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.
Updated! Did You Know a $7 Report Can Earn You Real Money? December 13, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a comment
Only Seven Bucks, Man!
Hello again:
You probably already know a little about good, low cost reports.
If you come around here often you know I am big on products that will…
One. Teach you a valuable skill…and
Two..Are an actual product that you can then sell.
Honestly…what could be better. You know there’s no free lunch.
I picked up on this quite a while back. Think about it.
You spot an under $10 plr report that covers something you need to learn and/or looks like something that would be a natural to sell on your site.
You pay some measly amount…usually under ten bucks, and download it.
You learn a valuable way to make money.
And you are provided the product and everything you need to sell it. And now, you start selling that. You just have to get started and it will happen.
Man, that sounds easy and straight forward.
Except for one thing. It’s always something. Ask Roseanne Roseannadanna! (Google her)
Like…do you have a domain name yet, and hosting. If not - full stop - you can go nowhere.
Pick a domain name and register it immediately. Or quit.
And…do you have hosting? (a place to hang your web pages. Your offers.) Get some right now and get this dumb obstacle out of your way!
Like…are you familiar with FTP and uploading HTML files to your Domain Address at your Host? No? Really! Get FREE FTP software for MAC… learn it in one day and get this obstacle out of your way! Really!
Yep, those few little things are what makes it impossible for good qualified people to get ahead in this biz.
My suggestion? Get ‘er done! Open the gates to IM Heaven! Knock down the obstacles! Figure it out! It isn’t hard! It just looks that way at first. Get with it! Just do it!
It is absolutely necessary and all those guys out there trying to sell you a “plan” KNOW in their heart of hearts that you won’t go anywhere because you can’t handle the basics.
What are the basics? I was hoping you’d ask.
First pick Hostgator and get a domain name and a hosting plan.
Why do I say that? I’ve had several and these guys are great! Best customer support I EVER had! Reasonable pricing too! Just take my word for it…my word is good. I’ve been there.
As for FTP? Surprise! It’s FREE! Choose Cyberduck or Filezilla and just go!
At the time of this post there is trouble at these sites but I guess it will be fixed pretty soon.
With the above in place all you need now is an HTML web page to upload! I call that “hanging’ the page.
Do it back and forth a few times (with changes), so you learn how to correct typos! Typos happen!
You do know how to edit an HTML file by now…right? If not you can know all about it here….WEBSITE EDITOR HERE!
So, now that I’ve bugged you about the basic stuff you may not know, let me make up for it by showing you this…
HOW TO GET STARTED PUTTING MONEY INTO YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT!
Just click here, buy it, and get to work. You are close!
One more time…
1. For simplicity Get a .com Domain Name for About 15 bucks and the reason I use the Hosting Plan below is 1. They are reasonably priced. 2. Best support in the world, no exaggeration. 3. Unlimited Sites - One hosting fee!!! That’s Hostgator and that’s the one I use and recommend.
You can get going today for $25 total for your first month and 10/mo after that! Do it! That’s HOSTGATOR!
Hostgator Rates
Use this FREE Software to make your pages.
Use this Free FTP for Mac and FREE FTP for PC to upload and download pages to your server.
Get this done and I’ll show you how to put a FREE Wordpress Blog up and running in 5 minutes.
Then I’ll show you how to put HTML sales pages up for your offers. That’s free too!
After that you can experience the fun of posting blog content and making you first sale happen.
You do this…you’re in business. And you control it!
And you did it all for $25. Not bad…not bad at all.
Email me if you have problems or questions. riley@makinganinternetmarketer.com
We’ll get you going.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
What Can You Do When You Build a Site That Doesn’t work? December 12, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 6comments
This Doesn't Work!
Hello again:
I’ve had a couple of sites that didn’t make any money. But each time I felt I got closer. I don’t know why there can’t just be a place you can go to be told why your site isn’t working.
I like the idea of Instant Site Review.com/ I don’t think that kind of thing exists.
Now it does! This unassuming little article is that place. Or one of them.
Did you ever hear that idea of doing a website about something you just really like? Well, I’m crazy about Dachshunds, so I made a big elaborate site. Took me a long time.
Turns out wiener dog words are cheap so I flooded the site with a ten dollar a day budget and a few articles.
I had a signup rate of about 15%. The list really took off!
Let me tell you that a wiener dog site is easy to do! Wonderful pictures AND I made a page where anybody could send me pictures of their dogs and themselves and I would post them up right away. That got busy!
I had CPA offers and affiliate offers and adsense and ONLY adsense paid. It paid about three bucks a day and I had $10 per day in PPC.
People liked the site, but they wouldn’t buy. I didn’t get it.
I declared the whole thing to be a great learning experience and shut it sown. Maybe, if I’d stayed with it…but I had all five of the criteria below going pretty well and it didn’t work.
Call me impatient but I bagged it.
Look at these following points of discussion about the efficacy of websites. One of these might explain why your site isn’t making any money.
Low Traffic - If no one sees your sales page you are finished right there!
You have to actually recruit visitors to the site! My favorite method is Article Marketing.
Unless you are very competent, depending on the Search Engines to bring you traffic is unlikely to ever work, and, really, you need to be proactive.
The best ways to drive traffic to your offer (site) are PPC, Article Marketing, and Web 2.0 Social Networking.
I’m still old school.
PPC bums me out, most of the time. I made $70,000 with ppc in 2007. But, it wasn’t repeatable.
Currently I have a blog. It gets traffic. More each month! I’m working on it.
I use articles to send people to my blog where I have several offers on webpages linked from the blog.
Bad Site Design - If you have traffic to your site, the next thing to look at is how visitors perceive your site.
If it looks unprofessional, if it’s tough to navigate or is a little ugly… it’s unlikely that visitors will trust you. They just won’t give you their money.
Good webpage/salespage/website design is easily and cheaply available. You can even do it yourself. Read all about it!
Bloggers can look good through nicely designed Wordpress themes and templates.
If you aren’t a blogger, consider using website template services for ideas.
But, I gotta tell you, being able to build or at least modify your own HTML websites is an absolutely invaluable skill…especially at first. Learn about it a little…it’s actually easy after you expose yourself to it for a little while.
Bad Traffic = Untargeted Traffic - This is pretty straightforward but a lot of people get it wrong. Example, if you have a wiener dog site don’t use “dogs” as a keyword, Broad, Phrase, OR Exact. You’ll pay for tons of traffic and very little of it will be interested in Dachshunds.
Watch your links! If you can send traffic somewhere (a valuable skill) DON”T make the mistake of sending them to the wrong place accidently! OMG! Yes, I did that very thing.
Short Story - A couple of years back I remodeled my main website. I also changed the URL address to a better one… I thought. I made a little typo. Check your links… then double check your links!
Because of that little typo I sent $700 worth of PPC to the 404 Forbidden Zone! You should have seen my face when I discovered that!
When selling specific items, send your traffic directly to the most relevant page on your site that gives them what they were looking for.
Copy Problems - If you send traffic to a beautiful page that promotes a specific product and it isn’t working, you may want to consider your copy!
Does the copy have spelling and grammatical errors? The kiss of death! Throw yourself down the staircase, kid…you can’t spell! How smart can you be? I should take your advice? That’s how a lot of people judge you, or the image of you…by the words you use and the way you write. This includes spelling and grammer.
Rewrite your copy to the best of your ability and then find someone to edit it. (proofread)
Good copywriting is what makes sales happen. Sell the benefits and tell your prospect how a product will improve their life.
No E Mail Follow-Up marketing? What if you did it all right? If your prospect left your site without buying…it’s OK…If you have their name and email address. And if you follow up with an autoresponder series.
Way back, when I was learning sales and marketing from the leaders at that time…they had a mantra. it went like this…
“We studied the best salespeople in America and we found that the top producers closed the sale on average on the seventh closing attempt (read… An email to the prospect)…AND…when you take into consideration that many salespeople know two closes and only USE one…then you have some idea of why there are so many peons in this business.)”
The lesson is this…If you want above average results, attempt to sell AT LEAST SEVEN times! Otherwise…accept low returns.
And, you can use your autoresponder for this!
So, EACH of the items listed above is critical to your online business success.
Here’s the nugget. Get the website, salespage, web page…whatever you want to call it… really looking good. Now, send it a lot of targeted traffic. Articles are my favorite. PPC is my next choice.
Pay attention, bank the money and then…PAY ATTENTION AGAIN! You will learn and prosper!
Oh, by the way, reconsider your offering (product)…if it’s not so hot, all the stuff above will still leave you with no sales! Don’t try to sell baldness remedies to people who are looking to lose weight. You want Targeted Traffic!
So, now you have it! Do all the above AND make sure it’s a killer converting product!
Thank you again…Go forth and prosper…and pay attention…you’ll get it.
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: Would you like a free ebook on spelling and grammer? Couldn’t hurt.
Learn to Build and Publish a Webpage in One Hour or Less! From Scratch! November 23, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2comments
MacBook Pro
Hello Folks:
If you could make a simple website with a decent offer on it and make a little money for doing it…would you?
Apparently a lot of prospective Internet Marketers are right at that point.
I don’t know why it’s such a formidable barrier. But that’s because I can do it. Easily.
But it was impossible for me less than a year ago.
How did I do it? I made the decision to go forward.
I had been studying Internet Marketing for quite a while and the whole time I was looking into it I was avoiding the website thing.
It seemed too complicated! Too technical. They talk in code!
I remember the day. It was a beautiful early summer day and I was in my van down by the river. No I wasn’t living in it.
I had my two little wiener dogs with me and a packed lunch, including dog treats.
I was also blessed with a MacBook Pro AND I had rigged up a high speed wireless antenna with a wire running the full length of the van that had a tendency to get caught on all sorts of stuff.
My van is a legendary mess but the stuff thats in it is all good stuff. Still, it does look like maybe a homeless soul dwells among the debris.
Anyway, I had everything I needed that day, except the ability to build a webpage, no matter how simple.
And I had come to that place in my heart of hearts where I knew I had to fish or cut bait.
I had a nice lunch, listened to the radio, watched people floating by on inner tubes, and played with the dachshunds a bit…all the while gathering up the determination this was going to take.
We got back into the van and I rotated my little computer table into position and got online…I was going to do it!
I wasn’t intimidated anymore, I was just going to do it. Get ‘er done.
So I found NVU and downloaded it onto my trusty Mac. It’s free software that has been in development for years by this group of people so altruistic that they are willing to work for the good of the people. FREE!
If you type NVU into Google it’ll come up number one. Wish my sites would do that.
So now I had it, right there in front of me. Nothing could stop me.
It took a while to boot, must be a big program, but soon there was a blank document with a tips box that I read and clicked off. I was good to go.
NVU isn’t intimidating. It looks like a word processor.
I had close by a special, not supplied by NVU, tutorial I had gotten somewhere. It looked a lot easier to follow than the instructions NVU provides, and it turns out it was!
First I saved the file as “firstattemptatwebsite” to the desktop so I wouldn’t lose it.
Second thing was, I had to look at the top of the blank document for a bit and notice all the little icons across the top.
No problem. Some of the icons were familiar but most of them were foreign to me. I decided not to let that bother me.
I moved the mouse arrow up to the “Table” icon. A box appeared on my formerly blank document, a little one, about an inch long. But it had those grabby things so I grabbed it and made a big box!
This is progress! I had a big, empty box! I moved the arrow up to the little icons for rendering text to be right, center,left, or fill space. I picked “center”
Voila! The box was centered. I decided to save this now because I didn’t want anything bad to happen and this was, after all, my first webpage! I chose to make the box light blue. Wow.
The box has a little blinking thing where you can do text. Wow, now I’m on text! What next?
I typed in “Riley’s First Webpage”. It was at the far left, centered vertically and was in small Times font. That would not do.
I “selected” that text and moved my mouse arrow up to the icons I had just used and chose “center”.
Nothing happened! I couldn’t believe it…something has gone wrong already.
The dogs are staring at me. Total elapsed time from start to here, about 5 minutes.
They don’t need to go out yet. I consult my tutorial. Aha!
I go up to the table icon and watch it drop down. It has two tabs. One for tables and one for cells. What’s a cell?
Anyway, in the “cell” box I find that I can move the selected text to center top and there it was, at the top in the center. I’ve come a long ways.
Not one to rest on past achievements I move my arrow to the upper right to “Headings”. I think it should be called “Headlines” but I’m not down there at NVU working for no wages.
I select Heading 1. My text gets big! It’s a headline! It’s black though and I want to change it to red even though I’m not at that part of the tutorial yet. So I do. It gets red. This is easy!
But somethings bothering me. The text is at top center but the tops of the letters are too close to the border of the box. It looks cramped.
So I go back up to the “table” pulldown and I discover “padding”. Padding? It is set at 2 pixels. Way too close! I change it to 10. Bam! The text moves down a little and looks a lot better.
I have a webpage! Sure it’s not fancy, but if it’s this easy so far it might stay easy all along. I’m a webmaster! Not much of one but a webmaster, nonetheless.
But it’s not up on the web! Oooh, FTP…I start to re-feel the intimidation vibes.
Thinking ahead I have already looked well into Cyberduck FTP and have it installed.
Another thing I have already is a domain and hosting package at Yahoo. They make it so easy.
My name is Riley West and I have been using rwest as a short version since high school which was way before the computer era.
So I register rwestdotcom.com….I thought it was clever. Whatever.
Next I save my first HTML webpage file and I fire up cyberduck FTP. I’m growing comfortable with all these foreign terms. I am preparing to upload and publish. More new terminology.
I had to go to Yahoo! and get my secret code words so that Cyberduck can claim it represents me and none other, and be allowed access. More new things.
Cyberduck is waiting. I tell it which file I want uploaded to rwestdotcom.com.
In the pulldown menu in the window for Cyberduck I select “upload” and “choose file”. I select firstattemptatwebpage.html and click upload.
About four seconds later it’s done and declared “successfully uploaded”. Man!
I have come so far in the last half an hour that it just blows me away! I’m excited.
But now…the real test…is my webpage on the web with hungry hoards looking at it?
As it turns out…no hoards. The only person in the world that knows it is there at this point is me. And I never changed it from that day on.
Let’s go there. Ok. I go to Yahoo and get into my website management area and go to “File Manager”. OMG there it is! I click on it. It comes up on the web!
It has an address. Actually it’s a URL. Uniform Resource Locator. Who knew?
My first website is at http://rwestdotcom.com/firstattemptatwebpage.html Paste this URL into any browser and you are there. Incredible, really.
Go there. Prepare to be impressed. The whole thing took about 30 minutes. Now I could do it in 5, including changing or correcting text, etc. Typos happen!
I’m a webmaster. It feels good.
Now, if you need to be able to do this, just do it. That’s how I did it.
I actually became capable of making money online that day down by the river with my dogs. It took less than an hour.
I followed this tutorial which you can download right here - FREE!
I have webpages now that are more complicated but the basics stay the same.
It is actually easy and I was afraid of it. Human nature I guess.
To recap…Go to Yahoo and get a domain name and hosting. The cheapest one.
Then download NVU and Cyberduck. They’re FREE!
Next, make your simple webpage and upload it! You’re in business. Welcome!
If you’d like that tutorial I used, guess what? It’s FREE! And it’s right here! But you might have to endure a little salesmanship. It comes with the territory.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Riley West
This is the Front Page…The Blog is Right Behind It! November 22, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2comments
We All Start Here
Hello Folks:
Here’s the ALL NEW FREE PDF MONEY MAKER! - “The Ten Basics You Need To Succeed at Internet Marketing!”
BLOG READER SPECIAL OFFER! - Read about it here!
ARTICLE TRAFFIC FREE TUTORIAL AND BONUS (PLUS MORE) CLICK RIGHT HERE!
Grab the new Rough draft FREE “Evergreen Marketing” book here!
Hey Folks! Here is a darn good offer. I bought and can pass on PLR rights to a little gem. You get a web page/sales page combo that collects names fast and pops sales too!
You would be selling the complete package, all graphics, licenses, EVEN 5 autoresponder MINI COURSE E MAILS!! All for $7 (inc the plr rights). It really is a nobrainer for a marketer who has his first few things in place. Like Domain and Hosting and an autoresponder.
FREE REPORT JACKPOT! THE FIVE DAY CRASH COURSE! Get Your’s Now!
You don’t have to build hard webpages - you just modify these to suit yourself. Check it out. Look at my personal thank you/confirmation page. I changed it around a little bit and even put my picture in there. Same with the download page. Take a look - Click the Book. Sign up for the 5 day crash course! See how it works.
When you go to look at this, put your name and email in the box on the right and you’ll receive the sequence of emails with the 5 day crash course! That way you’ll know what you’ll be sending your buyers.
You don’t have to purchase to get the course. See how it works! Click the book.
Free Report Jackpot
website problems
Latest Post on What to do When Your Website Doesn’t Work!
The Post after that! The Newcomers to This Business Get Taken Advantage Of - By Circling Sharks!
My Favorite Ebooks On Internet Marketing! - Click Here…
If you would like to get HOSTING AND DOMAIN NAMES this is the best place I have found. They will treat you with courtesy AND they have the best support help I have ever encountered.
You can have a Wordpress© Blog up and running in 5 minutes! Like this One!
Join our list for weekly updates and more articles on Internet Marketing!
There was quite a bit of interest in the story about Riley sitting down and making his first web page as well as getting it up on the net. Read it here.
And if you just don’t know anything yet and you want to get the basics down pat the best offer for the “really don’t know where to start crowd” just go down one line!
Looking for that FREE MONEY MAKING PDF? The link is on this page!
I’m currently rewriting and editing an old book and packaging it into a new Clickbank - Paydotcom product. If you will download the first draft I’ll send you the Book when it’s all new and ready to go. It will sell on Clickbank. It will also be a product YOU can resell. If you see any typos please notify me at riley@makinganinternetmarketer.com - optional.
DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK THAT NEEDS PROOFREADING HERE, PLEASE!
Speaking of Ebooks…Here’s a Real Beauty!
Hello Reader… The ebooks I have gotten the most out of are compiled by an English couple I am very glad to know. You see….you know what…I’ll write this on a blog page and put a link to it here. Do look at this as I consider these to be the best in the business. Do you want to learn how to stand out from the crowd and not come off like a Carnival Barker?
I do. Especially if it allows me to show you ways of marketing that are far more user friendly than the rest. My motto…No Hype - Demand Quality.
Here’s the introduction page for my friends in Great Britain.. link to it here
Hello… Fellow Internet Marketing Enthusiasts:
Would you like a “Quickstart” Internet Marketing PDF that is also a good business builder? Yes, it’s free.
NEW! WEBMASTERS! LOOKING FOR CONTENT??…here’s the syndicated RSS feed…Click Here For Instant Transport.
New articles weekly. Use as is… including authors resource box. Thank you! …Riley
This blog is a chronicle of my efforts to go from knowing NOTHING about Internet Marketing in 2006 to knowing quite a little bit of it around the end of 2008.
Everything I’ve got to offer is right here. It will be the basics. The basics are what get you there.
The basics are all I know. But, with help from my friends I have built an online business.
I can easily remember when I first encountered the Online Marketing arena.
My intial reaction was like… Well! This is big. Really big. And it’s growing!
Before that I had no idea. This marketplace is not just huge…it renews itself everyday!
It’s like a river. It looks the same today but that’s different water than yesterday.
This is the Internet. The single biggest repository of people and information in the known Universe. Every day tens of thousands of people wash up onto the shores of the Internet Marketing World and they are drawn to it like moths to a light! Because they need money or hate their job…many reasons.
There’s a standard discussion of the benefits of online marketing that include low cost startup and, in the case of selling of downloadable info products, low to no cost in product.
There is a whole other world of marketing on the web, and that’s the sale of physical products!
That’s REALLY BIG! I’d say that information entrepreneurs account for about 5% of the total and the rest is the sale of physical products or services.
Making money on the Internet is absolutely incredible. A few nights ago Lisa and I were having a drink in the early evening when I heard the distinct sound of a paypal deposit. We laughed and sort of celebrated. (We were already having beer and cosmos.)
To a lot of folks making money online is like alchemy…only cleaner! We make money on the web out of clear air. It’s nothing short of magic. If you want to do the same I’d like to help get you started.
And I can do that! I’m a complete pro at starting…few people would want to take longer to hit income than me. I studied the “basics” for a half year before I made a nickel.
This blog is the center of my IM collection which is a growing list of products that I have used to do what I have done. They have been refurbished into great little packages for sale by you with resale rights!
I know what it feels like to make money online and I’m here to tell you it feels every bit as good as you might think it would !
All I have done is the basic stuff - including study. I went through several courses and learned a lot there. I met some really great folks.
I started to become capable of making money online when I got reasonably competent at building webpages (soon to become salespages) and driving traffic to those mostly with article marketing and this blog.
Those three things…Webpages - Wordpress Blog - Article Marketing for Targeted Traffic are what got me going. There are thousands of IM’ers out there using the same stuff and it can work for you, too. It’s just the basics and the basics work!
I am also building a list using Aweber’s services with moderate success. I guess I need to write more interesting emails!
Currently I’m putting the finishing touches on a brand new Clickbank Ebook offering and I hope to have it ready for affiliates sometime in December 2008.
In the meantime, in the hopes you are interested, here is a listing of what I offer to help your career along.
All my products have two purposes. The first one is to teach the skills needed to succeed in Internet Marketing…
And the second purpose in each of my products is to earn you money by giving you something to sell!
It sounds like a good idea to me…I hope it does to you as well. It’s been working for me!
Once again…the “Basics” are
1. Webpages with good offers on them.
2. Blogs with content and good offers on them.
3. Traffic to these Blogs and Webpages! (Article Marketing)
That’s your Infrastructure. For which you need some tools and a little research.
6. The Not Quite Finished Ebook That You can see here!
You may have seen this offer on one of my other pages…But Just In Case, See This!
Yes, I only have five products for sale…THAT ARE MINE AND THAT I KNOW WORK BECAUSE THEY WORK FOR ME! They are money makers and they sell! So they can make you money, too.
You could make a blog like this, put those four products on it for sale, and drive traffic to the blog. Links in your blog will then send your traffic to the offers and some will buy.
It doesn’t come much more packaged up then that! Plus, I’m new, these are not saturated out there, and, I think these products I have here are evergreen. People will always need them. After all, they are the basics.
And, if you put your name and email address in the form above on the right, you will be given the opportunity to purchase the first 3 product for the price of one AND we’ll throw in #4 as a freebie. Last we’ll include the pre-edition copy of the Clickbank Ebook I am currently writing. It will sell for $37 and you’ll have a free copy.
I don’t know how you got here but maybe you ought to take advantage of this offer.
I can’t do it forever.
Once again, thank you!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: OUR DISCLAIMER…a dumb necessity in our crazy world.
Traffic from Article Marketing. It Works! November 14, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so farHello Again:
Boy…I have a good one for you here. This will serve notice that I am more fallible than average!
I closed down a site several months back. I just hadn’t done it right and there were many things about it that no longer pleased me so …down it went.
The site had been rather quiet for some time due to me actually getting tied up into a Google adwords campaign for several months. I made some good money, about 7 to 8 thousand dollars net per month for 10 months in combination with a furniture store in my hometown that I own but don’t work in.
Well, it’s Nov of 2008 and as you know there is a big retail slowdown going on, out there in the real world. So that campaign has become unprofitable but for ten months it took me away from my interest in that other site and, right or wrong, I let it languish. I had considered it a starter site for learning purposes so I didn’t mind the idea of letting it go and starting something a lot better now that I knew more.
And I did!
But I forgot something. In 2006-2007 I had written about 30 articles and posted them to the 10 top article distribution outfits including ezinearticles, go-articles, article alley and the sort.
So I had 30 articles, written by me but forgotten, on 10 sites for about 300 links back to a website I had taken down! I had traffic! Going nowhere. What a waste. It was hundreds per day. I had changed url’s and failed to think of all that lost traffic!
I’m now in the process of converting all these articles, and rewriting bits of each, to have a link to this site that actually is up and running.
I told you a while back (appx 2-3 weeks) that I was going to push on article marketing for a while and see if I could get enough traffic to get excited about.
So, as well as converting articles I already had all over the place I started up with that new article submission service that I told you about.
It’s called www.submityourarticle.com and, so far I really like it, especially now that I am past the learning curve.
Here’s how it works. You write an article targeted to keywords you want traffic for.
Then you take your article into their section called “article leverage” where you write a few variations of your title, your intro, some random individual sentences, alternate resource boxes and article leverage takes these well done (because you did them) changes and applies them randomly across some 2000 article sites. What an idea!
I haven’t seen a traffic increase yet but I am just finishing as I write. I would expect to see something soon.
I’ll keep you posted.
In order to keep in focus what this blogs intent is here is the Mission Statement.
This blog, The Making of an Internet Marketer, is here to inform visitors about sales by way of the internet and to make money for it’s owner (yours truly) while concentrating on the basics of Internet Marketing. The basics…hear that. I found that until I had a good grounding in the basics I just couldn’t move ahead. See the link at the bottom of the page and download “The basics”
Here’s a great website software tutorial -
Here’s a great Wordpress blog tutorial.
http://rwestdotcom.com/wordpressguru/WPsalespage.html
Here’s a great Article Marketing for Targeted Traffic Tutorial
So there you have it. Webpages, Blogs, and Traffic to them.
Old school still works and works well!
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: get the FREE “Basics” PDF here. Enjoy. Read. Learn. Do.
The Internet Marketing Kickstart Course - Is it Good? November 8, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so farThis is A Review of the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course.
Hello again:
I hope to give you some reasons to consider signing up for what may be the best Internet Marketing Course.
This course, to me, looks like “The One” that, if only I’d had this a couple of years ago I would be a LOT further along and better off for it.
I expected this. Sara Brown and Tony Shepherd have impressed me to the point that I have purchased almost all of their work and have been applying it assiduously since.
What it is that I like about them..and maybe as it applies to following their instructions…is that they are very clear in their explanations and instructions.
And, I have to tell you, that, is a breath of fresh air.
If you are reading this post you want to know “Why them? Why KickStart? Why should I devote myself to their course of lessons when there are alternatives?”
Let me tell you what happened to me at first, through the winter of ‘06. I was totally unexposed to this world.
I got hung up in the pitch pages and kept leaping from plan to plan savoring the sales page and not doing much with the content, when there was some.
I did that for a while and spent a couple thousand dollars before you’d know it and I had 50 ebooks, a whole bunch of Internet Marketing trivia in my head and no way to put it to work.
I wanted to sell something. I have been in sales and marketing for 35 years and this is sales and marketing…only with a big twist. And I didn’t know how to do it.
In 2007 I ran across Ken McCarthy. I thought his writing and products were the very thing that would get me to making money and I still think maybe they are.
But it’s expensive, high end, and not for everybody. That’s where I learned all about Autoresponders, Domain Names, Hosting, Market Research, Copy writing, E mail marketing, and lots of other things…not the least of which was Google Adwords.
So when I came out of there I really had a head full. And I was down another 3 or 4 thousand bucks. Really. I bought one CD set for $1000 exact and others and…well…it adds up fast!
Now I still didn’t know what to do. But my interest is in sales and marketing and now I wanted to apply my Internet skills to leverage that marketing knowledge to make money.
Right then I decided to sort of “Fake” my way through building a business! I got a domain name and Hosting on Yahoo. I was calling my business “The Official Internet Income Guide” There are still vestiges of it floating around. No money though.
I slapped together a bunch of articles (about 30) and hand submitted them to about 6 directories - all the best…Like Ezinearticles and GoArticles…etc.
Wham! I had traffic. Oops…I’d better get a string of emails put together and I put affiliate links in there…products I had used and thought were good.
It was all a little off. I was dismayed that I was selling nothing. I was building a list but they weren’t buying. I guess I didn’t know how to offer it to them.
Before I had time to get this sorted out I’d spent another 2 thousand bucks and was starting to feel…well…stupid. Or at least like I had gone down the road wrong and should have seen it sooner.
Then I ran across a gig doing Google Adwords for a bricks and mortar store in my little town in Oregon. Wow! That worked! I made back ten times what I’d lost on the previous venture and I just sort of forgot about the website and the list.
The adwords job is locked down and ongoing and by now almost no work. Cool!
But that’s not why I came here. I came here to build an Internet Marketing Business and I am on my way.
I ran across Sara Brown and Tony Shepherd and something clicked. It helped that I had some experience prior but when I saw what they had to offer and how they offered it I decided right there that I was going to emulate them and that’s what I’ve been doing for some time now.
They’re who I want to be when I grow up! I feel like I’m on the right track.
So when they came out with their course “KickStart” (which sounds good to an old motorcycle freak) I decided to jump right into it and to chronicle my progress through the course right here in the blog.
I can tell you this so far.
The material is excellent and thorough AND fun to read. That’s the hallmark of excellence if you ask me.
Oh, and so far, The right content for bringing newcomers along from the start.
I’ll cover more about the content in the next post.
Thank you - and, as always, comments welcome.
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Article Marketing Study November 3, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a commentFolks…as much as I wanted this to be good and work out…it just got stupid.
That happens in this stuff but I couldn’t handle it and went looking for another way and I found
an outfit called www.submityourarticle.com
I have now submitted 4 articles via their service.
I checked Google for the title and it’s kind of ego gratifying. Over 80,000 locations for my article!
Oddly enough I saw NO PICKUP in traffic! I’ll keep you posted.
Rw
This is the continuing examination of an attempt by yours truly to generate traffic through article marketing and possibly sell folks that are interested in that type of thing to consider an Article Marketing tutorial I offer.
Well…so I went to Isnare and I found out what I should have guessed…you don’t get some things as you would if you were a paying customer. I have to say though, that they look very reasonable and if they can actually place 5 articles at 40,000 distribution sites for $10 bucks…then they have my business.
Today is Nov 3 2008 and when I was at Isnare I got a little surprise.
Lead time! I’m not used to that! Here’s the dialogue box (it may lose something in translation)
Your article as been submitted for approval. Please give us 5 - 7 days allowance to review your article. Free submissions could take some time to be reviewed as we are getting thousands of articles per day. We will only send an approval notice once your article has been approved.
A link to iSnare.com from your sites as a sign of support would also be appreciated. Please feel free to choose any of these banners and text links.
Reach more with your articles! Distribute to over 40,000+ publishers and hundreds of article sites and directories for as low as $2/article for 5 articles. Click here to know more.
So, I guess I’ll purchase a few credits (they let you pay ahead) and put their logo on my blog.
Gee, maybe they have an affiliate program!
Later that day…
Well! They have a sort of an affiliate program!
This is it…
Do you want to distribute articles with Isnare.com without having to pay even a single dime?
It’s actually very easy and simple! All you have to do is promote Isnare.com’s Article Distribution Service and you can earn free distribution credits every time your referred author/member purchases credits.
Here’s how it works.
If you referred Juan dela Cruz to Isnare.com and he registers, every time he will purchase distribution credits you will also earn free distribution credits.
Here is the complete table of free credits you can possibly earn.
So what are you waiting for? Register now and/or login to you account and click on the link that says “* Isnare.com Referral Program - Earn Free Distribution Credits!” to get your referral link and code.
It
So, on we go. I admit I am not the fastest but Isnare doesn’t make it a total snap to put an article in. When I put the first article in it lost it’s format and I had to redo that in their not so good editing box.
More Tomorrow! Comments, please.
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Nov 4 2008
Well now, This is the historic Day of Nov 4, 2008 and America is swept up in the passions of partisanship, politics, hope and fear.
