Marketing on a Shoestring

If you have taken the route of Marketing on a Shoestring, time management is one of the key factors for your success. One of the easiest ways to find more time in your day is to click on the unsubscribe link on the email lists that you belong to. It is simple and quick and will save you countless wasted hours.

Certainly, I am not saying that you should unsubscribe from every list that you belong to, only the ones that are not giving you useful content. All they are doing is wasting your time. The lists that I am talking about are the ones that the last piece of good information you received from them was the free ebook that came with your opt-in. If fact, I now offer a free ebook just for reading my opt-in page without a registration requirement. Then when someone does join my newsletter, I have developed a much more responsive reader.

If you look at the number of emails that you have received all promising to give you the secrets to the internet kingdom and really give you nothing more than a blatant series of non-stop propositions, they are just wasting your time. In the long run, if you are only getting promos and not content, just unsubscribe. This way you don’t have to spend the time checking out the emails individually and you will end up with a lot more time saved in your daily routine.

I subscribe to every list that comes down the line in hopes that it is one of the good ones that will help me build my business. After just one or two emails, you know if you are going to get real content or it is just a waste of your time. My subscriptions to email lists has now been dropped down to about a dozen good content filled newsletters and all the rest have gone the way of the dinosaur.

As a Shoestring Marketer, your time is the most valuable commodity that you have, don’t waste it having to sort though a jungle of worthless promotions every day. Just hit the unsubscribe link and put your time to better use.

Many of us use Article Marketing to display our expertise, respect and trust with our readers but, we then turn around and shoot ourselves in the foot when they click on our website.

The first mistake that we make is sending them to an opt-in page rather than a real website. An opt-in site does nothing but kill that bond of trust that we are trying to build. But, even if you send them to a real content filled site, we still end up cheating ourselves out of building trust and respect that we need to be successful on the net.

When I visit websites, I see the same common mistakes in almost every site that I visit. If you are trying to build respect and trust, you should have complete contact information and your photograph on your home page. Your readers will feel much more confident when they know they are dealing with a real person and not some faceless entity. Photo, name, address, phone number, Skype phone info and, of course, your email address and make sure that your readers understand that you welcome reader input.

This all seems obvious enough but, just take a look at most sites on the net. Of course, I know my friends and I trust them. They are more than happy to give me their address, phone and email and of course I know their face on sight. Why not make friends out of your site visitors. Don’t be nameless and faceless and let them know how to contact you. Another words, build trust with your visitors just as you would with your friends. Next time someone visits your website, let them know who you are and watch your business grow.

It doesn’t matter if you are an internet marketer with your own product or an affiliate, at some point you have to be a salesman. Although you may think that it is all about product sales, you would be wrong.

What your prospect is really looking at is: Why should I buy from you and what is in it for me? There are plenty of great products and bonuses that you may promote and certainly you are going to tell the customers about these it’s features but, what you really need to know to make the sale is what are this customer’s hot buttons. Remember, the customer has probably seen several similar products or programs. He is not all that interested in what the product is but, what the product is going to do for him.

Each customer has a different hot button and your sales copy must hit as many of these buttons as possible. What is in it for me? Will I make a fortune, will it make my life easier, improve my family life, sex life, improve my golf score by 10 strokes or maybe it will add to my prestige. These are the types of questions your customer is really asking.

Ask yourself, why does one person wear a Timex and another a Rolex? For the most part, they both do the job equally well. Why does one person carry a Visa card that they got for free and another person carry American Express that cost the around $55 a year. The Amex card does not even carry a credit line and it is accepted in far fewer places. Perhaps the answer lies in Amex’s slogan: “Membership has it’s privileges.” A Ford and a Ferrari both have the same basic purpose-transportation. So, why buy a 250 thousand dollar Ferrari when a Ford performs the same basic job for one tenth of the price.

As an internet marketer/salesman, this is your job to find out and learn how to push those hot buttons. Marketing and sales are not the same thing but in the end, if you are going to build a business on the net, you have to develop both skills.

Advertising and internet marketing are just like cats and dogs. The dog (marketing) listens to you and is faithful. The cat (advertising) is also your pet but, his reactions are totally unpredictable, when you reach down to pet him, it is just as likely to bite you as let you give him a little loving. Yes, there are both pets but the reactions may be completely opposite of what you expect. Too many marketers, both newcomers and experienced, confuse advertising and marketing, believing that they are both the same animal. That’s a big mistake.

How many times have you devoted countless hours developing an advertising campaign and then watched it flop and do nothing more than swipe your hard-earned dollars. Then another time, a hastily built campaign made you a small fortune. Either way, advertising is only effective while you are pumping money into it and in the long term has no lasting results.

Internet marketing is much more like your pet dog. You develop a bond of mutual love and respect and when you walk through the door at the end of a long day, the dog is sitting there, wagging his tail and happy to see you. When you throw a stick into the field, you can always depend upon the dog to return it to you.

Advertising has it’s place and you will use it but, marketing will help you build a sustainable business. In marketing, you build upon a basis of mutual trust and respect and your clients will respond in kind. When you do advertise to your client base, only promote the best of products-products that you would use and believe in. If you ever promote a product that doesn’t deliver on what it promises, you are cheating your clients and ultimately yourself. You will lose all of the trust and respect that you have worked so hard to create.

An excellent example of marketing is in your choice of a stockbroker. A good stockbroker builds on the trust of his clients and if he ever leaves his current company, he takes his client list along with him. His clients trust him and not the brokerage firm that he is working for. He has helped his clients become successful and in doing so, he has also become successful. You never trust your money to some faceless company, you trust the broker that you respect and build a bond that overrides any advertising that his company may do.

Yes, go ahead and use advertising but, remember that the only long term results that you have come from building that bond of trust and mutual respect that comes from marketing not advertising. One final note, don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Only promote products that you trust and respect.

Everyone knows the value of Article Marketing. It displays your expertise, builds trust with your readers and builds great natural back-links to your website. However, there is one fatal flaw that I have been making which destroys everything that I have been working for.

My articles have been widely published and have created substantial traffic to my opt-in site for my newsletter and that in itself becomes the problem. My signature file was a link to my newsletter opt-in page. Thanks to an email from EzineArticles, I have stopped that practice.

Let me explain, you go to all the work of writing a good content based article to display your expertise and build trust and the first thing I was doing was sending my readers to an opt-in site that offered no content and it immediately destroyed the trust that I was trying to build.

Today, my signature file sends my readers to a content rich website where they learn even more about my niche and helps them to build their online businesses. Yes, there is a prominently displayed link to my newsletter opt-in but, there is plenty of content rich business building information on my signature site to further display my knowledge and build reader trust.

So, think about this when you build your signature file. Are you giving your readers more content and building expertise and trust or are you cheating your readers by giving them just another opt-in page?

Another thing that I am doing (and this could be a separate article) is that I no longer offer a free ebook to sign up for my newsletter. I found that too many people were signing up just to get the ebook. Now I offer a free ebook with no sign-up required just to read my opt-in page. I then offer my newsletter to those readers who are seriously interested in building their business. I don’t need a massive list of people who just signed up for a freebie, I only want readers who are serious about my niche and will actually read my newsletter for it’s rich content. Sure the freebie created a massive list but not a learned and responsive list. I know the gurus all tout giving away a freebie to build your list but it does you no good if the only reason they signed up was for the freebie. I don’t need freebie seekers, I need readers who have a serious business building mindset.

Enough of my rant for today, just make sure that your signature file leads your readers to content rather than the fluff of an opt-in site. If you are not receiving the newsletter from EzineArticles.com, sign up-it is well worth the time invested in reading it.

If you are an internet marketer, the only thing that I can guarantee you is that you are going to fail. But, this is a good thing.

While a few (extremely rare) marketers will hit it lucky on their first marketing attempts and achieve instant success, this is the exception to the rule. Most marketers in their early stages are bound to have some spectacular failures. If you truly desire marketing success, it is how you react to the failures that determine your ultimate success.

This, in fact, is the case in all fields of endeavor, not just internet marketing. No one doubts that Tiger Woods is the most successful golfer in history. But, every time he takes a shot, he almost never hits the target that he was aiming for. He fails on almost every shot. That doesn’t stop him. On the next shot or the next hole, he makes the necessary corrections and gets back into attack mode. Ultimately, he becomes the ultimate winner.

Every one knows how successful Donald Trump is. He has gone bankrupt many times but, he always got back into the game, altered his strategy and ultimately has become one of the richest men in America.

A man by the name of Fred Smith nearly did not get his Master’s Degree. In his final project, he proposed a business plan that only earned him a grade of “C”. The academics thought that his business plan was unworkable. That business plan became a somewhat successful company called Fedex.

Embrace your failures, study what went wrong, create a new strategy and then work your new plan. If you do this with each failure along the way, you will ultimately win the battle. As long as you continue the good fight, you will finally find the right methods that work for you and achieve success. The successful internet marketer does not believe that he has had a failure, only a learning experience.

The only true failures come from the fear of failing. If you embrace the fear of failure and fail to take corrective action, then and only then are you truly failing. As President Roosevelt (FDR) said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Certainly, the best way to learn is from the failure of others but, given that may not always be the situation, learn from your failures and get back into the game. You might not be an overnight success but, given repeated application, you will find that success was always there, just waiting for you to make the right moves.

There really is no excuse for failing to make a living or even a fortune on the internet. It is simply a matter of mindset and application. Those who fail on the net usually do so by shooting themselves in the foot.

Let me ask some questions. How many ebooks do you own? How many business opportunities have you purchased? How many new membership sites have you joined? How many newsletters do you receive? Don’t bother to answer, I know the answers. You have at least 100 or more ebooks sitting on your hard drive just sitting there collecting cyber-dust. You have purchased many business opportunities but, never applied the techniques. Joined every new membership site and then didn’t follow through and the newsletters, you may be receiving dozens of them (many of them like mine that are filled with business building content) but, you don’t even bother to open them and utilize the rich content within.

Internet marketing is a great way to make your living or even become rich. Some complain that there is too much competition and that it is hard to make any money on the net. They say that the only people that are making money got into the market 10 years ago when the competition was low. That is simply hogwash. The internet is still in it’s infancy and the opportunities to become rich have never been greater and will continue to grow.

Eleven years ago, when I first started marketing on the net, ebooks were unknown, business opportunities were miserable and there was no such thing as a membership site. We have come a long way since then. Not only do we have all of these things at our fingertips, look at the growth in forums, blogging, video, article marketing and of course the social networking sites. If you really want to become a success today, the cyber-world is on your doorstep and ringing the bell to get in.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on everything new that comes down the line. Go back and start reading those ebooks and those long forgotten bizops that you purchased and actually read the good newsletters that you have subscribed to. Develop a business mindset. Realize that an internet business is just as real as any brick and mortar business and treat it that way. Most of all, take action. Treat your internet business just like you would a 9 to 5 job. Show up to work on time, actually do the work and apply the marketing techniques on a consistent basis. Then and only then will you find success.

Business is business. Treat it that way and put in the work and don’t go crying about the “good old days”. Today, right now is the best time ever to make your fortune online. There are only 2 main ingredients required, a business mindset and the sustained and consistent application of work. If work is a dirty word for you then go back to your 9 to 5 job. You will find it much easier and most employers don’t get much real work out of their employees anyway. On the other hand, build your internet business the right way and be prepared to accept that being rich isn’t such a bad thing.

No excuses-get to work.

Kill or be killed may seem a little dramatic but, with all of the competition for your reader’s interest, if you don’t write a killer headline for your newsletter, the results are going to kill your business. It is one thing to get people on your list but if they don’t read your newsletter, you end up dead in the water.

When I first started out email marketing, I thought that all I needed to do was headline my newsletter with the newsletter name and everyone would read it. Then I looked at my open rate stats and nearly died. I work really hard to put a solid content business building article into each newsletter that is sure to build my readers’ businesses. But, after reviewing my stats, I realized that the only reason that people were signing up for my newsletter was to get the unique ebook that I was offering free with my opt-in form.

I knew that the people that were actually reading my newsletter were getting great business building information and those few were also very responsive and were buying my products. I only promote the best products in my niche. The goal then was to get more people not only to join my list but to actually read the content.

I realized that most of my list members are likely members of many other lists and that the competition for their time was paramount. It was then that I changed over to writing a killer headline for each newsletter that I sent out. Of course, offering something free in the headline would be the best headline of all but, there is just so much free stuff that you are able to offer. In lieu of a free offering with each newsletter, I chose the route of writing a killer headline that would force them to open my emails. My emails are so content rich that once someone actually starts reading them, I am able to gain their respect for my expertise and build the bridge of trust between us.

Typically, it only takes about 20 or so minutes to write a great newsletter. I now spend at least three times as much time dedicated to writing a killer headline. If you don’t have a killer headline, your hard work and expertise are going to turn to dust.

Ever since I started writing attention grabbing killer headlines, my open rate has skyrocketed and as a result my business was back on the path. So, the moral to this little story is don’t just rely on your list to build your business, give them a killer headline and a good reason to open your email. No matter how good your newsletter is, it does you no good if list members don’t bother to even open it up.

If you question this, just think back to the emails that you received this morning. How many did you actually read and how many did you just send to the trash bin and what was the reason you opened the emails that you did? You and I both know the answer, it was the headline that captured your attention. So now, go back to your list and write them a killer headline and give them a real reason to read your content. Like I said: Kill or be Killed.

When you first start out on the internet marketing path, you are barraged with an almost overwhelming wealth of information. One of the best methods of overcoming the information overload, is to find someone who can teach you the best practices in the industry. However, extreme care should be taken in who you choose to be your teacher.

I am not saying that you need to go out and hire a consultant. Certainly, a personal consultant could be a great influence on your internet success. However, the cost for good consulting can be rather costly. I, primarily, use the concept of modeling. I chose a number of successful internet marketers (some of them are called gurus) and modeled their behavior.

In modeling, you try to take on the attributes of your chosen mentor. You study how they market, how they started, what kind of content they put in their newsletters and carefully study how they put together a sales page. This only scratches the surface but, you can see that by studying a successful marketer, you can improve your marketing prowess.

I said earlier that you should choose your teachers wisely. By this I mean that you should only model successful marketers who have achieved success through the highest standards of marketing. There are many marketers on the net who will be more that happy to teach you underhanded techniques, but, if you learn from them you are only setting yourself up for failure.

With many of the methods being taught today, you could rapidly find yourself banned by your ISP, blocked from ever being listed on Google and possibly subject to criminal or civil litigation. You can usually predict who these unscrupulous marketers are by simply reading their sales letters. If they promise instant gratification, no work involved and riches beyond belief, close the page and distance yourself from them and their methods. You can’t go wrong from learning from someone who has built there reputation and business on the simple concept of integrity. In internet marketing, you have only truly built a business when you have built your reputation on expertise and integrity.

In addition to modeling, you may also want to contact you local Chamber of Commerce or SCORE. SCORE “Counselors to America’s Small Business” is a nonprofit association dedicated to educating entrepreneurs and the formation, growth and success of small business nationwide. SCORE is a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

Either way, model the best to become the best.