You see, back then I didn’t know anything. I felt overwhelmed all the time. I spent MANY nights discouraged and frustrated. And yes, I made all of the “newbie” mistakes you can imagine.

While I wouldn’t say I’ve arrived, or I have nothing left to learn (not by a long shot, believe me), I HAVE learned some valuable lessons about mistakes to avoid.

In this post, I’m going to give you what I think are the top seven mistakes new Internet marketers make.

When I was making these mistakes, I struggled. Now that I’ve put them behind me, things are going great. Here’s what I mean:

* My business is humming along just fine, even with the recession.

* I’ve worked with most of the top Internet marketers on various projects. Gosh, I have almost all of their phone numbers on my cell phone!

* My business has DOUBLED every year for the past three years running.

* July has been amazing, one of my BEST months ever!

But NONE of that would be possible if I kept on making the mistakes I’m going to tell you about.

So let me tell you what those are, and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Poor Planning

I could just as easily say NO planning, because most new marketers don’t do any at all.

Without a plan, they get distracted by just about every “new” thing that comes along. They jump into “hot” markets and niches without doing any research. When they get crushed, they’re shocked and angry. I was guilty of that, and found out I was in a bunch of niches where people only wanted to learn and not buy.

Let me tell you, as the old saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

The simple way to avoid this problem is to…PLAN!

You don’t need the world’s best plan. You just need a reasonable one YOU can execute. My plan isn’t yours, and yours isn’t mine.

Here’s what I recommend doing:

1) Pick a market you want to target. Research it. Use Google until you’re sick of it. Find a market full of people who are BUYING right now.

2) Choose a business model you’ll use to target them. You can start with affiliate marketing, or create a membership site, or create a simple product you’ll sell with a Minisite, or something else. There’s no one right or wrong answer. Just pick ONE.

3) Create a single, simple, relatively low-cost offer to target your market. Doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to be real.

4) Focus on that ONE product in that ONE market until you turn a profit, or determine with confidence that you can’t make a profit there.

That’s it.

You don’t need to spend big bucks on every huge launch that comes along so you can get the “missing link.” You just need to stick to a simple plan that will get you results. Then you can grow from there.

Remember, it’s better to have fewer sites that are VERY profitable, than to have a bunch of sites that make nothing. Planning and doing helps you get there.

Mistake #2: Wasting Time

Closely related to that first mistake is wasting time.

Internet marketing is FULL of time wasters. If you don’t have a plan, you’ll find yourself wasting lots of time.

Most new marketers are very active, but they’re NOT taking the action they need to take.

They buy domains, make lots of sites, grab graphics and PLR offers…and they don’t sell anything.

I did all of that myself, and the only way I ever succeeded was to STOP. You need to start selling something, monitor the results, learn and get better at generating profits.

And here’s something lots of people do (including me, back in the day) that sounds good, but really isn’t…learning.

You’ll always learn. I learn about my business every single day. But if you get stuck in the learning rut, you’ll find yourself taking (and buying) course after course with NOTHING to show for it.

One of the ways people think they’re learning is by spending hours in marketing forums. Forums aren’t bad, but does spending time there fit your plan? If not, why are you there?

You have to be confident that you’re not “missing” something when you’re not there…because you’re following YOUR plan.

I suggest that you block out some time every day to spend on your business. Don’t do anything in that time that isn’t specifically planned for, and helping you take REAL action toward generating the profits you want to generate. That will keep you focused.

Mistake #3: Spending With No Return

This is a big one.

I can remember years ago spending massive amounts of money on pay per click (PPC) advertising. And I spent a ton on software tools, too.

Look, those things can be helpful, but they also can be a money pit. I’ve wasted a ton of cash, and I bet you have as well.

You should adopt a simple rule for yourself…

Anything you spend should be planned (there’s that word again), and you should only spend if your likelihood of making a good return is going up.

For example, if you throw some money at PPC ads, and you get poor results, that’s not necessarily bad. It’s only bad if you did it just hoping it would go well. No, you should have planned your traffic experiment, and put limits on how much you would spend.

If you do the experiment and you learned something that you think will get better results, you can spend some more to find out. But if you don’t have a plan for it, do NOT spend any more.

Same goes for software and other tools. Ask yourself if you really NEED it. If you’re just buying it because you hope it’ll make the light bulb go on, keep your money in your pocket.

Here’s a good way to keep yourself on the right path…

If you haven’t turned a profit yet with your latest marketing exercise, refuse to spend any cash on anything else until you DO turn a profit.

Mistake #4: Not Building A List

I often wish I could turn back time to when I was just getting started and correct what might be the biggest mistake I ever made — not building a list.

My affiliate marketing efforts were actually paying off, but I wasn’t capturing the email addresses of my visitors. That meant I was getting cash from them once, and then I had to do the hard work of getting a new visitor! Not smart.

Remember, a list is what will make you successful. It gives you opportunities to sell, a group of people to send test offers to so you can learn what converts, and more.

Without a list, you’re really hurting yourself.

Fortunately, this is easy to fix by following a simple guideline…

NEVER put up a website that doesn’t have a way for something to give you an email address. In fact, I suggest that you ALWAYS directly ask for one, or even force somebody to give you one if he wants your offer.

This is easier to do than you might think.

Let’s say you’re selling a product, like an ebook. Simply create a free offer (maybe a very short report on the ebook’s topic) and tell people you’ll give it to them at no cost if they’ll just give you an email address to send it to.

You can put that invitation prominently on the sales page for your product, or even on a squeeze page in front of your sales page.

That will build your list, which will build your business over time.

And one more thing…use a third-party autoresponder. Never host your own scripts on your own web server.

You can often get autoresponder scripts for very low cost, and you might think you’re saving a ton over signing up for a service that charges you a mothly fee. But you’re not. I wasted SO much time struggling with script issues, getting poor delivery rates, and being blacklisted by ISPs. It’s definitely NOT worth it.

A third-party service might seem to cost more, but it’s actually a bargain when you consider the advantages it gives you. It also helps you focus on doing what you need to be doing, not struggling with technology.

Mistake #5: Chasing Bad Traffic

Not all traffic is good. I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

I won’t beat this point to death, but let me say if you’re spending time on safe lists and traffic exchanges, DON’T. Those things are a waste of time and money. They simply don’t work.

Good traffic is high-quality, targeted likely buyers. Bad traffic is everything else.

Safe lists, traffic exchanges, and other gimmicks can build a list quickly, but the list won’t do anything. You’ll end up with a few thousand subscribers (at most) who sit there and never buy because they are trying to sell to YOU.

What you should be doing instead is going after targeted visitors from reliable traffic sources like this:

* Keyword targeted articles on popular article directory sites

* IM-friendly social networking sites that can help you build a loyal following (like Twitter and Facebook)

* Other Web 2.0 sites that can give you great free traffic from search engines (like Squidoo)

* SMART PPC advertising, where you do great research first, and then split test your ads and offers until you know what works

* Relationships that can bring you “warm” traffic that’s eager to buy what you sell (more on this one in a minute)

When I was just starting, I wasted literally years on bad traffic. Now I spend ALL of my time on joint venture partnerships, solid article marketing, well researched PPC ads, and a few other techniques that reliably bring me great traffic.

That’s what you should do.

Mistake #6: Neglecting Relationships

Relationships are the backbone of my business. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

In the beginning, I stuck to myself and didn’t do as much networking as I should have done. You know, I’m still very private about my business.

But I learned that I needed to be a lot more open to establish relationships with people. Now I talk on the phone, chat, and regularly keep in touch with many of the top gurus. Some have become VERY close friends.

This is what Stephen Covey talks about as the balance between Production and Production Capacity.

Working heads-down on your business is good sometimes. That’s production.

But relationships are where the big profits are, and where the big opportunities are. That’s future production capacity, and it’s why I’m where I am today.

I mentioned before that my business has doubled every year for the past three years. Relationships did that.

So go out and meet people! When you’re in forums (because you PLANNED to be), get to know fellow marketers. Attend live events. Offer to work with folks. That’s how your business will succeed.

Mistake #7: Not Seeing Things Through

People quit too soon. Success takes perseverance.

When I first started, I felt like quitting almost every day. But I didn’t. Now I can look back on it and think how crazy it would have been for me to give up.

You’re probably not all the way to success yet, so you can’t relate to what it feels like. That doesn’t matter.

Here’s what you need to do…

Refuse to quit, no matter what, until you make your first sale on the Internet without spending yourself into debt.

If you do the other things I’ve told you about in this email, you should be able to do it.

Only you can decide not to quit.

Wrapping Up

Those are the top seven mistakes I see new Internet marketers making every day.

I’ve given you some advice about how to avoid each of those mistakes. And now you have to TAKE my advice and plan how you’ll avoid these mistakes in your own business from now on.

I hope this information helps you as much as I know it would’ve helped me years ago.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, Bulletproof Marketing, Inc.

Hey Guys,

Some times it seems like forever ago that I got my start in Internet marketing and other times it seems like just yesterday.

I can remember feeling like a fish out of water, struggling to find ANYTHING that would work for me. So if you’re feeling that way right now, I get it!

That’s why I want to tell you about my story, it’s more than a trip down memory lane for me. It’s about what I want you to get out of it. These are some fantastic lessons I had to learn without any guidance. If you’ll pay attention, you can apply these same lessons right away and take a huge shortcut.

I made a ton of mistakes along the way, but I also did one smart thing that I strongly suggest you to do.

I became good at something *FIRST*
before I broke into the Internet marketing niche.

The Internet is full of folks competing to be a “guru” of some kind, but when you dig deeper, you often find that they haven’t really done anything at all to take claim on that title! Sure, they had a big product launch, but so what? They’re not really “experts” at anything they’re talking about. Maybe they just got lucky.

I wanted to take a different path, so I dug into something I could see was a big opportunity–niche marketing. It’s actually still my passion, and the backbone of my business.

Back in 2003, most people weren’t paying much attention to ClickBank as a great tool to make a pile of income from niche marketing. So I was able to make a huge splash when I showed real proof of making over $60,000 a month by selling different digital ebooks on niche topics at ClickBank. There was only ONE other guy that I knew of at the time, who was making that kind of income on ClickBank (and could really back it up). His name was Stephen Pierce.

But actually DOING it gave me something to talk about. It made it a lot easier for people to take me seriously, because I was actually doing what I was telling them to do.

In a nutshell, my path was this:

* Do something to sell a product

* Document my lessons learned, and my success

* Leverage that success to build a list, develop relationships and sell more products in the IM niche

That’s what I did. But what can YOU do? I recommend a two-part plan.

The first part of the plan is to create your own product. The second part of the plan is to leverage that effort to grow your business into one that gives you solid, growing income as an affiliate marketer and maybe even as a proven IM player. That plan allows you to build some credibility for yourself, and make money at the same time.

Your first task is to find a niche where you can create an information product that’s likely to sell. Focus on niches that you know something about, or at least ones that you find interesting. Once you find a good target, it’s time to create your product.

You can find private label rights (PLR) material if you don’t think you’re a good writer. Or you can research the topic on article sites like EzineArticles and come up with material that covers the same points in your own words.

Your goal is to create a relatively short ebook that people in your niche will likely want to buy. It doesn’t have to be long. Something like 25-35 pages can work fine. Here’s what you need to keep in mind for your product:

1) It has to provide some helpful information that most people either can’t find on their own, or don’t want to go to the trouble of finding on their own.

2) It has to look good and sound enticing. Spend a little bit of money ($50-200) to get nice graphics for it, because that will boost the perceived value a ton.

3) It needs a unique angle, and one that offers unique value. There’s SO much PLR material out there that many people in a niche think they’ve “seen it all”. You have to make your offer stand out.

4) It should be inexpensive. You can charge $7 for it if you want. You can charge more if your niche is currently buying products that cost more and you think yours is just as good. The point is to charge a price that’s likely to get you buyers, not to focus on making huge profits right at the beginning.

5) You’ll need a very short free offer to build your email list. This could be a small report of 3-5 pages that sort of teases your product without giving away all the secrets.

Then you’ll need a simple website to sell the product. I call it a minisite. It’s a sales page hooked up to a payment processor (like ClickBank), and a page to deliver your product. Today I have dozens of minisites in all different niches and they bring me a nice passive income. They’re not very hard to set up at all.

My MiniSite Profits Exposed course can help you do that, or you can do it yourself (really, it’s not hard). Once you have your product and your site, it’s time to put the offer in front of people. That’s easier than you might think. You can:

* Write articles to target keywords in your niche

* Post in niche forums to tell people about your product (if they have a place where advertising is okay)

* Put up a free lens at Squidoo to target some keywords

* Create a short video using Jing and post it at YouTube

And the list goes on. All of those are absolutely free, by the way.

Send people to your site, offer them your product, and tell them they can have the free item you created if they don’t want to buy right now (or even if they do). You’ll build your list that way, and set yourself up for future success.

That’s the first part of your plan. Honestly, if you’ve never done it, it’ll feel like a lot of work. The upside is that you’ll be building a business that gives you credibility over time.

The second part of your plan is to leverage that stuff to build a long-term business that replaces your current income (and more).

Remember, you’ll be growing a list of subscribers, and you’ll also be building a list of buyers.

Once you have a list, growing your business gets MUCH easier. It’s a true asset that you can monetize.

Once you have a list, even a small one, then you can start targeting other products in your niche as an affiliate.

Search Google for complementary products (not direct competitors) and start promoting them to your list. That will do three things for you:

1) It will make you some money as your list buys things. It really doesn’t take much to add up. If you promote a $50 product and get a $25 commission, every four sales (which isn’t a crazy big number) is $100 income. Do that each week and you’re making $400 a month!

2) It will help you identify hot-selling products. You’ll know exactly what your target market wants to buy without having to invest any of your own money. Next time you choose a product to promote (or decide to create your own), you’ll be more likely to choose a winner.

3) It will help you build JV relationships. These will give you a big advantage when you launch your next niche product because your partners will naturally feel obligated to reciprocate. That’s where your income can really grow.

If you’ve never done this before, it might sound a little scary. That’s normal. Anything new can be intimidating. But you have to start somewhere.

You can definitely start as an affiliate marketer, with no product of your own. Many people have done that. But to be honest, even though it sounds easier, I think it’s harder. Having your own product, even if it’s a small and simple one, is a huge advantage.

Doing it that way also gives you a platform for breaking into Internet marketing like I did because…

You’ll have a *REAL* story to tell, not just a “lucky break”
with a big launch that didn’t last. You’ll also have a genuine
history with experience to draw upon.

THAT CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE!

And I’m not the only one who did that. Lots of my fellow colleagues who are now quite successful got their start by developing proven skills in some aspect of online marketing before they dove into the Internet Marketing niche.

I’ve given you a simple plan to follow. It’s not complicated. I bet you’ve even heard parts of this before. But it’s how I got my start, so I can say from experience that it WORKS!

Okay, that’s all now. If you have questions, please feel free to leave a reply below! I’ll stick around answer as many as I can, in the time I have.

Thanks for reading.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

Most of my readers are trying to make a serious income online. They’re at different stages of that process, and some are farther along than others.

Everybody who gives it a shot needs to learn a huge lesson. There are lots of ways to say it, but I like to describe it this way.

If you don’t invest some time into organizing and planning, you’ll get buried and lost.

You MUST organize and plan your business. If you don’t, your business won’t last.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for literally a couple months. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will tell you that I dug into my business from top to bottom to figure out what I really want to be about, and how to do it.

The result is that I’ve renewed my commitment to helping YOU. That’s what it’s all about. And the results are going to be great! There will be lots of exciting things coming. Don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know.

Part of that process is continuing to answer questions from my readers.

I don’t have the time to respond personally to the hundreds of emails I get every day, but every now and then I like to collect some of the excellent questions I receive and answer them for everybody in an email.

I DO care about whether you succeed or not, and I remember how terribly frustrating it was like not to have anybody to get straight answers from.

So here’s another batch of reader questions with what I hope are helpful answers that will move you closer to success.

Internet business is similar to any other business. If you don’t have prospects, you won’t sell anything. And if you don’t sell anything, you’ll go out of business.

So in this issue, I’ll answer some questions about building your subscriber list (that’s your prospects) and boosting your sales.

1) What I can do to increase my sales? They have slowed down in the last few months and I want to turn that around soon. (asked by Arthur Broyles)

ANSWER: This is kind of the BIG question in Internet marketing.

Honestly, sales rise and fall. You’ll rarely, if ever, have two months in a row with exactly the same income.

That can be a little unpredictable, obviously, but when you see several months of declining sales, it may be time to make some changes, assuming the decline isn’t just a normal seasonal variation (yes, those happen in lots of niches).

What you need to do is give your site a “power boost.” Here are some things you can do:

* One of the easiest (and most powerful) things to try is transforming your old sales letter into a video. Video sells, often better than written words. Fortunately, this isn’t hard to do.

At a minimum, you can READ your sales letter and record it! If you want to get fancier, you can hire somebody to make you a really nice graphical video with cool transitions.

And regardless of the path you take, you can definitely add a shorter video to your existing sales page to get some video benefit.

* Another thing to try is releasing a version 2.0 of your product. You’ll want to make it genuinely “new and improved” so people will recognize the additional value and be happy with it. But you don’t have to work yourself to death.

One of the best things to do is add one or more new components. For example, if you’ve been selling an ebook, you can add a video.

* Another great tactic is to ramp up your appeal to affiliates. If you do that, they can get excited about your product and really boost your sales.

You can give them new graphics to use, which is usually pretty cheap for you. You can give them new keyword lists to use when they buy advertising. You can even give them sample ads to use, whether that’s for Adwords or classified ads or even forum signatures.

And don’t forget to add ways for affiliates and others to tell others about your product on social media sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and Delicious. Those can go viral VERY fast. Don’t forget Facebook either. You should probably set up a page for your business and regularly update the content there.

Once you’ve got those things in place, tell your affiliates about them! Then consider running a sales contest to boost affiliate activity. That might sound scary, but it’s really not. All you have to do is give affiliates some incentive to promote.

For example, let’s say you sell a $47 product, and you give affiliates a 50 percent commission. That means you’re getting about $20-22 for every sale, after merchant fees. If you offer a $250 top prize for the person who sells the most, and (this is important) you set a sales minimum, you can make out like a bandit.

If you say somebody has to sell at least 12, you’ll know you have enough to cover the prize. If he sells more, you’ll be getting some serious profit. And remember, you’ll have multiple affiliates chasing that price, so your profits can be huge.

2) I don’t want to wait forever to build my list. What can I do to get subscribers right now? (asked by Rachel Williams)

ANSWER: There are probably as many ways to build your email list as there are marketers to make suggestions. But I have a personal favorite that tends to work FAST…

Ad swaps.

These are the fastest way I know of to get highly responsive subscribers who actually open and read emails. Those are the people you’re looking for, not folks who just sit on your list and do nothing.

An ad swap is what it sounds like. You and another marketer agree to promote each other’s squeeze pages to your lists. Simple.

The great news is that you do NOT need a huge list to start doing this. Even a list of 25-100 people can be useful. True, it’s tough to start with a list of zero, but you definitely don’t have to have a massive list.

Finding partners isn’t all that hard either. All you’re looking for is somebody with a list roughly the size of yours, even if it’s small! Here are few places to try:

* Post in places like the Warrior Forum. You can usually find some ad swap partners there.

* Use Google to find other marketers who have complementary offers. Don’t target folks with competing offers, or they’re less likely to want to swap ads with you.

* Search article banks like EzineArticles.com to find people who write about your niche. You can find some great partners that way.

When you find an ad swap partner prospect, send him a brief email something like this:

“I love [his free offer] and I think people who like that will love [your free offer] too. So I suggest that we do an ad swap.

I’ll promote [his free offer] in to my list and you can promote [your free offer] in an email to yours. We’re both offering something of value for free, so our lists grow to trust us more. And we both will have larger lists at the end by doing this.

What do you think? Drop me an email and let me know if you want to do it. If I don’t hear back from you within a few days, I’ll follow up.”

Don’t expect to hear back immediately. Sometimes you won’t hear back at all. Follow up like you promised to, but don’t bug people. If you get a couple people to say yes, your list will start to grow. Then you’ll have a better proposition to pitch to future partners.

I’ve found ad swaps to be extremely effective. You can add hundreds of subscribers to your list in literally a day or two.

ANSWER: There’s no right or wrong answer to this one. All you need to do is find something of value you can offer for free. It doesn’t have to be HUGE value, although bigger is better. Really, anything of value to people in your niche will do.

Ebooks and videos work very well. I’d say they’re the most common on the web today, and for good reason. If somebody in your niche is looking for information, a targeted ebook is a perfect offer. But you can spruce that up a bit.

Video tends to excite people more, so if you can add a video to your ebook, people will see it as more valuable. At a minimum, you can record an audio version of your ebook. That boosts perceived value too, because people can load the audio onto their MP3 player and listen to it anywhere.

The cool thing is that you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch for your offer. You can use private label rights (PLR) material for your ebook, and then add audio or video on your own. Or you might even find an ebook AND video PLR you can use together, which means virtually no work for you. Just Google “[your niche] plr” and you’ll probably find lots of material.

A simple newsletter can be a good offer too, as long as it gives readers real value. If you just send out affiliate promotions, they won’t be happy.

Your “newsletter” could be your thoughts about various topics in your niche, even a time-limited ecourse about something in your niche. Either one can work great.

You also can offer more than one thing on the front end, such as an ecourse to visitors from syndicated articles and an ebook or videos to visitors from an ad swap. That gives you the chance to grow your list from multiple sources.

4) I don’t have any affiliates right now, even though my program is public. How can get more? (asked by Susan Lipton)

ANSWER: I think the best place to start is by posting in forums like the Warrior Forum, or in forums specific to your niche.

Relationships you develop in forums can turn into affiliate partnerships naturally. And some forums, like the Warrior Forum, even give you a place where you can ask for partners (just be sure you follow the rules).

Another route is to use JV sites to tell other people about your product and your affiliate program. JVNotify.com is a good one to look into.

JV partnerships are often more extensive than simple affiliate arrangements, but they often START there.

One often overlooked way to recruit affiliates is to find complementary products using ClickBank and Google, then contact the product owners and propose a cross-promotion. It’s not the “easiest” route, but it can be effective.

It’s actually simple to do. Dig into the product site and find some contact information, usually an email. Contact that person and say something like this:

“I found your product today while I was doing some research and I LOVE it! I think it would be a good fit for my customers. Maybe you can take a look at my product and we might do a cross-promotion? Here’s the link [link]. Let me know what you think.”

That’s pretty easy to do. All you need to find is one person who likes your product enough to promote it. If he does well with the promotion, he might tell some friends, and your affiliate army can really take off.

5) My squeeze page isn’t converting. How can I boost my conversion rate? (asked by Charles Gutfreund)

ANSWER: The biggest problems are usually the headline and the perceived value of the offer. Fix those and conversions should go up.

For example, if you’re offering an ebook, maybe people in your niche think they’ve already read enough about the topic. Use your headline to tell them you’re offering something new (assuming you are)!

And if everybody else in your niche is offering ebooks on the front end, consider offering a video instead. If you can differentiate yourself, you’ll probably get more sign-ups.

Here are some other things to try:

* Adding some higher quality graphics to your page can help. Lots of people try to skimp on their graphics, and it makes their offer look cheap. Don’t do that. Spend a little more on nice graphics that complement your product. That will probably pay off.

* Shorten the page. Ideally, it should all be “above the fold”, meaning somebody shouldn’t have to scroll to see it all. Have a solid headline (see above) and a few bullet points about why your offer is great. You don’t need a sales page here.

* Consider using a video squeeze page instead of a text one. Like I said before, video can sometimes outsell text. It also lets you say more without making your page long, which is a real plus. And yes, it can look more professional.

* If there’s no direct call to action on your page, add one! Don’t suggest, just ask. You might say, “Click the button to get your FREE copy today!”

Remember, a squeeze page is about enticing somebody to sign up for a free offer. You don’t have to convince him to buy anything. All you have to do is overcome his resistance to giving you his email address.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link: http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-13

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you “get it”, though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an “expert”, it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

As you probably know, I make a good living as an affiliate marketer. And I get lots of questions about it, too, especially from people who want to know how to get started, or whether it’s even a good place to start. In this issue, I’ll answer some of the most frequent questions I get asked about affiliate marketing.

1) I’m brand new to online marketing. Can you tell me if affiliate marketing is a good way to start? (asked by William Ackersly)

ANSWER: The short answer is, “Absolutely!” There’s nothing magic about affiliate marketing, but it’s a great place to get started. The reasons are pretty simple:

* It takes VERY little money to get started. I recommend having your own website, and you should have an autoresponder account as well. But that’s really all you need to pay for.

* It’s easy to get started FAST. You can get set up within a day and easily start promoting products the next day, or even that first day. It’s not hard.

* The profit potential is great.

Even if you’ve already got an online business, affiliate marketing is worth a look. It’s a great way to supplement your income, and in most cases, it’s easy to add affiliate marketing to what you’re already doing.

So, regardless of whether you’re just getting started online or you’ve been at it for a while, affiliate marketing can be a great way to make solid cash.

2) How do I pick affiliate products that are likely to sell well? (asked by Bethany Simmons)

ANSWER: The best strategy is to find products that are already selling well. They’re likely to keep doing that! So how do you find them? Here are three quick ways:

* Search the ClickBank Marketplace to find products with a good gravity score. I recommend looking for scores between 20 and 150, which gives you a popular product that doesn’t have outrageous affiliate competition.

* Monitor what other marketers are promoting. I suspect you’re already signed up for several lists. Keep your eyes open for what they’re promoting. The odds are good those products are converting well enough to make it worthwhile for you to promote them.

* Ask the product seller how well it’s doing. Most people overlook this one, but it really works. I’ve asked sellers how well their products are selling, and they’re usually honest about it. If it’s selling very well, they’ll certainly have no problem telling you so.

And of course, you can combine all of those methods to get an even better picture of what’s selling well.

Regardless of where you start your research, one thing you absolutely MUST do is review the sales page for any product you’re considering promoting. Is the copy good? Does it make you want to buy? Is the sales page attractive? Does the payment link work?

And you’ll also want to sign up for and analyze any autoresponder for a free sales page offer as well. That will show you how aggressively the seller is following up with people to try to sell to them again…which can boost your commissions.

ANSWER: The best way to get people to take action is to give them incentive to do it. The two most common tactics are:

* Offering additional helpful information on a product review page. (I’ll talk about review pages more in the answer to a later question.)

* Offering a bonus to people who buy through your link.

Offering a bonus for an affiliate product has become a sort of standard in affiliate marketing, but you don’t have to be intimidated by people offering massive bonus packages. Your bonus just has to be attractive to prospects.

For example, you could offer another related ebook that you wrote and have never released before. That’s definitely unique. It might not be a huge bonus package with everything from video training to coaching, but it might be attractive enough to get somebody to buy.

Here are a few other guidelines for offering a bonus:

* Make the value of your bonus several times the purchase price of the product. Don’t lie about it! Make sure what you’re offering is really worth at least 50% more than the product, and preferably at least double. So your bonus for a $37 product ideally should be worth at least $75.

* Get a nice graphic image for your bonus. This makes it look more attractive, professional and (most important) valuable.

* Make people sign up for your list to get the bonus. That’s that way to build your buyer list over time, which will help you boost your affiliate earnings in the long run.

4) What PPC strategies do you recommend for promoting affiliate products? (asked by Robert Williams)

ANSWER: PPC is a great way to promote affiliate products, and it’s easier to do than most people think. Here’s the plan:

* Use trigger words and question marks in ad headlines to get more clicks. For example, your headline might say, “Be An Affiliate NOW?” That attracts attention, leads somebody to want to answer the question, and uses the trigger word “NOW” to get people to act.

* Target long tail keywords and product specific keywords. Long tail keywords are keyword phrases with three or more words. They typically get decent clicks with lower competition. That means you can bid lower for clicks, something like 25 cents or less, and still get good traffic.

* Send people to a product review page where they can click your affiliate link to get to the sales page. This lets you “pre-sell” the product, which often improves your conversions.

* Wait for 200-300 clicks. Ramp up your campaign if it’s converting, move on to another product if it’s not. Or you can try other keywords before switching products. It’s up to you.

That’s the simple PPC strategy that keeps you from spending too much while you figure out what works.

5) What makes a great product review page? (asked by Ruth Ames)

ANSWER: I’ve mentioned product review pages a couple times. If the concept isn’t familiar to you, a product review page is a page where you offer additional information about an affiliate product, often as a “review” of the product. That helps people know if the product is worth buying.

Your goal with a review page is to excite a buyer and make him more likely to click your affiliate link and buy the product on the sales page. Here are few tips for how to do that:

* Use a headline that includes some controversy. That might be something like, “Is Product X Junk?”

* Foreshadow the sales page headline when you can. So for a list building course that makes a bold claim on its sales page, you might say, “Can You Really Build A List Of One Million Like Product X Claims?”

* Offer helpful information and personal proof. If you’ve used the product and got great results with it, talk about that! If you haven’t gotten results, talk about your experience so far.

* Use a bonus offer as an incentive to click your affiliate link. This tends to produce the best results. It almost certainly will get you more clicks through to the sales page.

6) Which is better, promoting high-ticket items that sell fewer copies, or promoting less expensive things that sell more? (asked by Ruth Ames)

ANSWER: This is sort of the wrong question. The real question is how can you do BOTH?

What you really want to do is start by promoting some less expensive stuff, then promote more expensive stuff later as sort of a back-end marketing effort.

Once you’ve built a big high-ticket list, you can promote the more expensive products more often. Your list has build some trust in you at that point, and your high-ticket promotions are more likely to convert well.

You can even start the process by promoting FREE products with reasonably priced back-end offers built in. I’ve used that strategy myself, and it works very well.

Remember, affiliate marketing isn’t just about making a pile of cash on a single promotion. It’s about using affiliate products to build a business. If you focus on building a list and giving the people on it what they want, they’ll buy over time.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-11

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you “get it”, though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an “expert”, it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

Last year I released Get More Buyers (you’ll find it at http://www.GetMoreBuyers.com). I put up a blog to during launch week to get feedback and to answer people’s questions. The response was stunning, and the most common set of questions were all about how to start a successful online business. That’s also the most common type of question I get asked every single day.

In this issue, I’ll answer some of the most common questions about how to get started online. Let’s jump right in…

1) There’s so much junk out there about getting started. What essentials do I REALLY need? (asked by Jessie Allis)

ANSWER: Yes, there’s a ton of junk. Wading through it can be a distraction. Let me try to simplify things.

First, you need a market to sell to. Not having one is like trying to set up a business in a ghost town. You might get some customers, but they won’t come around much!

Second, you need a product to sell. That could be your own product, or it could be somebody else’s product you promote for a commission (called an affiliate product). This is what will put money in your pocket.

Third, you’ll need a domain. I suggest starting with a “.com” address, because it looks much more professional. And pick a domain that’s your own name, if it’s available, like my MichaelRasmussen.com site. That will give you a foundation to build on, no matter what direction you want to go, and will let you build your personal brand.

Fourth, you need a website. It just makes things so much easier if you have a site that you control and can change however you want.

Fifth, you need an autoresponder. This lets you build a mailing list and keep in contact with the people on it. That’s where your long-term income will come from. I recommend http://www.AutomateYourList.com. And once you have your autoresponder set up, check out http://www.EmailPromosExposed.com to learn how to write promotional emails that convert like crazy.

Sixth, you should consider setting up a blog at a separate site. This is a great way to keep your content fresh, which will get you more free traffic from search engines. And linking to your main site from your blog can help your search engine rank for your main site as well.

Seventh, you’ll need a payment processor, which is a way to take credit card payments online. I strongly recommend ClickBank, because they’re reliable and secure. They’ll also give you a built-in affiliate program, and they’ll handle paying your affiliates for you.

That’s literally all you need. There are other things that you CAN have, but those are the essentials.

2) How can the “average Joe” get started online? (asked by Neil Bier)

ANSWER: I get this one all the time. What shocks most people is that just about everybody who starts an online business begins as an Average Joe! I did.

The way to get started is to find a market that needs a product you can offer at a profit. That’s as fancy as it gets.

You can offer a physical product or a digital one. To keep things simple and low-cost, I suggest starting with a digital product, meaning one that people can buy and download immediately.

Here’s where I might shock a few readers…

Your first product can be VERY simple. You might write a brief report called something like “10 List Building Tips If You’re Starting From Zero!”

The point is, find a market, find what they want to know, then offer it to them. What most people just starting out overlook is that most of the information is available for free online.

Use Google to research your topic. Visit sites like EzineArticles.com to get ideas. Track down sites that already exist and see what information they offer for free. Then you can create a relatively short report that saves people the trouble of doing the research on their own.

You can hire somebody to write your report, or you can summarize existing material in your own words. About 10-15 pages should do it.

Once you have your report, you can sell it for a low price, maybe something like $7. Most people will be willing to part with that kind of money, since it’s almost as much as they spend on coffee or sodas in a typical day.

The next trick is to drive some traffic to your website where you sell your report. The easiest free way to do that is to write an article and get it accepted at EzineArticles.com. Target a keyword that gets okay traffic, but doesn’t have a lot competition.

I’ve never run across ANYONE who couldn’t use that approach to get started. There’s no guarantee you’ll succeed, but it’s a quick process you can keep hammering on until you find a winner.

ANSWER: There are really two answers to this question.

One option is to avoid the Internet marketing niche. There really are plenty of other niches out there. Do some digging on Google or at EzineArticles.com or even at Amazon.com to find them. Here are some niches that have been popular (and profitable) for years:

- Personal development stuff, like boosting your self esteem

- Relationship topics, like improving your dating life or marriage

- Debt or credit-related topics, especially with the economy doing so bad

- Health topics, like curing acne or fixing back pain

The list could go on. All you have to do is find a niche that’s not as cutthroat as Internet marketing. Odds are good that people in those other niches are even more eager buyers than in the IM space.

But I don’t tell people to avoid IM entirely. It’s a great niche, and I make good money there. The challenge is standing out from the crowd, so here are a few simple ideas:

- Talk about a NEW topic. If there’s a new social networking site out there, for example, write a report about how to use it. New information sells great.

- Present your product in a unique way. That could be doing videos when everybody else does ebooks, for example, or offering overwhelming value that nobody else does.

- Offer help to buyers. Lots of people sell IM products and then abandon buyers to figure everything out. Simply offering email support for a small fee and a limited time can make you stand out.

- Offer stuff that works. Not so hard, right? The market is full of junk that makes money but doesn’t live up to its promises.

And one more piece of advice for standing out…social proof counts most of all. So give your product away to some limited number of people and ask them for honest feedback. That will help your sales presentation be more genuine and more likely to sell.

4) I know I need a website, but I’m so overwhelmed by the technical stuff (which I have no experience with). Can you recommend any short cuts? (asked by Max Coltharp)

ANSWER: I can understand when anybody says they’re a bit afraid of the technology of online business. But there’s really nothing to be afraid of.

The first thing to keep in mind is that your website can and should be very simple. You’ll need a page to present your product, a way for people to buy, and a page to deliver the product. That’s it. Three pages can do the job just fine.

You might want more than that, but that’s fine to start with.

The second thing to keep in mind is that you need to find a good tutorial about how to build simple sites. Frankly, I thought there wasn’t a really good one out there, so I created my own:

http://www.MiniSiteProfitsExposed.com

It doesn’t cost a dime, so feel free to sign up for your copy and put it use. The video course walks you through everything you need to know to set up your own mini-site, which is a simple site to sell a single product.

You’ll learn how to get your domain, set up your hosting, create your pages, hook up your autoresponder and payment processor…everything you need. If you take the plunge and get stuck on something, don’t panic. You can find a cheap freelancer to help you on Scriptlance.com, or even have them develop the entire mini-site for you from scratch.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-10

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you “get it”, though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an “expert”, it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

Lots of people think doing business on the Internet is very different from doing business “offline”. Not really. They both boil down to one thing: selling. In the end, what really counts is getting prospects to become customers by buying your product.

In this issue, I’ll answer some questions about how to sell.

1) I’ve got my product ready to go, but nobody knows who I am. How can I convince people to buy when I’m not famous? (asked by Louisa Duren)

ANSWER: This is easier to do than people think.

Don’t get me wrong…having some name recognition DOES help you sell. Some people buy my products, for example, simply because they know who I am, and they were told that my last product was good. And that’s the key for new sellers like you.

People buy from sellers they know. Since you’re new, most people don’t know you. That means you’ve got to put some effort into making them feel like they do. Your main tool is social proof.

You’ve probably seen testimonials on sales page. That’s a kind of social proof. Case studies are another. Having people review your products in marketing forums is another.

If you have social proof, selling is a lot easier. But how can you get it? Here’s an easy strategy.

You can give away some copies of your product for free and ask for reviews.

This is exactly what it sounds like. You give people a free copy, and you ask them to give you feedback. When you get some positive feedback, you ask that person if you can use what they said as a testimonial on your sales page.

You’re giving up the profit you’d make on a few sales, but the benefit you get can be huge. The testimonials you get from reviewers can make your sales copy sound great.

You don’t have to be famous to do this either. For example, you can go to your favorite marketing.

“Hi everyone, I’d like to give 10 people a free copy of my new product. All I ask is that you give me honest feedback about it. If you like it, I may ask to use your comments as a testimonial on my sales page. So send me a private message if you’re interested, and the first 10 people are in!”

Even if nobody knows who you are, most people like the idea of getting something for free. That just might get you the social proof you need to convince some prospects to become buyers.

2) How can I use scarcity to sell more of my product without using phony scare tactics, like “the product might disappear at any time”? (asked by Max Goquen)

ANSWER: Using phony scare tactics is almost always a bad idea. Honesty is a better policy.

The most effective way to do this is to come up with a scarcity tactic that’s honest and sounds reasonable. That creates genuine urgency to get some prospects off the fence they’re sitting on.

What you want to do is have a good reason behind the scarcity claim you’re making. Anybody can scream, “Quantities are limited!” You need to do more than that.

For example, one way to create scarcity is to limit the number of copies of the product you sell. But why are you limiting it? That’s where you need a good reason so your claim doesn’t sound like hype. You might say something like this.

“I struck a deal with a contributor to this that I would sell only 125 copies, so when they’re gone, they’re gone. Don’t wait and miss out on this. When the doors close, I can’t make exceptions.”

Assuming you actually did strike a deal with a contributor like that, you’ve got a great scarcity claim to make.

The point is, you don’t want to whip prospects into a buying frenzy based on a false sense of urgency. If you develop a reputation for doing that, your scarcity claims will lose their effectiveness. You’ll also get a reputation as somebody who screams about scarcity when it’s really not scarce.

And by the way, when you make a scarcity claim, stick to it! If you say you’ll take down the sales page by next Tuesday, don’t leave it up until Wednesday. That will ruin your reputation fast.

ANSWER: Making up numbers isn’t always bad, but making up numbers that don’t make any sense can kill you.

It’s sort of like scarcity claims. You want to make claims that are reasonable, preferably backed up by some facts. If you do, your claims will come across as genuine…because they probably are.

For example, you can slap any old price claim on an ebook you sell, but does it make sense?

If you’re selling an ebook about how to write affiliate promotion emails, you can say it’s worth $997, but that probably won’t sound reasonable to people. It might actually be worth that, but it’s a tough case to make.

So how do you determine what a reasonable value is? There aren’t any rules like “ebooks aren’t ever worth more than $37″, but here are some suggestions for valuing things:

* The more material you offer, the higher the value. An ebook that’s only 15 pages long probably has a lower value than one that’s 100 pages.

* If you’ve sold something before, the previous sale price is a supportable starting point for value. That video course you sold for $97 is probably worth it, assuming some people bought.

* Audio and video tend to be perceived as more valuable. You can make a case for a higher value for videos than you can for an ebook, at least most of the time.

* If the topic is new and hot, the perceived value is higher, so you can place a higher value on it. An ebook about how to build a list probably should have a lower value than an ebook about how to profit from YouTube, for example.

Like I said, there aren’t really any rules about assigning values to things. What really counts is that you can back up your value claims, and that they seem reasonable.

And one last point…

Make sure the total value of what you offer isn’t so crazy high that people question what your product is worth, based on what you’re actually charging.

For example, let’s say you offer a product with multiple components, and the value adds up to something like $8,917.

That’s great, but if you’re only charging $37 for the product, people might wonder if your product is junk. They might say, “It can’t really be worth that if he’s only selling it for $37.”

It’s probably smarter to knock your value claim down a bit to make your price look good, but not too cheap.

4) How long should my sales copy be to convince people to buy? (asked by Alana Mertz)

ANSWER: This is a very common question, and there’s a very easy answer…

You copy should be as long as it needs to be, and no longer. That’s all there is to it.

Now, most of the time, longer copy gives you more space to make a solid case for your product. That can be particularly important for a product with a high price point (you have to overcome more potential price resistance).

But don’t assume that longer copy will sell better. Sometimes shorter copy does a superior job, because you’re not making people read a lot before they decide.

This is a place where testing is a must. Write copy that seems long enough to make your case, then test it to see if making it longer or shorter sells better. That’s the only way to know for sure.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-9

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you “get it”, though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an “expert”, it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

In the past couple of years, people have been exposed to a large number of products about product creation. There are courses about it, seminars on the topic, and countless articles about various aspects of creating products.

I know I get literally hundreds of questions about product creation every time I launch a product of my own. Here are some recent questions I think will help you know the answers to.

1) It seems like I’ve been working on several products for the longest time. I can’t ever seem to get them done, and they all seem important. Any advice? (asked by Kelly Berkholz)

ANSWER: I know they all seem important, and they probably are, but the advice I’ll give you is exactly what I would tell anybody else who is creating products.

First, choose one product to focus on first. If they all seem like “the” product to you, just pick one! This will let you focus on one product instead of overworking your brain trying to think about more than one at a time.

Second, focus on that product until it’s done. I mean REALLY done. Working on something else will distract you, and you’ll stay in the “nothing’s finished” spot you’re in now.

Third, launch that product. Having a bunch of products done but just sitting there doesn’t do anything for you. Finish the product and launch it to start accomplishing your intended goal with it, whatever that goal is (selling it for a profit, building a list, etc.)

Fourth, keep your focus on that product until it’s solidly accomplishing your goal. Don’t just kick off the process and turn your back on it. Work on it until it’s working well for you.

THEN move on to the next product.

Why do it this way? Because nothing beats the power of focus. You have to focus to finish. Without finishing, you’ll never benefit from the product creation work you do.

2) I don’t have a problem creating products…but I can’t seem to launch them! They sit around doing nothing after I worked so hard on them. What should I do? (asked by Guy Won)

ANSWER: Okay, you’re following the first part of the advice I gave in the previous answer. Now keep going!

But I won’t leave you hanging. Here are some specific steps to take. It’s a simple launch procedure you can use for any product you already have:

* Pick one product to launch first. Just like I mentioned earlier, you have to choose. If you try to launch them all at once, you’ll go crazy, and it probably won’t work. You have to start somewhere.

* Write down a specific launch plan. This includes what your target market will be, the components your product will include, what your price point will be, your target launch date, and who you’ll contact to promote for you (and how you’ll find new people, if you don’t already have a network to dig into).

* Set a deadline when you MUST start your promotion plan. This will light a fire under you. You’ve done the hard part (creating the product), so decide you’re going to DO something with it now.

I don’t want to be too simplistic here, but that’s really all there is to it. Not launching your product probably means one of two things…

Either you’re scared to launch, which is very common for people without a lot of experience, or you haven’t really thought about the stuff in the second step I just gave you.

In particular, if fear is your problem, you need to break through it. Forcing yourself to take action and launch is one of the best strategies for breaking through.

A great place to start is with that marketing plan. There are what’s called the “5 P’s” of marketing:

* Product
* Place
* Price
* People (your market)
* Promotion

If you’re stuck on knowing what you have to think about, there’s your list. You need to know what you’ll sell, to whom, how, where and for what price. When you know all of that, all that’s left is executing your plan.

You’ll be surprised how energizing it is to get your product actually out there selling. You’ll want to do it again.

ANSWER: Heck no you haven’t wasted your time! Be proud you got your product done. Lots of people never finish. Here’s how to get people interested in it.

First, though, you need to remember that there are TWO groups of people you need to get interested in your product. The first group is potential buyers, and the second group is potential promotion partners. Both have to think your product is good enough to act on (meaning buying it or promoting it).

Now I’ll cheat a little bit and tell you how to get both groups interested by targeting only ONE of those groups first.

If you get potential promotion partners interested in your product, they’ll help you get potential buyers interested in it. That might mean they’ll suggest changes that will increase the perceived value of your product, or maybe they’ll suggest some sales copy changes. Then again, they may say your product is great already and simply get their lists excited about it.

So I suggest focusing on getting partners interested first. Here’s short cut for how to do it, especially if you don’t have a big name yet.

Partner with someone who has a bigger name than yours. Get them interested in working with you to make the product even better. You’ll have to entice them to do this, so make it worth their while by offering things like this:

* Give the person a cut of the profits when the product launches (this should be a given, and be generous)

* Offer to do most of the grunt work to get the product ready, if the other person will bring their marketing expertise and existing JV partners to the table

You don’t have to be famous to find people willing to work with you, because here’s a little secret…most people don’t want to create their own products, because it’s a lot of work. If you offer to do most of the work, a potential partner might jump at it.

Once you’ve identified your partner, knock yourself out to deliver on your part of the deal. Do a great job, ask questions, and learn as much as you can. Then you’ll not only have a partner for this product, but you’ll also have an enthusiastic contact for your next one.

ANSWER: This is a classic question. Here’s how to find JV partners when you don’t feel like you know anybody:

* Hang out in marketing forums and develop relationships. When you find a good prospect, send him a private message to introduce yourself and pitch your JV.

* Use JV networks to get your proposals in front of lots of people you don’t know…then do a great job with your partners so you’ll be able to get them on board much easier next time.

* Look at the email lists you already subscribe to. Do you really like the style of one of the marketers? If so, strike up a relationship with that person through email, or on their blog. This isn’t an overnight thing, but it’s worth the effort. You can certainly pitch a JV right away, but it’s usually better to develop some relationship first.

* Find contacts in sales letter testimonials. This works great. Sure, some of the really big names won’t give you the time of day, but some might if you make a good proposal that has a lot in it for them.

The bottom line for finding partners is really simple. You might not think you know anybody right now, but you almost certainly can develop contacts with lots of people in lots of different ways. That’s where relationships come from, and some of those product great JVs.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-8

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you “get it”, though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an “expert”, it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

Sooner or later, every person into Internet marketing hits a bit of a roadblock. That roadblock is time. We all have only 24 hours in a day. We need to spend some of them sleeping, and it’s good to spend some of them not working on your Internet marketing business.

But many wonder how they can use their time better, increase their productivity and get more stuff done so they can have more time for other things. I’ll give you some tips in this email.

1) I’ve heard outsourcing is a good idea, but it’s expensive. Is there some way I can outsource without spending a lot of money? (asked by Javier Stransky)

ANSWER: Good question, and it lets me explain why most people think about this the wrong way.

Most people just getting started in Internet marketing have more time than money. But they consistently ignore the value of their time.

Your time is worth something. Let’s say you work part-time on your Internet business, but you have another job to help pay the bills while you’re trying to grow your online income. And let’s say you get paid $10 an hour for that job.

Now, if you have to work, say, three hours to write a really good article to get traffic to your site, how much is that article worth? That’s right, $30. What if you could hire somebody to write it for $10? That’s a pretty good deal!

The point is, your time is valuable. If you spend your time working on your Internet business, you don’t have that time to work in your other job, which costs you lost income.

Having said that, though, I realize outsourcing costs, and that you have other things to spend your money on too. That’s why I recommend using freelance sites like Elance.com.

Those freelancing sites let you post a job and get bids from lots of freelancers. You don’t have to accept a particular bid. You can look at the ones you get and pick which one you’ll accept. If you find two that look equally good, but one bids less, you can save money on your outsourcing.

Remember, the cost of outsourcing isn’t really the money you spend on it, although that counts. You also have to consider the value of your time.

2) Okay, I’m sold on the idea of outsourcing to save time, but I’ve never done it before. What kinds of things can I outsource? (asked by Lonnie Pelosi)

ANSWER: Just about anything that somebody other than you can do. That means the list is very long, but here are some ideas.

You can definitely outsource almost any writing task. That includes

* Writing articles to drive traffic to your site

* Writing ebooks to sell from your site

* Writing reports that you offer for free to attract subscribers

* Writing emails for your subscribers

* Writing blog posts, or web pages

But writing isn’t the only thing other people can do for you.

If you’re not a technical person, and you don’t like dealing with setting up websites, you can hire somebody to create minisites for you. That might save you a ton of time, and get you to the point where you can profit much sooner than if you do it yourself.

Or let’s say you just bought a great script to help make your site management easier…but it takes some skill to install. You can go to a site like ScriptLance.com and hire somebody to do that. It might take them minutes, whereas it could take you hours.

And some of the things you can hire somebody else to do are even more obvious.

For example, are you a graphic artist? Probably not, so it makes really good sense to hire somebody else to create graphics for you instead of spending a ton of time trying to learn Photoshop or something.

You might pay $50 up to a few hundred dollars for the graphics you buy, but trying to do it yourself might cost you days and still not get you the graphics you need.

ANSWER: I know the feeling. I can remember times when I forget the last time I slept. And I can definitely understand wanting to spend more time with the kids.

The key to figuring out how to work more efficiently (and profitably) is to figure out what you spend your time on when you’re working on your Internet business.

You might keep a log of what you do every day for a week or two, then check it at the end to see if you see any common tasks or patterns.

This exercise does two things for you:

1) It lets you see if there are common things you do that you can outsource.

2) It lets you see which activities make you money, and which don’t.

It’s smart to focus your time on what brings in the most money for the least amount of effort. That should get your personal attention. You can pretty much outsource everything else eventually.

You might not start being able to outsource everything, but you’ll probably end up being able to if you focus your time on money producing tasks.

For example, let’s say you that you have a few hours a day to squeeze in on your Internet business after you get home from your day job and put the kids to bed. Your log shows you that you spend about two hours of that time writing articles to get traffic. They’re not great articles, but they bring in visitors.

Once you know that, you can hire somebody to write articles for you and spend that time on other tasks that put money in your pocket.

That’s a simple example, but there are others. Keep your log for a week or two and they’ll probably jump out at you.

ANSWER: Efficiency is a skill, just like any other. That means you can learn how to be more efficient. It really takes two things:

* Paying attention to what you’re doing so you can see where you’re losing time

* Having a plan that focuses you on the most important things first

In my answer to the previous question, I talked about keeping a log for a while so you can see where you’re spending your time. That lets you know if there are things you can outsource.

But it also lets you know if you’re wasting time. I don’t mean that to sound negative. We all have a tendency to waste time! It’s easy to let time slip away and wonder where it went.

For example, let’s say your log tells you that you’re spending hours every day on email. That’s a huge time waster. If you absolutely have to do it, then do what you have to do, but you can probably cut back the time.

Once you’ve trimmed the time wasters, make a simple plan that focuses you on the most important things first. This is as simple as a to-do list with two simple rules.

First, the items on your to-do list have to be in order of importance. You should put ones that make you money near the top!

Second, starting at the top, you have to finish each item before you move on to the next one, if at all possible.

That’s not a fancy plan, but it’s the basic one time management experts like Brian Tracy talk about all the time.

When you get right down to it, working efficiently is a choice, and only you can make it.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-7

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you "get it", though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an "expert", it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

If you’ve been around Internet marketing for any period of time, you’ve probably heard of joint ventures, or JVs. These are partnerships where all parties (usually two, but it can be more) profit from the deal.

But if you’ve been around a while, you’ve probably also heard that JVs are difficult to get, especially if you’re brand new. I get questions about JVs all the time. This email answers some of the most common ones.

1) I’ve sent out probably 50 JV proposal emails in the past three months, and haven’t gotten ONE response. How can I get somebody to say yes? (asked by Clinton Beehler)

ANSWER: Excellent question, and it’s probably the most common one I get on this topic.

Fortunately, the answer is pretty easy, although it takes a little work to do what I’m going to tell you to do.

I get several hundred JV proposal emails every single week. Imagine getting over 1,000 proposal emails a month. What would you do with email 1,001? Yep, you’d probably ignore it. I just don’t have the time to read them all, much less respond.

So if you want to get your JV proposal read, regardless of who you’re proposing to, you need to do three things:

* Make your email subject grab their attention. A generic “JV Proposal” subject line probably won’t get read. But a subject like “PERSONAL: May I promote [his product]?” might. No guarantees, but remember, your subject has to compel somebody to open your email or the rest of your email doesn’t matter.

* Lead with what you bring to the table. If your entire email is about how your partner should promote your product to make you money, that’s no good. Instead, emphasize how HE can make more money along with you, so it’s a win-win deal. That’s a better pitch.

* Make the strongest case by dropping names of well known people you’ve worked with before, or people you already have on board for the JV already. If any of those people have given you testimonials about how good it was to work with you, it’s definitely smart to include those in your proposal.

* Be creative. Overwhelm him with profit opportunity, and really go out of your way to make it painless for your prospect to say yes. For example, if you’ll write all the sales copy and the email templates for the promotion, and all he has to do it load stuff up to his server or autoresponder account, that removes most of the work for him.

Even if you follow those guidelines, you still won’t get a yes every time, but you’ll put the odds in your favor. That’s the best you can do, and it might just pay off big.

How can I get a JV with a big name guru that will get me four- and five-figure paydays I’ve heard about? (asked by Roxie Barletta)

ANSWER: This might literally be the $64,000 question.

People want JVs with the big names because that usually means more profits. But remember what I told you in my answer to the previous question…I get several hundred proposals a WEEK. That reduces your odds.

There are really three main ways to get a JV going with a big name.

First, you can start by promoting their products and making them money. This proves you actually bring some profit potential to the table.

You don’t have to win their affiliate contest, or make them millions. But saying you’ve already made them some money helps your case.

Second, get an introduction. You can’t force this, so all you can do is increase your exposure to the big names and try to develop relationships that might grow into JVs.

That might mean hanging out in marketing forums and commenting on their posts. It might mean going to live events and introducing yourself. It might mean offering to help them by doing some free work on a product or launch.

Anything that will help you get to know people is something worth considering. Out of that could come partnerships with those people, or perhaps with people they know…and that might include a big name.

Third, you can shoot for a level below the big names. This might sound strange, but sometimes it’s best NOT to target the big names. Instead, target the up and coming marketers.

When you see a name you don’t recognize in the second or third spot in somebody’s affiliate contest, that might be a good person to try.

For example, I did a couple JVs with Mike Filsaime before he was a big name. Several of them made solid profits for both of us, but that’s nothing compared to what our partnerships bring in now.

By targeting somebody who wasn’t a big name yet, I grew a relationship with somebody who’s now a big name. And he can say the same about me.

ANSWER: I get this question a lot, and it’s a real challenge for people relatively new to online marketing. Fortunately, you CAN get JV partners even if you don’t have a list.

Having a list is great, but it’s only one of the things you can offer a partner. When you don’t have a list, or if your list is really small, that’s where creativity can make a big difference.

For example, let’s say you don’t have a list, but you want to do a JV with a particular person you’ve read posts from in a marketing forum. Ask yourself what you can offer this person that will make the partnership pretty much equal.

He might have a list, so he might be the one promoting a product to people, but can you contribute in some other way? Probably so. Here are some possibilities:

* If you can write sales copy, you could write some to promote your joint product. That might save a ton of money for both of you.

* If you can create websites, you could do the technical grunt work of getting everything set up so he doesn’t have to worry about it. That’s great if the person you’re partnering with is already very busy.

* If you’re good at creating products, you can take more of the creative load and let the other person concentrate on other things.

You get the point.

Being able to promote a product to your own list is a nice contribution to a JV, but it’s not the only thing that can help a partner. Anything you can contribute that can save time, save money or bring in more profit is usually very attractive to potential partners.

And when you propose your JV with these creative things in there, that has the extra benefit of setting your proposal apart from the others your partner might get.

4) Do JVs work outside the Internet Marketing niche? (asked by Lorrie Lipton)

ANSWER: This is an easy one…YES! In fact, JVs are more common outside of IM than inside. That’s where they started, actually.

Think about when you go to McDonald’s and order a Happy Meal. The toy that comes inside the box is usually from Disney, or Pixar or some other company. That’s a JV.

So if you’re in a niche other than IM, don’t think JVs are off-limits for you.

What makes a JV one of those monsters that
generates huge profits? (asked by Lakisha Facey)

ANSWER: I think people focus too much on the profits sometimes, when JV relationships are more important in the long run, but profits do count. And the most profitable JVs have some things in common.

First, they promote a great product. For example, Steven Clayton & Tim Godfrey released Commission Blueprint earlier this year. It was a fantastic product, and our JV did very well. A great product makes everything easier.

Second, the most successful JVs leverage at least one very responsive list. There’s no way around that. You can make good money without a big list involved, but you have to have some buyers, and that means at least one responsive list.

When I promoted Commission Blueprint, I knew it was a perfect fit for my list, so I was confident that they would respond. That made Steve and Tim more willing to work with me to create a killer bonus for my readers, and it paid off well for both of us.

Third, they’re professional. The websites work, the products are laser targeted at good markets, the graphics for everything look nice, and the promotion efforts hang together well.

If you want a super successful JV, you need to make sure it has a solid foundation of all of those things. If they’re not in place, your chances of success go down.

There are other factors that might make a difference, but those are the biggest three.

Remember, JVs are about profit AND relationships. Not every JV will be a profit gusher, but that’s usually less important in the long run than developing relationships that grow into larger profit engines in the future.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, "Somebody’s probably asked that already." Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-7

A lot of people wonder why I do this. There are really three big reasons…

First, I care about whether you succeed or not. Internet marketing really isn’t rocket science…once you know what you’re doing. Before you “get it”, though, it helps a ton to have somebody actually answer real questions that real people ask along the way.

Second, even after you’re an “expert”, it’s great to get new ideas from other people. You never know when an answer to a question will press just right button in your brain…and boost your profits.

Third, I get literally thousands of emails every week, and it’s impossible to answer them all. So I set up this system to help me manage email better, while still giving you the information you need.

So read on, and I hope you enjoy the learning.

You probably already know how popular affiliate marketing is. I’m an affiliate marketer myself, and I can confirm that it’s a great way to make money online. But I get lots of emails from people who are confused about some aspect of affiliate marketing. If that’s you, this FAQ should help you get past that confusion.

1) I get 10-20 affiliate promotions a week from lists I’m on. As an affiliate marketer with a small list, how do I make good income from my promos but keep from overwhelming my list? (asked by Kelly Dupras)

You say you’re starting with a small list. That’s actually not a problem, if you have reasonable expectations for it.

My list is pretty big, so my profit expectations should be higher. That’s why it’s usually better to think in terms of conversion rate.

If you have a list of 50,000 and one percent buy when you send a promo email, that’s 500 buyers. Is that “good”? That depends on how many buyers you’re used to seeing. Actually, a one percent conversion rate isn’t very good at all!

But let’s say you get 10 percent of people to buy from your list. Now your relatively small list of 1,000 gets you 100 buyers. That’s pretty good. If you make, say, $25 profit on every sale, that’s $2,500 per promo email. Even if your list is only 500, you’d still make $1,250 with every email. That’s pretty good profit there.

What really matters is focusing on building your list and packing it full of proven buyers to get your conversion rate up.

As you’re doing that, make sure you don’t burn those buyers out. If you promote too often, they’ll get tired of it and start ignoring your promo emails.

The smarter way to go about it is to put yourself on a somewhat regular promotion schedule. It doesn’t have to be rigid, but it should be pretty regular.

For example, you might decide you’ll do two major promos per month, and send a couple emails a week leading up to each one. And you’ll make one of those emails more informational than promotional. That way people will get used to getting your emails, and they won’t mind them.

Remember, the size of your list isn’t as important as your efforts to grow it and build your relationship with it.

2) What if I don’t have a list yet? How in the world do I get started in affiliate marketing without one? (asked by Hugh Furlow)

If you don’t have a list…get one!

Okay, don’t get mad at me. I’ll explain what I mean.

It’s not as hard to get a list started as people think. Actually, it’s pretty easy if you use a simple plan.

The fastest way to do it is to offer something free and tell people in a niche forum about it. It can be a short report or anything else they might want. You don’t have to spend months writing the thing. In fact, you might be able to do it in a few hours, including research.

Just go to your favorite article bank and find 5-10 articles about the topic that sort of hang together with a theme. Read each one and (this is VERY important) summarize the article in your own words.

Once you’ve done that, assemble your summaries into sections for your report. If you end up with 5-10 pages, that’s plenty. It doesn’t have to be long, because it won’t cost anybody anything!

Now that your report is finished, go to one or more free forums in your niche and write a short post offering your free report to anybody who signs up for your list. Your post might say something like this:

“I’ve just finished my report called [report name]. It’s free to anybody who joins my list. Don’t worry, I won’t blast you with 100 emails aweek :)”

If people ask you questions about the report, use that opportunity to build your relationships with people in the forum, and to make a case for your report.

I’ve used that technique myself several times. And I’ve also offered more extensive products for free, like the videos at http://www.MiniSiteProfitsExposed.com. People love free stuff, and they’re usually willing to join your list if you offer it.

If you’ll use this simple strategy, you could easily find yourself with a list of 500 people very quickly. And if you read my answer to the first question about promoting to a small list, you’ll see that list is plenty big enough to make you good profit.

3) What should I promote? I mean, the possibilities are endless. (asked by Guy Axford)

You’re right, the possibilities can seem a little overwhelming. So what you need to do is find a nice place to start…sort of your baseline place to go to find products.

I recommend ClickBank for that. Their Marketplace has over 10,000 products in there (including some of mine), and it’s very easy to search for stuff.

When you search, look for products in your niche, of course, but sort them by High Gravity. That will tell you which products other affiliate marketers are getting behind in a big way.

Don’t necessarily pick the top one on the list, though. Shoot for gravity between 25 and 150, so that the competition isn’t so fierce.

With ClickBank in your hip pocket as a place you can always go, I suggest branching out from there to focus on new products, preferably product launches. That’s where all the buzz is, and probably where you’ll make your best profits.

There will be more competition there, so you should do your best to come with a good bonus to offer as an enticement for people to buy through you. But if you’ll focus on what’s hot, you’ll like the results.

You might be wondering how to find those hot new product releases. There are a few possibilities:

* Check out the New Products listing in ClickBank’s Marketplace

* Hang out in marketing forums to see who’s launching what, and when

* Hang out in JV forums to see what people are talking about as upcoming launches

I guess that’s not rocket science, but it has worked very well for me over the years, and I suspect it will do the same for you.

Great question and it let me kill a myth that hurts lots of aspiring affiliate marketers.

You do NOT have to buy every single product you promote! It’s fine to buy a product, and it can make your review of it much more personal, but if it’s not something you have to do.

So how can you not buy a product and still do a product review without misleading people? It’s easier than you think.

First, see what you can learn about the product from the sales page. There’s usually a huge amount of information in there that you can use to write your review. Pick the parts you want to focus on, or draw a reader’s attention to.

Second, ask the product creator if he’ll let you see a review copy. It’s amazing to me how many people don’t do this. Most of the time, the product creator will give you one, especially if you start by saying something like this:

“I own [your website URL] and I currently have a list of [your list size] and I think your product could be a great fit. Any way I could take a look at it so I can review it for a promo email?”

You obviously should have a list if you say you do. After that brief introduction, be sure to include some basic information about how you’ll promote the product. That shows a product creator that you have a plan, and will make him more likely to give you a review copy.

Third, read what other people say about the product. Google the product name and see what comes up. You’ll probably find a few review pages already out there that can give you some facts to use. And you can always summarize what other reviewers have said, something like this:

“I’ve seen several reviews that point out a bug in the software, but they say it’s not a big deal at all.”

If you’re willing to get a little creative, you can write great product reviews, but not have to spend a dime on products.

———-

All right, that wraps it up for this time.

If you like getting answers to questions like this, ask your own question! You can submit your question by filling out the simple form at:

http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/questions/

Every couple weeks or so, I’ll go through the questions and pick out 5-6 to answer in an email to people on my lists.

Your questions are what will make this email helpful, so please keep them coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer your question, but if the same question gets asked several times, I’ll try to answer that one. So don’t think, “Somebody’s probably asked that already.” Maybe so, but it’s worth asking anyway.

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.

P.S. If you know any Internet marketers who would enjoy this article, just send them an email with this link:
http://www.michaelrasmussen.com/internet-marketing-qa-issue-6