Anyone Can Use This Simple Technique to Get Started Making Money on the Internet Immediately!

Getting started.  This seems to be a big hang up for a lot of people.

Many of us get so constipated with information overload, we fail to take any action.  We buy the books and courses and watch a ton of YouTube videos, but when it comes to execution, we fall short.

Failure to Launch

I remember buying a huge Internet marketing course for about $400 and diving into it with excitement and passion, only to let it sit there for about 2 years before taking any real action.  I had a problem getting my ideas off the ground.

And even though a course like that was very well done, if you don’t take any kind of action, your results will be null, and if your results are null,  you’ll get depressed, and if you get depressed you probably won’t take any action… 

And the process repeats itself. 

The only way to beat this vicious cycle of inactivity is to GET OFF YOUR HINEY AND DO SOMETHING!!!

An Easy Way to Get Started From Two of My Readers

Yesterday I ran an article asking readers to share their stories and ideas about how they made their first dollar in Internet Marketing.

I’m encouraged by the fact that at least a few of you have contacted me with their ideas and I really appreciate it.  This information will definitely help out your fellow entrepreneurs and it is a clear and shining example of how kind some people can be in helping others.

If you would like to contribute to this blog, please send me your ideas on this subject and I will gladly post it.  Either post your idea in the comment section or write it up and send it to:

elmo033057@gmail.com

In the subject field put: “Mark, How I Made My First Dollar” - That way I’ll be able to see it amidst all of the email I constantly get.  Ha-ha!

 So, I got two emails sent to me (no signature or web address, which I would have gladly posted) that said just about the same thing.  The emails were basically one or two lines, so I’ve embellished on their ideas to help get the message across.

So, thanks so much to Ryan and Blake for sending these.  In the future if you want me to put a link to your sites on this post, just let me know.

Start Hocking Your Skills and Talents

Sit down and dash out on a piece of paper all of the skills you possess.  Here’s a list of ideas to get you thinking:

Writing – Articles, blog posts, advertising copy, etc.

Graphic Arts – Logos, banners, buttons, scanned art, etc.

Speaking – Making how to videos, pod casts, interviews, (even public speaking)

Web Design – Any skill you may have that contributes to building websites

Programming Skills – Java code, HTML, Flash, etc.

If you don’t have any skills ACQUIRE THEM!

You can learn everything you need to know from a laptop these days, so no more excuses.  Get busy and start learning!

What you can do immediately is start marketing your skills through a variety of channels like Craig’s List, Elance, oDesk, and if you just absolutely want to get started and make your first few dollars, market yourself through Fiverr. 

In my opinion, making a living on a site like Fiverr would be very tough, however some people have actually done that.  But I look at sites like Fiverr and opportunities for making money with Adsense ads as a springboard to get you started.  That certainly shouldn’t be the only way to make money to survive on. 

True Story about Acquiring Skills

A couple of years ago, I was rehabbing a house with my family.  We had purchased a home that we had bought from a foreclosure.  We got a super deal on it, however, it had severe leak problems with the roof. 

We decided we really wanted to have the roof work done by contractors, and we had a neighbor tell us that we needed to install a metal roof.  Our rehab was on top of a tall hill and it as susceptible to high winds from time to time.

So we ordered a metal roof from a local contractor.  However, the company we got the contractor through ordered the metal for the roof AND the porch and the contractor was never told about the attached roof.  So we had a big extra pile of metal roofing and no roof for the leaky porch.

I told my son we would try to do the porch roof ourselves because if we got that wrong and it leaked, it would only be the porch area affected.  So, we pulled up YouTube and watched every video we could on how to install a metal roof and we installed the porch section perfectly. 

It was also great that he had a cell phone with video capabilities on it because many times we would access those videos while we were on the roof working. 

Aren’t we living in an incredible age?

By the way, here's a video from the porch of that house right after we bought it.

The Sooner You Do This, The Better Off You’ll Be

The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll learn how to market your opportunities online and gain skills others don’t have.  When I got started I knew nothing about Internet marketing, creating blogs, HTML, advertising copy, how to make graphics for websites, how to use Photoshop, how to use Social media, etc. 

I pretty much knew nothing.  But I learned by doing.  If I didn’t know how to do something I bought

books. (For Dummies books are great for learning certain subjects!)

And yeah, I failed a bunch, but I also learned a lot from those mistakes.  And quite frankly, it was a far better education that what I got in an expensive college.

Once again I want to take this opportunity to thank the two gentlemen that sent me the email with their story on it  - Ryan and Blake!

And if have a story or a comment about how you made your first dollar on the Internet, please take a few moments and share it with us.   

Please send it to:

elmo033057@gmail.com

(In the subject field put: “Mark, How I Made My First Dollar”)

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

How Are Internet Marketing Strategies Like Fad Diets?

I’m starting to look at marketing plans like diet plans.  Before you tell me that I’m mad, hear me out.  Within the last two days, I have heard another two revolutionary methods of marketing your businesses online that supposedly was a new way to do it.  While I must admit, there are different styles of marketing your business, there pretty much isn't anything new under the sun.

Consider diet plans for a second.  If you watch any daytime TV at all, one of the popular Doctor talk shows that permeate the airwaves have a different diet plan almost on a continual basis.  Of course, this is marketing in itself, because women, which are the target market, are always looking for ways to look younger and thinner.

So, the shows are geared for this.  The products and plans they have on those programs talk about books and equipment dedicated to this industry.  Not only that, these shows are interrupted by obligatory commercials that have all of the low- calorie foods and plans dedicated to this market as well.

And the diet plans are endless:

The Mediterranean Diet
Low Carb Diet
South Beach Diet
Chocolate Diet
The Spartan Diet
The Paleo Diet
The Diet Diet
The funniest one I heard was the Peter Pan Diet.  (I wonder if it involves peanut butter.)


I once had a book given to me that was produced by Men’sHealth magazine.  It was a real interesting book because it had huge, luscious, full-color pictures of food in it that YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO EAT.  I took one look at that book and shouted, “Finally a book that tells me what I want to hear, eat all of this incredible food!” 

The part of the book that stood out the most, was a section at the beginning of the book.  It went through all of the most popular diets, and described what you were supposed to eat or not eat on them and the editors and nutrition experts at Men’s Health dispensed their 2 cents worth on what they thought of each of these diets.  At the end of the day, they said that all of them were not realistic ways to lose weight and that each one of these strategies of losing weight was not sustainable over the long term. 

However, the real kicker came at the end of that particular chapter.  Men’s Health decided to tell you the one and only method of losing weight that would actually work over time. Yup, according to them, there was one diet that worked, and it was so complex and hard to do you just wouldn’t believe it. 

However, because I have worked out an exclusive deal with this top of the line magazine, they have signed a massive 500 page release allowing me (and me alone) to unveil this ultra-secret diet plan.  And now for the first time anywhere, I am going to unleash its awesome power to you so you can use it.

Here, now, for the first time, is the Ultimate Diet Program by Men’s Health Magazine, exactly as appeared in their book:

(Uh-hem…Sorry, I get nervous revealing such incredible information.)

Burn more calories than you take in.

Yep, there’s no arguing the logic or the science behind that plan. 

Marketing Strategies are like Fad Diets

As I mentioned above, I recently heard two new marketing …I guess you’d call them philosophies that I had not really heard before.  However, when I got past the fancy titles, (I think one of them was “Ninja Marketing Tricks for Businesses on Steroids” or something like that.) and the double speak, it was the same marketing ideas I’ve heard a million times before.

One was a sure fire method of making millions on the Web, but when I got deep into the eBook, I looked at the blue print which really wasn’t much different than one I had sketched out for myself years ago.  Although, I’ll have to hand it to the guy that wrote it, it was a pretty massive eBook that the blueprint was in, even though it had quite a few advertisements that tried to upsell you to bigger and more expensive ideas.

The other marketing idea was from a lady that was into “Natural Marketing”.  In other words, her approach was predicated on trying to relate to people, get to know them, and then sell them.  The video that played, as well as the copy that went with it on the page, kept telling you that you were struggling in life and that there was a natural way to market via relating to likeminded people.  Right underneath the skillfully made video was a button telling you to “find yourself” by paying around $10.00.

Just Like Losing Weight 50 Years Ago…

If you study the principals that were used 50 or so years ago, you’d notice that the basics of sales and marketing don’t really change, even though the vehicles they’re delivered from do change, like the Internet.  

However, many marketers and businesses are starting to realize that people are getting savvier to their marketing techniques and are beginning to adjust.  Perhaps in the future new marketers will have to actually get to know their clients and prospects instead of going for the quick and easy. 
It may actually be a breath of fresh air.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
www.MarkEllisCopy.com
(859) 797-9560
elmo033057@gmail.com

Use eBooks to Cheaply Drive Free Traffic to Your Website or Blog

I have written eBooks, and as a marketing tool, they work pretty well.  There are two schools of thought on how to create them.  One is to sit your butt down and knock it off and the other is to hire a ghost writer to make one for you. 

Since most of you are like me (lazy), in this post I’ll tell you how to hire a ghost writer to create an eBook. In the next post, we’ll explore how to write your own and some of the pitfalls to avoid, but for this episode we’ll go the ghost writer route.

What Are eBooks and Why Does Everyone like Them So Much?

Just in case you’re brand new to Internet marketing, here’s a brief description of electronic books or eBooks. You can easily become a publisher without having to print up books the traditional way.

These are electronic books that you can get online and read on your computer.  These are sometimes called .PDF files. (PDF is the file extension that means that the file is basically text and graphics in book format.) You can have great pictures, and text laid out in such a way that makes the book look great, and the book can be as big or small as you want it.

One of the best thing about eBooks is that you could really load one up with pictures and graphics and you’d save a lot of money over traditional publishing because using traditional methods, you’d have to spend butt – loads on money getting full color pictures into a book.

Not only that, but distribution costs are super cheap.  They can be downloaded as file from one place on the Internet to the other, and they can also be sent as an email attachment from one place to another.  You can also sell them from a variety of places online such as Clickbank, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.   

Another super-plus benefit to eBooks is that they can also be Interactive.  Just like the Internet, you can place links to websites and products you’re trying to sell, and you can even embed video into them.  However, the computer that you are reading them on needs to be connected to the Internet for the links and video to work. 

The main benefit of creating an eBook is that no longer will you need to go through a publisher and all of the traditional routes to become an established author.  You can call yourself an author without needing anyone’s backing or permission and you can do all of this for next to nothing.  Amazing!

The Downside of eBooks and How to Overcome It

As I see it, there are two main setbacks to using an eBook.  First, everyone is making them and giving them away.  Some of the best eBooks I have read were eBooks I’ve gotten online for free.  (I’ll leave links to these at the end of this post.) 

However, a lot of the eBooks that are given away SUCK.  Plain and simple. We’re not going to go that route.

The other drawback is taking the time to sit down and write them.  The two disadvantages go hand in hand when overcoming them, as you’ll see in a moment.

 So, let’s tackle both problems at the same time in steps.

Step 1: Identify the Niche You’re Operating In.  If you don’t know what your business is all about, you are in an extreme disadvantage.  You’ll need to figure out where you are and how you’re going to get there.  If you haven’t taken the time to read the post I’ve already written on exploring niches, check it out here: Ways to Find Niches

  

Another method of finding out what your niche is, as well as your unique selling proposition (USP) is to actually sit down and write out a business plan.  The way I wrote mine was I got a copy of Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Workbook.  This book is not only a great marketing book, but it will help you write out a fairly decent marketing and business plan.

Step 2:  Gather Resources.  Once you’ve identified your niche, go online and

peruse books and courses in your niche from Amazon, eBay and other book – type resources.  Find out what’s really hot in your niche and start buying and gathering information from them.  If you have to buy books from Amazon, you can get them cheap by buying them used.  You are looking for the absolute best information you can find in your niche.  The best way to determine this is by looking at the Amazon ratings as well as the number of comments that are on the site. 

TIP: Another awesome place to get this type of information from is forums.  Start reading and copying and pasting the best posts, questions and answers you can find from them.  Some of the most incredible advice I've gotten is from forums, so copy and paste your favorite readings into a word processor and keep them.

You’re going to need quite a stack of resources on your subject.

Step 3: Start Reading and Highlighting Your Resources.  Now, take the resources that you’ve been gathering and start reading.  Whenever you find something in them that you think is dynamite or useful, highlight it with a highlighter.  Do this to all of your resources. After doing this, you should have quite a pile of information.

Step 4:  Get reasonably priced writer and have theme write your material.  There are many places on the Internet to find writers that will do your ghost writing for you.  Here’s a partial list of places you can go to on the Internet to outsource writing:

Moving AheadCommunications 

Ghosts R Us – Specializes in outsourcing eBooks     

Fiverr - A unique site that vendors can only charge $5.00 a gig.  

oDesk 

eLance 

Freelancer 

99designs 

Hire the World  

There are loads of outsourcing sites and you’ll need to get used to using the one or two that you’ll feel most comfortable with in order to get your eBook or eBook written.

Step 5: Send your highlighted material to your ghostwriter and have them rewrite it.  Once you have your ghostwriter hired, send them your highlighted books and have them rewrite the material for you.  You are not plagiarizing, but rewriting the material into someone else’s words.  Not only that, but you are picking material from a variety of resources.  So, you are not copying, but using the material you highlighted as source material. 

Step 6:  Brand your eBook.  Make sure all of your marketing information is in the eBook before you give it away or sell it.  Make sure that your Web address, email, business number and any other contact information that you have is in the eBook.

Pretty much, that’s all there is to it.  One thing to keep in mind, you’ll need to check and read the material sent back to you by your ghostwriter.  You don’t want to have your name on anything substandard because you’re trying to build an excellent brand and reputation, here.

To Your Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Free eBooks that are just outstanding:

How to Make MoneySitting on Your A** by T.J. Rohleder

Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy 

Web Savvy Content Creation to Generate FREE Traffic to Your Website

If you are going to use free content to drive traffic to your website, then you need to pay close attention to this one important tip I’m going to throw at you in a second.  Free content online is huge, and there is a lot of competition. 

However, for those of you out there in the vast Internet heartland, reading this message might be just what you need to push you to greater heights of Internet marketing glory.

The Giant Failure-Filter…Don’t Quit Your Day Job

If the statistics are close to accurate, Internet based businesses have a 90%+ rate of failure within the first 120 days.  There are many reasons for this that have been cited:  Lack of business experience, very limited technical skills, poor understanding of starting and running a business, no capital at all, unrealistic expectations. 

Should I go on?

This is why my blog is dedicated to teaching you how to work the Internet as cheaply as possible.  If you've never had a business before, start and learn as cheap as you can.  The most beautiful thing about the Internet is you don’t need to spend a wad of money to get started, and therefore, if you don’t succeed, you’ll financially live to fight another day. 

But don’t quit your day job, no matter what the gurus tell you.  Every stinking’ one of them had failures along the way.  Rarely, (emphasis on rarely) are the ideas, economic conditions, and your personal life so perfectly in sync that you’ll hit a homer on the first swing.

If you are persistent in business, you’ll bounce back from your failures.  You will find, especially on the Internet, that you’ll fail more times than you succeed. 

Writing Content for Free Online Traffic

Writing content in order to get free, organic traffic to your site or blog is

probably the cheapest way to get Internet traffic.

Just think of these benefits:

• If you wrote a post or added a webpage every single day of the year to your site, at the end of the year you’d have 365 pages of content out there on the Internet working hard for you, every day of the week.  Over two years you’d have 730 pages of content over three years that would give you over 1000 pages.  Those pages work 24/7/365 for you and the charge will be almost nothing. 

• If you did keyword research correctly for those pages, they would definitely bring in some traffic.  

• You could also post short notices to social media sites about those posts, generating a flood of traffic, and you can use the same post on social networking sites months later to generate interest in it again.

• If you organized those posts, and put them into a .pdf file, you could also brand it as an eBook and either sell it online or give it away free as an incentive for giving you their email address.

• Not only will you get comments from people visiting your site, but your website or blog will definitely draw attention from Google and other search engines.  People contributing to your blog by commenting on it will help it generate more attention from Google, and therefore, move you further up the search engine results pages.

The Downside to Using Free Content

I present to you now, the downside to this strategy:

• Most of us are lazy, let’s just face it.  In order to pull this off, you are going to have to write and actually enjoy it.   The only way out of this is to hire a ghost writer, but that costs money and the good ones don’t come cheap.

• You’re going to have to set a part of your busy day away to write and post.  This requires discipline as well as commitment.

• Quality is the order of the day.  In order to pull this strategy off, you’re going to have to give people the highest quality content you can muster.  It doesn’t matter what your services or products are, if you aren't producing excellent information and content about them people will ignore you.

• You need to know how to write.  If you write posts or pages that people can’t easily understand, then chances are they will click and go elsewhere.  Yes, this blog is about using the Internet as cheap as you can to make money, but don’t think for a second you can give out used Volkswagen efforts and get Rolls Royce results.  

• This is time consuming.  You’ll need to spend at least an hour or more writing every day.  Anything less is ludicrous.

• You need to know what you are talking about.  If you have no clue about your area of, ahem…”expertise”, then it will definitely stick out like a sore thumb. 

• You’ll need to know how to post to the Internet and do Keyword research.  You can use WordPress, Blogger or a website editor like Dreamweaver.  If you are going to build an actual website, you should learn how to hard code HTML so you can create the pages that you’ll post your writing to. 

  Blogging the “Easier” Solution

If you want my two cents about the easiest way to get content onto the Internet, I’d say Blogging is the way to go.  Both WordPress and Google’s Blogger are very easy to use and you can get free versions of both to cut your teeth on.  I personally use Blogger, both the free version and I also have a .com I pay for on another Blogger blog as well. (www.markelliscopy.com) 

Blogger is the cheapest way to go because even if you get a .com (URL) for that blog, all you have to pay for is the .com.  To have a URL with WordPress, you’ll have to have a hosting package from a company like HostGator and know how to set up the blog through the control panel. 

Here are some resources for you to consider:

Dreamweaver : Web Design Software

Learn HTML and how to build websites online...FREE!

Blogger

WordPress

In my next post, we’re going to explore how to organize your subject matter and research it in order to be able to write blog posts that people are actually going to WANT to read about.

Until then…

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy List Building Story That's 100% True and SHOCKING!

NOTICE:  I am not, nor will I ever be involved with Network or Multilevel Marketing.  It's just not my thing.  If that's the type of business you're into, then God Bless you and keep on trucking. I'm not going to voice my opinion on it one way or the other.  It's just not for me, and I'm not into it.  I have seen some people make a wad on this type of business and I've seen people lose their shirts on it. In my opinion and experience, you have to be an excellent salesperson with a very thick hide to work it. But that's all I have to say about it.  So, there.

Years ago, I worked for an Internet and information marketer; it was a very interesting experience.  He called me from a number on a bulletin board, where I had placed a flyer advertising my Web Design services.  Turns out he had hundreds of websites and couldn't keep track of them all, so he hired me to help him out.   

To this day, I still scratch my head at how disorganized his operation was, yet he was pulling in well over a million dollars.  One day, I went in to his place of business to work on some things he asked me to take care of while he was out of town. 

As a matter of fact, he was always out of town, because he was constantly doing seminars of one sort or another.  So, I got to this building he had rented, and the thing was left wide open.  I didn’t have a key, I just walked in looked around and nobody was there.  He had left family members in charge while he was gone and apparently they had left it open. 

I called him to let him know that his building was left unsecured all night and that the lights and everything else were running full blast.  Since I had no way of knowing how much equipment he had in there, I didn't know if he had some of his stuff ripped off or not.  He had loads of computers, packing machines, machines for silk screening DVD’s, a lot of high-end video equipment, etc.   

When I got him on the phone, finally, he sheepishly said, “Oh, Dad must have left the building unlocked again.”  Turns out this happened all of the time.  

Since I was left alone in his building, I decided to check out the material he was making money on.  His operation was all handled at his shop, and it looked like he didn’t outsource anything. Every part of his business was right inside the building, and he printed on demand.  In other words he wasn’t publishing his books and pamphlets the traditional way.  He was the publisher.  Whenever an order came in, he’d print it up himself, box it up and send it out.

So, being an information marketer – wannabe, I decided to peruse some of his material to see what an actual full-sledged info-marketer was selling.

I was shocked at what I saw. 

Most of the stuff was... how I can put this delicately….Rubbish!

A lot of what I saw were flimsy pamphlets he had printed by copying stuff he had thrown together from his websites and websites from friends who had given him permission.  He would basically print up the actual webpages, put them into a spiral bound machine and send them out.  And the websites themselves were rubbish.  There really wasn’t any rhyme or reason to the material he was peddling.

But, his phones were ringing off the hook.  People were only too eager to buy what he was selling. (Just imagine if he actually sold a world-class product what kind of business he’d do!)  Turns out that he was an EXCELLENT salesman.  He had gotten into the multilevel marketing business and done very well with it.  Now, he not only was running that operation, but he was selling courses on how to make it big in the world of MLM and networking.

I didn’t stay working for this man very long, even though he and his family were very nice to me.  He was on the road so much, he was never home.  I could never get ahold of him to find out what he wanted me to do with his websites, and he also had other gatekeepers that were running some of those sites, so I just faded out of the picture. 

However, I did get one important lesson from this man.  I asked him what he considered to be the most important aspect of an Internet business or an information marketing business was.

THE LIST.  

That’s what he emphatically told me.  “The list is absolute gold.”

He was an expert at this, because his list was so massive he couldn’t keep track of it all.   However, he had a faster way in than many Internet marketing newbies would have.  Because he had made a major landing in a diet product related MLM business, he would go on the road for this business to their seminars.  He was an excellent salesman, so he’d not only promote his business, but he’d also promote his course. 

So, he was in an enviable position to promote his wares to large, hungry

groups of people that were eager to plunk down their money at the event as well as get on one of his hundreds of sites and order when they got home.  

This concept never left my mind.  When I was still building websites for people, I started noticing that people that were doing lousy in their businesses had no concept of list building or keeping in contact with their past clients.

If you have people that liked your business and liked you, these are the easiest prospects you could ever get?  Why wouldn’t you keep them in your business loop?

So, if you want to build an online business, or an offline bricks and mortar business then keep a good database of your clients and prospects. Always stay in touch with them, and strive to build it, because this is the fuel that’ll drive your business.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy Methods of Converting Facebook Visitors Into Buyers

In my last post I wrote about how you should know where your Facebook business page fits in your sales funnel.  If you didn’t get a chance to read that post, here’s the link:

Method of FillingYour Sales Funnel 

The Traditional 3-Step Process

In case you don’t know, I don’t claim to be an expert in all areas of Social Media. I do use it on a daily basis, and over time I have seen results from it.  However, to be totally honest with you, I don’t claim to know some Top-Secret Super Guru Method of using social media to generate thousands of dollars daily.  

If you are looking for a good resource like that, you may want to hire this consultant:

So, this is what I've been doing in social media, it is what is called by some marketers as the 3-step process.  Very simply, it looks like this:

Breakdown of the Steps:

Step #1 - Facebook With this step, you are going to update your status in some way.  If you look at the Nature Valley Granola Bar Facebook page, you’ll see that they have all sorts of updates.  They don’t promote their items every day, because when you’re selling all of the time it is “Big-B” BORING! 

Nature Valley shows pictures taken by fans of the great outdoors.  Once my wife and I were hiking around Colorado, and Nature Valley was asking people to post pictures of themselves holding their product in the great outdoors.  My wife was only too thrilled to have her picture posted with a granola bar.  Sheesh!

This is a case of Nature Valley promoting AND getting customers to add to their Facebook Fan page.  So they were getting customer involvement and getting their Facebook page updated at the same time!  Double the Fun! (Wait, that’s a gum product!  My bad!)

Step #2 - Your Blog or Website Once you've engaged your prospects, you can now get them to your website or blog, where they can read information that is of importance to THEM.  (You always want to make sure that you’re not writing things that interest you; it’s your audience that counts!)

You need to have links to your coupons, squeeze page, irresistible offer, or whatever else on the page that they are reading.  Don’t overdo it, but place the links where it can be plainly seen and if possible make them a part of your website’s landscape. 

You can do this several different ways too!  You can have an advertisement close to your valuable content while at the same time, you can also have an RSS feed next to your content and an opt-in box as well.  

What these last two options will do, is allow you to build your marketing list so you can send them a well written offer…eventually.

Step #3 – Conversion…Cha-Ching!  In your final step in the 3-Step Process, you’ll have your sales page work its magic.  In reality, this is the page that’s going to require the most skill to craft, because you’re going to have to use words to sell your service or product.  Not as easy as it looks.  The best way to do this if you have no experience yourself, is to hire someone to craft your compelling copy.

Depending on what you are selling and how much you are charging for your goodies, your message can run from about a page or two, to ten pages!  I just read a sales letter a few days ago, and it was over twenty pages in length!!!

Usually, if you’re selling a high ticket item, you’ll have to use a pretty long sales letter to overcome the load of objections in the mind of a prospect.

  I can tell you that if you hire a good copywriter it will run you big bucks.  In some cases they’ll charge you a minimum of $3000 and half of that is up front, non-negotiable and non-refundable. 

On the other hand, you can hire a cheap copywriter and have low conversions.  It all depends on how much you really want to make.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy Facebook Method of Filling Your Sales Funnel

Social Media, especially Facebook is very popular.  The Internet is loaded with entrepreneurs that are jumping on the social media bandwagon, thinking that it will reel in loads of customers and prospects. 

If you don’t believe me, just hop onto Facebook and type “Make Money” into the search field.  You’ll see volumes of people that are trying to get you to immediately buy their wares.

Usually, these are big picture ads telling you to “click here” to find out how to make boatloads of money by either following their advice or selling you a product.  Unfortunately, this is not the way social media works.

Sure, you might get lucky and out of 5,000 or so posts of that nature, you could sell a person or two.   However, the chances of that are slim.  You first need to identify and clarify your sales funnel and its relationship with your Facebook business page.

TIP:  By the way, many people think that if you just use social media channels,

you can make mega-bucks with your business and walk away a winner.  I recently saw an episode of Shark Tank wherein a woman did just that.  She would post items she saw in stores and different places and people would buy similar items from her through her social media site.

However, what if the social media site goes down because it was hacked into?  What if someone banned her account or in my case, the hosting company wanted to charge me a large fee for bandwidth because there was a flood of people on my site buying stuff. (True story!)

The fact of the matter is, to quote Dan Kennedy, “If you are using only one channel or method of selling your product or service, then you are in a very dangerous position. And that’s because if something were to happen to that channel, you’d be out of business!”

‘Nuff said!

So getting back to our Facebook strategy, ask yourself a question:

How does my Facebook page relate to my sales process or where are my prospects at in the buying process?

Will Facebook fans actually buy from me?

How can I track my conversions so I can see whether or not Facebook is worth my time?

Dealing With the Reality of Facebook Marketing

If you cannot answer at least two of the questions above, then you may be wasting your time.  There are social media forces at work that you won’t understand and that could lead to you wasting a lot of time and money. 

Let’s take a good look at question #1 “How does my Facebook page relate to my sales process?”

You first need to have a sales funnel for your product.  Usually, Facebook pages are very early on in the sales process, thus putting it near the very top of the funnel.  On very rare occasions, you’ll have someone that will but from you right out of the starting gate, but that is rare.

You need to keep in mind that Facebook pages, like other social media pages, are trust and relationship builders.  (That is actually the answer to question #2!) 

Once a person likes what you represent, they will join your page and begin to participate.  However, in the scheme of things, very few people out of many will join your page, very, very few will participate.   Social media experts will tell you that a whopping 90+% of the people that go to your Facebook business page are browsers or lurkers. 

They know what they’re talking about.

I think the very first marketing book I read years ago, was by Jay Conrad Levinson in his CLASSIC marketing book, Guerrilla Marketing.  I say “classic” because you should go back and read it once a year.  Mr. Levinson made the observation that in order for people to trust you, they need to see you over and over again. 

This is the reason why mainstream businesses like Progressive Insurance and McDonald’s are always in your face.  Billboards, TV commercials, coupons in newspapers, magazine ads, etc.  The more you see these companies’ ads the more you feel like you know them.  No matter how bad Mickey -Dees hamburgers are for your health, you still want to buy from them.  This generation can barely recall a time that you didn't see the “golden arches” in almost every town you went to.

Not only that, but I think their Big Macs taste good, and people like them.

Checking Conversions from Your Facebook Page.

I’m sure that there are all sorts of high-tech methods, but being a cheap skate marketer, I like to do it up right and NOT spend money on tracking. So, here is my method…Cheap and easy.

Have an exclusive page on your site or blog with which to send your Facebook traffic from.  Google Analytics is a tool a lot of people use to track their traffic with. If you follow the directions on Google Analytics, which usually is nothing more than dropping a bit of code into your site, you should be able to see how much traffic that’s being generated from your Facebook page. 

If you’re like me and use Google’s Blogger, you can use the “Stats” checker in Blogger.  There is a menu in Stats that lets you check traffic sources.  The cool thing about Blogger’s traffic checker is that it is built into the system already, so you shouldn't need to place code into any of the Pages I’m sure that someone will tell me that this is not the most accurate way to go, and they would probably be right. 

However, most businesses on the Internet are not MASSIVE BEHEMOTHS, and therefore in the early phases of client and customer acquisition, can keep it cheap for a while. But this should give you a good idea if you’re getting any traffic from your Facebook page.

Reference Section:

Ten Ways to Check Traffic to Your Site

Getting Started With Google Analytics Video

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com