Bloggers Market.com

Internet Marketing – Lesson 17

Jeffrey — Sat, 25 May 2013 12:30:00 +0000

Most of what I write about here at Bloggers Market is really second nature to me now. Once learned, the road-map is pretty easy to follow. However, there are a couple of areas that give me pause. I ran into trouble with this series in the beginning trying to communicate to my readers about display ads as an income stream. To get a really good overview this takes several hundred pages of text involving different companies, styles, coding, proper placement, best SEO and SEM practices, proper pricing, testing; so on and so forth.

I’m in the pickle again with “Shopping Carts”. I hate giving my readers 300 words that leave them as clueless at the end as they were at the beginning. However, I have to cross this path within this series. Sooo…

Most of what you will do within Internet Marketing will be within your own powers to create. Some things that will not will be, display ads of some sorts, SEO, and Shopping Carts.

I’ve been burned to the ground by some really reputable Internet Marketers because of dubious Shopping Carts Services that I am positive that the Marketer had no idea what was happening on the affiliate end of things.

Managing your Online business may take some real effort to manage, but when you have 10′s of thousands to deal with, things can get really dicey. If the Shopping Cart gets is wrong, it will be your name that gets caught in the gears of the machine, especially if it comes to affiliate payouts or refunds.

If I do a simple product that goes for less than a hundred dollars, I usually go with “PayPal” as the payment portal and then handle the refunds myself and avoid dealing with affiliates. 50% of 10 bucks is just not worth the bother and hassle.

However, if you have a product that sells for $1995.00, you are going to have to have a reputable hosted shopping cart or shopping basket service. 50% of that is definitely worth the hassle.

Again, there is no way to cover all of the angles of shopping carts in this post. Here comes the “Due Diligence” thing again!

Here is my list:

OfficeAutoPilot

Those listed above are the most popular …… and most expensive. However, this is just a starting point. With some advice from Father Google you can find some reputable reviews of shopping carts that should prove enlightening.

Also, be prepared for a killer learning curve. I figure that you will spend a couple of grand just learning the systems here. Good Luck …… you’re going to need it!

Internet Marketing – Lesson 16

Jeffrey — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:30:33 +0000

The path to success for the Internet Marketer has three elements; a good product, good landing-page with compelling copy, and a good ad campaign. While there are many ways in which to monetize a Blog or Website, putting these three elements together will provide you a path of least resistance with the greatest chance of success as well as profit.

Good copy and ads for a product are essential to your success, however, this will have to come with a good dose of experience. There really is no way to cover this subject in a Blog post or even a good book.

I have seen books that go on and on with the details that may or may not work for you. This is probably one of the reasons that this subject is not as well covered on the Internet as others. You really have to assemble a ton of bits and pieces to effectively put together your Marketing campaign. In the end it all comes down to a good split test and a better product.

What is most important to the exercise of writing effective ads ( as well as copy ) for your product is coming up with a collection of ads, split-testing, and then deciding in a fairly quick order whether or not “your dog will hunt”.

And if you do have success with a good product, keep in mind that eventually you will see a point of diminishing returns, at which time you will have to make a judgement call on when to get out.

If the product has no “Pop” at the beginning of your launch, don’t extend your loses past a month. In other words don’t go for 90 days thinking that your product will eventually catch-on.

If you are not seeing some kind of a return on your investment within a couple of weeks, you might as well set your sites on starting over. This is taking into account that you have given it a fair chance at launch. Don’t think that by bidding 03.00 cents for a keyword, that this is going to provide you with healthy profits.

Again, in the long run …… experience will make the difference here. You just have to keep trying and be smart about how to structure your ad campaigns, as well as how much money to commit to your goals.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 15

Jeffrey — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:30:28 +0000

Squeeze-Pages for the most part are pretty straight forward, after all you are just trying to harvest E-Mail Address. I’ll address the more complex designs that are tied into product launches as we go along here.

Landing-Pages are where all the action takes place for the aggressive Internet Marketer. Managing a Blog’s structure is a real challenge, however that is just one half of the issue …… the other is the landing-page.

Not only is a landing-page complex in its design, there are also multiple parts to a good landing-page system. What makes landing-pages complex, is the need for a captivating design along with compelling copy.

I’m going to list the parts of the landing-page system, yet I really have no way of going into the parts, as they are really an art-form that takes years to master.

My last design took me two weeks of full-time work to complete, yet I have been working for years on perfecting the system. My first system took me months to complete.

Here is my list:

Landing-Page
Squeeze-Page To The Offer
Downloads Page
Affiliates Page
Graphics Page For The Affiliates

Tie in a shopping cart and you are set to go!

When you view the above list you may think to yourself that really the landing-page is the only challenge in the group. However, I can assure you that all parts of the list are a real challenge.

You may say, how can a graphics page be a pain? Just drop your images in and go! Not so fast, you have to design a number of images for use by your affiliates along with “clean code” to go with them. You must then arrange those images in a “pleasing-to-the-eye” way on a beautiful page.

While the landing-page is used to sell the customer, the affiliates page is used to sell the affiliates. If the page is just “functional”, you will run the affiliates off. The affiliates page has to be a knock-out, just like the other pages to the system.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 14

Jeffrey — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:30:57 +0000

This week we will take a look at the different options that you have when building squeeze-pages with third party applications. Whenever you look at outside resources that you wish to use or need, make sure that you don’t get “hooked” into the cash-flow dilemma. Whatever it is that you need, purchase that product for a flat fee, don’t subscribe for anything other then Web-Hosting or Training.

With squeeze-page software you can get both types of services. You can subscribe or purchase …… flat-fee. Again, forget the subscription, go with the flat-fee. While there are many to choose from, I can really only think of two options. The first is “OpimizePress” and the second is “premise.”

There are of course many others, both free and paid that will provide you with the tools that you need. I just prefer to have all the tools in one place, so my choice is “premise.“, at a cost of $165.00. Well worth the money if experience is my guide.

Unfortunately, most of my clients want custom designs for opt-in and landing-pages that are styled around their existing web-design or theme, and I can assure you that they pay more than $165.00 for them. I can easily spend a couple of days designing either one. If I could just use premise, I could be finished in a couple of hours.

However, below is a list you may want to troll through:

One thing you might want to be aware of, is that these sites listed above will all try to harvest an E-Mail address from you if you are interested. You might want to take a look at the opt-in as this is probably what the final product will look like if you use if for your Internet Marketing needs.

I’m sure that there are many others to choose from, so, you will have to do your due diligence here. Taking your time here will really help you understand a major part of Internet Marketing that you really should have both a deep understanding of, and experience with.

Next week we will look at the Landing-Page.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 13

Jeffrey — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 12:30:48 +0000

This week we’ll take a look at “Squeeze Pages”. The Squeeze Page is one of the most critical components of your Internet Marketing activities. Without a list things will be difficult. The sooner you build your list the better. You have to stay focused and build your list exactly along the lines of your niche.

If you sell pet supplies, you need to build lists with products that you can give away for an opt-in that has something to do with pets. Having an opt-in for a product on gardening will not provide you with a good contact for a sale of pet supplies.

Unfortunately the best way to build a list quickly is to have a product of your own to build interest. I say “unfortunately”, because this actually denotes that you build a paid marketing campaign that will bring traffic to your site to view the offer and then opt-in for more information. This is the best way to build a list, but it is expensive.

However, if you have a list that is built around a product launch, you will have a good list with which to pitch that product. While you will always make sales with your list, a general list such as the one you see with my pop-up for my monthly opt-in is not exactly the best way to make sales. What you are angling for here is that 3 percent that will buy from that general list. This is icing on the cake, not the heart of the matter.

The Squeeze Page is that heart of the matter! It is designed to harvest sales contacts that are interested in your product. While your squeeze pages should be stylish, don’t over think it here. Keep the whole thing on one page with no scroll. As a matter of fact when you are starting out you should consider carefully using a squeeze page building product to use, instead of trying to design a page yourself with HTML and CSS. More on this next week.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 12

Jeffrey — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:30:14 +0000

As I have written and you have read over the past couple of weeks, artwork is one of the more challenging parts to Internet Marketing. Unfortunately after you have your designs in place, you must begin anew with artwork for your Affiliates.

While you may want to keep continuity with your ad campaign, you will have to change it up a bit to maintain interest in your products and to show a bit of professionalism. Not to mention that your affiliate artwork will come in all types of sizes and shapes. The more that you design the more options your Affiliates will have to display your products.

You will want to maintain all of your artwork with codes on your site. You can see examples of that here at Bloggers Market.com under the category of “Affiliates”. You will see a pretty good selection of artwork sizes along with the code already written. You will have to do the coding yourself. Google will really punish these Affiliate links if they are not written properly, so go ahead and code to best SEO practices and provide the code for your Affiliates to simply copy and paste.

The main idea here is to make sure that everything is done with best practices, while at the same time making it as easy as possible for your Affiliates to work with you.

And speaking of making it easy for your Affiliates to work with you, I’m going to go ahead here and mention Affiliate Payouts as this is one of the most critical parts of selling Affiliates on listing your products on their site. You have to have a good Shopping Cart that you can depend on, that will responsibly handle your payouts and refunds for you. E-Junkie and JVZoo are a couple of choices that you may want to take a look at. There are others of course, so do your due diligence here.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 11

Jeffrey — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:30:11 +0000

Whenever you are designing your artwork for your sites and your affiliates, only use original images. Don’t try to copy someone else’s idea and paste your icons or logos into it. BAD IDEA!

There are also a number of royalty free sites where you can gather your needed materials. Again, pull together the needed pieces and build what you need. Even if you are granted royalty free status, don’t take a single piece and paste your materials on it. Design your own ideas.

Once you have a general idea as to what you want, then you can spread that around to all of your artwork that you will need for a certain campaign. In other words, you only have to design once and then you can deal with making the square artwork fit into the round hole. By re-sizing and shifting things around a bit you should be able to make a go of it.

Avoid any kind of video usage except for the main landing-page. Too much use of video and you will surly lose the attention span of your target market. Using video is nightmarish at best, so be really cool here. When you design your landing-page video, make sure that you keep it to FOUR MINUTES (4) …… get it 4, 4, 4, no longer.

I have read tons of material on the power and length of videos for Internet Marketing, and the loss of viewers is simply astonishing after 4 minutes. If you are using instructional videos for an opt-in campaign, don’t go over 8 minutes here. And if your end product is some sort of educational series, keep each video at an hour. If it goes 8 hours give them 8 different videos.

Putting together these types of artworks takes a huge amount of time. Sometimes as much time goes into the artwork as goes into the product itself. But show great patience and restraint here and you will be well rewarded.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 10

Jeffrey — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:30:58 +0000

This week we will look at “ARTWORK”! To me it is almost painful to look at the word. If I am motivated in the future to out-source any part of my business, it will be the artwork end of things. When I think of artwork, I think of Photoshop; Arhhh!

Of all the software that I have ever encountered, Photoshop and GIMP are the most intimidating. With open-source software that award goes to Wiki-Media, however, I can live without Wiki-Media, I’m just stuck with Photoshop and GIMP.

Of course, these software packages are not trying to destroy your quality of life out of spite, rather by design, they are just killer to learn. Once learned, if you do not use the software everyday, you tend to forget how all the parts go together.

I personally use GIMP, as I’m just not a big fan of the cloud and you have to subscribe to Photoshop to the tune of $50.00 a month or pony-up a couple of grand for a license. And who would want to do that for the dread of torture.

For the basic Internet Marketer, GIMP will do fine for all your needs and it’s open-source and FREE!

Time is always an issue in your business and you have to cut corners from time to time, however, avoid this while working and designing your artwork as it will truly show to the world. Take your time here and do the very best that you can.

When I work with private clients, oh they just love my artwork. Yeah, well, whatever. They don’t see the 3000 lines of PHP underneath, that took 3 weeks of 18 hour days to write to get their site to work so that they can even view the artwork!

So take your time and don’t get frustrated that such seemingly easy work takes a great deal of time. In the end you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 9

Jeffrey — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:30:06 +0000

Last week I provided an Internet Marketing Products designs and launch list. I would like now, to address this list one item at at time. I have already covered the first and second items on the list, so this week I’ll look at announcements to your mailing list and to your affiliates.

When you have a product in mind and you are ready to commit to bring that product to your market, you need to let everyone know. You need to drum-up support for this process and product about 8 weeks before you are ready to launch it. And no you are not going to be sending them E-Mails about how they need to check-out your way-cool product when you launch it; you’ll lose their interest pretty quick if you do that. You’re going to be doing a bit of story telling along the way to maintain their interest.

As for your affiliates, you need to keep this all business and let them know that you will soon be providing the next best thing since sliced bread! “Stay tuned for more”.

Actually, you want to let everyone know what is going on and the process that you are going through to bring them your next product. You want to let them know about all the cool stuff that you are adding with your offer and all the trials that you have gone through to make your next product launch the best ever.

By doing this, you are communicating to your market as a friend and not as a potential sales figure. They in turn have to respond by reading it as intended, and not as a sales pitch, thereby gaining interest.

By the time the actual product launch comes around they will be ready to receive your products, you can count on that. In the end they may not purchase from you, but they are sure to promote your product on their site as an affiliate.

Internet Marketing – Lesson 8

Jeffrey — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:50:04 +0000

Producing back-end products, as well as launching products is not for the faint of heart. In a perfect world this should be left to professionals, or rather out-sourced. However, unless you yourself understand this process, you will have marginal experiences with outsourcing.

This week we will be looking at the individual pieces to the product launch.

First, I want to again caution you on the fact that I or anyone cannot fully explain this process of “Internet Marketing” within a Blog post or series of Blog posts. As with any endeavor worth undertaking, experience plays a big part in your success. And experience you can’t find in an E-Book or DVD-Boxset, let alone a Blog post.

Once you have a product in mind or completed, you will have to provide a structure from which to work from. By that I mean, you will have to decide how you want to deliver that product to your market and then begin the process of producing materials for its promotion.

I’m going to place this process in a list, as this is an easier way for you to get the picture.

Product Production
Bonus/Gifts Production
Announcement To Your Mailing List
Announcement To Your Affiliates
Production Of Artwork For Product
Production Of Artwork For Affiliates
Design Of Squeeze Pages
Design Of Landing Pages
Work On Ad Campaign
Construction Of Shopping Cart
Designs Of Any Upsells
Design Of Launch Functions
Design of Social Promotion
Formal Launch
Customer Service Functions