Infrastructure First - Offers In Place - Traffic Is Next. December 27, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a comment
Building Bridges
Hello Aspiring Internet Marketers!
I’m addressing this message to people who are interested in building a business online that will support them year after year and grow while doing it.
Here’s what you are going to need, beyond a computer, internet service, and a place to sit.
You are going to need a blog. You will use it as a content management system/blog combo and, you don’t know it now, but it’s super helpful in managing all your website offers. I recommend Wordpress and so does just about everybody else.
I highly and proudly recommend hostgator. I use them and I think they have the best support staff in the world! I think you should get your first domain name there and your hosting, too. Here’s why.
Hostgator comes with a ton of extras but, right now, you just want Fantastico and they give it to you at no extra charge. Fantastico will slap your Free Wordpress Blog up on hostgators servers at your domain address so fast it’s fun!
Now…I’m telling you exactly what I did to build my business. I went to Yahoo for my other domain name - rwestdotcom.com/. They make it so easy but here is the main reason to have them host your html web page offers.
I love how easy it is to fix a webpage at Yahoo. This is big! You are a beginner. There’s going to be mistakes.
Listen to this…when I spot a misspelled word on one of my webpages (and I have many and growing) I can, with one click, be right in among the files, and usually I can fix it right there. That’s without having to download the file out of Yahoo to my HTML editor, fix it, and then re - upload it.
This is a killer time saver and makes you look like a pro when you can fix a web page mistake on the fly.
So that’s me now. My blog is at Hostgator and all my HTML sheets are hanging over at Yahoo.
By the way, I have dozens of webpages selling for me on ONE DOMAIN and HOSTING plan at Yahoo. They don’t seem to mind heavy loading. Think about how much that saves you!
Here’s how that works. my domain name is www.rwestdotcom.com….if you go there it is my index page but I hardly ever use it.
But, if I want a salespage for my website tutorial I just bang out the rough draft and, with one click, I upload it to a new domain name that I just make up! Make them up intelligently so you can tell what it is from it’s file name.
It’d look like this ….www.rwestdotcom.com/websitesalespage.html and THAT is right where my website sales page resides. Go take a look. It took 5 to 10 minutes from scratch so you ought to be able to put a good sales page up in an hour or so.
I have one other piece of infrastructure that, for me is indispensable and that is my $20/mo AWeber autoresponder. This single piece of equipment is what makes it possible for your website/blog combo to sell something on automatic without you having to be there! You CANNOT do without it.
I almost forgot PayPal! Just do it. It’s so easy. You can get fancy, expensive checkout systems later when you might need them. This is how you get paid! Why not keep it simple?
Now, that’s the infrastructure. Here follows a list of other things you’ll need.
1. You’ll need a website HTML tutorial and the software. I have it for you.
2. You’ll need a blog installation tutorial to get your Wordpress Blog up at Hostgator. I have that for you.
3. You’ll need an FTP program for when you want to move a LOT of files really fast.
I have located two free FTP’s and I use one. I’m on Mac. I have them both for you here FREE! Cyberduck…and…Filezilla.
4. You’ll need an article marketing tutorial so you can learn to drive traffic to your offers and blog. No traffic no sales BUT…this is cool…blog’s attract traffic because search engines love them. Still, you need articles for great targeted traffic.
By the way, the first things I sold were the very things I used to do what I did.
If you want to see what I did go to my blog and look around a bunch. Click a ton of the links. Don’t worry, these links don’t cost me anything.
So what I am telling you is that my blog/web page combo works fine and is producing sales. You can have one just like this one. Just use all the things I did and copy me.
The only thing you can’t copy is the actual “copy” or words that I use in the way that I use them. They’re copyrighted.
And, you are going to have questions. Use me for that at riley@rwestdotcom.com.
This way works. I was shown it by my mentor at the time because he knew it worked. You are welcome to it, a proven path to sales and a growing business.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon Pioneer making his way in the trade
You May Be Able To Make Money Online By Yourself…But… December 22, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so far
Removing The Barriers
Hello again!
In the last post I detailed one of the “stumbling blocks” I have encountered in some of the “Do It This Way AND You’ll Have Big Cash In Two Weeks!” type programs.
Yes, I have fallen for the siren salespage that made it all sound so easy. Hasn’t everybody?
My main point in the last post was that they always seem to leave something out. That is…that their “step by step” plan is missing a step or two!
It seemed to me that, no matter how hard I tried to follow the plan, that I would invariably get to that place where I didn’t know how to proceed!
In my case it was when I got to the step that started with “Open a Google Adwords account.”
For a lot of folks, opening an account is achievable, but actually building an ad campaign that earns money faster that it costs money is practically impossible.
There’s too much that can go wrong, especially for beginners.
So that’s one example of a place you can get hung up and even hurt, financially, if you don’t at least have some familiarity with the “step”.
And almost all the programs that claim to be “The Way” to making money online will have these “steps,” that a lot of people won’t get past. Be it for reasons of patience or whatever people hit points they don’t want to go past. It becomes too difficult for them and they either quit or look for another way, which is going to have the same problem.
I fought that a while. When I first started looking into this it all seemed so reasonable.
You see, I’ve been in marketing a long time…say 35 years. But NOT Internet Marketing, and, naturally, it has it’s own unique methods. And tremendous growth potential.
One thing I can say for certain is that ALL the current sales techniques were being taught to me by the world’s best in the late 70’s. BEFORE we had computers we used TV, Radio, Newspaper Display ads, and most important, cheap rate snail mail. (If you’d like to read a bit about it I have a free book offer here - a book that I contributed to.) If you want just go past the sales pitch, get your free ebook which is unlike all others, and sign up to get your FREE, PUBLISHED, NO BUGS VERSION as soon as it is out.
So, I saw this problem for what it was and I decided to eliminate my ignorance of all things mechanical in Internet Marketing.
My theory is that, as long as you don’t understand the mechanics (which I often refer to as “Infrastructure”)…the specific ones you don’t understand are going to stop you.
Well, I didn’t want to be stopped.
So I joined an Online Internet Marketing School and I immediately set about learning what I didn’t know and making a list of those things I had to have down pat so that I could do what I wanted to do.
And THAT’s Direct Sales by means of the Internet. At that time I knew Direct Selling but I didn’t know Internet Marketing Infrastructure.
Prior to this I really didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Things like “Building a Web Page.” I didn’t know how to do that and was seduced by those who said, “You can make money online without a website!”
Same with blogs, only I had heard that Google loves blogs AND now, every day, I get visitors to this blog from SERP’s (search engine page results) that Google served up to their query. (the words they typed in) A blog makes Traffic!
Other things I knew very little about were simple things like Domain Names and Hosting.
I avoided FTP (file transfer protocol) for a long time because I found a harder way first that was simply loading my website files up to my Hosts servers one at a time - by hand!
I could understand that. Then I found out later that FTP is FAR easier and will do other good things for you,too. Like back up large numbers of files or just transfer them someplace. Or duplicate or delete them!
I didn’t understand the autoresponder, list building, and email marketing. (Also known as “back end sales.”
Now I was on my way but I felt I needed to understand this at a higher level and I found that higher level training in a program run by Ken McCarthy called “The System.” I go into that a bit more on my next post. It’s important.
But, before I quit today let me tell you what my goal was, besides the obvious one of understanding Internet Marketing.
I wanted an online business that made money even when I wasn’t there to watch it!
Tell me that doesn’t sound great.
Now, I know what that takes and I am doing it…if at a low level. More on that later, too.
One more thing…if I had found this PDF when I started I would be a lot further along than I am. So, go there and get that. I’ts FREE!
Once again, it’s been fun…comments welcome,
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: More on developing skills and finding your way in the next post. - rw
I’ve Always Been A Loner - But Sometimes You Need The Club! December 21, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so far
Going it Alone?
Hello Again!
I started out knowing little to nothing about Internet Marketing and, if you are even a little like me, so did you.
Early on I ran into one of the very best things I could have. It’s an Online Internet Marketing School that has a low, one time only fee to join for life. It’s extensive and the information in there is top caliber. I still go there for a refresher course now and then. I’ll probably never quit.
I’m guessing but, I’ll bet good money that there is well over five thousand websites out there right now, telling you that they can show you the way to Internet Riches if you will just buy their “thing, plan, way, method, or secrets.)
I went for some of those and I ran into the same thing over and over. Either I didn’t like what they were showing me, or I didn’t trust them, or whatever…it wasn’t for me.
And there was one other thing I didn’t like. It seemed that there was always something missing in the program and that was the thing that would keep you from progressing to actually earning money.
One of the common “missing things” was Google adwords!
You’d get this new program and while still excited that this might be the way for you finally, they tell you to open a Google Adwords account.
Well, really, the account can be handy but there is a catch 22 there.
Yes, Google Adwords has made people good money time and time again and will go on to do so.
Always up for learning a new way to drive traffic to an offer, I plunged in. Opening the account was easy enough but I soon learned that that there were many subtleties involved and I got to understand them, but not overnight.
No, it took me a couple of months to start to really understand how it worked and that was only because someone else was paying for me to learn to use Google Adwords in order to drive traffic to their website.
That’s trust! By the way I studied Google Adwords with Perry Marshall’s stuff and, while I can’t say for sure, many top level Internet Marketer’s consider his stuff the very best. Try his free mini course.
You can make some big, bad mistakes in there and Google doesn’t give you your money back if it doesn’t work!
Check this out…I was running about $2000 per month in clicks and getting thousands of people to the website each month. It made a huge difference in sales at the store once actual, real, targeted traffic started showing up, on a regular basis, to their website.
Then they decided to get a “better website”. We also switched hosting companies.
I don’t know why I did this or even how it happened but here it is. We moved the website to another host and I built a few ads to start off with that were more relevant to the new website.
I must have gotten something wrong, but ONE thing was definitely a mistake.
I took off on a nine day motorcycle ride.
While I was gone business at the store slowed down quite a bit. First slowdown since I started driving traffic to their website. We talked every day and this thing was starting to ruin my motorcycle tour!
When I got back I ran to my computer (I should have taken it with me) and I found out that I had made a mistake in the new ads. I left a letter out of the url! One little letter! It was an “s”.
I had driven 700 paid click targeted traffic customers to the 404 Forbidden Zone!
That cost me $600 bucks and I think it cost the store a lot more than that because they were off 30% for 10 days and grouchier than a stepped on cat.
Oops! This all started because I bought a program that was going to teach me how to make money online, BUT FIRST, I had to learn Google Adwords. That set me back two or three months…BUT I did learn Google Adwords.
I also learned “Check Your Links”. Every time. I still do.
So the program I bought that said “BUT FIRST - you need to learn Google adwords!” should have added “AND to CHECK YOUR LINKS!”
See…they always leave something out. What’d I tell you. Caveat Emptor. Trust no one. Not even yourself.
This is automatic money online here! Only it can go both directions.
Once again, it’s been fun…comments welcome,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: There is at LEAST one or two more posts coming on this topic AND why it forced me to do something that most folk’s don’t want to do…AND how that helped me make my first money online. I’ll see you there.
The “Basics” of Internet Marketing November 5, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a commentHello Again:
What are the basics of Internet Marketing? Weren’t we just talking about that?
Oh, well, the basics are always fun to review. Usually profitable, too!
I say it’s putting the right offer in front of the right people by means of the Internet.
Still, I think we can paint a little picture here that may simplify the concept of Internet Marketing for you.
Let’s say you already know how to handle getting a webpage up. Let’s put a good offer on that webpage selling something people need and want. (Two different things…need and want)
Once you have the offer up and running with an autoresponder it’s time to get down to the real business. Yes! Up until this point we were only talking infrastucture!
Infrastructure is important because it’s the “setup” that let’s you run automatically. That’s important because you can hardly do without it. But guess what “it” can’t do without.
Traffic. Better yet Targeted Traffic. People coming to your website.
Targeted traffic is when people with bald tires are shown a new tire offer.
So how do we get targeted traffic in numbers big enough to sell something. Well, what’s that, for example?
I’ve seen it so often it must be true. Conversion rates rarely exceed 5%…more often 1-2%.
So if you want to sell 10 of these things (in your webpage offer) you must get a thousand people to come to your site AND they have to be the type of person (traffic) that wants what your offer.
So traffic…Targeted Traffic is what you need to work on. Lately I’ve been getting into that and I’m starting to make some progress.
But traffic is what you need after you have your infrastructure in place! That would put you in the market for Website Creation, Offers, Hosting and Domains, and Autoresponders!
You see… until you have the infrastructure in place you don’t need traffic. Unless you are generating traffic for someone else’s offer, which happens a lot, but I’m not going there right now.
After you have the structure in place you have to get the traffic! So you can get to that place where the simplest equation describing Internet Marketing dwells.
It’s here that the money is made… Traffic + Conversion = Sales. Think about it.
You get your offer all rigged up and ready to go. You drive Targeted Traffic to it. Some of that traffic convert into sales and you are on your way. Selling and building a list.
Don’t forget about the list. Customers that have visited your site and especially those who purchased, are likely to buy from you again. Unless you fail to treat them like you would want to be treated.
If you are in need of the skills necessary for success in IM and you’d also like to see the “big picture” I recommend the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course.
If you need website skills you should see this… WEBSITE!
If you need Hosting and Domains you should see this….HOSTING AND DOMAINS.
If you need an autoresponder you should see this….AWEBER!
If you need a List of the Basics, this is Good and This is FREE!
If you need Traffic you should consider this…ARTICLE MARKETING TUTORIAL
If you’d like a blog like this one that attracts it’s own targeted traffic then you’ll want to look at this…..WORDPRESS TUTORIAL
Well, that’s pretty straightforward…which is what you get here.
That’s it for today - Thank you - Please, leave a comment!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
I Did It Myself and So Can You! October 24, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a commentHello Folks:
I can’t get over how many people are coming to this blog.
I did follow the instructions to a “T” and, apparently it works!
Thank you blog readers! Thank you for a really great e-book!
Anyway, if you’d like to see the book I followed to get this Wordpress blog up and running you can just click these words.
Interestingly enough, I am using a combination of This blog and simple HTML salespages. Yes I said simple!
When you get to that webpage above you’ll be looking at what I call a salespage. I made that one in a half hour and had it up on the web.
Now there are a lot of little attendant tasks that have to be done. These consist of things like ‘links” and testing those links.
There are download pages to attend to but really all that is is another webpage with links for the downloads.
I risk boring you. I know that. But I am excited to be able to offer people who want it The Tools they need to create a traffic generating blog with links to webpage offers.
Here is a FREE copy of my Ebook that includes not just a tutorial but also the software to do it with! It’s called 24 Hour Web Page Guru. That’s exciting. Take one.
Oh, and here’s the salespage for the website thing because the PDF, as good as it is, isn’t the only thing included. There’s a cool money making opportunity and I’m not kidding. You can check it out right here.
By the way, let me tell you what I do with ebooks, especially the ones I want to work out of and reference back over and over again.
I have them printed at Office Max and spiral bound with a clear sheet of plastic in front and a black sheet in back. Works for me.
And it’s quite cheap.
Thanks Folks - Please leave a comment
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: If I confused you (which I do to myself often) I wanted to show you
a killer startup bargain you could use to get ahead, Yes! Get Ahead!
Maybe you haven’t yet. You can now!
A Killer Resource That Doesn’t Take an Arm or a Leg! October 23, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2commentsHello Folks:
I have bought and paid for a LOT of how to ebooks and about half of them were OK to good and a few of them were totally excellent. The totally excellent stuff is what you’ll find in the blog.
You might want to slap me around a little for not telling you about this sooner.
You see, back in the day, when I was careening from one ebook to another I fell across one book (not an ebook) that literally changed the way I saw marketing on the net. I could see clearly now. I understood. The big picture.
The man behind this is named Ken McCarthy and you would do very well to hear him. (or read him) He’s a great writer and makes it fun! But, there’s a catch. Isn’t there always?
The catch is that a big part of his information is FREE.
As it turns out this guy is one of the pre-eminent teachers of Internet Marketing Skills in the world.
I hadn’t heard of him a couple of years ago and it wouldn’t be a surprise if you haven’t either. You may not have heard of Ken but all the big name marketers have. Many of them studied under him.
Every year he has this big gathering called the System Seminar that people from all over the world come to attend. A $2500 event. Plus travel and incidentals like food.
So it’s high end stuff but it’s presented in such a way that totally sets it apart from the other things you may have read about or attended.
But I’m getting ahead of myself! Here’s the nugget! This guy hands out free information like he has to get rid of it fast!
And this information is better, often, than anything you can buy and it’s all about how to Market on the Net.
Here’s what I did. He gives out so much info in the form of mp3’s (ipod) that I just put them on my ipod and listen to them when I’m out for a walk or driving somewhere.
Each of these tapes (not really a tape but I don’t know what to call them) is about an hour long and is an interview between Ken McCarthy and one of the people who is going to be teaching their specialty at the System coming up.
What’s really great about these interviews is that they are not a pitch-fest! They are an in depth look at a certain area of Internet Marketing skills with lots of good useable, actionable tips and skills that you can take away (FREE) and use to build your business or skills or both!
I love what this man produces! I think many of you will too. This is both bedrock action info and advanced techniques that will blow you away. Exciting stuff.
Go here and sign up for the Free Pre-System Seminar. A free information series you will not regret! This will really add to your arsenal of good usable knowledge. I did it and I won’t quit doing it! It’s Free and it’s Good!
They also sell products, too. Who wouldn’t? And this Internet Marketing information is absolutely top drawer. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Go get the Free Pre-System Seminar right now and, please, come back here and tell me what you think. I’d love to hear it. As always you can email me at riley@rwestdotcom.com/
Thank you - Please leave a Comment!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: Next Post: Get weekly lesson sessions that will take you from no where to making money.
How to Kickstart Your Way Into Internet Marketing -1 October 22, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2commentsThis is the first chapter in what will be a multi-chapter detailed review of the new Weekly Lesson Plan program offered by Sara Brown and Tony Shepherd. It is called The KickStart Course.
This is a training program is produced by a couple of people I have been lucky enough to work with for quite a while now, and I still do. I consider them to be very high caliber instructors of Internet Marketing processes. So far, for me, they are the best.
Plus, they are easy to get along with, these two. They are folksy to a point and approachable. What I appreciate most about these two Brits is that they are very good at making money on the web and uniquely capable of telling you how to do it, too.
There are thousands of people out in the world of “make money online” that offer plans ranging from $47 to $2000 plus that are “Guaranteed” to teach you the ins and outs of marketing on the ‘net. In my experience there are none better than than these guys.
And, their program is just plain inexpensive. it might just be “Your Way“.
Before I really get going on this I’d like to demonstrate how a seemingly simple thing can get out of hand and cause frustrated newcomers to quit in droves.
First I should admit that I have bought over $5000 worth of ebooks and instructionals and, while I learned a lot in all that study, I still had to figure out dozens of little details myself.
And some of those little details can be a deal breaker.
That’s not a bad thing. it’s just the way it is.
Case in point…one day (I might have a bad nights sleep the night before) I got into a big clustercrunch about the paypal buy now buttons.
Really! I was setting up another salespage and when I got to that part of building the page that required me to go into paypal for code, I hit a brick wall.
Now, mind you, I made paypal buy now buttons before, and successfully. It would have been funny if I wasn’t in some sort of self imposed rush. I’m self employed! I don’t have to rush very often
Anyway, I got into paypal and had trouble with the code. That drug out for a while and frustrated me a little but then…then I really hit trouble.
See, after you buy something on paypal they end you up on a return to merchant page. There is a button there that says “return to merchant” on it.
Well, it would just take you back to your sales page if you let it and I knew darn well that I wanted my customer to go to the download page when he/she punched the button.
I couldn’t figure out how to do it! I couldn’t find the place in paypals extensive site that allows you to assign the “return to merchant” button a url that has your download page on it.
Simple if you can find it…impossible if you can’t.
No problem…I called paypal help! By the way that is a feat unto itself. They make finding the phone number damn near impossible and when you do find it and call you are looking at a pretty good wait!
I can practically recite their “Your phone call is important to us..blah,blah…” spiel.
Finally I got a gal who was hard to understand. Her English was a heck of a lot better than my second language is but I still had to have her repeat herself over and over.
As I tried to explain to her what I was hung up on she had to keep putting me on hold while she ran and asked someone who might know. What a horrible job. I felt sorry for her and kinda mad at the same time!
After a LOT of that, the gal came back online with an answer I knew she was reading. The essence of the answer was that there was “No way to achieve changing the url on the return to merchant page unless you resort to a custom software developer!”
I sort of raised my voice a little and said “There sure as hell is a way! It’s done all the time and even I have done it before but I guess I forgot which trapdoor to fall into.” She just read me the same answer over again..like I didn’t get it.
I said again “There is a way and it’s simple and I just can’t find it! The fact that it’s easy and you can’t even help me with it is mind bending! Can’t Paypal do better than that?
She read me the answer again! I hung up before I said something untoward.
I gave up. I had a snack. Drank a beer or two. Watched a movie. Went to bed.
I got up in the morning and said something like this to myself “I’m getting past this stupid button thing! I’ve got things to do!
So I called them again. I got a gal who was little easier to understand. Things were looking better.
I told her I couldn’t find the place to change the url in the return to merchant button.
Without hesitation she said “That’s under the profile dropdown.” There will be three columns of preferences and that feature is in the third column. It’s down toward the bottom and it’s called “website payment preferences”
I haven’t had a problem since. But that was a toughie and it shouldn’t have been.
I would bet , like a lot of other little details, that some fledgling marketers would throw up their hands and walk out mad determined to stick with their job.
Internet Marketing has lots of little details like that. I know for a fact that stops a lot of folks from getting anywhere. They just give up.
Don’t let that be you. You can learn any of the mechanical stuff like building webpages and uploading files and setting up autoresponders. You may have trouble with copy writing…some do. But you can find a workaround for copy writing.
But I think what kills off so many prospective Internet Marketers is that they just couldn’t get to that point where they could see it all, how it works, and put it together.
And that’s what I want to talk about over the next few posts because something has occurred that can change the rocky process of learning to a more calculated and smoother progression of improvement.
This is a training program that was produced by a couple of people I have been lucky enough to work with, and still do, that I consider very high caliber instructors of Internet Marketing processes. So far, for me, they are the best.
Their style of instruction works for me better than anything else I’ve done and I’ve done a LOT!
I could go on and on about how much I like the info products I have purchased from these folks, Sara and Tony in Great Britain. And I will! But not here now. This post is getting too long.
I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll pick up where we left off with a detailed review of their new product! It could be just the thing for you. If you’d like to visit the site and familiarize yourself with what I consider to be a groundbreaking new development please do so.
Thanks again - Please leave a comment!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade
The 10 Basic Things You Need for Successful Internet Marketing. October 20, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 3commentsHello Folks:
Before we get into the meat of this days discussion I’m going to give you a link to free PDF called “Ten Basic Things You Need for Successful Internet Marketing.
Look at it when you get a chance. If you are looking to get into Internet Marketing you need to know what these “ten basics” are! Plus, if you purchase the PLR rights, you can put your own affiliate links into the document, Pass them around FREE and you’ll get some link pops from the people you give this to and who in turn, check out one of your links and ends up buying. This is a money-maker.
So here it is…“The Ten Basics…..”
And now todays post…
Did you ever go fishing without the bait? Did you ever try without hooks? Or a line?
You can’t fasten down your handlebars without a bolt. Or a wrench of some sort.
It’s hard to do anything without the right tools!
I could go on. I just want you to understand that there are some basic ingredients to Internet Marketing that you really can’t do without.
OK. Enough! You want to know what the ten basic things are that you need to know to be able to successfully market via the internet.
In order to have an article here that doesn’t get way too long I am going to put links into the list for additional information and resources.
With no further ado…here we go…
1. You must understand what IM is, it’s various forms, it’s jargon, and have a little grasp of the lay of the land. It’s made up in part with Affiliate Sales, Selling your own product, E mail marketing, and sales of physical products to name the most well known.
2. One really must be able to make up a simple website for themselves.
3. A beginning marketer should know what a domain name is, and how to get one. The same goes for hosting. That’s the outfit that will put your webpage up on the web with your domain name as it’s address. In this catagory you must know how to upload the files you need to make that website appear on their servers. That would be FTP software. You need to learn about that. I recommend hostgator. It’s the one I use and it has great support!
4. A student of Internet Marketing (IM) has to know about automatic email followup sales campaigns. I use Aweber. It’s the best. Almost everyone uses it. Great tutorials! Only $19.95/mo. Worth three times that.
5. You need to understand what keywords are and how to work a simple keyword tool so that Google (or someone else) can show you the keywords. Other terms for keywords are “keyword phrase”, ” long tail keywords”, or even “search query”. Additionally, you should open a Google account. It’s free and has so much cool stuff that it is a killer resource.
6. You need to know how to drive traffic to your website. You can learn all about that here. Otherwise it will just sit there, unvisited. There are various methods. One of the most popular is writing articles. When I first heard of this I was intimidated. After I had learned how to write and submit articles it was easy and it caused traffic to come to my salespages.
7. You certainly would want to know how to let people pay you for what you offer and how to collect it. (It’s automatic) Start with Paypal.
8. One should get a blog started. They are easy to do and sometimes they can substitute for a website and/or drive traffic to a website. I recommend Wordpress hosted on your account. It’s FREE!
How I did it: I signed up for Domain and Hosting at Hostgator. They are great to deal with and have the very best customer support I have encountered. That alone is BIG!
They also include a free program called Fantastico. It will install your wordpress blog effortlessly. When you get that done email me at riley@rwestdotcom.com and I will email you an ebook For FREE that tells you how to set up your blog for maximum traffic. Works for me at 24 Hour Wordpress Guru.
Tip: Don’t fall for the free hosting Wordpress offers (Or Blogger) When you have your own name and hosting you are in control. Wordpress hosting does not allow sales pages and affiliate links.
I tried it once (because it was free) and they caught me right away and sent me packing!
9. FTP! File Transfer Protocol. What a name! Someone is just trying to sound geeky. Don’t worry about it. It’s totally easy. Way easier than doing it by hand! (Yours truly tried to hang on to the old ways but finally got dragged into the 21st Century)
Use it to upload files to your hosting servers so your webpages can be on the net. There’s lots of them for sale. I use a free one! Cyberduck. Yes Cyberduck…odd name… FREE! Works Great!
For the PC/Windows crowd there is FileZilla! It’s FREE too! I’m not sure why but EVERYBODY freaks at the idea of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) At First. I guess it sounds hairy…but it’s NOT!
FTP Makes the whole process of uploading and downloading files darn near effortless! Now, I LIKE that!
10. Maybe you are one of those folks who want to be taken by the hand and carefully led down the path to Internet Marketing Success.
I don’t blame you! If this had been available when I started (and I knew about it) I would have gone this route for sure!
It’s the Internet Marketing KickStart Course! I recommend it highly.
If I had this list and the information and resource links within I would have gotten off to a lot better start.
Thank You,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: This Report/List will stay about the same but the links to further information and resources will grow. Check back now and then.
You can download this list in the ever Popular PDF form and give it away or use as a bonus!!
It is for your personal use only. You are authorized to give it away or use as a bonus. You can not alter it in any way. You must preserve the links within.
If you would like Master Resale Rights to this list so you can sell it, give it away, put your links in it and modify it in any way you want just hit the paypal button and cruise through to the download page. It is only $7 and it comes with HTML, Source doc, license, and rights list. It’s a no brainer. You won’t get rich but you sure as heck won’t go broke, either. My recommendation…use it to get paid to compile a list! ie They Opt-in for the Free Report and now they have your links and you have their name and you KNOW what they are interested in, don’t you?
Copyright 2007 © rwestdotcom.com All Rights Reserved
Webpage Building - Learning New Stuff - Getting Things Done October 19, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 3commentsI’m 60 years old. Anybody could get a lot done if they had that much time to do it in. That’s what happens if you let 59 get past you.
This post is about getting things done.
The problem I see holding people back from Getting Things Done is two things. Maybe three.
One, They don’t put much into their time.
Two, They don’t have specific goals.
Three…They don’t have a step by step plan to achieve those goals.
I don’t mean I know every step I am going to take to get to my goals. I run into the same unexpected setbacks everybody else does. And I’m not going to sell you a Zig Ziglar tape. (although he is excellent)
It’s just that I stick on one step until I get it done. Get it done!
I don’t know what happened to me the other day. It was like I suddenly had big holes in my memory.
Now, I don’t always get it the first time. Does anybody? If you all say everybody does I’m going to feel really stupid because for me it’s actually like I never get it the first time.
I have trouble keeping it simple but I am determined to do so. Still getting stuff done and knowing what to do next is an artful balance that I work on every day. For me, it actually makes things interesting.
I guess you just don’t know what you don’t know and it shouldn’t be a surprise. But what yanks my chain is higher eschelon gurus selling HTGR systems centered in Internet Marketing and it’s all so elaborate. Yawn. Pause.
It’s also darned expensive.
Recently I stumbled across a promotion that had all the hallmarks of your typical giant launch and this one was a doozie. It had a large commitment built right in and was going to insure your rapid rise in earnings by determining this one thing.
This “thing” was your “major constraint” Find out what that is, get over it or get past it and get on with your life of riches.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I have so many constraints that my modus operandi has always been to seek progress in spite of my shortcomings.
Well, my major “constraint” has got to be ADD. I have had it all my life. Makes it difficult to concentrate.
So I became a list freak. It seemed to me that if I could just get all my to-dos onto a list (and not lose that list or become overwhelmed by it) I could prioritize my to-dos and just start slugging away.
Except…I’m not so hot at prioritizing. And I’m easily distracted.
I want to tell you this simple thing I do to keep my rats nest of a brain on track.
Here’s what happens to me when I don’t use this little trick.
I open my laptop and something catches my eye or I suddenly remember that I may have an answer to an email I sent yesterday or do I have some new people on my list and is my email sequence ahead of or behind…oh I think you get the picture.
My paypal account, how about clickbank, did I test that last download page, oops I didn’t check the links in that pdf, oh and even worse… I changed the name of one of the files so now I have to go all over the universe fixing those links or just say screw it or change the file name back even if it is the wrong name…
Sound familiar? You do what I’m doing up there in that last paragraph and you aren’t going anywhere very fast. Plus you are becoming a trained expert in the art of living in chaos.
That’s me. But I got a workaround. It’s simple. I say no. And I keep a good pen and paper right next to my computer so that when I know what the next best thing is that I should do to move forward I write it down there.
When I finish what I’m doing currently I move to that entry on my list. I look at it. I think “That’s the best next thing. Let’s get ‘er done. Where the best place to start. What do I do first. Go. Get on it.”
I usually have good things to do next on that list and, when it comes to my current endeavors, one of the questions I ask myself daily is “What is the best thing I can do to cinch down loose ends or move my business forward?”
For me it’s usually fix up or add some infrastructure and work on building traffic.
Is it really that simple? Just two things? Infrastructure or traffic. That’s it. Zen moment.
My house is in the woods. Time for a walk. Relax. When I come back I’ll do one of two things. Work or not work. If it’s work I’ll do one of two things. Easy boy. Whoa.
That was fun, see you next time. Comments wanted!
Wholeheartedly here,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Keeping It Simple - Building Webpages October 18, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 4commentsHave you ever noticed the tendency of Internet Marketers to overcomplicate things?
I’m serious here. I’m sure few people would have been as impressed with this fact as I am. I have ADD. That makes it hard to concentrate and even harder to learn!
I’m not whining. I’m so used to it that by now that it seems totally normal. It makes multi-tasking seem more natural to me because I can hardly maintain a straight line of thought anyway. But, multitasking works against me.
I have to render the complicated down to little steps and do them one by one. It’s how I put together this offer today
Maybe thats why I seek simplicity with a certain level of doggedness that irritates my wife.
Some seek simplicity because they want it. Their lives are already too complicated for them. I seek simplicity because I have to.
You see, if I can’t keep it simple I can’t keep it!
This doesn’t mean I can’t handle something complicated. I can. It means that I can’t learn something presented in complexity.
I learned to fly high performance aircraft. That’s complex! But I ate that elephant one bite at a time.
So let’s get back to how this affects our perception of how to learn about Internet Marketing!
Well, let’s change the question to “How to learn to earn money with knowledge of IM strategies and tactics.”
My answer to that question has to be “Put an offer in front of the right people in such a way that they buy it!” Boom! That’s it. Simple. Takes a lot of little steps, though.
Now, a lot of folks are going to say, “It’s not that simple!” I agree. But it can be stated that simply. And that, for me and a lot of others, is more to the point and more easily acted upon.
Acted upon! Get it done! One step at a time. Keep moving!
Here’s a sample situation.
Say that, for example, you still don’t know how to edit a webpage and this keeps you from being able to present an offer!
How to start..
1. Get a webpage editor onto your computer. Here’s a FREE way!
2. Open the web building program.
3. Open a blank document.
4. Put a table on that blank document. (Looks like a rectangle)
5. Fill the table with some text ..maybe add a picture, change the border.
6. Save this doc. as an html file. HTML editors do this for you.
If you stopped here you have gained a lot of experience. And if you really want to go somewhere…continue.
7. Get a domain name
8. Get a host.
9. Using your domain name as your web address upload that document to your hosts servers. Use an FTP program for this. I use cyberduck and it’s FREE! Works great, too!
10. Now, open a browser window..any browser window.
11. Type in http://www.yourdomain.com
12. See the document on the web? That’s yours! Wow!
14..Go back to your webpage editor pull up that orig doc.
15. Modify the doc. Another pic More text etc Colors,etc.
16. Save that new doc. as anotherpage.html - upload it.
17. It’s address will now be http://www.yourdomain.com/anotherpage.html
18. Check it out on the web. See?
19. Pull that No. 2 doc up in your webpage editor and select some text.
20.Creat a LINK from that text to the firstpage.
21. Upload that so that now this page http://www.yourdomain.com/ anotherpage.html has a LINK to this page http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
22. In a browser window address bar…Type http://www.yourdomain.com/anotherpage.html and Click that Link!
23. Did it Work? Probably. If it didn’t fix it.
If you didn’t know anything about making webpages and If you actually stepped through this process, you now know way more than you ever did about it.
In reality you delved into webpage building, domain names and hosting, ftp upload/download file management, and links. Quite a few other little details, too.
Tip: When uploading a modified file that was previously uploaded I delete the previous file so that things stay simple.
And, once you’ve done it a few times it is actually simple and straightforward.
I consider webpage building, handling, and manipulation to be one of my core assets and I’m sure I couldn’t get along without it!
Why? Because, if I didn’t know how I wouldn’t be able to “Put an offer in front of the right people in such a way that they buy it!” Boom! That’s it.
I have an offer right here for you. I think you are going to like it.
Thank you again! Comments are welcome!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
