You are here: Home / Archives for internet marketing

What’s the difference between a rich Internet marketer and a poor Internet marketer?

By

Having lived here, there and everywhere, I’ve met a wide range of people from every ethnic and financial background you can imagine. I’m a people lover. A culture fiend. I love to know what makes you, you.

I often look back at my travels and laugh about how interesting people are. Not in a way that we’re all so markedly different from one another.

Though borders and plane rides and passports may separate some of us, attitudes about life situations rarely differ from one land to the next. There’s always the A Audience and the B Audience.

For example, no matter where I go in the world, my girlfriends who have married and divorced always have an easier time finding another husband.

The girlfriends who have never been married are always thinking they’ll never find “The One,” despite the fact that their divorced counterparts rarely have a shortage of dates.

But it’s not just a woman thing.

Internet marketers are the EXACT same way

Bloggers and affiliate marketers and online entrepreneurs, in general, who have had some success can always seem to find more success.

And what about failure?

Failure is just a part of the landscape. It’s not an end destination where they get off the train. Big time Internet marketers who have lost everything (and it happens way more often than you probably think) don’t wallow in a barrel of sour grapes.

They lick their wounds, reset their mindset and they move on… vowing to regain everything that they’ve lost. It doesn’t matter that they only have $10 left, they find a way to make a comeback.

Those who haven’t made it act just like my never-been-married girlfriends

My never-been-married friends say: “These guys just can’t handle a strong, secure woman like me.” Or “These guys just don’t know what they want.” Or my favorite, “There are just too many single women and not enough single men.”

It’s the same shit I hear in the forums, just from a different audience.

Struggling Internet marketers will say: “These guru’s are all trying to shovel scammy crap down our throats!” Or, “I’ve tried everything and nothing seems to be working.” Or my favorite, “It’s virtually IMPOSSIBLE to make money in the Internet marketing niche.”

To both of these parties, I say, “Sucks to be you.”

Mindset can be the noose around your neck or the ladder to climb the money tree

In either situation it’s not that one group has a better advantage over another.

My divorced girlfriends are no more super model-ish than my never-been-married girlfriends. Team Divorced isn’t any sweeter or richer than Team Never-Been-Married.

The difference between the two – I’m convinced – is mindset.

My divorced friends expect to be partnered up, so they never have problems finding a partner. My never-been-married friends expect problems and excuses, and that’s exactly what they get.

If you approach Internet marketing as this “impossible to conquer” niche where everybody is “scamming you” and there’s no room for the little guy to make money because all the guru’s are cozy with one another, then I feel sorry for you.

You’re destined to see all these things come to pass.

Despite the fact that a lot of people start off at the same point, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And it has nothing to do with money, it’s all about mindset and accepting responsibility for your own success.

The girl up on the stage

My daughter (God bless her two little left feet) has a minimal amount of rhythm when it comes to dancing. Despite two years of dance classes, she almost always has a difficult time catching the beat.

But that doesn’t stop her from spontaneous dancing in public. If we’re in a store and a good song comes on, she goes in to a full on dance routine.

Yeah, she’s frequently off beat. But people are always saying what an awesome dancer she is. And even though she knows she’s off beat, she still keeps on grooving. Her lack of great rhythm NEVER ever deters her.

A few months ago we were at a street fair where an elevated catwalk had been constructed for a fashion show. The fashion show was over, but the music was still playing and there were a couple of babies up on the catwalk dancing.

My daughter begged to go up there. I said no. My girlfriend took her up there anyway.

To my absolute amazement she danced perfectly on beat to a song that she’d never heard before! She was popping and locking and just working the catwalk with perfect rhythm.

The crowd roared. (Seriously!)

I watched in utter amazement, tears welling up in my eyes. I couldn’t believe that she had throngs of people stopping to watch her like she was one of the performers… the same girl who I swore couldn’t keep a beat to save her life.

I learned an extremely valuable lesson that day.

And I hope you take away a valuable lesson from this post.

Life is all about challenges. As soon as you jump over one hurdle, you can rest assured that there’s another one waiting to greet you.

The mindset you hold for yourself in this Internet marketing thing will either propel you forward or drown you.

You’ve been scammed? Good, so have I. You’ve lost money and sleep? Good, so have I. You have to work 18 hours a day? Good, I’ve been there too. Can’t hang out with your friends? Welcome to the club amigo.

You don’t have to have perfect rhythm. You don’t have to be the most beautiful, be the most conversational or have the fanciest laptop.

You just have to take responsibility for your own mindset.

Success is never assured, but the ability to succeed always is.

 

Filed Under: Strategy Tagged With: ,

“Yeah, but is it really passive income?”

By

In my last post (back in April) I gave you a rundown of my passive income strategy. No need to rehash it, you can check it out here.

Well one of the comments on that post really gave me food for thought. It came from a fellow blogger by the name of Oliver Tausend. Here’s what he said:

“Hi Dahlia,

thanks for sharing your insights and your testimonial about Triberr. I’m just curious, why would you want to create a new product, market it through blog commenting and other efforts and then only make 45 $ -150 $ a day ? I also can’t really see the passive aspect of this type of income.

What do you think ?

Take care

Oliver”

I was moving at the time I made that last post, but when the dust finally settled, I really sat down and thought about Oliver’s comment. According to Wikipedia, passive income is described as “income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.”

Writing comments isn’t exactly “nothing.” It does, in fact, require effort. I do like (love) the income I derive from it, but it’s still takes work.

So I decided to challenge myself.

“If I stopped blogging, would I really be able to support myself via e-book sales?”

Thanks to Oliver’s inquiring mind, I needed to know just how viable this operation could be if I took an extended holiday. If all my potential customers had to work with were old blog posts and great product reviews, could my little e-book empire sustain itself? Hmmmmm.

That’s when I stopped blogging. Cold turkey. No warnings… no “here’s-why-I’m-not-going-to-be- blogging”… just crickets and tumbleweeds for all.

Lemme tell you… I missed blogging here. Man did I miss it! I was a little sad not interacting with all of my online homies, which just tells you impactful online friendships are.

During my time away I did manage to crank out several e-books (woot!), including a 150+ page monster that I’ll be talking about later this week (double woot!).

But let’s return to my original order of business… was it really passive income?

The short answer is “Kinda”

During the month of April (my last post was April 1), I generated approximately $1,339 in e-book sales. Most of that came from sales of The BIG LIST of Amazon Products, which is sitting over there in the sidebar.

A good percentage of those sales came about because Alex Whalley over at Build Rank Profit talked about my 86 Resources That’ll Help You Become a Profitable Amazon Affiliate article. The traffic I received that day was so good that it was my best day (traffic-wise) here at That Internet Marketing Thing.

In May sales dropped to $785 and in June they dropped yet again to just under $400. This month I’m already over the $150 mark, which is respectable bit of change, considering most people talk about a lull in sales during the summer.

So yes, I did manage to earn passive income doing absolutely nothing. No blog posts, no witty Twitter banter, no forum postings.

Unfortunately, in my neck of the woods, those earnings definitely weren’t enough to sustain my lifestyle. I must continue blogging and promoting my work in order to keep the sales machine moving.

And whilst periodic breaks are do-able, I cannot truly say this is passive income. I’m okay with that. I’ve never been afraid to work, especially when I can set my own hours and call all the shots.

Does no posting = a traffic slowdown?

As time marched on, my traffic levels definitely decreased here.

In April, I had 1,108 unique visitors. In May that number went down to 765. In June there was a less dramatic drop to 692.

During all three months my most popular post was always 86 Resources That’ll Help You Become a Profitable Amazon Affiliate. I believe having an Amazon-related post definitely helped to keep the momentum moving when it came to my selling my BIG LIST of Amazon Products.

Here’s what you can takeaway from my impromptu experience:

1) Online relationships are worth their weight in gold. Though I did manage to generate sales without any recommendations, I got way more in the past with them.

I attribute my blog commenting strategy to meeting bloggers I wouldn’t have broken bread with in any other place. A lot of internet marketers view commenting as a cheap backlinking strategy, but it’s worth so much more than that when done properly.

2) Heck yeah, you can make money talking about Internet marketing! Internet marketing is one of those topics that people say is oversaturated. I was a teensy bit nervous at first because I thought there might’ve been a shred of truth to that.

Well I’ve been running this site for well under a year – (with a 3 month break, nonetheless) – and I’m making money. My good months were all over the $1K mark.

I know it’s not the proverbial “$50,000 in 30 days” that’s often red headlined across the minisite universe, but it’s not pennies either. And I’m definitely not losing money at this point.

If I can make a thousand dollars a month here, I can make $5K with more consistent blogging and traffic.

3) A ton of mediocre backlinks won’t always trump a good content strategy. Some of the content on this blog has achieved top 10 rank in Google… a feat I was able to accomplish within the first month of launching.

But it wasn’t because I was chasing profile links or salivating over comment opportunities on PR7 blogs.

It’s because I enjoy talking about this stuff so I write for my readers. If Google comes a knockin’ while my blogs a rockin’, super. And if not… well that’s why you keep your marketing game strong, and diversify your efforts.

If Google sets the sun on your site, what are your chances of survival? After you finished bitching on moaning, could you pick up the traffic pace somewhere else? If you can’t answer that question with an affirmative, then you’re hustling backwards.

I guess this whole experience has helped me realize just how important it is to work an interlocking system of strategies that involves contact with other bloggers. It was a good lesson to learn early on, and now I’m ready to live that philosophy once again.

Let’s toast to an endless summer, where flip-flops and bikinis are the required uniform, and e-book sales flow like sunscreen on a family beach!

Filed Under: Passive Income Monthly Reports Tagged With: , ,

Links vs. Lovers — The really real way to find yourself surrounded by more customers than a Happy Meal on the playground

By

I’m always down for picking up a tip or two from a new e-book or through one of my favorite blogs.

But aside from running your own site, there’s nothing more ‘hands-on’ educational than working behind the scenes on other peoples Internet marketing projects.

This story starts off in a quaint little place called Freelance-hood.

Besides running my jewelry supply biz, I’ve been ghostwriting for a variety of Internet marketers over the past year.

Sure it’s a nice source of income to whack down my debt, but I also did it as a way to reverse intern myself. Reverse intern?

Well nobody is gonna willingly let my almost 40-something year old ass come in and learn their business. I’m too set in my ways and I generally like to lounge in my pajamas all day.

Most people would be offended if I showed up in mens boxers and a wife beater, which is my typical work uniform. I think… though I could be wrong.

In any case, I decided that the second easiest way to get an intimate look at an Internet marketing business would be to hire myself out as a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter with benefits. (No… not ‘those’ kinds of benefits!)

I’d give the client the copy or article they paid for, then I’d casually make a suggestion about the project they were working on. Kind of a “Hey, here’s your copy, but let me point out something else that you may want to think about” conversation.

Some clients liked my value added brown nosing and I was able to assist them in a capacity beyond just writing articles and sales copy. Essentially I was learning the way their business worked, and getting piz-aid for it. It worked out swimmingly well for both of us.

Do you want the red pill or the green pill?

When you’re a ghostwriter you’re used to being asked to do SEO optimized articles. Tons of ‘em. They’re a mainstay of your service arsenal.

But I had one client who constantly rebuked the thought of a keyword heavy article. He’d tell me, “Be natural with your keyword distribution. LSI should come easily. I don’t want it to look forced or overdone.”

What he was really trying to say was, “Write for people and the search engines will come.”

I understood his strategy. This wasn’t my first ride at the Internet marketing rodeo. But it was kind of REFRESHING to see someone else recycling this philosophy.

His orders were simple, “I want you to speak the language that my prospects understand.”

His requirements were straightforward, “Read this article, this blog, and scan through this website before you begin, so you can get a general idea of what my prospects already understand.”

Basically he was giving me the Cliff Notes road map into the brain of his desired customer. And there was a very good reason for it.

Growing a baby in the womb takes longer than creating a successful Internet marketing business.

I watched this guy go from nothing to a whole lot of something in like 3 months. His initial product launch generated a little over $110,000.

I know because he sent me a bonus that literally brought tears to my eyes and a warmth to my heart normally reserved for old episodes of Touched by an Angel.

This guy was no SEO ninja — nor was he looking for a SEO ninja.

He was a ‘get-a-customer’ (GAC) ninja. And he quickly helped me realize that if you want to go from 0 to $100K quickly in the Internet marketing battlefield, you need to adopt some of the GAC ninja techniques.

1) Focus on getting people to ride your philosophical coattails. People like people who dress like them, act like them, walk like them and talk like them. Search engines… eh… not so much.

For all of its amazing search prowess, Google can be like an evil step-parent to webmasters. They’ll slap, penalize, sandbox or take out a belt and whip your website at the drop of a hat.

People are a lot more loyal. When living, breathing human beings like you, it doesn’t matter what mythical powers you think Google holds. People buy your products. If they like the message you’re spreading, they’ll keep on buying whatever you’re selling.

Don’t be distracted by the latest whiz bang linkbuilding shenanigans. Think of the people dammit.

2) Plant your billboard where your customers are, not where you think Google can reach you. I get a lot of freebies from a lot of marketers. Free reports, free videos, free software. I scan through all of them because you never know what hidden gems are tucked away inside of some obscure PDF.

A lot of these freebies are too basic for my needs. Most of them are okay.

Only a handful have been magical enough to make me stop in my tracks and go buy whatever product their hawking. I don’t fall in love easily, but when I do, it’s a seriously syrupy love that makes me buy all of your stuff.

Funny thing is, Google didn’t introduce me to these people. I found them on Warrior forum or through guest posts on blogs that I read.

As someone who’s been around the online marketing block a long time, I usually DON’T make Google my first stop for finding online marketing resources. I go where other Internet marketers cozy up.

Unusual? Not really.

If you’re selling earrings, you’re going to have an easier time selling them in a store with bracelets and necklaces, than you would at a fruit stand.

Positioning yourself in front of customers is such a basic marketing premise. So why do so many well-intentioned Internet marketers ignore it? I don’t know.

3) Even if you’re a nobody, don’t even ‘give’ away bullshit. I watch people in the IM industry who interest me.

My favorite people to eye spy are the complete noob’s who pony up some new information that instantly catapults them into guru status. Reminds me of Susan Boyle singing her little pipes out and shocking the crap out of everybody. I root for the underdog all the time.

I can tell you right now that the meteoric success of 3 of those former Internet marketing newbies stemmed directly from a freebie they’ve given away, or a killer article they’ve written that was later featured on a high profile website.

See it doesn’t take a lot to get people to swoon over your flyness. You could write a 3-page report that gives away a single strategy nobody else is talking about.

If that strategy is unlike anything else floating around in the blogosphere, and you strategically place it in a targeted location that gets a decent amount of traffic, you’re gonna have to fight off the customers with a stick.

Excellent content gets you lovers AND links.

And a single strategy is all you need to share. Then you just sit back and let shiny object marketing take its course.

So I ask you again: red pill or green pill? Links or lovers?

It really all comes down to deciding if you want a long term strategy that can deliver instant profits, or a short term fix that’s subject to the ruling of a computerized brain?

Remember what happened in The Terminator.

Filed Under: Strategy Tagged With: , , ,