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.

I get massive amounts of email, way too much to answer even one percent of it every day.

Most of the people who send me emails need help with their online business in one way or another. They’re confused, or stuck, or don’t even know where to start.

What’s probably surprising to a lot of people, maybe even you, is that I really DO understand where you’re coming from…because I came from there myself.

Most of you know that I’ve been running a successful Internet business for six years now, since 2002. But successful today doesn’t mean I started that way. Let me tell you a bit of my story so you’ll understand why it makes sense to listen to the advice I’m going to offer you.

I started from scratch, with no money, no JV partners, no list, no advantages at all, really. In that sense, I can relate to anybody out there who’s starting from scratch and feels kind of lost and overwhelmed. I’ve been there!

As I learned what worked and what didn’t, I made a ton of mistakes. I had to spend (and waste) a bunch of money on trial and error. I got frustrated. There were many times I want to dump it all. Sound familiar?

Now I have a business that gives me financial freedom I could only dream of six years ago. Here’s what I mean…

I’m the top affiliate for most product launches I JV for, and I have raked in big profits from product launches, firesales, giveaways, resale rights, you name it.

My email promos regularly bring in five figures, and I’m earning more in passive income in a month than many people make in a year slaving at a desk.

I have an opt-in list of active readers who buy like crazy when I promote something, which I only do when I’m really behind it. That kind of list performance is probably why I get dozens of JV proposals every week.

And my products get endorsements from respected online experts like Allan Gardyne, Paul Myers, Jimmy D. Brown, Jim Daniels and others.

Absolutely none of that is to boast about how good I am. I told you that story so you’ll know that the advice I give is based on a level of success I bet most of you want. I’m no genius, but I’m not just “lucky” either. I’ve learned how to do this, and I want to teach you. I get all sorts of invitations to speak at big IM events, but I choose to teach only through my products, newsletter and blog. Today is an example of that.

If I had more time, I could answer emails and blog comments all day, but I’m one guy with a business to run. That said, I’m going to take a little time to teach this week. So consider this post an open invitation to ask me anything you want to.

You can ask about getting your business going, success factors, how to build a list, or anything else you want. I’ll hang out for the next two days to answer questions (not with a response time of seconds, but pretty quick during the day).

I really do care about helping all of you, but I have to manage how I do it. Posts like this are one simple way I can balance helping people and running my own business.

Be sure to bookmark this post and come back regularly to comment and read my answers to other people’s questions.

Have you always wanted to ask questions about your business, but you didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for a few hours of a business coach’s time? Here’s your chance.
Go ahead and ask away!

If you haven’t complained about it, you’ve probably heard other people complain. And you know what? You’re right. It IS tough to find good information, especially if you need to know how to start from scratch.

I get a ton of emails from people needing help with this stuff. Literally hundreds. And they usually ask very similar questions, because nobody’s ever laid out the simple steps you need to take to set up your own mini-sites that actually turn a profit.

The funny thing is, I used to be in the same situation myself. I was frustrated. I couldn’t find help anywhere. I knew I wasn’t stupid, but I needed somebody to lay out a blueprint for me to follow to get started…and not charge me an arm and a leg for it. I definitely can relate to people who are struggling with nowhere to turn.

So I did my part to fix that problem by offering a 100% free video course called MiniSite Profits Exposed. I launched it on Monday (it’s my first product in two years). You’ll find it here:

Click Here To Get FREE Private Access to
This $197 Value, Life Changing Product!

The course shows you a simple strategy for setting up a profit stream from your own product and website.

My goal was to give people the nuts and bolts of how to create mini-sites for themselves, without being technical geniuses. I won’t go over the entire course here, but here are some important items in there:

• The right mindset for building profitable mini-sites
• How to write hyper-converting copy for your squeeze page and your sales page (including the “blind bullets” technique that’s almost sure to get you more conversions)
• How to automate your business
• Simple strategies for increasing your profits with minimal extra effort
• And much more!

The main point of the course is that creating mini-sites is easy, once you know what you want to sell. In other words, once you have a product, even a very simple one that didn’t take you long to create, selling it with a mini-site is the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to make money.

Apparently the message is getting out there, because roughly 30,000 people have signed up so far. Here’s what just a couple of them said about the free course:

“Hi Michael,

Your Mini Site Profits Exposed Videos were a real eye opener for me. I want to thank you so much for your time, and effort in producing such top quality information. These videos alone will help people of all walks of life back on the right path to becoming successful online. This is the BEST information I have ever come across online to date: You can be sure I’ll be sharing this with as many struggling marketers as I can.”

- Gary Neame

“Mike,

I have to first off tell you that I am the most skeptical person on the planet when it comes to buying “How to make money” information. I don’t care if it’s online or at a convention/seminar. Well, so far this one is everything that you said it would be and more. In fact I have some programming knowledge and thought I would need it. It turns out, my girlfriend started setting up a site after I fell asleep three days ago and it’s already bringing in money. I’m not saying I’m buying an estate home soon, but it actually is as easy as you said and DOES WORK!! Thanks again for being so persistent with your emails to us.”

- Brad Rello

These are real people, probably very similar to you. They picked up the free course and watched the videos. As you can see from Brad’s comments, he’s ALREADY making money with this.

So now my question to you is…are you using this stuff yet?

The course is 100% free. Have you started applying it in your business? If not, why not? If so, what’s standing in your way so far?

All the best,

Michael Rasmussen
CEO, BulletProof Marketing, Inc.