Because building a list is so vital and important to your Internet marketing efforts, I'm spending the next few blog posts writing out a strategy for you to use in building a list rather quickly. Since I'm making a rather detailed series of posts on this, I'd like to share this great infographic with you, to give you some inspiration. As you are going to find out, your email and customer list is where the real money lies, because it is an indication that you have either sold or gotten a response back from a prospect or customer that trusts you. When you begin to gather tools like auto-responders you will become acutely of companies like GetRsponse, Aweber and MailChimp, there tracking tools and how they can help you. But before you start playing around with these shinny new toys, you're going to need to set up a plan for your list building and execute it. Below is a great info-graphic from GetResponse that shows you how to set this all up. Enjoy!
Brought to you by GetResponse Email Marketing
I’m always bumping into someone that comes up with a new Internet
marketing angle I never thought of before.
Funny thing about it is that it is usually some young new maverick that
has somehow leaped over us older dudes and are on their first million or so.
Ahh… To be young again!
Anyway, if you have a unique way of marketing or making
money online, send it to me here and I’ll post it for you and even let you put
your URL and other credits with it: elmo033057(at)gmail.com
Using Amazon to Make
$500 a Day
I’m about to start selling a few books and reports myself on
Amazon, so when I found this piece of marketing advice I thought it was
great. Great timing too.
The beauty of using this method is that it doesn’t take
great skill, you can outsource a lot of it, and it is DIRT CHEAP! That’s right, you heard my favorite words…DIRT
CHEAP.
OK, so this method of making money online involves
information marketing by selling books on Amazon.
Step 1 – Find a
Niche that’s selling but small enough that you won’t have tons of competition
I've already written a rather extensive article on how to
find a niche, but here’s the fast and quick explanation. You can use other sites like For Dummies or
eBay, but Amazon is my site of choice for niche research.
Go on Amazon and in their search window, click on the drop down
menu and then scroll down and click on “Books”.
Click on the drop down menu until you get to "Books"
Once you click on “books” click on the little search icon
and it will take you to another Amazon page. This page should be dedicated to Amazon
books. Scroll about halfway down the
page until you get to a section that has all of the Amazon book
categories.
Next, click on the "Search" icon
You’re going to start clicking on these different categories
and drilling down into them looking for hot niches and sub-niches.
For example you could look through the business and
marketing books. Whenever you click on a
book category, more categories open up.
So in the “Business” category, you could click on the marketing link and
you’d find pages and pages of books on marketing. Within those pages are niches and
sub-niches. How do you find out which
topics are the hottest? Look at the comments!
What The Comments
Will Tell You…
There are loads of categories to drill into!
If people take the time to read a book, go back online, log
in with their account, and then write an essay or comments, then chances are it
is a good book with good subject matter.
Amazon will also allow you to peruse several pages of the book to
include the Table of Contents.
That is where you can really get some great ideas for a
short eBook or paper.
At this point, you can do one or two things:
One, you can take an idea from the Table of Contents and
then surf the net looking for free information on that subject area.
Two, you can also just go ahead and buy the book from
Amazon. 9 times out of 10 you can get the book dirt cheap used on there, and
you know how I feel about getting things done DIRT CHEAP! P.S. In case you want to watch a video on how to use Amazon to find a niche, look at this:
Step 2 – Write a
short eBook based on the hot niche or sub-niche.
You want to write a short eBook that gets right to the point
if you can. The title should describe
exactly what the eBook is about and the eBook should be SHORT and to the point,
explaining exactly what you stated in the title. Around 30 or so pages should be more than
enough.
The reason why you’ll want to write a short eBook is because
most people are going to want to read exactly what they’re looking for. A lot of marketers make massive courses
because to the purchaser it looks impressive.
However, many times
it can have the reverse effect. People
see a vast ocean of information and get overwhelmed, so you want to create
short eBooks but make sure that the information in them is well written and
dynamite. You don’t want to produce a
bunch of useless crap, either! How to Get You eBook Into Amazon
Step 3 – Post and
Sell you eBook/Kindle Book in Amazon Books.
Actually, Amazon makes it pretty straightforward about the
process, and all you really need to do at this point is follow their step by
step set up directions.
TIP:However, it should be noted that when you have to
write a description of your product, some knowledge of copywriting techniques
will go a long way. This is where
many people fail in their attempts at selling products of any kind on Amazon. Also, make sure that it’s clear in your
description that this is a SHORT eBook and let your potential customer know the
number of pages in it.
TIP: For starters you may want to write your short eBooks
under an alternate name. This way, you
won’t damage your good name or reputation if for some reason people don’t like
what you’ve written.
TIP: Price your short eBook at about $5.00 a
shot. That way you can easily justify a
shorter eBook.
The Dirt Cheap Beauty
of this Bid-Ness Model
The thing I like the most about this idea is that you can
move very quickly with
it. You don’t
need to spend 4 months writing a pant-load of material for a massive
eBook. The $5.00 price point means that
people will probably not mind parting with that much money as they would $30 or
so dollars.
(Personally I love Bob Bly’s books, but they almost all
start at about $30 dollars or so. I
bought 4 of them a month until I realized how much a month I was spending. Not Dirt Cheap enough...Ha-ha !)
If you do decide to use your real name in this, make sure you've branded your eBook with your name and contact information.
However, many times
it can have the reverse effect. People
see a vast ocean of information and get overwhelmed, so you want to create
short eBooks but make sure that the information in them is well written and
dynamite. You don’t want to produce a
bunch of useless crap, either!
Step 3 – Post and
Sell you eBook/Kindle Book in Amazon Books.
Actually, Amazon makes it pretty straightforward about the
process, and all you really need to do at this point is follow their step by
step set up directions.
TIP: However, it should be noted that when you have to
write a description of your product, some knowledge of copywriting techniques
will go a long way. This is where
many people fail in their attempts at selling products of any kind on Amazon. Also, make sure that it’s clear in your
description that this is a SHORT eBook and let your potential customer know the
number of pages in it.
TIP: For starters you may want to write your short eBooks
under an alternate name. This way, you
won’t damage your good name or reputation if for some reason people don’t like
what you’ve written.
TIP: Price your short eBook at about $5.00 a
shot. That way you can easily justify a
shorter eBook.
The Dirt Cheap Beauty
of the Bid-Ness Model
The thing I like the most about this idea is that you can
move very quickly with it. You don’t
need to spend 4 months writing a pant-load of material for a massive
eBook. The $5.00 price point means that
people will probably not mind parting with that much money as they would $30 or
so dollars.
(Personally I love Bob Bly’s books, but they almost all
start at about $30 dollars or so. I
bought 4 of them a month until I realized how much a month I was spending. Not Dirt Cheap enough...Ha-ha !)
If you do decide to use your real name in this, make sure
you’ve branded your eBook with your name and contact information. Danger Will Robinson...Danger! Danger!
Danger! Danger!
One other thing that I almost forgot to mention about
selling eBooks on Amazon
using this method. You can create quite a few of them quickly
using this technique. However there is a
big danger here.
Don’t make the mistake
of creating a piece of JUNK. Because if
you create a piece of junk, no matter what pseudonym or moniker you hide under
you’ll eventually get a very bad reputation.
Besides that, you’ll get used to
making junk and not quality products for your prospects and clients.
Please leave comments ...God knows I need them!!!
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your
Back!"
Information
marketing is probably the easiest and fastest way to build a business on the
Internet. (Already I can hear you say “Duh
– Everybody knows that!) Most people won’t
try to make money using this venue and when they do, it is usually done wrong.
However, when
you think of it, if everyone were great info-marketers the market would be
absolutely saturated. (Kinda like brick
and mortar video businesses back in the 80’s.)
Not to say it isn't highly competitive in certain niches already, but if you know how to target a hot niche or sub-niche,
you can still rake in the bucks.
The Reality of the Info-Marketing Business
– or – That Dirty Four Letter Word
I like to
frequent forums where IM newbs (slang for Internet Marketing newbies) hang
out. Most of them are wide-eyed
optimists, and right out of the starting gate, they make posts like this:
“How can you
make $2000 a month selling info-products?”
“Frustrated
with trying to make $$$ online”
“I’m totally
broke and desperate and need to make good money now!!!”
You know, the
usual.
My response
to them is:
“Did you
think this was going to be different than starting any other type of business? It requires A LOT of WORK!”
Just like
Edison used to say, “The only place where success comes before work is in the
dictionary.”
Information
marketing IS lucrative, but you have to work it like a madman or woman to make
money at it.
Consider What You Need to Do to Make
Money
Outside of
actually creating the actual product (videos, eBooks, reports, blog posts,
etc.) you still have a load of work to do to actually get your product onto the
market.
Market Research
Let’s say you’re
going to sell a 100 page eBook. You need
to research first to see if there’s a market for it. If you do it right, it may take you a few days
or more of work to find out whether your product has merit.
The reason I
say this requires a few days of research, is because you really need to find
out on the front-end of your project whether or not there is a marketable niche. You need to find out if the market is large
enough and hungry enough to buy what you’re trying to sell.
If you watch
ABC’s Shark Tank, you’ll see that this is where most enthusiastic and new
entrepreneurs fall short on that show.
People come into it expecting to go into business with seasoned, filthy
rich venture capitalists on their ideas and products.
Unfortunately,
these venture capitalists are very experienced and business savvy. If the budding entrepreneurs haven’t sold too
many units, or have any existing market data to back up their claims, they won’t
get a deal.
As one of the
sharks on the show likes to say, “You’re dead to me.”
Marketing Plan
Once you've finished writing, formatting, branding and packaging your product, you still have a crap-load of work to do.
You've got to
figure out how you are going to attract your target market. What methods are you going to use to attract
and keep the attention of the people you want to have as paying customers?
What type of
a sales funnel are you going to use?
What is your unique selling proposition? If you structure a plan based on the
sales funnel model, you’ll need to decide what channels you are going to use to
broadcast your message.
Execution
Once you've figured out how you’re going to market your business, you've got to execute
it.
The Most
seasoned marketers will tell you to use as many different types of marketing
channels that you can manage. That way,
if one channel goes out for one reason or another, you’ll the other channels
that you can still promote your business through.
For example,
if you are accustomed to using nothing but YouTube videos to promote your
product and then Google decides to kill YouTube for some reason, you’ll still
have 4 or 5 other channels like social media, blogging, or whatever that you’re
still using.
Selling
Once you get
your crowd through your sales funnel, you’ll want to set up a sales page. (Actually the sales page is part of your
funnel, but let’s not split hairs here!)
You've got to
have a page that convinces your readers that if they don’t buy what you have to
offer, life on planet Earth will end. You
either have to have the skill to write compelling copy or hire someone that’ll do that for you.
Delivery
Once you get
everything else in place, you’ll need to make sure you've got a way to collect
money and deliver the product. There are
all sorts of ways to do this from making on line delivery systems to sending
your product directly to the customer by way of snail mail.
Hot Tip #1 - If you have a PayPal account you
can sell eBooks online relatively easy. PayPal
will process your transaction, but it will not DELIVER your eBook. For that,
you’ll need an intermediary site.
There is a
site called Upload –N- Paythat you can use as a
delivery system. The setup is fairly
easy and you can be running in no time.
Hot Tip #2 – if you
want to produce your own physical Audio CD’s or Video CD’s there’s an excellent
company called Kunakithatsilkscreens the CD and packages it in a
nice case.
A while back, I was making sports videos for
kids that wanted to get scholarships for college, and I needed a way to get the
video CD into a box. I used Kunaki
because they print on demand.
I uploaded
the video, sent in the case photo and for an extremely reasonable price got my
video and case created.
An
absolutely amazing service! Here is their price list: Kunaki’s Prices
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to
High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
The
Reason Why eBay Is so Easy to Make Money From…
eBay
was instrumental in my getting started in Internet marketing, because it had so
much going for it.
For
one thing, you could know absolutely nothing about building a website and still
be able to set up a site on eBay in a reasonable amount of time. Since I already had some HTML experience to
begin with, eBay was an absolute snap.
All
I had to do was take pictures of the products I wanted to sell, make a brief
write up about them, and boom! -- I was in business.
The
other wonderful part about selling things on eBay, was the fact that you got
TARGETED TRAFFIC to your products. If
you had a website, you had to somehow drive traffic to your site that wanted
what you had to offer.
For
people just starting out, that meant shelling money out on ads, which sometimes required lots and lots of
money.
With
eBay, all you had to do was put your item on the auction block in the category
that was relevant. Once you did that it
was duck-soup getting people that were in your target market bidding on your
stuff.
Finding My Niche and
Making Money…Finally
So
after a few bad attempts at selling random stuff on eBay, my wife and I decided
to go into the embroidery business together.
And as I mentioned in my last post, I threw a rather wide net and started
making any kind of embroidered item that I thought people wanted.
Once
again the old marketing adage, “Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one.”
So,
my feeble attempts at making any kind of good money fell flat.
Our Master-Blaster Hat
It
wasn’t until I came across the idea to mix two of my passions together that I
got the idea to mix embroidery with music.
I created Ellistrations music apparel.
I
made all of the digitized designs myself.
Hats for every type of musical instrument you could think of. Trombone hats, shirts, and jackets. Trumpet apparel, etc.
And
I must have been some sort of pioneer in the niche, because at the start,
people were fighting over my stuff.
I
remember designing an oboe hat and putting it up on eBay. It had a cool design with an oboe crossed in
front of it and it said, “Double Reed Disaster” in the design.
Two
or three women started bidding on it and it quickly escalated to $65. Man, I was elated. After wholesale the hat only ran me about
$6.00 total and I didn’t pay shipping because I had already included it in the
price. So, I made about $60 on just one
hat.
We even sold flute purses!
I
started to make other hats and shirts as well. Sax hats, trombone shirts,
bassoon jackets and every other piece of apparel and musical instrument I could
think of.
I
digitized my own designs and came up with my own catchy slogans and ideas. Flute shirts that said “Fluteaholic”, Bagpipe
hats that said “Piping Hot”, and tuba hats that said, “Blastissiomo Con Forte”
on them. (That phrase is kind of a joke with brass players. It means blow the *$%@ out of the instrument
as loud as you can.)
How I Expanded on My
eBay Business
I
quickly recognized that there was real market for this music apparel stuff, so
I created the Ellistrations website.
Since
I’m cheap as they come, I decided to get the cheapest hosting plan I could find
and build the site myself. I needed a merchant
account, but during the year 2000 merchant accounts ran about $500 just to get
started.
I
searched the web extensively and found two alternatives: PayPal and another
site called 2Checkout. Since PayPal had
not evolved to a full blown merchant service yet, I needed a way for people to
pay by credit card if they wanted to.
This site would process credit card orders for
you without the commitment or outlay of cash that you needed to get started.
It
merely took a percentage (2.5%) of each of your sales. All you had to do was go to the 2Checkout
site, type up the prices and label the merchandise, copy and paste the code
into your website and you could take credit card orders!
It
was perfect for a cheapskate lie Moi.
(That’s French, I think.)
A Huge Lesson in
Internet Marketing From the Trenches
Everything
was going real well, I was making sales from putting my stuff up on eBay and then
directing those happy customers to my website and making sales there.
It
worked perfectly. I was in business and
making money doing something I loved.
That is... for about a year…
For
some reason, I started losing sales on eBay; sales just weren’t coming in as
fast as they were before, and I was starting to feel the pinch. I did some
investigating, reading and searching.
Turns
out I had made a big miscalculation. You
see in business, if your idea is can easily be replicated, you’ll have competition
sooner or later. (Watch Shark Tank if you don’t believe me.)
I
started searching eBay and found out that other businesses were duplicating me
with much slicker marketing and material as well. They weren’t making high quality embroidered
apparel, they were cranking out silkscreen designs of all sorts.
Anyone can duplicate your business... if you aren't careful!
Pretty
soon, I had at least 20 other businesses competing with the same types of ideas
as mine. It didn’t take long before burn
out and long hours multitasking took their toll on me.
So,
I made as much money as I could, socked the money in the bank and sold my
machine.
Turns
out that I made quite a bit of money from my little venture, better than I had expected,
actually.
But
the BIG IDEA I learned from this
was: If your business is easily replicated by others, you’ll have loads of
competition.
The key to creating a
unique, hard to replicate business is to figure out a way to make it so
complex, it will be difficult for other businesses to follow.
So I was pretty much out of the online embroidery business.
However, while running my business I discovered an easy way to make money that was
so lucrative, and easy to create, it blew my mind. This is an idea ANYONE can do if they put the
time and effort into it.
However,
I’ll tell you more about it in my next post.
Until
we meet again…
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your
Back!"
In my last three posts I asked for readers of this blog to
send in their stories on how you made your first money on the Internet.
I must admit, you’re a stubborn bunch. I had three responses from readers that
basically sent me one or two short sentences that I had to expand upon in order
to make it interesting.
In case you’re holding out on me, or are too constipated to
get out of your recliner to write it up, my offer still stands. You can send me your story on how you made
your first bucks on the Internet here:
This offer will stay open until the hot, bad place freezes.
How I Made Some Real
Money on eBay!
It’s relatively easy to make a little money on a venue like
eBay! But it’s a real challenge to make substantial amounts of cash there, and
it requires quite a bit of work.
The way I happened to make money on the auction site was
labor intensive. Actually,
anyone that is making good money from an Internet venture will tell you, the same thing: It's a lot of
work.
My wife and I have had a few sewing businesses over the
year. She is quite amazing and has made
everything from quilts to canvas covers on the backs of trucks. I did the marketing, she did the sewing.
With an embroidery digitizing program any things is possible!
However, she knew how much I like doing graphic arts, so she
started showing me embroidery that people were making using computer driven
embroidery machines. I was amazed at how
beautiful you could make items using a single head machine.
The other part that I thought was cool, was that you had to
use a digitizing program that was similar to a graphics program to create the
designs. So, with a little prodding, we
decided to get the machine, digitizing program and go into the embroidery business.
However, the embroidery machine start up ran us around
$12,000 for the machine, software computers, etc. We had that money saved up so we didn’t have
to get a loan or anything. ($12,000 to
start up regular bricks and mortar business is still dirt cheap, so don’t start
accusing me of not being thrifty! Ha
ha!)
Why the Internet Is THE Place To Start a Business and Why I’d NEVER Go On Shark Tank
No, You're Dead to ME!!!!
As you already know from reading this blog, I don’t like
going into debt to run a business because I’m too cheap. As a matter of fact, you’d never see me on
Shark Tank begging those folks to go into business with me because I just don’t
want the debt and I hate owing people money.
My way of thinking is I don’t want the heavy pressure and
stress that’s associated with borrowing money like that. I’m always trying to think of other ways out
of that situation.
The real value of Shark Tank isn’t the money, it’s the
Sharks themselves and their connections.
Getting the opportunity to work with them would be the real value. However, there is a cheaper way to find out
how they do business and that’s read and study their books.
Almost every one of them have written books and blogs, made
videos, given interviews and all you need to know is in the library on the
Internet just sitting there for free waiting for you to read. Not only do you have their resources, but you
also have access to every single entrepreneur’s mind that is significant.
How to drive your librarian crazy...
If you don’t see their books in your local library, then get
on Amazon and buy their books used.
Why? Because it’s
cheap that’s why!
The reason why I’m mentioning the fact that I’m cheap here, is because when my wife and I started to scope out places to rent for our
embroidery business, we were freaked out by the cost of renting a space.
The mall in Lexington was only a few short blocks from our
house, so we thought we’d rent a kiosk there.
However, the kiosk spaces were renting at $3000 a month, and during the
months of October through December the rental went up to $5000 a month.
So, in my estimation, many of the kiosk businesses at the mall
were LOSERS! I can’t figure out how the
people that sell the little painted crabs that crawl around inside little
glass cages make any money at all. You’d
have to sell a ton of those things just to break even!
The idea of all of that money being shelled out JUST to get
started horrified me!
My Dirt Cheap
Solution
Since I had already built websites and done some Internet
marketing on my own, I put our single head embroidery machine into our finished
basement and started the business there.
I figured out every cheap way I could to get website hosting, a merchant
account and a domain.
Back in those days, merchant accounts weren’t cheap like
they are now, but they were a heck of a lot cheaper than renting a space at the
stinkin' mall! Not only that, but all I
had to do in the morning was get up and go to work. No commute, no spending money on gas, and no
rental fees.
Cheap-cheap-cheap!
I didn’t have to worry about when I had to lock up and go
home either. If I wanted to digitize a
design and test it, all I had to do is create the design and run it through my
machine because everything was right there for me to work with. It didn't matter if it was 12:00 noon or 12:00 midnight.
eBay! –The Launching
Pad for My Business!
Once I got my Website built, I knew I needed to pull in
initial sales, however when you build a brand new website, it takes a while to
get indexed by the search engines. So,
for the first few months you are pretty much invisible on the Internet.
It turns out that eBay! was my solution.
I got an account with eBay!, plugged in all of the information
I needed to start selling and proceeded to begin to make money.
Well, yeah I made money, but it wasn't much. Since I’d never sold more than a few eBooks
online, I really didn't have much Internet marketing experience to ride on. I
threw my embroidery business out there without a clue as to what my niche market
was, what my Unique Selling Proposition (USP) was or anything.
Unfortunately no marketing plan = no business.
I remember some guy ordering a gardening hat from me. I think I made $2.00.
So, I started reading.
A lot. I got every eBook and
Internet marketing book I could think of and I found a niche I was passionate
about – musical instrument apparel. This turned out to be a nice niche for me since I liked the graphic aspect of creating my own digitized – embroidered
designs as well as my passion for music.
Thus, Ellistrations Music Apparel was born!
So, in my next blog post I’ll tell you how I sold a $3.00 dollar hat for almost
$60.00...
Until then,
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo”
Ellis
"When
it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
