Letters From Dan

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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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.