Make Money Online

Is Internet Marketing too Techy for You?

By Christian

I network primarily with home based business and other small business owners who want to use blogging, internet marketing and social networking tools to promote and grow their business. One of the biggest concerns I hear is that this “internet stuff” is just too technical. With terms like “seo”, “image alt tags”, “robots.txt”, and so on and so forth, internet marketing is surely filled with jargon and a lot of things to learn. But so what? My argument is that the learning curve is NOT something that should scare you away. You’re looking at tools that can literally transform your business. And they cost almost nothing to use them! If you’re in the camp that has delayed getting online in a big way because you’re intimidated by technology, I get it, but I hope this article gets you off the fence. That’s my goal anyway.

What’s Your Competition Doing?

Consider this: your competition IS going after the internet space in your niche, so if you don’t you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. Besides, with even a cursory glance, you can see that people are looking for what you sell online, and if you’re not in that space in a big way, then you’re basically begging your customers to go somewhere else. That’s not you!

It’s Time to Be Smart, not Safe

This is not a time to not be smart in business. I see business owners canceling their print advertising left and right. And many have reported to me that they see little to no negative effect. What does that tell you about the power of traditional advertising on today’s consumer?

You need to market yourself in some manner. Would you not agree? I think there’s something essential to consider here. I’m not going to pretend there is not a learning curve to internet marketing. I’ve spent years doing this, making a lot of money for clients, and I’m just now starting to turn the tables to make real money for myself. It takes time to learn the ropes of ANY system. This is no different. Let me tell you that if you take on internet marketing for your small business, you will not only learn a lot about technology, but you will be tapping into a global market…it will likely transform your business in a very real, positive way. It will change the way you think about your business, and you’ll see a whole new set of ways to grow it in the future. This ought to both thrill you AND scare the crap out of you. If not, you can stop reading now 🙂

Success Takes Work, Period

I can’t make the learning curve disappear for you. Anyone who claims to do that is full of BS. One of the top things I concentrate on at Next Level Blogger is how to make money online using blogging, social networking and internet marketing. This field is filled with content on “how to get results fast”, “how to make money fast”, etc. I’m trying to keep my foot off the gas in that department. It takes work, and I don’t want to give any false impressions. Even Frank Kern, the king of laziness in the internet marketing world, openly admits that he has to work hard to make his millions. Deep down, we all know success takes hard work, and as a business owner I have no doubt you understand that. So why should internet marketing be any different? The question is not whether you should do the work necessary…the question is whether or not you can get huge results with it. I’m telling you the answer is “yes, you can get HUGE results with it! It’s worth the work!” My goal is not to make the work disappear, but I do want to put it into perspective.

To Put it into Perspective…

One field I know well is real estate. I’ve had a lot of success generating leads online and helping my real estate team sell a lot of houses. When making the transition from traditional advertising to internet marketing, I often confront (and still confront) the concern of internet marketing being too techy. I explain a new marketing idea I have, and some people just don’t “get it”. And because it’s an uncomfortable concept, they just want to keep doing it old school. Well, if old school still worked, I’d be out of business. The whole point of this is that old school doesn’t work anymore, not when it comes to marketing. To remain competitive, we NEED to try new things.This means we simply have to dive in, get our hands dirty and learn new stuff. Period.

This is what I try to explain to my clients, and this is what I’ll try to explain to you today: to become an expert in your field, to become good in your business, you needed to learn a lot of things. In real estate for example, Realtors NEVER used to use cell phones or laptops. They never used to use contact management databases. They didn’t know how to typeset their own print ads or design brochures…none of this. Now, a real estate agent without these tools and skills is out of business, period. Stuff changes, doesn’t it?

And this is all I’m saying in this article. Soon, a Realtor without a Twitter account and a strong social networking plan is going to be uncompetitive. And this applies to YOUR business 100%. Whether you’re in a home based business, network marketing, whether you sell ebooks or affiliate products, whether your main business is online or offline…no matter what you’re selling, this applies, because what the consumer wants is changing, and the way they’re searching for information is changing. Is internet marketing too techy for you? At this point, yes it probably is. So it’s time to start learning! Embrace change, because it’s here to stay.

How to Improve Traffic from Your Social Networking

By Christian

This post is part of a series. If you’d like to read from the beginning, check out the other posts so far!

This post of course is entitled “How to Improve Traffic from Your Social Networking”. Notice I said “improve”, not “increase”! As business people who want to sell things and make money online, we always want more traffic. And surely more traffic can be a good thing. But if your traffic is of low quality, you can get all the hits you want, and you’re still not going to reach your goals.

If it was really just about getting more traffic, you could just go purchase pop-under traffic from some traffic broker. You can get hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site like this very quickly. Of course, you won’t make any money this way…it just goes to show you that traffic is not everything. Quality is what counts!

The crux of the high traffic conundrum is that if you’re putting out quality content, and you’re taking steps to attract quality, targeted buyers to your site, high traffic and substantial profits are eventually inevitable. The ease and simplicity of the internet makes us want everything right now…yesterday in fact. I’ve talked with so many business people who run a blog or who have taken on different internet marketing projects, and they get discouraged after only a few weeks. It takes time! If you’re laying the groundwork in the manner I describe in Next Level Blogger, high traffic is on its way! But first, you want to make sure you’re attracting the right traffic.

The Value of Social Networking Traffic

Everyone knows (or SHOULD) that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are great sources of traffic. But like anything else, let’s not just take what falls on our plate. We need to stop being happy with just getting hits. Look past the numbers and figure why…WHY are people visiting your site, and how can you bring more targeted buyers to your site every day? Here are a couple things to consider doing if you want to make more money and get better results from your social networking traffic:

Better social networking contacts
Better social networking prospecting

Better Social Networking Contacts

Once again…there are no shortcuts! If your social network is not high quality, you’re not going to get high quality results. As marketers who want to sell things and make money online, so many of us want to ramp things up quickly. We want to build a large network as fast as possible, so we take short cuts.

There are automation tools available for MySpace and Twitter that I’ve seen out there, and let me tell you if you’re using a tool to “automatically” add followers for you on Twitter for example, with the hopes of building your follower count, guess what’s going to happen…you’re going to get a lot of followers most likely! And you’ll feel all warm and toasty inside because you have a ton of followers, and when you tweet out a link to your latest post, guess what happens. Nothing! Know why? Because the network you have built is junk!

It’s understandable to think that you need to have a large network on Facebook or wherever, and truth be told if your network is larger, you’re going to get larger results, but this is only the case if the people in your network actually care about you or what you’re talking about!

Build your network the old-fashioned way, by making personal contact with people you’ve found “out there”. Maybe you’ve come across their blog or seen them in a forum. You’ve talked. You know what business they’re in. They are aware of who you are, and you add them on Facebook. That’s a real contact. That’s a targeted lead. That’s someone you KNOW is interested in what you’re selling. It’s someone you can truly connect with and possibly help in the future. Build your network this way, not through automation, mass following or any other junk-building methods.

Same as what I say about high traffic, large numbers only mean something if there are quality, targeted prospects behind those numbers. Otherwise, it’s just junk. Build a quality network. It’s better to have 500 highly targeted people than 50,000 people who could care less what you have to say and who only added you because they didn’t want to be rude. Yes, this approach takes time, but it doesn’t take MORE time than doing it the fast, crappy way. Because the fast, crappy way doesn’t work. Then you’ll end up having to start over. If you really want to make money online, you might as well do it right from the beginning 🙂

Better Social Networking Prospecting

As business people, bloggers, internet marketers, we don’t often think of ourselves as salespeople, but if we’re selling things online (whether it’s a service, a product or anything), we are salespeople whether we think we are or not! And posting links, tweeting out your latest blog posts, engaging your buyers online to get them over to your site…this is prospecting. We are well-served to think about it this way. If we want to get maximum results, that is.

I will talk more about the power of prospecting and how to prospect in later posts, but for now, I want to simply state how you can get better results from the posts you make on your social networking sites.

First of all, I highly recommend using Ping.fm. It’s pretty well-known at this point, but there are still a lot of people not using it. I’m not sure why. You can post once and have that post hit any number or all of your social networking profiles all at once. You can use it for your blog posts, status updates and more. It’s a massive time saver and a great, simply way to reach more people without any additional effort.

Second, I think it’s important to consider the content of your posts carefully. This is another great example of an area where you can get great results, but most people don’t give it much thought. I believe it’s essential to be deliberate in your approach. If you can get a 1% better response from your status updates, that may not seem like much, but if you multiply that by 500-1000 status updates over the course of a year, it can easily add up to a LOT more traffic to your site, more orders and subscribers, etc. Trust me, 1% adds up!

It’s a common practice to tweet out a link to your latest blog post for example. Keep doing it. It works. It’s a great way to let people know about your newest content. Many people do not subscribe by email or rss. They follow you on Twitter. I was originally surprised when I learned this, but it makes sense. Many people who care about what you’re writing are only going to hear about your new posts this way, so make sure you keep doing it.

But you can get a better result, and a lot more clickthroughs if you are just a little thoughtful about how you post the link. Many people use Tweetlater or some other automated tool in order to automatically tweet out their latest posts. That’s cool. It gets the job done, but you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t use any automated tool for this purpose. People are HYPER-sensitive to automation, and I honestly think they can smell it from a mile away. I don’t want my followers to think I’m not there in person. I want to cultivate that personal connection as much as possible. So I do it manually.

Take your post and think about the main value proposition to your readers. Don’t just tweet out the title and expect people to click over and read it because you’re so awesome and people love you. Give them a REASON to click over and visit your blog. Answer the question honestly, why should your readers visit and read this post now? What problem does this post solve? What real value are you offering them? State this briefly and tweet the link out that way. It takes 3 seconds of thought, and that’s all it takes in most cases to make that extra connection with someone. The details matter!

How to Identify Your Most Profitable Niche Market

By Christian

There are a couple common challenges to blogging effectively when it comes to picking your niche:

How to pick a profitable blog topic, and…
How to pick a profitable blog topic when you already have an existing business.

I will try to shed a little light on both of these. Most importantly, if you’re blogging for the purpose of selling stuff, you’re smart. Good call. But if you want to sell stuff, you need to first make certain that there is a market for what you’re selling. This is the first order of business. It may seem like common sense, but you’d be amazed how often this step gets skipped entirely! I recommend using SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. This is a free tool, and it can give you some huge insight into whether or not there is a real market for what you want to sell.

Here is a typical report this tool will generate for you:

I ran this report on the keyword “cake recipes” just as an example, because I wanted to show you what this tool offers you. Look at a couple things here:

It seems “cake recipes” itself only generates an average of 63 searches per day. Not too heavy. But look at all the other related searches. Check out the scroll bar to the right in this screen shot, and you’ll see that it’s quite a list of very related searches, all totaling up to several hundred searches per day. Is this sufficient for your needs? I have no idea, because I don’t know what you plan on selling to these people, but the point is that it’s important to look at the whole report, not just the exact keyword you type in.
Look at all the resources to the right. All those links take you to other reports and resources you can use to cross reference your results and get more ideas. It’s pretty comprehensive.

I’ve used this tool a LOT over the past couple years, and believe me it will enable you to save yourself a lot of heartache by confirming up front whether the niche you’re pursuing is even something people are interested in.

Another thing to consider

Let’s say you’ve found a keyword that gets plenty of traffic. That’s a good thing, right? Can you make money in that niche? Possibly. But just because there are a lot of people looking for information in a particular niche doesn’t mean they’re spending any money. There’s a difference between getting a lot of traffic and making a lot of money. This is a theme that will continue to come up here a lot, so I’ll go ahead and say it again: it’s better to get only moderate traffic in a profitable niche than to get tons of traffic in an unprofitable one. This sounds like a “duh” statement, but go look at how many people are trying to make a living with entertainment blogs and news blogs, and you’ll see very clearly that most bloggers often monetize as an afterthought. That’s fine of course, but if your goal from the start is to make money online, make sure you pick a niche where there is sufficient interest AND where people are actually spending money!

Do a search in Google and see if there’s any advertising in the sidebar in the search results page. Look at this result for “cake recipes”:

Now this is just my personal take on it, but there’s over a million search results and a grand total of 7 ads. And 3 of those ads are from big name companies, probably wasting money. If I was looking for a profitable niche, I’d want to see more than 7 people trying to make money on it. I’ve talked about this before, but competition is a good thing! If there are a bunch of people advertising to try and reach this niche with paid advertising, I’d take that as more of a sign that people were spending money on this niche. As it stands, I see a million pages offering free information and half a dozen people charging for it. This is not what I call a good target.

What if You Already have a Business?

Let’s say you own a business already, and you want to start blogging. Or maybe you’re already blogging and social networking and not getting the results you’re looking for. One common mistake a business owner will make when starting a blog is to simply use their existing business niche and build a blog around it. This is surely a logical approach, but don’t make the assumption that what you’re doing offline is going to work online. The internet is its own marketplace.

Think about it this way: if you were taking your business and starting another store in a new location…you would research that location first, right? You wouldn’t just assume that any old place will do, and you wouldn’t assume that what you do in one place is going to work somewhere else, right? There are a whole variety of factors to consider when opening a new location for your business, and doing it well and profitably requires that you do research up front. Give your business blog and social networking presence the same consideration.

For example, let’s say you’re in the real estate business. I use this example because I have experience in real estate, and I know a lot of people in the real estate business. The common assumption for a real estate agent would be to use their blog to post their new listings. That makes sense of course, but will it help you produce results toward reaching your goals? The name of this post is “How to Identify Your Most Profitable Niche Market”, so we need to find a niche for your blog that is actually profitable, not just one that makes sense.

From what I’ve seen, I’d say 99% of Realtors who have a blog, use their blog primarily as a place to post their new listings, and that’s about it. Look, marketing your listings is a big part of the real estate business, so that makes sense, and I think you should do it. But I strongly encourage you to dig a lot deeper. Are people in your market searching for vacation property? Short term rentals? Foreclosures? Multifamily investment property? If so, then any of these are worthy niches…valuable pockets of your market where you could slip in and dominate your competition…and you’re missing out on it entirely if you’re not doing your research!

Type in all the keywords you can think of that fit your existing business. Anything that you think is relevant to what you offer. How do you want to be found online? Type it in. See what comes up. Get familiar with what people are actually looking for. This keyword tool is a fantastic, free resource…use it! You can start a blog using a topic that “makes sense” if you want, but if you want great results, you need to be sophisticated in your approach. You need to provide content that is highly targeted to a market with demand that you have verified. This goes for those of you who want to start a new blog to make money online or for those of you with an existing business. It’s the same either way. Do the research and verify demand up front, and you will be well-rewarded.

A Specific Example of Finding a Profitable Niche

An example of this…I work for a real estate broker, and in her particular market there is a high demand for bank owned properties. There are a lot of people searching for bank owned properties; we’ve seen it. It’s funny, because compared to many markets across the country, there are very few bank owned properties in this market, but nevertheless…people are searching for it. So we set up a single page with a keyword-targeted domain name pointing to it…to target that traffic. When people search for bank owned properties in this market, her site will show up. No other real estate people in this market are doing anything nearly as targeted as this, and as a result I bet this page is going to do very well for her.

That’s all I’m talking about. It’s not rocket science. It’s just a matter of digging in deep, doing research up front and taking the time to make sure that whatever blog you want to set up is going to actually help you meet your goals.

Harness the Ultimate Niche and Destroy Your Competition

By Christian

This post is about value. Creating value is powerful. It is the ultimate niche. It always works. Value defeats your competition every time.

The way you create wealth is by creating significant value for many other people. Whether that’s through creating jobs for others, providing hugely valuable content for others to learn from, selling valuable products that enhance the lives of many people…the net result is the same. Value leads the way to wealth.

As Zig Ziglar has said so many times, “You can have everything you want in life, if you can just help enough other people get what they want.” I’m an advocate of pursuing wealth over profit. It’s important to know the difference. This means pursuing value first and foremost in your business. When you do this, your niche will reveal itself automatically.

But there are roadblocks, aren’t there? When we actually go about the work of setting up a home based business, we run into on all-to-common situation. We see other people…those jerks…who are already doing what we want to do. This is what we refer to as “competition”. I know, it’s a highly technical word 🙂

Competition is a Reason to Pursue a Niche, Not a Reason to Avoid It

Know this: competition is a good thing. It is the foundation of value. It fortifies value and encourages us to create more and more of it for others. And wealth for ourselves and others in the process. If there were no competition, value would be very low. Without competition, there is no motivation to improve. So why do we look at competition so negatively?

So many would-be successful business owners will look at high competition as a reason to not enter a specific niche. To this I have a few questions:

What is your motivation for starting this business to begin with?
Are you focused on creating value for others or simply making sales?
Do you really believe there is an ideal niche out there, one that perfectly aligns all your talents, is fun and exciting, highly profitable and has no competition?

Let me respond to the last question first. The is no magical niche! Look, if you’re looking to start a home based business or want to take your existing business to the next level, you’re signing up for some hard work. To the others, let me say this: long term success in your business will come from creating value for others, and this may mean taking the long view from time to time.

Get Far Away from the “Make Money Fast” mentality…

So much home based business literature out there is focused on “making money fast”. Get over it! We all know get rich quick schemes are a bunch of crap. You can make great money, and you can achieve some fantastic goals, and the social media concepts I cover in this blog are awesome ways of making this a reality for you. But if you are requiring your business niche to be some instant miracle cure to all your cash flow woes, it’s time for a reality check.

You Can Prosper in ANY Niche…Go Make it Your Own

Look at my niche for example. Next Level Blogger is a blog about blogging. Do you know how many powerful blogs I’m up against in this niche? We’re talking Darren Rowse, John Chow, Michael Martine, David Risley, just to name a few. Now that’s competition! But why am I writing this blog? Why am I not running away with my tail between my legs? Because I know what I have to offer is distinctly different that these other writers. My focus is on sales training and business principles…and how to translate those skills directly to social media. I know there is significant demand for this content, because the success of these other blogs is obvious, and it’s equally obvious the content I’m going to be covering here is not covered in depth anywhere else. Now this does not speak to a fault of anyone’s existing blog. It just speak to how opportunity works, and it illustrates how niches work. This is important.

I know you all know how great, talented, good-looking and important I am, and of course I’m going to use every strength I can muster up to make this blog as successful as I can make it, but my point is that YOU have exceptional strengths, a unique story and huge value you can add to a niche somewhere as well. You need to develop that and tap into it.

Be Passionate…Success Comes from YOU, not Your Niche

I want to encourage you to pursue the niche you’re passionate about, and don’t spend so much time researching keywords and trying to find the perfect niche. The magic is never going to come from the niche. The magic is going to come from you. At the end of the day if you want to be successful, you’re going to have to be great at what you do, and you’re going to have to create a lot of value for others. If you want to chase the get rich quick gurus for a bit more, I won’t hold it against you. But one of two things is going to happen. You’ll either become disillusioned and decide you don’t have what it takes to be in business for yourself, or you’ll decide that if you want to do it, you’ve gotta do it for real. There are no shortcuts.

The Real Deal…this is How Niches Really Work

The more a niche develops, the more it opens up to new opportunities. First there were sites on how to make money online. That led to sites on how to make money blogging. Now there are sits on how to make money blogging in real estate…see where I’m going with this? What can you add? Maybe you can write a blog about investment real estate, or maybe you can focus on something even more tight…multifamily investment property in Orlando, FL. What’s up? That’s a blog that could dominate the Orlando Florida real market right there. Then someone else could come in and niche that out even further. They could focus on providing a particular kind of financing for that type of real estate, or they could come in and focus on a particular neighborhood…the opportunities are endless. See how it works? There is no end to it. The more niches there are, the more opportunity for NEW niches there will be.

Is it too late to start a blog or get into a niche market and make your mark? Are you kidding me? It’s the perfect time.

Don’t compare your business to anyone else’s. Do what you’re passionate about, and focus on creating value. It is the only constant. If you see competition, that’s a good thing. It means there’s a lot of demand. Your business will ultimately be as unique and valuable as you are. Get in touch with your market, and ask them what they want. Believe me, if you have a market…they will tell you! If your focus is value, not sales, not making money, your niche will take care of itself, and it will evolve along with you, with value leading the way.

One side note. My recommendation to do what you’re passionate about cannot be divorced from the rest of what I’m saying. Don’t take this all to mean that you can do whatever you want and expect to be successful. What I’m saying is that any niche that you want to tap into, can be tapped. You can develop it and own your own portion of it. You can take it to the next level. It’s probably going to be a lot of hard work, and you’re going to have to get good and produce awesome content. But you’ll love doing it, and you will be successful if you go all the way.