Internet Money Making Explained

So many clients come to us saying:
“I know I need a newsletter”
“I know I need a better website”
“Do I need a blog? What is a blog and how is it different from my website?”
“What is Twitter and why do I need it?”
“I need a shopping cart for my products and a way to take credit cards instead of PayPal”

You KNOW something. You know some of the PIECES of internet money making. You might even know the whole FORMULA although most people are trying to hide that info on the internet. Here it is. Revealed…

Products + Website + ShoppingCart + Auto-Responders + Merchant Account + Newsletter + Other Marketing = $$$

Products – You have a gift, a passion or some learned knowledge. You CAN create products from these skills and these products are very valuable to other people. That’s why it’s called “Information Marketing”. Don’t say “but the info is all out there on the web for FREE”. It’s the way you organize it and put your own spin on it that attracts buyers.

ebooks
software
membership sites
seminars in person
seminars on the phone
seminars on the web
pdfs to download
cds to send in the mail
reselling someone else’s product
selling your own “put your hands on it” product (t-shirt, home goods etc)

Website – Your website is not “just a brochure” anymore. It should be a sales team MACHINE that works while you sleep so you can wake up to sales. You need a site that gets your visitors to TAKE ACTION (sign up, buy something etc).

Must be Web 2.0 friendly and soon Web 3.0
Must rank high in search engines
Must include keywords (takes 1-2 hours to do a great keyword research
Can include monetization such as Google Adsense, Affiliate ads, ad space you sell etc
Should have fresh changing content (blog, new products, news fed from other site etc)

Shopping Carts – You need this software setup online to manage your products, sales, auto-responders, affiliate accounts etc. Having this in place will save you a TON of hair pulling and time. Just do it.

We use: 1ShoppingCart.com and pay $99/month for the FULL features. You don’t have to include the Affiliate feature right away as you can add that later when you are really ready to announce your affiliate program. Please use our referral link so we get some credit!
There are other carts like: Work At Home Mom Cart (WAHM), eJunkie etc but we’ve tried them. 1SC has it all but ask about the newsletter sending glitches first.
You will need to pair this with a merchant account. We use Authorize.net which was sold to us from PowerPay. We didn’t opt for the American Express feature yet. You can do whatever you like.
The Shopping cart CAN handle the auto-responders and newsletter sending but ask us about the ins and outs first. Some techie stuff we need to tell you.

Newsletters - This is KEY. You need to always be thinking about “building your list”. You need to make sure your sign up box is front and center for ALL to fill out and offer them a free gift while you’re at it. There are TONS of list building tactics available to you and you SHOULD take them seriously. People will find you and pay you when you have a nice big list to market to as well. (Don’t spam, only market quality info to your list) Your newsletter list is a bigger client base than your client base.

Start with ConstantContact.com for price reasons (don’t spam, you will get kicked off)
Move to a bigger service like Aweber, MailChimp, IContact etc when you need to
Have a newsletter that matches your website and branding and make sure it’s full of GREAT info
Send no less than once a week and more is suggested

Other Marketing – Viral Marketing is FREE and powerful. You cannot ignore how much marketing can be done in a few hours a month and we have earned thousands of dollars from twitter, facebook etc with nothing but time invested. It’s how we were featured on CNN, Monster, Inc., Kiplinger, CareerBuilder etc. Your plan should have short term tactics as well as long term goals (tracking over time)

Twitter, Searching Twitter, Twitter Auto-Tweets etc
Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Ads etc
Linkedin, MySpace, 100′s of other sites to tap into
Offering freebies
YouTube, Viddler, Qik, Vimeo, Screencast
Contests, Campaigns, Articles, Videos, Blogging, Commenting, Sharing etc.
You can buy advertising
Answering questions in forums to be an expert on your topic

Each piece plays an important role in your marketing strategy and must be used in conjunction with the others. If you execute this plan correctly, you can guarantee success!

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