24 Feb 2008 12:33:15 | Stuart Reid
Hello!
It's not rocket science making money on the Internet. Once and
for all I'm going to give you a basic plan you can use to work
from. I'm not taking you by the hand, but this is basically the
advice you'll get in countless high-price courses distilled into
one e-mail :)
The Secret:
You just give people what they want!
But... you can charge people for this priviledge.
(Or you can also give it to them, and earn from it in other ways)
You can create this `thing` that people want, or you can get
someone else to make it for you.
Or you can take a ready made solution and provide that to
potential customers.
But first - of course - you need to find out exactly *what* they
want!
You see - there's no secrets. You can write your own cheque if
you find or make a product that solves a common problem, as long
as there is enough people with this problem. It's a simple
matter of supply and demand.
Make sure the people with this problem are aware of your product
and you're laughing all the way to the bank!
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1.Discover a common problem and provide the solution:
There are many ways to find out. If you have an e-mail list,
simply ask your subscribers if there's anything they need help
with, or if there's anything they have problems with.
You can also look in web forums, to see the kinds of problems
people are facing.
Finally look to current trends. Use a site like Google News to
see if current affairs presents an opportunity, or look at
Google Zeitgeist, Lycos Top 50 and Yahoo Buzz for ideas - they
list the top searches in various categories for their respective
sites. Technorati will show you what's currently hot across
thousands of Blogs.
http://www.google.com/news http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzz_log
http://50.lycos.com/ http://www.google.com/zeitgeist
http://www.technorati.com
Sometimes you can even skip this stage since other people have
already researched what sells. For example, eBay offer a list of
their top selling items, as do Amazon, and many other commerce
sites. Do better than the current top products but in the same
market to `hijack` their sales...
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/top-sellers
Examples: A common modern problem is the worry about terrorism.
Old established problems include health, money, career, and
relationship problems.
2. Provide a Solution:
Basically *information* is the solution. You can of course find
a physical answer to certain problems but the cost and
complexity of developing these can be out of reach of most home
business people.
Information is easy to create, easy to sell, and easy to
transport. Over the Internet it can be as simple as downloading
a file, usually an e-book or report.
You can create this solution yourself. Research the problem and
find answers and procedures that will help solve it. The
Internet is a great source of answers, yet people are willing to
pay for the convenience of having these answers presented to
them in an easily digestible format.
If you don't think you can write/create this product yourself
you can get someone else to do it for you. It's an open secret
that there are many people who can create graphics, sites, books
and software for you at a price much lower than you'd think.
Just look to sites such as eLance, ScriptLance etc. Prices can
be cheap because the solutions often come from countries such as
Russia or third-world areas where wages are much lower. Take a
look at Mike Filsaime's "Outsourcing Secrets", a free guide
about this:
http://www.netpreneurnow.com/outsource.html
http://www.scriptlance.com http://www.elance.com
http://www.rentacoder.com
Hint: Just looking at requests other people have posted can give
you plenty of ideas...
If there are already books or guides that would suit the market
you're aiming at you could form a Joint Venture with the rights
owner and sell it for a percentage, perhaps through an affiliate
program, or you could use the existing work as research for your
own. If the work meets certain criteria, usually that it's over
75 years old, it could be in the public domain. In this case you
are free to sell it as your own.
Example: write a guide about saving for retirement, dealing with
health issues, keeping your family safe, or any one of a number
of other topics. It doesn't matter if these subjects have been
covered before - you can always put a new spin on it.
3. Make sure the people with the problem can find your Solution.
In essence this involves promotion. This is THE single most
important part to running a successful website.
The best kind of visitors are people who already know what to
expect, they are known as `qualified visitors`. They may come to
your site from an article, a link on another site, or a link or
paid ad at a search engine. With luck these visitors may even be
so hungry for a solution to their problem they will be `pre
sold` and order immediately.
To get qualified visitors to a website you need to ensure that
anyone who would be interested in your product would be able to
find it. The first port of call is the main Search Engines,
which nowadays can be boiled down to Google and Yahoo. You need
to ensure your page(s) are `machine readable`, i.e. contain text
content, so the Search Engines can make sense of them. You
should also use services like Googles Adsense Tool, WordTracker,
and the Overture Suggestion Tool to find relevant keywords that
people would use when searching for a site like yours. When you
have your keywords liberally use them in the main page content
of your website.
Discover hot keywords at these links:
http://www.netpreneurnow.com/wordtracker.html
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
Another good way to get traffic is to ensure your link is
displayed wherever your potential customers would congregate.
This could mean swapping links with similar sites, paying for
ads on similar sites, or posting messages (with your link) in
forums and messageboards. You can also advertise `offline` by
placing ads in local businesses or in newspapers/magazines were
appropriate.
Finally, e-mail advertising still works well. You can purchase
ads from e-zines that cover your topic, as well as build your
own list by offering something of value (like a report) at your
sales site in exchange for the visitors email address.
A great method of getting your site `out there` is to write
articles, based on your product, that include your link. You
then submit these articles to the various article directories
across the web. This makes you seem more of an expert in your
subject as well as providing links back to your site.
As well as traffic that comes direct from your link these links
back to your site also increase your position in the Search
Engine listings, so it's an important and ongoing step while
promoting..
Finally don't forget word-of-mouth promotion. Happy customers
will be happy to recommend you, and free `toys` such as
e-postcards or free books (perhaps a subset of your main
product) will often find their away around the web rapidly.
All this works well to get interested people to your site. Once
they are there, it's the job of the copy - the text on your site
- to convert these visitors into buyers. A good sales site will
always be 100% focused on getting the visitor to take action -
usually to buy your product. There is a science to writing good
sales copy and there are countless books on the subject.
Essentially you need to state the problem, offer your solution,
and appeal to the visitors wants and needs. Other useful tips
include providing a guarantee, making it easy to order, and
using a clean, readable design to focus attention on the text.
It's always a good idea to collect the visitors e-mail address
whether they decide to buy or not. This enables you to follow up
on your original offer at a later date in case they don't
purchase on the first visit. To get an e-mail address offer
something of value that is sent to them when they enter it.
That plan above really IS the "secret" to profiting online. Of
course, I haven't gone into great detail on each step - I'm
leaving the nuts-and-bolts stuff up to you. If I covered every
little step I'd expand this report into a 300 page book, and -
of course - charge for it :-)
Luckily there are some existing products that can take you by
the hand and lead you step by step through every stage.
I recommend The Marketing Dashboard from Marlon Sanders, or his
massively expanded course The Action Grid.
The Marketing Dashboard was launched last year and it's now at a
lower price but still contains the same great content. With this
the entire process mentioned above is presented in a step by
step, point-and-click interface. So you simply do task 1, then
task 2, etc. At the end you'll have a fully researched and
created product.
For more information visit:
http://www.netpreneurnow.com/dashboard.html
The Action Grid is more expensive than the Dashboard and it's
designed for those *really serious* about making a LOT of cash
with their business. It shows you how to build "high ticket"
products, that you can sell for $297 to $999 or more a pop!
To see that just go to:
http://www.netpreneurnow.com/actiongrid.html
Thanks for reading,
Stuart Reid NetpreneurNow.com
P.S. This isn't the ONLY way to make money on the Internet but
in my opinion one of the best. Set up a string of successful
sales websites providing strong products to busy markets -
sometimes known as Niche websites - and you'll be hard pressed
to find another way to make so much money so easily.
About Author :
This article is (C) Stuart Reid. You can distribute this article
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