the attendees is he didn’t talk about internet marketing, he spoke about life. But it slowly became clear that a career in internet marketing is about the juggling of time, family, use of money, use of time and tasks. Without looking at all these things as a whole, how you create a lifestyle that includes a healthy balance of life – not just work.

Mark Hendricks at Niche Affiliate Marketing Sy...

Image by rogercarr via Flickr

One of the illustrations Mark used was the working of a maze. To get your crayon from the Start to the Finish, isn’t if faster if you start from the finish and work backwards? The point he makes is – doesn’t it make sense to create a goal and work backward from the goal to now see how to accomplish it?

For instance if you want to make $48,000/year, don’t you first need to be able to make 4,000 in a month? Doesn’t it make sense then to figure out how to make $1,000/week? And then doesn’t it make sense that you’d have to learn how to make $150/day? (Yes, I know that’s not perfect math, Bob The Teacher) :)

When you work backwards and try to figure out how to make $150/day – you’ll know you’re beginning to achieve your goal.

Back to feeling overwhelmed. . .

So what I know, as a 3 time NAMS attendee, that the “newbies” might be feeling overwhelmed right now, but once they establish their overall goals – all the tools they learned here will be right in their lap. And they’ll know exactly how to use them.

Getting Started In Internet Marketing?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Google, home business, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., Niche Affiliate Marketing, SEO, sitebuildit, social networking
Posted in An Internet Marketing Journal

Are you just getting started in internet marketing? I put this together as a follow-up e-mail I sent to a business group I met with. Ultimately, I decided I should immortalize it by turning it into a blog post. Before I did, I rewrote the list from a “chronological” standpoint.

If you don’t have your own website and you’re just getting started in internet marketing, then the first thing you need to do is get one. There’s no way you can market anything on the internet without a place for people to go. Sure you can send affiliate links out for the next 20 years. But if you spend your time doing that, then you’ll know that everyday you’re not working – the internet is not working for you.

So with that in mind the first step would be “get a site up”:

STEP ONE

Building Blocks

I believe there are three basic avenues:

1. Build your own site with a package like SiteBuildIt.

I would make this its own step because SiteBuildit is a complete package – everything you would possibly need in one – and they put it in the correct order for you. This is a great option if you know nothing about website design because it is specifically designed for people who don’t.

CHECK OUT SITEBUILDIT HERE

2. The second avenue, not necessarily the second step is to build your own website from scratch.

Here’s a simple tutorial on getting a web page up, but not necessarily a website. For that I’d say you’d need some technical “code” training from either a book or a school.

If you don’t want to use SiteBuildit but also don’t know enough code to do it on your own, you can always hire a web designer or use E-lance and bid out what you want accomplished.

What if you want a blog instead of a typical website? Both require some code skills. Here’s a good discussion for you to help make that decision: BLOG OR TRADITIONAL WEBSITE
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(Pssst. . . If you decide to go the avenue of the blog, this is the free blog upload tool. Using this will ensure that you have a secure blog. This is a much better tool than fantastico.)

The problem you’ll have going the route of designing your own site or blog is good design doesn’t necessarily mean people will find your site on the web. You’ve really got to have a designer that understands your marketing plan before they even comes up with the first draft. If you plan to market heavily using advertising- then search engine design becomes less critical. But if you plan on building a site people can find with the search engines, SEO is more important than anything.

That’s one of the training benefits you get with a package like SiteBuildIt.

I’m sure you can find a web designer, but would be happy to collaborate with you on the SEO portion if you’d like – otherwise, they may have what you need.

The Tools
With this and the option of having someone build you a site, you’re going to need both a domain name (like www.IamGreat.com) and a hosting account. You don’t need either with SiteBuildit, they come part of the package. (here’s the services they offer )

Get yourself a domain name at GoDaddy (this link should get you a domain name for $7.99.)

Here’s my affiliate link to Hostgator, as well. I highly recommend them. I haven’t used any other hosting company, so I can’t say if they’re better or not. But I can say I’m quite happy with them.

You’ll also need an autoresponder to send regular, scheduled e-mails to people who “subscribe” at your sites. I’ve used aWeber quite a bit and do enjoy using them. Here’s a link to them: AWEBER If you get to the point you need them, please ask me why I like them over the others. (SitebuildIt has it’s own internal autoresponder – so you don’t need that either).

3.The third avenue is THE FREE ROUTE.

You can get a free blog at wordpress.com – if you want as well, but it won’t have the tools you really need to have a successful blog. Nevertheless, they are easy, can be up in five minutes and are used by many, many people. You can also get a free “webpage” at Squidoo. They call their webpages “lenses”.

There are a few other FREE places to get a webpage, just remember you get what you pay for. I think you should definitely utilize the free website services like Squidoo, Facebook, Flickr and WordPress.com – but I think you should use them as ways to drive traffic to your main website.

STEP TWO

This could be the first step if you’re just getting started in internet marketing but already have your own website (and I don’t mean a company provided MLM website.)) This step is called “Understand the Buying Process.” You need to figure out what your goal is. If you are selling something, what? (You don’t have to sell anything to make money, sometimes all you need is traffic).

What stage of the buying process does someone need to be in to pull out their credit card? Specifically, if you’re selling computers, does the ordinary consumer do research first? Do they compare prices and stores? Do they just buy on an impulse? What do you need to accomplish in order to make the sale?Here’s a link to the discussion I put on this blog about it. Don’t start marketing until you understand this concept.

This might help, too. Here’s a great article on Direct Marketing you might like to read: http://sn.im/9f7n9

STEP THREE

Keyword research

I put this after the buying process part because it’s important to know the goal of your site before doing keyword research. It helps to know whether you’re building a site called “Benefits of Linux Based Computers” which you’ll drive people to a place to buy Linux Based Computers or if you’re building a site called “Cheapest Linux Based Computers” at which time you’re expecting your audience to have done their research and you just need to provide them the best deal.

(If you’re using Sitebuildit, then you won’t need the following tools, they’re included). If you aren’t using it, there are some good keyword tools like, Google’s Keyword Tool and their Google Wonderwheel.

The SEO Quake Plug-in for Firefox is good too, but we’ll need to discuss how to use that in person.

STEP FOUR

Take what you learned above and apply that to your website, meaning either add content or revise what you have.

STEP FIVE

Marketing Information Collection

Here are the things you want to start before you’re done building your site:

Join the Last Niche for $1 and start getting that information.
Sign up at Clicknewz and start getting that information
Set up a gmail account and get Google Alerts for your keywords. Don’t go to googlealert.com, that’s a different company. Get a Google Account and then click on “My Account” and find Google Alerts. Start an e-mail address for Google Alerts to track your keywords. This will help you with content creation and will alert you to people talking about your niche.
Keep track of all your sites with Delicious.com This is a great place to save all the websites you use. If you save them as “private” you can save your passwords and stuff too. I use them for social networking. Make a list of your favorite sites and send it out.
In fact, check out usernamecheck.com in this “delicious” list here to see what explore some user names you’ll be using at places like Twitter and Facebook. If you’re name is already taken, use your middle name or something. Try to find one name you can use everywhere.
Get this free list and pareuse the sites and how they’ll help you

STEP SIX

The Work. The Marketing.

$$. Google First Page Formula is the talk Joe Marsh at NAMS uses when teaching how to get onto the first page of Google. This one’s not free, but definitely worth having in your arsenal

FREE – Ezine Articles is the best. It gets 15 million hits per month. Read about how to do article marketing at Jeff Herring’s Site (he’s the main guy in this field).

$$ – Alertrank is the service that manages Google Alerts. I recommend it if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate.

FREE – Another good tool is to start a Facebook Group. Here’s the one I started to help build a list of people interested in family travel: My Favorite Place To Take Kids On Vacation Is If you’ve got kids, there is a lot of content on here of great places to take kids on vacation. Join us! If you’re going to do this, let’s chat. You need a strategy before you just start swinging your arms.

$$. If you’re serious about making your business work online, I’d really, really recommend going to NAMS in January. If you’re not sure, get the recordings of the last one here: NAMS Recordings This includes one hour where we actually recorded a “how to” webinar and then proceeded to post it online and started selling it (actually making sales) within an hour. The entire how to is here.

$$. Angela’s Backlinks $5/month you get 30 high page rank sites from which you can create backlinks.

$$. Instant Capture Page: I haven’t used this, but it’s fascinating. Watch their little video.

FREE. Video Marketing -Jing is the free computer screen video capture software. You can see a screen capture video in action at Mike Stewart’s site, or can download it here and watch their tutorial: Jing Project This one is awesome!

$$. Email Marketing – ConstantContact.com and MyEmma.com are great e-mail mktg sites. SiteBuildit comes with e-mail marketing software so you won’t need that if you use it.

FREE. Start establishing yourself in SOCIAL MEDIA -
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Brightkite, SPNBabble and many more.

STEP SEVEN

GET ORGANIZED

Ron Mueller is a tax guy that specializes in HomeBusiness Tax. I don’t know of anyone local who really specializes in it. Most people know how to do taxes for a home office, but few know home business. I used this book last year and got $15,000 back on my taxes. In the book he includes all the IRS references to where in the tax code he pulls certain things. You can use it to do your taxes on Turbo Tax or you can use it to “help” guide your tax guy.

Mozy is a great place to back up all your home computer files and websites. You never know when your computer will crash

Finally, seriously consider coming to the Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop in Atlanta in January. On this page: http://sn.im/namsx3 there are a lot of details including the list of topics we’re discussing. If you’re interested in making your site sell well- this is a great workshop to learn stuff at. It’s called a workshop because we do learn and do work. It’s not a pitch fest with a bunch of people selling their products. You’ll actually learn. http://sn.im/namsx3 – SIGN UP, IT’S FULLY REFUNDABLE AND IS THE BEST INTERNET WORKSHOP AROUND.

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Your Blog Must Have A Theme

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: advertising, blog, blog must have a theme, Business, business model, Camera, Consistency, consistent theme, Digital, digital camera, Distinct, Internet, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., marketing, merchants, monetize, neighbor, persistence, Wordpress
Posted in An Internet Marketing Journal

To have a successful blog, and by that I mean one that not only attracts traffic but is easy to monetize, you need to have a consistent theme. The “blog about my life” isn’t nearly as marketable or as “follow-able” as the Digital Camera Blog or Internet Marketing Blog. In fact you can’t even get some of the bigger companies to advertise on your blog unless it is theme based. Here’s what Netflix requires before they’ll agree to advertise on your blog:

* Related content

* Consistency with their brand, products or business model

Netflix

* Related advertising or merchants

* Distinct method of promotion

That doesn’t mean that your blog won’t necessarily make it to the top with extra effort, persistence and hard work. It just means that you may be disappointed when you show your neighbor how to load WordPress and you find out 3 months later he gets more traffic and better advertisers.

So don’t know the idea – and don’t jump on it. Just keep forward with that in mind.

(P.S. Netflix is as cool as it gets – so in my book they can be as scrupulous as they want to be.)

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Internet and DR Marketing: Do You Know Your Audience’s Level of Sophistication?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: direct response marketing, Eugene Schwartz, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., Levels of sophistication
Posted in Consumer Buying Process

Eugene Schwartz, the guy who revolutionized direct response marketing – the guy who didn’t get paid enough for his copywriting skills – the genius of marketing, broke down this very important lesson.

As I reference in my previous post about understanding the buying process of your audience, it is also important to understand their level of sophistication.

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Internet Marketing: Do You Know the Steps of the Buying Process?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: audience, buying phase, comparison phase, education phase, Eugene Schwartz, first phase, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., second phase, steps of the buying process, third phase, Todd Brown
Posted in Consumer Buying Process

I recently read Todd Brown’s Article on “the Greatest Marketing Lesson”, which I thought useful, and it made me think about reiterating this important lesson to go along with it.

Todd actually wrote about a concept he learned from Eugene Schwartz regarding the “level of sophistication” your audience has achieved and how to tailor your marketing to that. When you’re finished reading this post, go read Todd’s.

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