Internet Marketing Ideas by Steve Weber   Reply to Me On Twitter: Click Here

“It takes money to make money”

This old saying is true even with respect to Internet marketing. Fortunately, the cost of starting an Internet business is a very tiny fraction of starting a brick and mortar business.

As I have pointed out before, our retail site, CactusCanyon.com was started with an $8.95 domain name, $3.95/month hosting and $200 for a case of products to sell. Return on investment doesn’t get much better than the success my wife and I have enjoyed with that site!

However, I still hear time again from beginners who say they “are going to go with free hosting first”. A new site can enjoy top-notch hosting for $3.95 per month from very reputable companies. There are other, second tier hosting companies, charging only $2.00 per month.

If you can’t afford the $3.95 per month, go with the $2.00 per month host for a while. There is no good reason to use free hosting with these kinds of deals available.

Why Free Hosting is Bad (this goes for blogging sites too):

1: Many hosts provide free hosting, but they insert their own ads onto your page. First of all, I never suggest putting any kinds of AdSense or affiliate ads on a brand new site. Second, even with a little bit of traffic, one could easily make $2.00 per month from AdSense and pay for the hosting. Why allow someone else to profit from your site?

2: Free hosting/Free Sites often force you to use a URL like these: www.YourSite.TheirSite.com or www.TheirSite.com/~yoursite. In both cases, your site is on THEIR domain! If you promote your site, you are promoting THEIR site too! This simply makes no sense!

3: Oftentimes with free hosting/free sites you are not allowed to use certain code or scripts…like opt-in boxes which are used to build a list with. Giving up control of your site in order to save a few bucks per month again makes little sense.

There are many ways beginners make mistakes when trying to start an Internet business; paying a few dollars per month for hosting their business is not one of them.

Steve

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There are many scam sites online promising “hundreds of dollars per day” for any would-be internet marketer who purchases their product. No experience required.

These scammers can write some REALLY good sales pages! They are very convincing!

However, it’s all a scam. There is simply no way a beginner can pay $49.99 for a product and start making money tomorrow…much less HUNDREDS of dollars per day!

Any site which promises fast and easy online money is a scam. Period.

Steve

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Most beginners don’t get past the step of learning simple web design skills. Actually, this is not the hardest part of Internet marketing. In fact, it is quite easy compared to the skill and knowledge needed to drive traffic to your site.

Many beginners opt for a “canned” web building tool. Many of these are offered by hosting companies. One only needs to “fill in the blanks” of a template in order to create the page. Although tempting, I see these as only a waste of time and will simply delay the process of building true web building skills.

Using these kinds of “instant sites” do not offer enough control over the site. If your goal is simply to get a site up there, they are fine. However, a site without traffic is worthless. The only way to implement SEO features; you must have complete control of your site’s structure. You won’t have this control with these canned sites.

Additionally, successful Internet marketers use their web design skills a LOT! There are always “thank you” pages, squeeze pages, landing pages and other mini sites to create.

If you are really serious about Internet marketing, you must learn simple web design. If you are not willing to learn this skill, you really should look for something else to try besides Internet marketing.

My Product, Real WebSite Pro teaches the beginner how to create and publish a real website. It also includes videos on buying a domain, setting up hosting, and how to get the page ranking well in Google.

Decide for yourself you are going to do this! If you do, you’ll be well on your way to enjoying the rewards of Internet marketing!

Steve

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I know many of you may think PayPerClick will be your golden goose; 99 times out of 100 it will simply be a money pit for Internet marketing beginners.

If you are trying to market Internet marketing related products, I’d say that 99.99% of beginners will lose money for quite some time.

It is far easier to make money with AdWords by promoting non-internet marketing related products.  You see, with Internet related products, you are competing against the best of the best! At least with a product like doggy chew toys, or anything else which is non-Internet related, you’ll have less competition and less of that will be from very knowledgeable PayPerClick advertisers.

Therefore, if you are dead set on trying AdWords or other PayPerClick method with affiliate marketing:

• Choose non-internet related products to market
• Spend DAYS reading about the process BEFORE you start
• Set your daily budget for how much you are willing to lose each day while learning.
• Continue reading as much as possible about PPC!

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Have you asked yourself that question? I think we all did at first. For me, the answer was pretty simple.

You see, when I first got really serious about Internet marketing I understood these points:

• There were a LOT of successful Internet marketers
• There was plenty of room for more Internet marketers (like me and you)
• The people who were successful got that way without luck
• The people who were successful were not smarter than me (or you)

With those points in mind, that question was no more than a passing thought. I WAS NOT going to quit.

Remember….Relentless Focused Action!

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We’ve all seen the offers:

Get your site submitted to thousands of search engines for just $19.95!

A good idea or a bad idea? It can’t hurt can it?

uhh…yes it can hurt! You can pay the $19.95 and be worse off than before! Here’s how:

Those sites will use scripts to submit your site. Many of them will submit your site over and over and over……and over …..to the same search engines. Let’s say Google did index your site, but now it still gets multiple submissions. This looks like a spamming technique! The only thing Google hates worse than MSN and Yahoo is a spammer!

If you submit your site to these people, you have no control over what they do with regard to the submission process. Besides, this type of deal doen’t help anyway. Say they do only submit once. A direct submission is worth FAR less than if Google finds a site ACTUALLY linking to your page.

Save your $19 and spend an hour submitting to free directories and let the search engines find you like that. THAT is the best way to get into the big search engines!

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I know how hard it is at first. The amount of information which must be filtered and digested can simply be overwhelming! Even the basic skills needed to succeed in Internet marketing, like web design, can sometimes seem impossible to master by the beginner.

When I was going through this process, I used a simple technique to keep me focused and on track.

One of the keys to my success was a question I asked myself at the end of each day before going to sleep:

What did I do today to get me closer to the success I was seeking?  

It became a rule of mine that I would always have a good answer.

Some days, I would have a long and detailed answer which I was very excited about. Other days, when I had almost no time to do anything else because of my “other” job,  I may only have been able to answer that I spent 10 minutes reading an article about SEO and learned something from it which will help my business.

No matter how small the effort might have been that day, it was important that I always could describe how it was beneficial to the business I was trying to build.

And you know what? If you do that each and every day, you will be amazed at how it adds up over time! All those efforts, both large and small, will all come together at some point for you.

Ok, so what have you done for your business today?

Steve

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Holy cow! I’m almost 50! I know, don’t tell me, I look only 39. But my oh my, it has gone by fast! Several years back I decided that life was just too short for the rat race my wife and I were living. We live in laid back western Oklahoma too!  I can’t imagine the pressure of life in a big city.

We felt we were running around crazy all the time. I had finally had enough and decided to do something about it. It was not my first time to venture into uncharted areas. I tried several other business ideas in my 20’s and failed worse than horrible. After those fiascoes I went to college and got two degrees so I could be a full time member of the real rat race. My wife did the same. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of my degrees and so is my wife. But life is short. In most cases using a degree means living and working under other people’s rules. I’m not a full fledged rebel or anything like that, but I sure got tired of the majority of my waking and productive hours being dictated by someone else.

My first step was to get my wife home. She wanted it to happen and I did too. She had numerous areas she wanted to pursue from home and simply was unable to because of her job. As soon as we were making enough to cover half of her income, we committed to it. By the time her contract was up, we were making much more. Funny how those things work.

That move alone took a huge weight off of us. Life instantly became easier for the both of us. No longer did everything at home have to revolve around our work schedule. It was really a great move and I highly recommend it. When both spouses work full-time jobs, the income is good, but the cost is very high.

Our online business continued growing and I was able to soon take the plunge too. I have to admit THAT was scary. I felt a lot of turmoil inside; leaving a safe, secure, and very well paying job…WITH BENEFITS…made me feel a bit uneasy…to say the least.  But I did it because I knew life was short.   

My only regret is that we did not decide and take action sooner. I can’t describe in words how much better life is now. We are both so much more relaxed. Our business is doing very well and will continue to grow - Life is good.

If you are reading this and wishing the same for yourself, commit yourself to it. There is nothing special about my wife or me. We have proved that average people have huge potential. Your success depends only on how much you want it for yourself. Once you make an honest and full commitment, your life will immediately change.

With “Relentless Focused Action”, there is simply no way an average person can fail. I am sure many of you have doubts, but stop and think for a moment how powerful those three words are. Give them a try and see for yourself.

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Unless you have a stockpile of cash with which you can learn PayPerClick marketing (like AdWords) with, you will need to rely on free traffic in order to enjoy success in your Internet marketing business.

The BEST type of free traffic comes from the search engines by using Search Engine Optimization techniques. Other free traffic can also come from article writing, forum postings, video postings, etc. Regardless of the method, some niches are easier to market than others.

I hate to break this to everyone, but Internet marketing products is NOT a niche area. The extreme competition in this area makes it all but impossible for beginners to get traction and succeed in.  Selling Internet information products is tough.

A beginner has far more chance of success if they choose almost any other niche area besides Internet marketing. Getting free traffic for Internet marketing related sites is extremely difficult compared to niches around fishing, astronomy, coin collecting, bird watching, and almost anything else.

Why do so many beginners choose to market Internet marketing products? As beginners we spent much time being exposed to Internet marketing products. We all seemed to gravitate to those products. Also, ClickBank and PayDotCom are filled with these products and make it easy to market them.

However, beginners should resist the temptation of promoting Internet related products. There are gold mines in thousands of niche areas where beginners can succeed far more easily in.

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Again today someone sent me a site to look over with SEO unfriendly title tags. The title tag is what shows up at the top of the browser. It is also what shows up in bold in the search engine listings. It is ALSO something the search engines place a high importance on when ranking pages. Titles are a VERY important part of good SEO.

• Each page’s title tag should be short as possible and contain the keyword that page is optimized for. Do not put in unnecessary words.
• Good: Large Dog Collars
• Bad: Try Our High Quality Large Dog Collars
• Horrible: Huge Selection of High Quality Collars. Large, Small, Leather, Nylon, Woven, and Spike Dog Collars - Super Fast Shipping!
• Each page should have a unique title

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