Why be an Internet Marketer? Part Two

byDrawshot

872 followers

Updated 10 years ago

Part Two of a three part series. Part One of this series.

Again, I'd like to ask, just why do you want to be an internet marketer?

Are you sure you wouldn't rather spend yet another four or eight years on your education so you can start off with a nice load of debt to weigh yourself down? OR, maybe borrow the money to start a brick and mortar business? Maybe you're well out of that phase of life, maybe it’s better to spend your "retirement" working for another 10 years or more?

Now before I manage to aggravate everyone here, I understand that an education can be important, but unfortunately, the only guarantee there seems to be today, is not that you will certainly have a great job waiting for you when you graduate, but that you will have a huge debt to repay no matter if you have a job or not.

I have nothing against a brick and mortar business, other than the expense to set one up, and the failure rate. Depending on the type of business, failure rates can run up to between 70 to 90 percent.

That idea of working another 10 years or more? I can understand the need for more income, because the rate of inflation is much higher than the rate of increase for any retirement programs. Actually a lot of retirement plans have disappeared or been cut, not just trimmed, but cut way back. Personally I think that an internet business is hands down better for a new business start than any other.

You can start an internet business for free. The first few websites I made were years ago on a site called Geocities. They hosted free websites and I had a fan site for a video game, and I had a website devoted to playing pool. That billiard website is where my handle "Drawshot" came from. The sites were free, and I had discovered a few tricks that attracted people, and kept them on my sites. And I made a nice bit of change from ads and some affiliate links. A few people where I lived had seen my sites and next thing I knew I was in the web design business. I'm only going over this, not because it’s so brilliant, but because it’s just how I came into making an online income by accident. And I had never paid a dime for anything to get started.

Not everyone will do well as an internet marketer. It can depend on your choices, how complete your training is, and how hard you're willing to work. You have to be willing to understand that it can take time and there are no real get quick methods. Just ask yourself, If you really knew a "secret" way to make money hand over fist, would you be willing to share it with anyone that had the $49.95, $495, or even more? I know that if I had a fast instant method for cash, I would just keep doing it and not spend my time trying to sell the idea itself.

As promised, all the great reasons I think internet marketing is the best business to have.

1. Its low cost. You can even start for free, and mostly it is sweat equity, your labor, in building up the value of your business. There is a lot to learn in making a competitive website, but it can be done for free. If willing to pay a bit, you can have access to more training to help build your business even faster and more complete. If careful and you dodge those spam sites out there, it’s still dirt cheap compared to the cost of a formal education, or that brick and mortar business.

2. The rate of return on your investment (ROI). You can actually start making money within a short period of time, depending on how well you've picked your niche and type of website. Because the cost of startup is so low, you have a better chance of returning a payback on your investment quickly. Members here at WA have reported starting making money in their first month or two.

3. While a brick and mortar business requires you or an employee to be present in order to make sales, your online business is running 24/7. It never sleeps, calls out sick or goes on vacation. Every page you post is there basically forever, What that means is that if you stick with adding content to your website, or new websites, you can have hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of virtual sales people working every day for you. That post you make today could be producing income for you ten years from now.

4. Speaking of employees, first starting out you will not need any. Its great not having to have payroll expenses when your first starting a business. If there are any skills you may be lacking in, such as graphic arts, logo design, etc, you can hire someone at a free lance website at a reasonable price to create whatever it is you are looking for.

5. Your market is the world. There are over 2 billion people with an internet connection and its estimated that by the end of 2014 there will be over 3 billion. That is a far cry from the reach of a local business.

6. It’s easy to measure the results of your efforts. You can track everything and have it illustrated in detailed graphs. When you run advertising campaigns or do split testing you can see your leads, sales conversions, and traffic growth almost instantly, or even in real time. If your advertising is not working as planned, you can see what needs to be changed and do it quickly. No need to waste weeks or months to find out the results.

7. It’s the most effective method to reach consumers for most small and medium-size businesses. Consumers have become jaded to television advertising and print media ads. They run to the kitchen when ads come on TV, they skim through magazines and don't look at the ads. Direct mail often hits the trash unopened. When a purchase decision is being made, even for local purchase, online search is the most used tool buyers use to make decisions. The estimates say that between 81 and 89 percent of buyers use search engines prior to making a purchase.

8. Branding. What those buyers are looking for are reviews and information they can trust. That comes from content that is targeted, user friendly and gives value to the reader. If your content has good keywords, titles that are engaging, your articles will rank, and readers will come. Give them well written content, and presell them by showing how what you are promoting solves their problems. Then give them clickable links to that product. When your site ranks well for organic searches and you're having traffic, your brand grows and it’s easier to maintain and increase traffic with new articles and advertising.

9. You can use data to target your ads to your consumers buying habits. As time goes by if you watch your stats on sales, you will notice trends from your buyers and can adjust your advertising, or even promote new products based on their prior purchases. Another side to that is that many advertising platforms keep track of what products people search for, and can place ads that target those buyers on your site. Buyers are all individuals and some may make a purchase the 3rd time they see an ad and some may never buy. Marketing experts say that most will buy somewhere between 7 to 20 times of seeing an ad. You could pick up extra sales from searches they've done for other products days before.

10. Expansion is inexpensive and easy. When you're ready for a new challenge, it’s as easy as a new niche, website and domain name. You should already have the basics down on how to build your site and marketing, so the second time around should go even faster.

11. You can run your business from almost anywhere in the world. There is internet service available in almost every place you can go. You can work from home or at a beach half the world away, if no Wi-Fi is available at the beach, create your content and then upload it at the closest Wi-Fi hotspot available later.

12. My favorite part of online marketing. The bigger and busier your business becomes the more free time you can have to do what you want, not what you have to do. Once your business starts to take off, you can start setting up your virtual office and marketing team. With the internet as our tool, and business place, your team can be anywhere in the world. Many parts of the world have outsourcing companies which have talented people that can work for you full time or part time. All without needing a brick and mortar business office with the requisite building costs, electric power, water bills, etc. The more work done by your team, the more time you have for things you really want to pursue. I'm not saying that it’s going to be a life of leisure with no responsibilities, which would really suck in my book. But if you really don't want to be doing graphics, or studying sales charts, or whatever it is that bugs you. That’s what your team is for. You can then spend time doing what you really enjoy doing in your business. And you can have more free time to enjoy some of the things in life that make you happy.

Part two is longer then I thought soooo,

Coming Soon:
Part Three. Why I think you and I can be in that 5% that is making money with internet marketing.