Internet Marketing Superheroes

The Formula of Success – Making Money Online – Part 2

frankstar — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:28:12 +0000

The formula to success – making money online continued.

This is a continuation of the formula of success – making money online part 1. Just to re-cap, here is the formula:

Creativity + Understanding + Direction + Determination + Communication + Integrity = Success online.

DETERMINATION

If you are a naturally determined person you’ll just immediately get this. That’s because you have used your natural talent to achieve results in the past. There’s no doubt that good old fashioned will power, and stubbornness (or as some people like to say – tenacity) absolutely have their place in building your business.

Now most people know that – but the trick is to get into this state, and to keep maintaining this state in the first place. So ask yourself – just what is determination or will power? Will power or determination is unification of desire. What you’ve got to do is decide with your entire mind to do something.

Let me qualify that a little. Ever heard of subconscious sabotage? What’s happening here is that there is a part of someone that desires to fail – for one reason or another. Something happened in their childhood that made them feel unworthy for example. That little voice is holding them back.

Or let’s say that you don’t really want to do a task, but you know you should. Part of you has the desire not to do it.

So what you can do is listen to those dissenting little voices. Write down what’s holding you back and problem solve. The task you didn’t want to do – let’s say it’s writing yet another article. Come up with affirmation of why you like writing articles. Learn to like it. Compromise – if I do this article I get a bar of chocolate. The point is to listen and identify the problem – this way you are less likely to subconsciously sabotage. Also you can pick up on recurring habits this way.

COMMUNICATION:

Some people can talk and write all day long. Others are good at building connections and making bridges. All this is part of the essential skill of communicating. TV presenters are often very good communicators. They make people feel at home, can communicate and explain situations and events clearly, and are funny enough but not too funny to be a comedian.

Being able to communicate effectively is something that can be improved upon all your life. It covers a very broad skill set – sales, negotiation, empathy, humour, putting complex concepts into simple language etc. A good grasp of language comes in very handy here, but its not just about words and grammar.

What mood where you in when you bought that item. What made you buy it? How did you get into that buying state of mind? Chances are that it wasn’t just te words that made you buy – it was the effect the words had on you and how they made you feel. Different words have different connotations to different niches. Communication is about evoking the right state of mind in others.

An example of how this varies from niche to niche is the first time I came across one of those “wait wait wait” pop up ads. Often the vendor will give you a discount. Rather then let you navigate away from the page, a sexy operator will pop up and offer you a further bonus. As an internet marketer, I thought this was quite cheeky and a good negotiating ploy. I got the product because of their cheek. And it has to be said, because the pop up operator was sexy.

When I starting promoting other niches, I came across a product with several different sales pages. One of these had a pop up as described previously. I thought this would be the best page – but when I tested my market, customers got quite irritated by the pop up. For that niche it wasn’t a good idea! They felt they were being pushed into buying something.

INTEGRITY

Have you ever looked at a sales page on the internet and thought – lies, lies lies! Often sales pages are totally hyped up. I made the mistake of buying a product once – the hype looked so good. When it didn’t live up to the hype, do you think that vendor saw any repeat business? Nope. Not a sausage. He was lucky he didn’t get asked for a refund!

What’s that much repeated business axiom? Under promise and over deliver. Too much hype and you’re doing the opposite! I’ve nothing against hype – but only if the product lives up to it.

Integrity is about being reliable, living up to your promises and providing true value. If you are an affiliate marketer, this means trying out your products and making sure they work before you recommend them to other people, even if they are from a super guru!

If you recommend something and it turns out to be crap, then you will carry the can! It sounds obvious, but people will think that you recommended the product just to make a fast buck. This does nothing for your reputation and they will be very unlikely to buy from you again! Also doing this sets you up for subconscious sabotage. A small part of you will disagree with what you are doing, and won’t think you are worthy of success.

Ever heard the phrase the money’s in the list? This is effectively saying that you are going to make repeat sales off the people on your list – so its absolutely paramount that you give them quality info, and build the relationship and trust!

The Formula of Success – Making Money Online – Part 1

frankstar — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:54:55 +0000

This formula of success is really all about your approach to business.

A while back, when I first became interested in building a business online, I came up with an equation of success. It was fun to come up with it, and does give you a good idea of what to concentrate on in your day to day business.

This is not a get rich quick idea, and its not straight out of a motivational self help book either. I wrote it on the back of a post-it note whilst I was messing around in the lounge.

Ok people, is this the formula of success for your online business?

Creativity + Understanding + Direction + Determination + Communication + Integrity

Sucess Online

In this posting I’m going to look at the first 3 variables – creativity, understanding and direction. The last 3 will be in part 2.

CREATIVITY:

In the online business, it pays to be original. The more ideas you have the more deals you make, the more products you produce and the more successful you’ll be! Yes ok that’s obvious, but the point is that you can develop and cultivate your ability to be creative. If you look at your greatest online achievements so far, you’ll be able to trace them back to a good idea that you had.

How can you stand out from the plethora of other online marketers? How will you create products? How are you going to add great value to those products? How can you make your articles more interesting? What’s needed in your niche and how can you fill it? What problems exist and can they be answered? All these questions need your creativity to answer them.

I have found that a great way to be creative is to read up on the subject you’re researching and jot down your ideas as they come up. Try to add to what the author has done. Here’s a good idea that I came across at the warrior forum – take the bullet points from products your interested in, and then actually answer them and add a bit of value at the same time!

When you get an idea and jot it down, also write down how you got to that idea. Next time you need ideas, follow the same process. For instance, I have found that I will often come up with good ideas from having imaginary arguments with people. I also find that if I tell myself I am brilliant I will come up with more ideas. Try this. Look yourself in the mirror in the morning and tell yourself you’re brilliant. You may feel silly, but just do it for a month or so and look at the effects.

UNDERSTANDING

You’re online business can be compared in many ways to a game of chess. In order to come up with a competitive strategy you need to know the rules of the game and the capabilities of the different pieces. Similarly, you need to know the different aspects of your business and what these different parts are capable of. For example, CPA, affiliate marketing, product creation, website creation, email marketing etc are all different aspects of the business. Actual websites, autoresponders, mailing lists are the pieces of your business.

The rules of the game are really the rules that govern people. For instance one rule could be to gain your customers trust. To do this you need to give them value, not spam them, not waste their money and generally treat them with respect. Use your “pieces” to obey the “people rules” of business.

What are the different aspects and pieces of your business at the moment? On the internet, the more you know about the different aspects of marketing, and the more you know about the rules of people (sales copy, negotiation, building relationships etc) then the better placed you are to come up with good ideas and strategies. So come up with a plan to systematically attack and learn about the various areas of making money online.

DIRECTION:

You gotta have a plan, Stan! You could have the creative power of a Genie, and the understanding of Buddha, but if you don’t know where you want to get to it’s just going to fizzle out into many different outlets. Now I’m going to say something here that is not mentioned in many success / motivational books. Some people hate having a plan. They rebel against it. They just do not like structure in one way or another.

Perhaps their childhood was too rigid and left them with a bitter taste. A way out of this is to make sure you really like your plan. Enjoy the process, make the end result something that really gets you going. Have you ever heard of Steve Pavlina? A remarkable blog. I read an article there once about discovering your true purpose. He waxes philosophical for a bit, then gives you the nugget. It’s basically this: Empty your mind, ask yourself what your true purpose is, concentrate and write down as many answers as you can until you get to an answer that makes you cry (with joy, obviously!). That’s your true purpose. The moral of the story is make sure you enjoy what you’re doing! Otherwise, what’s the flipping point?

See you next time for part 2 of “the formula of success – making money online”

How To Find Hot Niche Markets

frankstar — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:20:29 +0000

If you are new to internet marketing you may be looking for a way into the game. “What can I sell” is one of the first questions people will ask. And one of the first answers you come across in all the “newbie” literature is “sell something you’re passionate about”. Don’t worry about finding a profitable niche. Just do something you’re passionate about. Wait! Stop the press! Hold your horses! Let’s think about this first!

It’s great to be passionate about something. This will give you stamina and staying power. You will enjoy your venture so much more. That’s the idea behind choosing something you are passionate about. But come on, most people can be and are passionate about a lot of subjects. So I say this. Be passionate about your subject, BUT make sure there is a market AND make sure there is demand for your product, FIRST!

The best way to approach your internet marketing efforts is not, as many Gurus would have you believe, to do something you’re passionate about. There’s good intentions in that sentiment, as outlined above, but the fact is if you choose the wrong market you’re going to fail, no matter how passionate you are about it!

Turn the conventional method on its head. Find all the top niche markets first, and then choose one that you like! This way you don’t waste weeks creating a fine product, that you’ve invested time and money in. There are hidden costs in creating a product. You need good graphics, minisites and sales pages. These either cost an investment of time or money.

So how to find a good niches full of thirsty, starving buyers, who need your product like the desert needs water. There are many well known niches. These niches are based on problems and needs such as:

The need to make money

The need to lose weight

Not being able to get their PC / Xbox to co-operate

People needing help with their relationships

How to advance their sports / hobbies

Just off the top of your head you will probably be able to come up with a few ideas. In fact this is a good way to get started. Brainstorm. Keep you eyes and ears open and look for people’s needs and problems. Find a need and fill it as many entrepreneurs say. Solve the problems the need causes. Here’s a quick tip that’s often overlooked at this stage. Once you have brainstormed your niche subjects – think about which ones are upcoming trends.

But there are better and easier ways of finding these niches then just keeping your eyes and ears open. A great place to look are the bestseller lists on Amazon. Another great place to look is http://www.ezinearticles.com!

I go into using EZA and other tools to find niches fully in my free package. Click on the page peel at the top of the page to get it. There is also information on how to find upcoming trends.

Niche Market Research – What They Don’t Tell You

frankstar — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:57:57 +0000

“I know” you think – “I’ll try my hand at making money online”. After looking around the internet you are bound to come across information on finding a niche, or the best way to go about niche market research.

Here’s something that not a lot of people know. Well they probably do know, but don’t realize it. It’s about keyword research. If I liked to hype things up I would say this is a closely guarded secret of a selfish Guru who doesn’t dare let this out in case the little guy becomes too powerful and starts making his own money! If Carlsberg wrote articles they would use these tips! (Probably)

When people perform keyword research for their niche they will generally search for:

1) A long tailed keyword, which they hope to use to rank in search engines

2) They will have criteria for this keyword. Market Samurai users will say something like it should have 1000 searches a month and less then 50,000 competing websites.

Well that’s all well and good. But I can go 1 better. In fact 2 better. I’m going to add 2 extra criteria to my long tailed keywords.

Criteria Number 1: “Buying” Keywords

Have you ever heard of the sales cycle? When someone wants to buy something on the net they will generally research their product first. They put in generic terms first and gradually get more specific the nearer they are to buying. At what stage in this cycle (researching to buying) is it best to sell them your product? When they are just on the verge of buying! All the work is done by then! So my first extra criterion is to make your long tail keyword a buying long tail keyword, or to at least include some in your marketing!

If someone keys “canon 590 review” or “best price canon 590” these are buying keywords. This person is looking to buy and get the best deal.

Criteria Number 2: Google and LSI

What about extra criteria number two? It’s this. Ever heard of LSI? Latent symentic indexing. These are terms Google believes are related to your keyword, mean the same thing, or should be in the same context or page as your keyword. For example “make money online” and “earn cash fast”. So my second tip is once you have your long tailed buying keyword, checkout the LSI. How to do this? Go to Google, put in your keywords, click on options, and then click on “wonder wheel”. I’ve included a quick video showing you how to do this on this post (coming soon).

You will find that at the very least this will give you more niche marketing ideas and an extra keyword phrase.

The Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

frankstar — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:53:04 +0000

The Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

What makes people fail when it comes to affiliate marketing? In this article I’m listing some of the most common affiliate marketing mistakes that people make when it comes promoting other people’s products. Here we go:

1) The false start, or not starting at all

Many people are seduced by the lure of quick riches and do not realize exactly what needs to be done to get yourself off the ground. For the beginner there are a number of tricky hurdles to jump. Choosing the product is relatively easy, but then you may need to set up a squeeze page, sales page, market some articles, join some forums, set up an autoresponder series, and possibly set up a blog as well. Initially what seemed so simple has suddenly got complicated. Some people can also find themselves starting to doubt, deciding to promote something else. “Damn the penis enlargement niche is much better then vegetable gardens, why didn’t I choose this in the first place?” This leads nicely to the second mistake.

2) Running too many projects / campaigns at the same time

This can be quite dangerous, especially at the beginning. If you are new to affiliate marketing, it’s far better to get success with one product before moving onto the next. You need to concentrate, and get the best out of your marketing efforts. I’m reminded of an old Chinese proverb about an eager young man wanting to become a kung-fu master. The training takes 5 years. The young man asks his master if he really concentrates, could he become great in half the time. The master tells him it take 10 years not 5. “Why is it that if I work harder, it will take twice as long?” says the young man. “Because when you have one eye on your goal, and one eye on your training, then you will only have half your focus on your training”. The moral is not to try and do too much…get on top of your existing products first.

3) Selecting the wrong niche products to promote

Before you start marketing your product you need to know if there is a market for the product. Are there enough people interested? If there is, do the people in the market part with their cash? For example, there is an enormous amount of searches for astrology, but people want free information and rarely open their wallets.

4) Doing everything yourself

I know, I know you’re on a budget. You’ve got to do everything yourself. But is it really worth it? What’s a decent hourly wage in a job? How much per hour would you like to be paid from your marketing? Let’s say you want to put up a mini site for a product you wish to promote. Any good with graphics? You need to design the graphics for your minisite. Then get it all into a webpage. Then upload it to your server (after you’ve got a domain name, hosting etc). Sounds simple, and it is, although sometimes there are hiccups that can set you back. Now how long will all this take you to do? The reason I’m asking is that you can get a minisite designed for around $30. If it’s going to take you longer then 3 hours to get all this done, then it’s probably cost effective to outsource it! And as your income grows, this will become more and more worth it! Not to mention some of the technical headaches you will save!

5) Thinking that affiliate marketing will get you rich quick

Ok, time for a horrible truth. Affiliate marketing is not an easy way to riches. You will have to work hard. The fact is – if you could see the figures of most affiliate marketers you would see that some make hundreds a month, a few make thousands, and a very few make millions.

6) Not investing in your education

I know, I know, you’re still on a budget. The problem is you’re in a catch 22 situation. How do you expect to be hugely successful if you don’t know the most effective way of marketing? Internet marketing methods and techniques are evolving all the time – the trick is to get all the good courses. What if I was to tell you there is a good way to get your mitts on the latest and best information at zero cost? You know what it is? Go to internet marketing forums or forums in your niche and post that you will review products if they supply the product for free. Many webmasters of review sites (and there are a number out there) do not have the time to do the reviews themselves, and yet as their site is well ranked, they are in a position to make money from your review and the affiliate commissions it generates. Also, there is nothing to stop you publishing your own review as well. You may even find webmasters asking for reviewers. Or you could even go to somewhere like e-lance and advertise your services as a reviewer.

7) Getting discouraged to easily

You’ve got to keep your spirits up in this game. The truth is it takes time, and some campaigns will probably fail. Or at least appear like they are failing. How many opt ups did you expect per day? How much traffic did you expect? How much of that traffic did you expect to convert? If something doesn’t go to plan, or performs worse then you expected, don’t worry. Get back on that horse and keep riding. It is possible and you’re the best. Keep this mantra going in your head. Give yourself a treat. Stoke your self belief and self esteem!

8) Information Overload!!

This is the opposite of mistake 6. Sometimes people will get everything under the sun. I was like this when I first started out. Also, will some products there are enormous bonus packages with huge amounts of information in. They take several hours just to download. Often it’s also good information, but it can lead to paralysis. There are too many ways of achieving the same objective, and you don’t know which one to take! What’s the solution? First, find a source of information you trust and follow it through to the end. Secondly, ignore all other sales letters and reign in your spending. A good way of doing this is keeping a spreadsheet with how much you have spent on it and the date. Did you make use of the information? This is a well known problem, and I have done a previous blog post on it here.

9) Seeking Perfection

There’s always something else you can do. As you research you’ll find that this person’s squeeze page seemed more effective, or you should have put something else in your eBook, or that person’s blog looks better. The important point here is that you set launch dates or targets, and if things aren’t perfect, go ahead anyway if they are passable. Otherwise you can end up delaying for ages, and never doing anything to effectively build your business.

10) No accountable friend

Getting someone to justify all your business actions too is a great method of finding out what people really think. They will often come up with insightful points that make you re-examine how you’re doing things. Also they can sometimes give you much needed support. So go and talk to people about your business ventures – you could even get some customers! Better still, team up with someone and arrange a weekly meeting. Look at your objectives and strategies. What exactly did you achieve?

So there you have it, some top 10 tips for affiliate marketers. For something more in depth, check out the free eBook offered at the foot of the page!!

Internet Marketers are full of S***! Controversial Post!

frankstar — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:16:12 +0000

How many of us out there have been disappointed when they have got one of those hyped up reports from the web? Or disappointed with parts of the report?

I mean I know we need to be positive, and use the reports for their movement value and for generating ideas, but sometimes don’t you get the feeling of being a little let down?

I recently got a report from the net. I won’t tell you what the subject was about, but here was one of the bullet points from the report:

Find the ultimate blueprint for cranking out cash generating content-laden articles faster than the roadrunner!! (page XX)

And do you know what the answer was?

Write your introduction

Write your body

Write your conclusion

Well Duh!! Honestly now – who wouldn’t be slightly disappointed by this? So this blog post is all about separating the hype from the truth. I’m also going to ask for comments, because I have a hunch. You know what that hunch is?

Young men are far more likely to hype up their sales page, give you volumes of information that you’re unlikely to use and generally mislead you then older guys and women. Do you think this is true, or has elements of truth in it?

Now don’t get me wrong here – I have been very satisfied with other reports from other young guys. And of course it’s possible that women and older guys will also mislead. But generally, speaking honestly, are you more on your guard if you know the report is from a young man?

But I have now made an addition to the criteria on my checklist. Now before I get anything from the internet, especially in internet marketing I follow the following steps:

1) Look for a review on the internet

2) Look for any customer testimonials

3) Look at the credibility of the person

4) Look at their background (including sex and age!)

So my question to you dear readers is, what criteria do you follow before buying a report on the internet?

The Fastest Way to Make Money Online, at ZERO COST! – and NO WEBSITE!

frankstar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:55:34 +0000

Can you make money online fast, at zero cost and without the hassle of a website? AND with a minimum of work? Yes you can! You don’t believe me do you? Read on, it’s true!

Forget that horrid feeling of having your bank account overdrawn, not being able to pay the bills and having to get all the cheap crap because you don’t have the money to buy the good stuff. Welcome the feeling of splashing out when you want, and being able to get pretty much anything! Just try this, I dare you! All this will cost is your creativity!

It’s all in the research. But without further ado, this is what you can do to make money fast with a minimum of hassle, without a website.

Now of course there is a downside. You’re going to need to be able to read. Can you read? I should hope so! And secondly, you’re going to need to be able to write. Can you write? Could you write a creative captivating article? If so you’re onto a winner. Thirdly, you will need to do a bit of work on this. You’ve got to find or create something of value that solves a problem. Keep asking yourself, does this product give good value? The good news is that the work you do will count. You won’t be wasting your time, and will be working effectively.

We are going to use a combination of affiliate marketing and article marketing. Good research is the key to this method.

Step1: Download your free guide on finding white hot superhot niches, either from this webpage or from http://top100articlesoftheyear.com. Learn this method and choose a good niche. Make sure you apply this method to as many of the top article sites as possible.

Step 2: Using the free guide above find all the best articles in your niche. Look at the problems they are solving. Study these articles and what they are doing. You are going to use them as a template to write your own killer article.

Step 3: Visit click bank and find a good quality affiliate product, or make your own product. It needs to have a great sales page with a high conversion rate. Would you buy it? It would be a good idea to contact the creators of the product to find this out. And most importantly, it needs to solve the problem you identified in step 2. (blog forums for problems etc)

Step 4: Write your article. Put in your affiliate link in the resource box for your article. When people click on your affiliate link they should be automatically redirected to the high conversion sales page. Submit your article to the top 10 article directories. As you have based it on the most viewed articles in your niche, you have a great chance of getting targeted traffic. Now I know what you’re thinking. Ezinearticles.com (EZA) will not allow you to put in an affiliate link in the resource box. Is there a way around this? Check out this useful article: How to Get Money From Google with Zero Investment. See what this author has done? Used a re-direct. EZA do allow this, as long as the re-direct is from the top level of the domain. Other article directories also allow this. For convenience, here is the editorial guidelines link for EZA.

Step 5: Start promoting your article. Use Google to search for the best articles in your niche and see what websites come up. Put the best article titles in quotations, and search on Google. You’re looking for blogs / forums / social networking sites. See how the author of the article has promoted their work, then use their techniques and add to them.

Just in case you do not know what a re-direct is. You simply purchase a domain name, host it with a hosting service, and then get them to re-direct it. There will be an option for redirects normally in your cpanel.

That’s it! Simple. And you could do this with many niches, and it costs nothing! Mailing lists be damned!

Of course I don’t really mean that. If you have a website you can harvest a lot more from this method. You have access to more marketing methods. For example you could bribe people to use your affiliate link by offering a related product (perhaps one you have created?) for free. You could also start building a mailing list. Once you have this list you can then market other affiliate products of value over and over again to your list. A list also makes it far easier to seek out joint ventures with other marketers. Having a mailing list opens a lot of doors in the internet marketing world. I can say with confidence that most experienced marketers won’t use this method, or advise people to use it, as you are missing out on a huge chunk of the pie by not promoting a website or using a mailing list. But some people may not want the hassle of a mailing list or website, in which case this is all they need to do! This method is straightforward and simple.

The key to this method is not to rush in and to research your niche well beforehand.

The information in the free guide on using Google and ezinearticles is invaluable. You can pick up techniques directly from popular articles. For example, this author has leveraged off an existing established author to sell their own product:

Article Marketing Domination

I’m not saying you should do this, just that finding good articles and then analysing them is a great way of getting your own unique strategies. What has the author done with the article exactly, how have they got traffic to it, how can you use this. Thinking in this way you are far more likely to come up with your own brilliant creative ideas about how to make money on the internet!

This technique depends on researching your niche and your ability to create a great article and then promote it successfully. Your article is in effect acting as a website. So the more you know about researching your niche and article marketing the better.

Get your free download here.

Reporter vs Expert – Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

frankstar — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:05:00 +0000

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of pre-eminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think its fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of, well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

Top 10 Blog Traffic Tips

frankstar — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:49:21 +0000

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

P.S Happy New Year everyone!

Getting direction and purpose

frankstar — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:39:45 +0000

I could also have titled this post offline events, elevator Pitch and business cards. But when I wrote it I realized that going to offline events, getting an elevator pitch and getting business cards often give you purpose and direction!

Have you ever been to any offline events? Forex, property, marketing, starting your own business, there are many. Have you found that often they will recommend that you:

a) Get some business cards printed, and have something useful like a calendar in the back

b) Get an elevator pitch

Sure enough, after any of these events you will no doubt come away with a few people’s business cards.

But “wait a second” I hear you say, what’s the point of business cards? I’m starting an online business, I wasn’t going to actually meet anyone! I was going to sneakily start my business without anyone noticing!

Well you’d be surprised at how much business word of mouth can generate. Also it’s no use just “quietly” doing your business. You’re not ashamed of your business are you? Speaking to people about your business, especially friends, and the people in your immediate environment can really help keep your finger on the pulse. You can get insight into how the public will view your business – which will help with your promotions and sales pages. People will often be more direct, and different information will come up in a face to face situation then in a purely online environment.

If you’re an internet marketer, and you don’t have business cards, if you’re not careful people can immediately discredit you. Internet MARKETING is the business you’re in, so it is often expected that you have some kind of business card! Especially if you attend an offline event.

Why bother with offline events? Networking! Is networking important in this game? You bet cha!! Peer networking is great for traffic to your site. If your have an article or product that is good for someone else’s customer’s, then you get super concentrated targeted traffic coming to your site! The conversion rates will be much higher then normal traffic. Also attending offline events shows other people, and your subconscious that you are serious about your business / products.

Anyway, the alternative title of this post is “offline events, elevator pitch and business cards”. In case you don’t know, an elevator pitch is a quick overview of your business, which could be delivered in the time it takes to get to your destination floor in an elevator. In other words if you bumped in to Richard Branson, or someone who could enormously help your business in an elevator, what would you tell them? A short, sharp piece about your business when the opportunity arises.

Why write an elevator pitch? You can put it in your email signature on forums and emails. You can use it or part of it in your websites sub title. When you’re talking to the press it can help get attention. If you come across as someone who has crystal clear ideas about your business you make a much better impression. Developing your elevator pitch makes you think about the problem your business is solving, who your audience is, how your going to stand out, what you unique selling points are.

Here is my elevator pitch:

Internet marketing superheroes – your destined for more…more customers, more business, more freedom. It’s a site to help people make money online using internet marketing.