Hard-Assed Internet Marketing Wisdom

If you're a "newbie" internet marketer or even if you've been trying to make it work for a while, let me congratulate you for finding this blog! But be forewarned, you will need a lot of true grit to keep on reading what I have to say. And you'll also need the spirit of one who is willing to learn the real TRUTH behind the "mystery" of Internet Marketing.

What I'm going to reveal in these posts isn't going to be all "sunshine and lollipops." It will be cold, hard facts that you may not like to hear...but it will be exactly what you need to hear to succeed. Regardless, I'm going to spill the beans anyway because I think it's time for you to know the truth and to stop wasting your time and money on a bunch of half-baked "guru" products that don't or can't do anything to push you onto the fast track to real success.

But firstly, you should understand that when I say the words, "fast track to success," I DO NOT mean you making thousands, hundreds or even a few dollars by tomorrow evening. You have as much chance of that happening as a snowball in hell...I don't care what overnight "guru" tells you differently.

Even though the internet is a virtual place, business wise, it a very real world where, if you look closely, you can see the honesty of it quickly. Good or bad. That's precisely what I'm going attempt to show you here, too.

I hope that by reading the nuggets of information I write everyday or so, you will gain a clearer understanding of how Internet Marketing works and some important activities that will truly reward your time and energy within it.

Now, let me ask you...

If we pretended for a second that someone was to promise that you can make gazillions of dollars overnight on the Internet and...You don't have to have your own product...You don't need any money...You don't need any skills...You don't need to learn anything...You don't need to build a website...You don't need to lift a finger...In fact, as far as they're promising...You don't even need a brain.

They also say, we'll do ALL the work for you. We'll give you ready-made products. We'll build the site for you. We'll drive traffic to the site. We'll convert those visitors for you. You only have to sit back, relax, watch TV with a beer in hand and rake in the cash...yadda, yadda, yadda.

Would you think that sounds ridiculous?

You wouldn't believe that horse hockey offline, right? Then, why would you believe it online?

It's amazing the kind of garbage people try to pass off as legitimate on the Web. They assume all people are morons. I hope you don't fall into that category. BUT...

Honestly, that's exactly the hype that sucks so many people in. If you Google the words, "Make money online," that's what most of the get-rich-quick opportunities promise you...even from the well-known gurus. Take a closer look at some of the "classified ads" on the sides of this blog...do they make good "sense" to you?

Are people really that stupid? Do we fall for this crap so easily?

I'm going to say it once and for all, "there's absolutely NO magic system for internet success." You can't pay $97 for a product and go to bed poor to wake up as a millionaire. I don't care who you are. I don't care whether the business is online or offline, it takes focused work to succeed in building a real money-making business.

Yeah, you heard me right, there's that dirty word...WORK.

If you truly believe you can make a 6 or 7 figure income online without putting in time and effort, without educating yourself, without a knowledgeable mentor, you're an idiot. Plain and simple. Sorry, but it's true.

Now, with that said, are there any honest resources that can help you shortcut your learning curve to success? Of course there are a few.

Are there specific actions you can carry out that will get you to your financial goals faster and easier? Of course there are a lot.

But the idea of success without some work? Give me a break. Only a moron believes that. So promise me and I say this this from the bottom of my heart...

Stop wasting your time and money buying those stupid programs. They're scams. Don't expect someone to just hand you a success system for $47 or even $197. Don't expect someone to give you the golden product to sell. If it ever really worked as they promise, they would definitely keep it for themselves...unless they are also idiots. Instead, if you are serious about having a successful web business, get smart about educating yourself.

You can start right here using this blog and the few recommendations I will offer. Give it a serious shot! "Don't worry about failure. Worry about the chances you'll miss when you don't even try."

As Jim Rohn said, "Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better."

P.S. the display ads on the sides are my direct recommendations for decent products that can help you achieve marketing success...look at them, too.

Trying Out More and More Dumb Internet Projects While Making Less and Less Profits?

I will reveal right here and now THE 'Secret Formula' for making money online that most people just don't seem to recognize. On a daily basis I communicate with many would-be net tycoons who are making this mistake over and over again.

I should know a lot about this, because even though I now have long experience creating many successful direct marketing projects, I too started out as one of the hippity-hop, opportunists.

What I'm talking about happens everyday as we netrapreneurs surf the Internet. We read a little Google news, go to random websites, study competitors ads, check out new products and services of interest and more.

And while we're involved in all of this so-called, "daily research," something starts to boil in our brains...

We get that "mental itch" once again...

"I know I could make some money with this new gimmick," you say to yourself.

And so here we go again. We order and download the product, jerk out our laptops and quickly type an outline for the new project, that's going to make us an easy fortune. We get really hyped for a few days while dreaming about how we're going to spend all the money that's going to flow in from this project.

But then something else takes place in the brain.

We magically discover the next potential moneymaker while doing some more daily surfing. Then another. And another...there's always more and more guru promises to consider!

Yet, what happens in reality is...we never completely finish anything. We never fully develop any of those ideas and market them aggressively. Therefore, these fool gimmicks end up making us...NOTHING...ZERO...ZILCH!

If you haven't figured out the problem yet, listen...there's more money to be made on the internet by executing one thing in a GREAT way than trying to do 12 half-assed things. Go write that on your wall. It could be worth serious money to you if you wake up and really get an iron grip on the concept.

If you take just ONE, simple idea and develop it all the way, you will have a chance to add a real BUSINESS to your portfolio, not just jacking around with one gimmicky project after another. With a REAL business going, you can steadily reinvest in it and build it from your continuously growing profits.

If you don't want to simply be a broke "opportunist" for the rest of your days, then you should start centering all of your attention online toward building a BUSINESS. Once started, you should focus your time on growing something new for the business everyday (like signing up affiliates for your products and services, creating JV deals, testing better places to advertise, discovering new, on-target keywords you haven't tried before, steadily adding content to your site that the search engines can spider and much, much more.)

If you're not making more money now than you did last month, or the month before, you're going about it WRONGLY. Growing your profits online is fairly EASY if you follow the simple philosophy of...DAILY GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT.

On a monthly basis you should be able to award yourself a PAY RAISE by growing your business and having it become more profitable.

But you CAN'T ever do this if you are constantly jumping around like a bull frog on a hot plate to new opportunities and "potential" projects. You need to STOP IT RIGHT NOW and get off your butt and go into action with the project showing the greatest SHORT-TERM profit potential, just to see what happens. Be a "bull dog" and get a grip on your business plan.

When it starts to make a little profit, then your next move is to...

Fine Tune Your Business System As Precisely As You Can...Then REPLICATE It!

I also see many web entrepreneurs actually launch a new product or service and make some profit, only to jump onto something else too quickly. THEY ARE SIMPLY SCATTERED!

If you already have ANY online project that makes some money, there's a real probability that the same business could be pulling in exponential multiples of what it's currently making. You do see that, right? Don't even try to rationalize to me how you've tried everything to drive new leads to your site because there's NO POSSIBLE WAY that's true. The Internet is a humongous place. Your business, no matter what size, is only scratching the surface of the sales you could be making.

So stop screwing around with so many different "ideas" and gimmicky projects. Ideas by themselves aren't worth JACK Sh-T!

You do understand that even an ordinary idea, that's at least executed and takes in a little bit of money, is worth far more than the greatest idea in the history of the Internet that's never put into action, don't you?

My advice to you, if you want to make real money, is to narrow it down to what you already have that's making some profit and then go off somewhere quiet for a few hours with a notepad and pen. Don't come home until you can clearly articulate at least 100 new ways to generate more income from THAT business.

Then prioritize those ways in the order of which ones stand to make you the most money, fastest...and attack those first...drive that business deeply into the black before moving on...make it WORK for you!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Many of you have asked me about Search Engine Optimization repeatedly, so I will give you a brief explanation here.

SEO is the process of choosing and testing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site theme to ensure your site ranks highly in search engines. When someone searches for specific words or phrases linked to your site's niche theme, hopefully the search engine will show your site in the top ten listings.

Optimization basically involves fine tuning the overall structure and content of your site including the HTML and also involves a link building process. As you probably already know, the most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their ranking algorithms top secret to help them find the most valuable, context centered search-results and to deter spam pages from hampering those results. A search engine uses hundreds of factors for ranking the listings and the factors themselves along with the weight each factor carries changes continually.

Algorithms can differ so widely that a web page, which ranks #1 in one search engine could rank #300 in another. You don't have to "submit" a new site to the search engines in order to get listed. A simple link from an already established site will cause search engine "spiders" to visit your new site and begin to index its contents. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks after referral from a link to an established site for all the main search engine spiders to start visiting and indexing the new site.

If you think you are unable to research and choose good keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to outsource the work to someone who specializes in such projects.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies (Search Engine Optimizers or SEO's) will analyze the theme for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and traffic. If you want, they can also provide ongoing services to optimize and monitor your website and recommend editorial improvements to keep site traffic flowing in and your search engine ranking high. Normally search engine optimization experts work with a web designer to build an integrated system so all aspects of design and content are considered at the same time. In coming posts I will talk more about how you can optimize your own sites for the best rankings possible. Learn how I quickly quadrupled my Adsense earnings with this simple keyword tool!