How To Market Online

Am I the only one who tries to be honest in their advertising? Surely not - there have to be others around!

Surfing the web, you have to be amazed at some of the claims made by the programs being advertised. Do people really believe these statements? I suppose they must, because there are those who make money from these programs.

Here are a few examples of ads I find very difficult to believe. The italics are, of course, my comments:

Basically, You Earn 2.5% per Day for 60 days. Maybe, for the first few people, but it sounds like a ponzi to me!

Earn $1000's in just one month with just 3 signups Yes, who have to get 3 signups each, who have to get 3 signups each, etc. If everyone is a paid member, and everyone recruits, you may just do it in the perfect world!

Make money online, no recruiting, no selling Oh yes - and just what does one have to do then?

Get paid every 30 seconds! (Well maybe you do, but how much? .0001 of a cent. Every 30 seconds sounds like a PTC)

Ok, so I'm a very sceptical person, but really, how many people do you know who have actually made money with programs like this? Bet you can count them on one finger, or less!

Perhaps I'm wrong in asking where the honesty has gone. Perhaps these people really believe the program hype, and maybe the programs can do what they say - if everything goes by the book, perfectly. But when does it ever?

We should do more due diligence, and unless something is believable, keep our money in our pockets. If anyone has a program which really works with little done by them, please let me know, I'd love to join it!

If you really want to become successful at marketing online, then you'll need to become well-known. Branding yourself is the way to do this.

I've been playing around with this idea for some time now, and have finally written a short e-book about branding yourself. If you'd like a copy, the link is below, and at the moment, it's free!

Added 2012:

Well, the time has come to remove the link to my ebook, as it's becoming rather dated. Maybe I'll write another, maybe not, but in the meantime, please do think about branding yourself online, and becoming known. It's better to be known than not! :-)

Do you ever think that things are going well, and your marketing is improving? Earlier this year I was doing pretty well with an affiliate marketing venture, then all of a sudden the sales dried up.

What changed? Nothing that I can think off. The advertising was the same, the places I advertised were the same, and the ads were rotated in the same way.

Perhaps it's time to change my splash pages and design some new ones. Maybe I will have to try some other places to promote this product.

Whatever the solution, I'm determined to find it, and make some cash online!

Recently I came across 12SecondCommute, a new program to help build your list.

As well as building your list, there is the option to promote any other programs you may be marketing.

Darryl Graham, the owner, also has ProfitYesterday and 2TillProfit, both of which have been around for some time.

A great deal of thought and effort has gone into 12SC, and there is plenty of information on the website.



There is a 30 day free trial, which is great, and it may well take you that long to navigate around the site and read all the information available to you!

Personally, I'm not that good at list-building, so any program such as 12SecondCommute, which offers this much help, has got to be seriously considered.

Recently I've joined a couple of article marketing sites, to see if this would improve sales and branding. Article marketing is highly recomended by many online, so thought it was worth a try.

It's too early to tell if anything is working yet, and up until now, I've only written three short articles. Time and motivation are the
reasons here. :-)

Perhaps instead of updating my Sqidoo lenses, I should be writing more informational articles, but Squidoo is much more fun, and after all, even though we are trying to make some cash online, there's no reason we can't have fun doing it.

Added later.

I'm no longer promoting this program, because although it looked really promising, I had absolutely no success at all with it. The last straw was that the e-book was updated, and the cost of getting my ebook updated was $20. I thought this was quite unfair, so decided to leave EWCF immediately.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the last couple of months, I've been going through a slow period with my marketing, so I thought it was time to try something new.

In the past, I've usually gone for free or very little cost programs, so decided to go a bit more upmarket. Nothing comes from nothing, they say!

The program I went for is called "Effortless Web Cash Formula. You can find all about it by doing a search for Effortless Web Cash Formula and downloading the ebook.

Of course, to get started isn't free, but the cost is not that much, really.

First, purchase a software package for $37 USD
Then you'll need to purchase a domain from GoDaddy, but your site will be hosted free.
Next, you'll pay the program owner $10 for set up and your site will be hosted for life.

That's it - Just start advertising your program, and look forward to getting plenty of $37 payments into your account.

Pretty easy, isn't it? It's a lot easier than many of the previous programs I've worked with, and this one looks as if it could be the one to make me a bit richer! LOL

Don't you hate being lied to? Well, your readers and customers will also.

If you're advertising a product or service, don't hype it up, tell the truth.

When you see an ad saying "Make $5,000 in 10 days", do you believe it?
I know I don't.

Yes, it is possible to make that kind of money online, although I haven't
personally, and don't know of anyone who has.

You've often seen ads for programs which say "All you have to do is refer three
people, and you will earn $76,569.87"

This is quite possible, of course, but what they aren't telling you, is that after you
refer your three people, each of those must then refer three people, who must
also refer another three people each.......

See how it goes? The possibility of earning that amount of cash is there, but every
person you refer, and all their referrals must be paying customers, and must also
be active. Very unlikely, I'm afraid, so the ad is only very loosely based on the truth.

Sorry if I've dissillusioned you, but I like honesty in advertising.

Yes, it's true. Marketing online can sometimes be very discouraging. You'll get times when for weeks, nothing much happens, and you seem to be advertising and throwing money away for nothing. It happens to all of us.

There are two ways to go, when this happens to you:
* You can quit
* You can look at your marketing methods, and improve them

Of course, the second option is the best, but it's often the first option that is taken by beginner marketers. They begin to think that it's all a scam.

In some situations, of course, they are right - many programs to be found on the net are scams, and will only make money for the owner of that program. This is why, before you put any of your hard-earned cash into marketing, do your due diligence.

Due diligence? This basically means, do some research into the company you will be promoting. Find out as much as you can about them, and only then, make your decision as to whether to join them or not.

That's getting a little off the subject, but it needs to be said.

If you are going through one of those dry patches, it may help to completely take a break from it for a few days. Sure, you may lose some advertising, but then, you weren't getting any results anyway, and sometimes, a break makes you see everything just that much more clearly.

Whatever you decide to do, it is definitely not a good idea to jump from program to program - that way, you can lose hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Everyone, otherwise known as "They" say that you must have a list to make money online. Not strictly true, as I've made a little purely by advertising, however, if you really want to get ahead in marketing, build your own list.

It's not just about collecting names and email address by the hundreds or even thousands, it's about building relationships with those on your list.

Why? Because if you have a relationship, and the people on your list trust you, then they are more likely to buy from you than from someone they don't know.

It's important to be honest with your list, and to only offer them good products. If you wouldn't use something yourself, don't promote it to your list.

Remember, your list are people, just like you, so treat them how you would like to be treated, not just as a number. Make it personal, and they'll stay with you.

There are many viral list building programs available on the net, and I'll recommend a couple of them later. Not all programs operate in the same way, so it's best to find one or two which you really like to work with. After all, you won't work with something you don't like, now will you? :-)

Basically, viral list building means that everyone you sign up, and everyone who sign up under them, are in your downline. That's the power of viral list building - if you have an active downline, your list will continue to grow, with little or no effort on your part.

One of my favourite programs is Vital Viral Pro Troy, the owner/admin is very helpful, and there are many back office segments which free members can access. Of course, upgraded members get more, but don't upgrade unless you really can afford it, preferably from your income, once you get started. Vital Viral is a relatively inexpensive way to get started with viral listbuilding.

Another program with both a free and upgraded option is Affiliate Funnel, which also includes a downline builder for traffic exchanges. Affiliate Funnel also rates traffic exchanges, publishing results weekly, so that you're always aware of which ones are doing well at the time.

The best way to build your list, of course, is to have a capture page of your own, on your own website, so that your list is truly your own, but we don't all have the knowledge or resources to do this. These programs are a good alternative.

Recently I've been doing a lot of reading on marketing, and it seems that the best way is to have a good plan and to stick to it.

If you're as in the dark as I was as to how to set up a marketing plan, perhaps one of the many systems around online may be of help to you.

Use your advertising resources to publicizse your marketing program only, as it's only wasting your efforts to try to advertise more than one product at a time. For example, if you're advertising two products, then you are reducing the effort by 50%. If you advertise three products, then each is only receiving 33% of your marketing efforts. As you can see, it makes more sense to publicize one product only.