Online Marketing Essentials – The Customer funnel

Hi, I hope you are all suitably fired up and eager to read the next installment of Online Marketing Essentials. Today I'm going to take as look at how to funnel your customer leads to the point of sale (where they can actually buy the product). For affiliate marketing, where the point of sale is not your own website, this is especially critical.

There's basically four methods

Direct to vendors sales page web site
Direct to the purchase page
Via your own squeeze page
Via your own website

Lets look at these in more detail

If you send the customer directly from your ads to the customer sales page you have no need for your own website. This means no hosting fees and no web skills required, hopefully the vendor sales page will do the selling and result in sales.

This is good if you have no web skills at all or want to get started quickly. Although most web hosting companies now offer 'no skills needed' template built web sites.

On the downside you have no opportunity to capture the customer or offer the customer any additional products. There are also issues in that your links to the product will clearly be seen as 'affiliate links' by those in the know. There are ways of 'masking' your affiliate link but none are very good unless you have your own website.

One quick option you do have is to simply buy a domain name. You can then set 'forwarding and masking' on your new domain name so that you can use that in place of your affiliate link to get to the vendor sales page. If you want to get up and running swiftly then this is a good option in the short term.

Sending traffic directly to the purchase page is pointless if the customer has not already been given the guided tour of the product and set up ready to buy. For new starters this not a realistic option. The reason for sending directly to a vendors purchase page is to bypass his sales page if it is not converting customer leads. You will then have to convince the customer to buy the product yourself and you will have to have done this either on your own website or squeeze page. This is an advanced marketing technique but not for a new starter.

Sending traffic to the vendor via your own squeeze page is a good idea. What you effectively do here is pre-qualify your leads. The better qualified your lead the better chance of a successful sale. If your squeeze page is very good you may bypass the vendor sales page altogether and go straight to purchase point. Worth offering the option on your page! You will also use your own domain name to get to your squeeze page and not your affiliate id URL.

On the down side you need to host your squeeze page in the same way as a web site. You also need to ensure that your page enhances your sales and not reduces them by using a continuous improvement process.

Sending traffic via your own website is a great idea. You have the opportunity to mask your affiliate ID and you can capture customer details for 'back end sales'. Long term this, or a squeeze page, must be your options.

Also you can sell your own products from a website if you have them and offer content that will draw the customers back to view the website again, giving further opportunity to sell.

With a web site you can also start to create your own brand and have a domain name and corporate image to use in all communications. Long term this creates recognition and more customers confidence which results in more sales.

The downside is that you really need some skills in web site creation but there are plenty of tutorials and new applications that make it very very easy – honest!

Domain Name and Hosting
You will need a domain name and a hosting account if your going to put up a website or squeeze pages. You really can't beat VodaHost at this game. They have the simplest and cheapest way to get a professional website up and running.

They give away their BlueVoda (check out the video) web site creator which is absolutely the easiest one on the planet and it is not limited in functionality either.

You simply buy the hosting and everything else, including your domain name and unlimited web space and bandwidth, is free so it is likely to be cheaper than other hosting companies who end up charging you for all the separate bits which can often come to quite a large monthly sum.

Another big plus is that everything is integrated and I do not think any other hosting has this. i.e. you create your website in BlueVoda and you can upload it with a single click. No need for third party FTP or slow web based file managers.

OK - for fear of sending everyone to sleep I will wind up for today - hope to see you all again in a couple of days when I add the last installment of marketing essentials which discuses generating leads and turning them into customers.
Bye for now

PS if you have not already availed yourself of FREE mebership then go to The Online Income Club now. It takes 30 seconds! - and you get a full detailed online marketing e-course and loads of FREE quality tools, marketing e-books and other collateral - go on what have you got to loose?

Tony Marriott

Internet Marketing Essentials - Selecting Your Product

Hi all,
Hope everything is hunky dory in your lives and your internet money is pouring in! If it's not then these postings are just what you need.

This is the third in a series of five postings taking you through the basic steps you need to complete to successfully market anything on the internet. This post looks at where to find products and how to make sure the ones you pick will sell. We check out a killer tool to give us the final edge.

If your just starting out in online marketing then it is absolutely imperative that you start with a simple marketing model. You should have a single chain plan so that you can easily modify any part of that chain and review the results. We must be in a position to relate any changes in your results (good or bad), to the changes made in your marketing model. It is this cycle of change, test and review that is the core to successful marketing. To be able to do this you should start with one product.

First thing to discus is product type. For a start-up marketer the best option is to select a digital product. Fortunately there are a number of affiliate networks who you can join and will allow you access to a large number of vendors who run affiliate programs. The bad new is that most of these are very restrictive, especially with new-comers to online marketing. Many product vendors run there own affiliate programs but to start with I suggest you stick with a network.

One particular network, is however, very amenable to new marketers and is completely free to join. So to select your first product you should first join ClickBank. You can go to the ClickBank web site and try this for yourself.

Go to the ClickBank site and at the top of the page you will see a hyper link entitled 'marketplace'. Click on this and you will then be presented with a search box. For this example I am going to be someone interested in languages, summer holidays and similar so I have selected the category 'Society and Culture' with the sub-category 'Languages'. I have left the keywords box blank, hit GO and a number of results results are displayed.In this case the top few items are Rocket Spanish, Rocket French and Rocket German.

Read the product description, but remember this is written by the vendor. The other thing you need to do is 'view the pitch page' This is the selling page of the vendor. Click on the link under the description and see if it appeals to you – would you be tempted to buy this product? Do you think other would?

Now look at the green text under the item. For Rocket Spanish it reads:

$/sale: $86.04 Future $: - Total $/sale: $86.04 %/sale: 75.0% %refd: 73.0% grav: 83.36

What this tells you is that for each sale you make you will get $86 (or its equivalent in pounds), that will equate to 75% of the sale price. It shows that 73% of their total sales comes from affiliates. The final number (Gravity) is calculated by ClickBank based on the last 8 weeks sales. Its a rather complex calculation that adds more weight to more recent sales but gives a measure of the current sales performance of the product. Basically you don't want too high a gravity as you will be competing heavily with other affiliates but you want it high enough to expect a reasonable sales volume. Remember, for now keep it simple.

You can make an assessment on this product in the following way.

1. You will be getting a good amount of cash per sale ($86) that is a fair percentage of the sale price (75%).

2. The product itself looks to be a quality product as 27% of the sales are organic or non-affiliate sales (sold by the vendors themselves).

3. It has an average level of gravity that is ideal for a first venture.

If we wanted to consider Rocket Spanish as our product then still we need to do some further checking and we do this with a fantastic little free tool that will really improve your chances of success.The tool is called PPC WebSpy and it integrates with your web browser. It only works with Firefox, so if you only use Internet Explorer you will need to download and install Firefox. This is also absolutely free. Many believe this is actually a superior product to Internet Explorer (IE) and certainly less prone to problems. I suggest that during your installation of Firefox you deselect the check box that says 'use Firefox as your default browser'. This will then leave your IE exactly as it is but you will be able to launch Firefox to use PPC WebSpy. If you get to like it you can always make it your default browser later. My guess is you will!

Firstly you need to view the PPC WebSpy video which explains and demonstrates how it works. The next steps are simple, you just Google 'Rocket Spanish' and you will see the paid search results. Look at the keywords used and the costs per click, that PPC WebSpy show you, and you will easily be able to calculate what it would cost you to get on the first search page of Google. In this example I was able to discover that I could get the top search page position with the keywords 'learn Spanish free online' for only $0.38 per click. This means you need to get a sale once in every 226 clicks ($86/$0.38) to break even. That should be easy for targeted traffic.

What works for paid traffic also works for unpaid traffic so all the signs are that this is a viable product that should make you money. I'm not promoting Rockert Spanish though just using it as an example. Use this basic technique to select your own product and you will maximise your chance of success.

Additional detailed information, the PPC WebSpy video and free download can all be found at http://www.theonlineincomeclub.com/. Join today absoulutely FREE and receive a 7 part e-course covering all aspects of intenet Marketing + many, many great freebies.

Online Marketing Essentials - Selecting Your Market

If you already have an off-line business, i.e. a shop and want to market your current products then you need to look at markets that are appropriate for your product. Your product may define your market sector but don't rule out other sectors that, with a little thought, may prove very lucrative. You will also need to understand market niche to maximise you advertising potential.


Don't Choose a Product First!


If, as is more likely the case, you do not already have a product then you need to focus on your market sector first. DO NOT select a product first. Selecting your correct market is crucial. It is very easy to make a mistake here. Consider this the foundations to your house. Get the foundations right and the house will stand - or get it wrong.. - say no more!


If you do not yet have a product then you should consider an area of which you have some knowledge. This may be from your day job, hobby or pastime. You will have a much better chance of success if you know your subject and preferably are passionate about your subject. All this will show through to your customers. Do not think that because you are not trading face to face that your customers will not notice if you have no expertise, or enthusiasm, in the things you sell.



That does not mean that you have to have intimate knowledge of everything you ever sell in the future but certainly for your first forays into internet marketing you will be far more successful if your knowledge and passion can show through in your marketing literature, web pages, emails, ads and everything else.


Narrowing Your Market Niche


Niche!. This is a well used word amongst online marketers (pronounced 'neesh' in the UK and 'nich' in the USA) which basically means a sub section of a market sector. This becomes important when you need to attract customers. The internet is so vast, that trying to compete at a market sector level (i.e. cars, golf, money etc.) is impossible for a new starter. The costs of getting any advertising to be seen against the major companies like Ford or Barclays and the other huge competitors in the sector would be prohibitive. So don't even attempt to play in those large markets.



You need to look for a market niche i.e. a more defined area within the market sector.


Just to clarify that when I say 'advertising' I am referring to a whole range of ways of getting customers to your products. Some free, some paid and some you would never think of.


Think about the following scenario. 'Second hand Ford cars in Bristol' is a considerably smaller market niche than 'Ford Cars' but there is still enough customers in this niche to support many traders. This is basically what we do with internet trading. We find the niche we want to be in and we focus our advertising (free and paid) on that narrow field. It is then far more effective as there is less competition and so the overall cost of advertising is much smaller.



For example attracting 1% of 2,000 customers is a far better result than 0% of 20,000,000. We can get our advertising to the group of 2000 with very little cost but for same money we could not even get our ads seen in a market of 20 million where we would have to compete against major players.This is also why we select our market before the product. Once you have a market niche you can then look for appropriate products to sell in that market. Don't worry there are plenty around.


Try and Think Outside Box


When considering your niche market don't think that you need to follow a mainstream ideas. Don't look at what you think is making money today and be driven by that. The truth is that the more obscure, original, unusual etc. the more likely you are to succeed. You will have less competition and that means you will get to a larger share of your customer base. Avoid the 'making money' sector. I can speak from experience that is completely dominated by large players and very difficult to make anything out of unless you come up with very new angle. It is the one sector that a lot of new starters pick and drop out very soon afterwards and never venture back to the internet again.



Hopefully this will give you more food for thought. Plenty more to come.

You can also find a more detailed report into this subject and many others by joining the Online Income Club absolutely FREE. Click on the link at the top right of the page to Join NOW!



see you soon



Tony Marriott

Online Marketing Essentials - Where Do You Start

Hi,
it's now Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining and I have spent most of my day on the beach. Thought I'd better get another post up here so please have a look at my words of wisdom below. Should give you some things to mull over! You can get the definative Online Marketing Essentials tutorials by joining up at the Online Income Club website


Firstly you should be aware of the reality of internet marketing. There are many advertised products around and most of them offer huge rewards for working a very few hours. This a marketing strategy in itself and is very effective, which is why you will see it a lot. In some cases it is an outright lie, in others it does not fully explain that, to make that kind of money, you will need to invest significant up front time and capital. You can make thousands of pounds a month but you will not do it overnight on a shoestring budget. If you can then it's likely to be illegal or at least immoral.

Your Ethics?

Give this point some thought! You may have different ideas on what is acceptable and what is not. It can be tempting to take routes to money that fill your pockets to the detriment of others. Even if you do not believe in Karma (Do good things and good things come back to you - do bad things ......?)

-but consider this, you want to make a living from the internet and to do that you will need to plan and put in the time and effort. You will want to be in this for the long haul, i.e. you want money coming in months and years from now (that's when you can put your feet up and work your 2 hour days!).

To make this work you need a good track record, integrity and loyal customers - you will not get these by ripping people off. On-line trading is not that different from off-line trading, all the same rules apply, you will be helping yourself to succeed by having integrity and treating your customers fairly.

First Steps

So, where do we start? Firstly you need to be properly motivated and as I said earlier do not look at this as a get rich quick scheme. You will be disappointed. Unfortunately the vast majority of people who start to trade on the internet fail to succeed. Even those with great products. A great product is not a sure way to money.

Many people fail because they set themselves unrealistic targets or worse set an expectation that it will all work immediately, with no effort. Either way it's a sure route to failure. What normally happens is that the new starter will become disappointed with the early results, loose enthusiasm and ultimately stop working.

On the other hand if you create a plan and set realistic goals and follow your plan you will almost certainly succeed.

The First and Most Important Lesson

This is probably the most important thing I can teach you. plan, plan and PLAN.. Very little works in life without a plan, and if it does it would most certainly work better if it had a plan. Remember this - you will need a detailed plan, you will need to follow the plan, you will review your results, alter your plan to improve the results, follow your new (improved) plan, review your results.... and continue in a ever improving circle. This is what will make you consistent money.

Ok, lets assume you're motivated and have realistic expectations. We can now focus on some specifics. Especially if this is a new journey for you, you need to keep focus on what is important and ensure that the overall plan is manageable. That means keeping things in perspective and ensuring that you do not wander off down side roads that detract from your core objectives. Trust me - there is so much info on the internet that you could spend a lifetime reading, learning and trying products and still never get anywhere near making a penny. I guarantee that you will find things that look great and quick and easy and useful and more - but you must not stray from your main goals. Remember PLAN and STICK to it. If you see something good then save it away for later. One good behaviour in marketing is to save everything that may have future opportunity or benefit. That can be programs, adverts, articles, web pages anything. Marketing experts refer to these as snatch files but for now create a folder on your computer to save articles, documents etc. and create a favourites sub folder in your browser to bookmark useful web sites . You really need a number of folders and favourites to hold various categories of things but to start I suggest you just have the ability to save the good stuff rather than let it distract you from your main course.

Keep it Manageable

The final important lesson is to keep your first venture small enough to manage. Don't get over complicated, add too many products, try too many advertising methods, different market sectors etc. The strategy is to get one thing up and working . When you have done this you will have actually done the hardest part. From then on it's just a matter of duplicating your successful plan.

Food for thought guys - more soon
bye for now
Tony Marriott

Hi, Welcome to my Blog

Hi, I'd just like to introduce myself and tell you a little about me, where I'm from and how I got to this blog.

I'm Tony Marriott founder of the Online Income Club.Last year I worked in the UK for a major US IT company. I was a senior manager responsible for delivering IT supports services to blue chip companies across the UK. I managed a 120 man team of engineers and mangers. I worked 18 hour days and most weekends. My wife rarely had any 'quality time' with me as my entire focus was for 'the company' and earning enough money to have 4 weeks a year on holiday in Greece (our favourite holiday destination).

I had always had a vision of earning enough money and enough pension to be able to live Greece once I had retired.

Recent economics in the UK like dropping house prices and dropping pound value combined with European house prices rising sharply and the strong Euro it was looking less and less likely that my get my dream. So, cutting a long story short, last year I decided to bite the bullet and make a new life in Greece. I didn't do this without a plan of course, after my time as a senior IT manger one thing I can do well is plan. Believe me, if there is any one thing I would like to teach anyone to do, then it is to 'do NOTHING without a plan'. Even a bad plan is better than no plan at all. Bad plans can always be changed to good plans. With no plans you are dead in the water.

I seem to have sidetracked here a little but we will come back to this point shortly!

So my plan.. was to leave my UK well paid job, move to Greece, get a new job, get a new house and live happily ever after. As part the plan I took some time-out and went to Greece with my wife to look at possible new homes and employment. I did, of course, do my homework first and made many local, contact via the web. That two weeks in Greece made the difference between success and failure. Holidays are a luxury and life is ideal. Real life just ain't like that. We came out to Greece in the winter and without going into too much detail - my eyes were opened.

It was clear that getting a job in Greece with enough money to live here was unrealistic. Language, my age, nationality, culture and just about everything else was against me. The European Union is not the big loving club it supposed to be!

Anyway, I said I would come back to the point on having a plan. All good plans have options and alternatives and most importantly a back out plan. I can assure you mine had all these. So I moved directly to my first back up option for making a living, the internet. I researched everything I could (although it's easy to go astray with all the information there is and it's easy to lose a lot of money paying for the wrong information. Anyway, from my research I drew up ANOTHER plan which looked like a great way to earn enough money to allow me to move to, and live in Greece without having to find a job.

Again I will cut to the chase. Following my plan and using a basic planning strategy (Plan, test, analyse results, modify the plan based on the analysis, re-test and keep following this cycle until it works - it ain't rocket science but does need structure and focus) I managed to create an online business that now gives me what I need. I'm not rich and I am not looking to be rich. I worked for 38 years trying get rich but all I need now is enough to live on and maintain my new life in Greece (that includes my beachfront appartment of course!) , no stress and to enjoy my wife and family for many years to come. You can checkout my wife Debbie's blog at http://anewlifeingreece.blogspot.com/ where you can get an idea of the challanges we faced, our journey from the UK and the way we now live our life. There are some pics and videos too!

I know there must be a lot of people in my position, or with my outlook on life and I also know the current state of the UK and US economies are likely to make a lot of people re-look at their working lives. The dog-eat-dog environment is not one I want to be part of any more. So with this in mind I decided to start The Online Income Club. In my efforts to get to where I am today I spent a lot of money and time, that I could well have done better things with, trying to generate my online income. I think I am now in a position to help others looking to go down a similar path. Whether you want to earn a living, or get rich, if you want to work from home in the UK, USA or any country of your choice the fundamentals of online trading and marketing are exactly the same.

I also managed to accrue a significant amount of collateral on my internet journey and I am happy to share these with anyone who has an interest.

To make all this work I have created a website http://www.theonlineincomeclub.com/ it is a free membership site where I will give away all the previously aforementioned collateral. I have also reviewed a large number of business opportunities that are currently being sold so I can give you some good insight into the value etc. of these.

There are significant amounts of free stuff on the net, some rubbish, some bogus and some useful. I sift through these to give you the best offers so you don't have to waste your time with the rubbish. I also give you the low down on the outright scams and other rubbish you need to keep at 'bargepole' length.

Hopefully all this will help a few other people towards realising their dreams as I did. Of course running this blog and the web site takes a chunk of my time, and a few quid in hosting etc. I would love to say I was in the position of Bill Gates and be able to give it all up and dedicate my life to helping other but unfortunately I'm not. I never ask for any money for club membership or to get access to any of it's resources. It is and always will be ABSOLUTELY FREE so anyone can join and use all it's facilities and it need never cost them one penny. I do, however, allow some adverts on the site but I review everything first and will not allow anything on the site that looks even remotely suspect and I insist on a minimum criteria of 'no questions asked money back guarantee' or it 'don't get in the door'. So there is absolutely no risk with any product on the club website, if you decide to try any.

As I said before though, the whole of the clubs resources are free and they will be continually updated. So please use the link above and take a look at the site. If you have any interest in making money online I promise there will be useful things for you here. I am also starting to create video tutorials which will all be made available very soon.

So I hope to see you over at the Online Income Club website soon. I will keep everyone updated on the progress via this blog.

Catch you on the next update - Tony Marriott