I’ve been online now for three years and have taught myself how to do a number of things related to blogging and internet marketing.  When I first started, I basically knew nothing about either subject.  I didn’t know what WordPress was, didn’t know the first thing about blogging, plug-ins, ftp, hosting, buying domain names and the likes.  It seemed pretty scary stuff at the time, but also intriguing.

With tons of research, watching videos, purchasing books and courses, the one thing I have found out is that internet marketing is not a cut and dry business.  There are many pieces to the puzzle of making money online and they are not always easy to find, understand and implement.

At this point, I have three WordPress blogs up and running and recently took a free mini-site template and totally transformed it to suit my needs and tastes using HTML, which I taught myself.  By the way, if you would like to learn HTML, the best learning resource I found at my local bookstore is a book called “Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML” written by Elisabeth & Eric Freeman.  This is a fabulous book that teaches those of us that are brain dead when it comes to technical stuff like this.  These people really have figured out how to teach people in a method that is Dick and Jane easy.  They call the book “A Brain-Friendly Guide”.  I was so excited because it was like teaching little children in first grade, and the lessons were really fun.  I was able to create my first actual web page that I could have uploaded to a hosting account (if I had one back then).

Anyway, taking all of the things I have learned under my belt, I’ve decided to do an EXPERIMENT and see if I can apply some of the techniques I’ve learned to actually make some real money (not the chump change from the side ads) online.

I also decided to write the processes I go through and the results, here on this page.  If I can be of help to others who are struggling  or just give some interesting facts, figures and resources, then I’ll at least have helped someone else.

July 1, 2010

The Value of Forums

I know it’s been a couple of weeks since my first post about Internet Marketing and my plans to log the information that I have learned along the way.  There has been a lot that has happened in these past two weeks.

First, in my desire to consume as much information as I can to educate myself, I have decided to join a couple different forums.  This was a big payoff, as it opened up a whole new world of information.  Not just the crap that you get from marketers in your email box promising you a free report or video, that is basically a set up for one of their product launches (you know what I’m talking about I’m sure if you are involved in marketing online in any way) but real information being shared by people who actually make a living online.  Jackpot!  I’m finally getting somewhere, lots of information with real value.

The most impressive forum is the popular Warrior Forum.  This forum was created for and caters to Internet Marketers, and everyone that is anyone is in there.  The Warrior forum members are a closely knit community and they really do help each other out!  I have found several threads where a Warrior has laid out a complete plan for one method or another on how they set up a system, which is a lucrative area of their online business.

It’s free to join the Warrior forum, although if you want to join the War Room, a private section of the forum, it currently costs a one time fee of $37.00 for life.  It will be some of the best money spent if your new to internet marketing and looking for valuable information.

The Warrior forum also has an area, where some members, for a small fee (I believe it’s $20.00) can post a WSO (Warrior Special Offer).  This is where you will find a number of offers, like really great pdf’s about every area of internet marketing, or people who find niches and put together a whole package for you to use in selling, in that particular niche.  All of these WSO’s must be offered to Warrior members at a discount that is not available outside of the forum.

Another great resource is from a lady that has been doing internet marketing for 13 years, is single and has raised her two children (now teenagers) from the money she makes doing online marketing, and she is in better financial shape then most.  Her name is Lynn Terry and the name of her site is called ClickNewz.com.  Lynn also has a member forum which you will find by visiting her site.  Her private area called the Elite Group, is a bit more pricey at $37.00 per month, but I found some valuable free pdf’s on keyword research, choosing domain names and choosing a niche that is so clearly spelled out, that any newbie who was having trouble truly understanding these key areas, would finally have the light bulb go off when reading Lynn’s reports.  All valuable resources that I will keep in my files to refer back to.

July 14, 2010

Affiliate Marketing

Things are starting to get exciting.  I have learned a ton of things, through the help of an actual online marketer, who does this for a living.  The fog has started to clear and I can now see that the prior path that I was on, would have been pretty fruitless and frustrating.

Building blogs and praying that someone will find them (which they really do over a very long period of time) is a good way to become discouraged fast.  I’ve put a lot of time and work into the blogs that I’ve created and after a few months on each, and seeing nothing really happening, each time I figured I picked the wrong topics to write about and there were either not enough people interested or there was too much competition already.   I was lost in cyberspace among the thousands and millions of other sites.

I really didn’t understand the whole marketing thing.  Oh, I understood the concept, but the hard facts were still a mystery.  My new mentor has taught me well!  I was persuaded to find a method of marketing that I would enjoy, e.g., blogging, affiliate marketing, etc.  I chose to go in the direction of building mini sites.  What are mini sites?  They are basically WordPress blogs, that have around 5 pages of content and are based around one product.

The idea here is to provide as much quality content to your readers, to either solve a problem, or help them find something that they are looking for; maybe a book or something on those lines, and then provide a link that gives the reader either a solution to their problem, or the item that they are looking to purchase.  Of course, the link would be an affiliate link, this way, when a purchase is made through your link, you would receive a commission for the referral and for all the time you put into creating that information to help someone.

The great thing about using WordPress, is that it is easy to set up and configure and there are literally thousandss of free WordPress Themes for you to choose from.  WordPress also has a plug-in for just about anything you can imagine! WordPress.org can be uploaded right to your hosting account server and it is absolutely free.  In most cases, your Web host may already have a button which will automatically install WordPress for you.

Prior to being taught to use the WordPress platform for mini sites, I had tried this idea on my own.  I took a free template that I was given, and spent some time studying html codes, which are needed to use a stand alone template.  The template turned out okay (I was pretty proud when I finished it) but it took me a whole week to get up a two page template.  I know I could have had a WordPress site set up in a matter of two days with a lot less frustration and a hugh selection of themes, instead of trying to re-create one using a sample template.

July 30, 2010

Mini Site Heaven

This next post will be about the first REAL mini site using the EASY method.  Stay tuned for the startling results of knowing how to do it the RIGHT way…  It blew me away!

Well, I have to say that I have learned much in the past month or so.  I’ve now created four (4) mini sites and was able to get the first two on page one of Google shortly after they were indexed.  The first site pretty much stayed on page one.  It bounced around for some time, but then ended up in the #1 position and stayed there for nearly a month.  While it was sitting there, I started working on the second site.  This site was a total pain in the butt, due to the type of site and the theme I used to set it up.  In order to set it up the way I wanted, I had to figure out how to adjust the html code.  I decided after spending nearly 3 weeks playing around with this site, that I would not attempt one like that again.  It is for the sale of a set of dvd’s from a former TV series.  There was almost no fresh content to write about, other than the descriptions, and no new news to keep anyone informed about, since the series is over.

My third site was on a certain baby product of which there are several different varieties.  I made the mistake of using a theme where making posts instead of pages was required for the home page.  It turned out okay, but has limitations for building backlinks to internal pages.  I just finished my 4th site and am not only please with it more than the other sites, I am learning how to create a site much faster and now have a list of the exact number of pages and WordPress plug-ins I need for each site that I intend to build.  I copied them to a folder, so that I don’t have to think about it.  If you’re a creative type of person, this is the fun part of putting all of this together.  It can also be a downfall, as you tend to tinker with things trying to get the look just right.  This can eat up hours of valuable time, even days.  The idea here is to get your site up and running within a day or two.  There are programs you can purchase that will actually cut the process in half or less.  You still have to have your content and other information available, but it is a sort of wizard that will pop up a few pages, you fill in the blanks, pick out a theme and it installs all of the rest of the stuff that is not hard, but time consuming.

So now that I have the site building down pat and know how to get on page one of Google, I want to make sure that I stay on page one, in the highest position possible.  In order to secure a top position on page one of Google, I need backlinks.  I have been going round and round in this area, but the person mentoring me has just confirmed the use of two programs he has been using with great results.  One of them is a $47.00 per month membership, but is a top notch site recommended by a very large portion of the marketing community.  The other is a product on Clickbank that he has tested for several months and has finally confirmed that it does the job quite well.

Being that I don’t want to take on any monthly fees at the present, I opted for the Clickbank product, with a one time fee of $67.00.  Since I just downloaded it yesterday, I have not had it up and running just yet, but, this product only submits your sites to web directories.  From what I have seen so far, I believe that this will only be one avenue for getting backlinks.  As I understand it, I need to have backlinks from different sources or Google will penalize me buy dropping my sites back in the rankings.  The idea is to have a bunch of natural backlinks coming from a variety of sources.  This is really the biggest part of the internet marketing game.  Without backlinks, you could be lost forever in cyberspace.  I will report on how the back linking is going in my next post and see if it starts making a difference with my sites positions.  My first site that was in the #1 spot, dropped down to #7 and my dvd site ended up disappearing for a couple of weeks and then came back and is bouncing around between page 2 and 3, so we will see how the links coming in affect their ratings.

Sept 9, 2010