Quick-Start Business Idea
December 12, 2007
A member at the Warrior Forum who's new to Internet Marketing sent me a private message yesterday. He heard about a few of my very successful launches and wanted some tips on how to get started in IM himself. I wrote back and gave him a few tips and pointed him to my post on cutting through the fluff.
But today I was having a conversation with Alok Jain (of recent Project Quick Cash fame), and out of that discussion came a great idea about how to get your business off the ground if you've created a product — whatever niche the product is devoted to. Neither I nor Alok can claim this idea as our own. In fact, I got this idea from members at the Digital Point Forums.
You see, any time somebody posts a new product for sale at Digital Point, inevitably a number of DPF members will post a reply asking for a review copy (or review access, as the case may be). If the vendor is smart, he'll give review copies to some of the better known DPF members who have a good reputation (reputation is measured on DPF through what's called iTrader points: when you have a good, or bad, experience in a business transaction with a DPF member you can leave feedback).
Now, if you're thinking, "Why would the vendor give away free copies?" — think again. The copies aren't free. They're given with the understanding that the DPF member will post a review of the product to the thread. A long-standing DPF member's reputation will inevitably kick-start a string of sales for the vendor. I see it happen there all the time.
So if you're trying to get a new product off the ground, the first thing you want to do is go establish yourself at a popular forum related to your niche. Post advice, quality information, answer people's questions, etc. Build up a good reputation.
Once you have a bit of reputation, then post information about your product (if it's allowed) and offer a few top-members review copies in exchange for a review and/or a testimonial to go on your sales page. That will kick-start sales, which will lead to you having an even stronger reputation, which will end up in more sales, and so on.
Another related idea is to send a private message to the potential reviews ahead of time. Get their feedback before you ever post a thread selling anything. Listen to their suggestions for improvements and make your product better. Then post a sales thread and ask the members who gave you the feedback to post their feedback to the thread.
What this does is builds your reputation through the reputation of others. And in the virtually-anonymous online world, reputation is very important.
This approach is not limited to Internet Marketing products. Let's say you wrote an ebook on herb gardening. There are some huge gardening forums online. Go build up a little reputation there, enough to get the long-standing members to take your private message asking for a review seriously, get some testimonials, and so on. This will build momentum.
Momentum in business is very much like momentum in nature. Once a plane gets off the ground it takes a lot less fuel to keep it in the air. It takes a lot less power to maintain a car's speed than to accelerate to that speed. That's just natural physics.
Those same principles apply to getting your business going. The hardest part of running a successful business is starting a successful business. But you can piggy-back your way to success by inviting well-established experts in your niche to provide feedback on your product in exchange for a sample copy.
(A word of caution if this post motivates you to go to DPF and work on your reputation: you can only post sales pitches to the boards under the "Buy, Sell, Trade" category. So be careful about where you post!)
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
Cutting through the fluff.
December 10, 2007
The past two weeks have concerned me. There have been so many products launched, and their sales letters make them look so good. I've been in this business for a few years now, so I've learned how to cut through the fluff and select the products that actually appear to be offering something solid to buy and test. Before I knew how to do this I wasted a lot of money (and, just as importantly, time) on products that now I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
I wanted to share my selection methods with you so that you will be prepared if you haven't been in this business very long. Even if you have, you might find a few points helpful (or might be able to add some of your own in a comment below).
Learn The Basics Before Buying Anything
You can't build a house without first laying the foundation, so before I talk about what I look for in a product, first let me tell you what you should already know before you buy anything related to internet marketing. There is a lot of information freely available on developing these basic skills, and I personally feel you should have at least some practice in each of them before spending any money on a product.
1. Learn to write copy that sells.
If you're going to make it in business online as an individual, you need to learn how to write a good ad. Whether it's a 5,000 word sales letter or a small AdWords ad, you need to know how to draw in visitors and turn them into customers. If you have had no success doing this, then no product is going to help you.
There are only 4 steps involved in turning a visitor into a paying customer:
1. You have to get the visitor's attention.
2. Once you have their attention, you have to hold their interest.
3. While you have their interest, you must stimulate a desire.
4. Finally, with the visitor's interest and desire peaked, you have to demand that they take action.
Developing your skill in each of those four points takes time, but you need to learn to do that before you start purchasing products to help you build your business. If you haven't at least gotten some skill in the area of writing ads, no amount of additional knowledge will help you if you plan on selling products as an affiliate. After all, no matter how much traffic you can generate, if you can't convert a visitor into a customer, you'll still go broke.
Even if you plan on building your business around content creation and advertising (such as AdSense), you still need to learn this skill. At the very least you need to learn how to grab a visitor's attention and hold his interest. That turns a one-time visitor into a repeat visitor. Having great content will naturally draw a wider audience, more links from related sites, better search engine rankings, etc.
Really, if you can't write good copy, you're going to have a difficult time succeeding as one-person business. Start off selling lower-priced items, since it is much easier to convert people for a $7 product than a $77 one, and you'll build some confidence as you start to make a few sales.
2. You need to learn how to build an email list.
No matter what niche you're working in, you need to make sure that you're building a list on the back-end of any website you have. Even mainstream businesses are doing this now. I regularly receive emails from Amazon.com, Lowes.com (a hardware store in the USA) and other sites that I shop at. They send how-to information (especially Lowes), and let me know about products that I might be interested in.
If you're not building up a list, you're missing out on the lion's share of your profits, because it's the customers you've already got who will come back and buy again and again. The hardest part is turning a visitor into a customer. Once you've got a loyal customer it's a lot easier to get repeat business.
So learn how to build an opt-in page (which will again put your copywriting skills to the test), and remember to send your list valuable information in addition to sales pitches. If all you do is sell to them, they won't stay on your list long.
3. Learn how to drive traffic to your site.
Whether it's through search engine optimization, pay-per-click ads, social bookmarking or any other method, you need to know how to drive at least some traffic to your web site. There is a ton of great, free information available on how to do this. There are some great products that will teach you how to take this to the next level, but you need to have a little bit of a feel for it yourself first so that the additional information makes sense.
This is incredibly important, too, because no matter how good your copywriting skills are, if you can't get visitors to your site there's nobody to buy whatever you're selling!
Let me give you an example of why you need to have some basic understanding first. I have a very successful link-network service that you might already be familiar with. It has hundreds of happy customers gladly paying the monthly subscription because it is ranking their sites very well for their chosen keywords.
But you know what? I also have a lot of people who cancel their accounts because it doesn't work for them. Do you know why it doesn't work for them? Because they don't know how to do keyword research and pick the right keywords to target in the links they get. They never learned how to do that (and many of them refuse to read the how-to guide I give them on the subject).
It doesn't matter how many links you have into your site if you're targeting either a) keywords that get zero traffic or b) keywords that there's no way you'll ever rank for without having 100,000 links or more! If you do either of those things you'll never see a positive return on your investment.
That's why it's so important that you have a little bit of skill first, before investing in the products. It helps you to understand how to get real benefit out of the products.
Okay, So You've Got Some Skill, Now What?
Once you have at least some skill in those three areas, you're in a much better position to cut through the fluff of sales letters and their promises. You don't need to be driving thousands of visitors a day to your site, or making thousands of dollars a month from your efforts yet — you just need to have enough skill to have some consistent traffic, have made a few sales and added some people to your email list. Once you've done that, then the information below will help you a lot more.
When you look at a sales letter, there are 3 things that you need to analyze before purchasing:
1. Does the sales letter show proof, screen shots, stats and evidence that it works?
This is important. There are some really good copywriters out there who could sell an ice-maker to an Eskimo! They can make anything sound like "the next big thing" and make you really feel like you're missing a huge opportunity if you pass on it.
You see, buying is a largely emotional reaction for most people. You want to succeed, badly, or you wouldn't even be reading this. If you have already seen some success, you probably have a strong desire to continue growing your business (otherwise, again, you wouldn't be bothering to read this and learn more).
You need to learn to park your emotional reaction to a sales letter and analyze it for what it's really telling you. The sales letter needs to demonstrate the products ability to work. Even showing a lot of evidence is no guarantee of your personal success with a product, but it's certainly a lot more convincing than having no proof shown at all. So if it doesn't show stats, proofs, or evidence, pass on it!
To help you know if the stats can be trusted, do a quick search on Google for the name of the person who created the product. Find out if others have mostly good, or mostly bad, things to say about the product owner. If the feedback is all negative, then it's an indication to shy away even if the stats look good.
2. Who are the testimonials from?
A good sales letter almost always has testimonials on it. Testimonials build trust, because it helps the visitor see that yes, other people have had success with the product.
But are the testimonials in the sales letter only from known internet marketing "gurus"? If so, do you really think these guys took the days or weeks of time to go step-by-step through the processes outlined in the product to see real success? Do you think they care enough about the smaller amounts of money or traffic that might be a big deal to us, but to them is just a drop in the bucket? Isn't it much more likely that what you're reading is an "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" situation?
Now, if the testimonial is from someone that you've known to provide real evidence and proof, that lends more credibility to their praise of the product. But if it's from guys who are always sending sales pitches and never providing valuable information with proof of their own personal success, pass! Don't think that just because you recognize the names in the testimonials that the product must be worthwhile. It's easy to fall prey to the logic that "if the big guys say it works, it must!" That simply is not always true. In fact, it very often is not true at all, especially in the world of internet marketing.
3. Is what the product delivering tangible or abstract?
I am a huge fan of the step-by-step reports that actually outline proven methods of success. I hate it when a product is all fluff and theory with no actually stated process.
I'm at the point now where I will not buy any product that does not revolve around the basic skills outlined above. If it doesn't teach you (again, in a step-by-step way) how to write better ads, or how to build a bigger email list, or how to drive traffic to your site — I pass.
To me, everything else is just smoke and mirrors.
Summing It All Up
A real business is about eyeballs, customers and follow-ups. You have to get more people to see what you're offering, offer it in such a way that they become customers, and follow-up with quality information and related products that will help the people who are on your list. If the product doesn't help you do that, it's not worth your time.
Learn the basics first so you'll be able to cut through the fluff and not be drawn-in by a great sounding sales pitch that offers nothing of real value or evidence. Build your foundation first so that your house won't collapse when the ground shifts. The Internet Marketing world is always offering new products promising "the next big thing." Yes, the ground is constantly shifting. If you don't already have a solid foundation, and you go chasing after all of these phony dreams, your house (your business) will collapse right out from under you.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
How I got my Squidoo lens to #1.
December 3, 2007
Squidoo made quite a splash when it first came onto the scene. At first Google loved it like it was their own child, but in July of this year Google slapped Squidoo like a red-headed stepchild.
After all of this I still saw new ebooks and reports being created hailing the power of Squidoo for traffic generation. I'm always interested in new forms of traffic, so I thought I'd test it out myself to see if Squidoo is really all it was cracked up to be, or if people were just making a lot of noise to sell their reports.
I happened to already have a lens at Squidoo from a prior experiment that never got off the ground, so I did a little investigating to see what it took to get the lens ranked in Squidoo (not the search engines). My goal was to get my lens ranked number one in its category (Sports and Recreation) — which I did, though at the time of writing this post it's now number two.
As it turns out, getting a lens to the top of a Squidoo category is a pretty easy task if you don't mind spending a little money. All I did was drive a bunch of pay-per-click traffic to the lens and got a bunch of positive votes (it's a pretty good lens, if I do say so myself).
I'm not talking about expensive pay-per-click traffic, either. I spent a mere $100 for 1,633 visitors from GoClick.com. I bid on a bunch of golf related keywords, and also on the overflow traffic from the Sports category (which is a neat thing that GoClick lets you do).
On top of that I purchased some pop-under traffic from TrafficZap. I sent a total of about 7,000 unique visitors to the lens between GoClick and Traffic Zap. Keep in mind that I did not expect any of that traffic to convert into ad revenue or affiliate sales. It's been my experience that neither send quality traffic, but I was testing a theory that external traffic to the lens is what makes for good rankings in your Squidoo category.
In case you're not aware, Squidoo lets users vote on lenses. I expected votes to influence the ranking, too. However, getting to the top in Squidoo seems to have little to do with the votes for your lens, and everything to do with the traffic you get to your lens. Here's a lens that has only one vote (and it's a bad vote) and yet is now the number one lens in the Sports and Recreation category.
Knowing that ahead of time would be enough to make me question the value of being well ranked in a Squidoo category. If it's that easy to get ranked (and believe me, my own efforts show it is), then you could get any kind of garbage to the top with a little money and even less effort. Surely Squidoo users would soon figure this out and stop visiting the category pages to look for new lenses to visit?
As it turns out, that's true.
In a period of a little over two weeks I got 1,422 visitors directly from Squidoo itself. So despite being number one for most of that time, I only managed about 100 visitors a day. Now, that's not so bad if you're not using pay-per-click traffic to keep your ranking up. But even if I got my lens ranked number one through other, free, means, would it be worth the effort?
Again, if you're not familiar with Squidoo, here's a little information: Squidoo will share the advertising revenue they generate from your lens with you. The ads are well placed, and there are many options for related affiliate product sales, etc. I used all of these methods on my own lens (which is about Golf). Very relevant ads were shown on the page, so no problems there.
The result? I've earned $0.01 in royalties. Yup, a whole penny from 1,422 visitors. Ouch.
I also peppered the lens with an affiliate link to a top-producing ClickBank golfing product (which I own myself and have found to be quite helpful).
One nice thing about Squidoo is how detailed its reports are. It tracks all of the clicks to external links on your lens, so you know exactly where people are clicking and how often. Squidoo tells me that I managed to get 25 clicks on my affiliate link from 1,422 visitors. That's a 1.7% click-through rate. Not that bad if you consider how much content is on the page. I didn't make any sales, though…
The bottom line is that being ranked number one in the Sports and Recreation category didn't do me any good at all in terms of revenue. The 1,422 visitors almost never clicked on the ads, and only a handful clicked on my affiliate link.
Does this mean that Squidoo isn't a worthy platform for monetization? Not necessarily.
It's very possible that search engine traffic or other traffic converts better than direct Squidoo visitor traffic. After all, it's a safe assumption that the majority of people browsing the Squidoo categories are already familiar with Squidoo, its ads, and how things work there. Naturally they avoid clicking the ads, since ad-blindness has already set in.
And it's also possible that a lens in a different category or on a different subject matter might perform better than the one I created on Golf. Some categories are more purchase-friendly than others. A final thought is that a lens might do better in terms of lead generation: getting people to opt-into a list instead of click on your ads.
All that said, though, I really expected a lot more from direct Squidoo visitors. I expected far more of them, and I also expected better results in terms of click-throughs and ad revenue.
My current recommendation is not to spend a lot of time trying to get to the top of your category in Squidoo until you've proven to yourself that you can monetize the traffic you'll be getting.
Please post your thoughts, comments, and personal Squidoo experiences below.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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