When you think of your new Internet marketing business, think in terms of starting a small business in your home town. What would be expected of you?

By whom?

Your customers.

Let’s say you go take the free course on starting a new business at your local community college or one sponsored by your local chamber of commerce. What would they tell you?

Now, I haven’t been to one of those courses for a long time but the first thing you would look at would be the competition.

This simple fact of life is so often ignored by new marketers on the net and by dumb old men like me.

There are two ways to look at competition. There are probably plenty more but I’m keeping things simple. They are:

1. The competition will kill you.

2. The competition will help you.

I know marketers who are successful who like to jump right in where the competition is intense. The reason it is intense is that the money is there. That is where the eager buyers hang out.

So they pick an intensely competitive area BUT they do not jump in without their goggles one.

They study the market.

They look for a different approach to the market.

What are these buyers really after?

What bait will make them take the hook?

What product will be a better solution to their problem?

What headline can I use to make them want to get their greedy hands on this product?

What list of benefits can I present to help them make the decision to buy?

These marketers are looking for a problem to solve and then they are going to use every hook and crook to attract buyers.

See, it is just like fishing.

Now you wouldn’t build a bakery next to an existing bakery, would you?

Why not?

What will the market support?
Don’t they put fast food joints next to each other.

Don’t they put stores in malls where there are tons of other stores?

You can build a bakery if it is not producing the same products as the one next store.

Maybe your bakery makes meat pies. So they get a loaf of bread and a cake next door and then come into your place to get meat pies for dinner.

Now what I’m trying to say in my clumsy way is that business is business.

Competition is competition.

Life is life.

The Problem for New Marketers

One of the first thing we do as a new marketer is to build a website for a product or products or services.

With WAU members, a site can look professional from the start because we have the WordPress modules.

We can even have free sites. Even a visitor can get a couple of free sites for 30 days.

The site is not the problem in all cases, especially if it is just a review site of several products that the writer is very familiar with.

Everyone like a review.

Ryan Moran said he made $80 grand a year with review sites.

I guess if he didn’t make that much or more, he made something else. He made about $500 K in college.

But Ryan learned right off that if you have no traffic, you have no business.

Ryan always tested keywords with pay-per-click. That is what he said. Once he found the very best keywords, then he used article marketing and other free methods to drive traffic to his sites.

Pay-per-click can be hazardous to the financial health of new members. Make sure you are well tutored on the subject (right here at WAU) and keep it limited to your purpose. I would not start with Google.

I suggest that a new member get a good product, a product that people are in a frenzy for, and then use whatever methods available to drive traffic to that site.

I would use small paid ads in other people’s ezines to test the power of the ads and to tweak them to the point that they are paying off. Then I would submit them to other newsletter, using a proven ad to gain traffic.

In one of my tutorial, I suggested inexpensive print advertising, putting the ads only where similar ads are present. For ezines, see what is being advertised before submitting the ad.

I know that article writing is free advertising but if the article is not hitting your market, you will get no clicks. So you may as well go to a place where you know there is a market and find the keywords that work. Then you will be a more effective writer.

I hope members will comment on this issue.

Use the traffic generating methods taught here at WAU such as forums and social marketing. You might drive some traffic to your site by USFree ads or other ad listing service. It may not be the most effective way but it could bring some traffic.

Anyway, I keep trying because member Travis uses it. The difference seems to be that he knows what he is doing.

Gather Email Addresses

You will want to invite members to your site to leave their email address. It cost money to collect these names but you can just keep them on a free mailing list to start. But get the names and keep providing good information to your list members. A member should be worth $1 a month to you. Gather a thousand names and you have income. You will be able to hire a listing service with all the advantages of automatic and broadcast messaging.

Don’t Forget Video

If you make up a review site, have a video on the site or point it to a video. Make sure vendors have a good video on their page, one that convinces buyers to take the plunge. A review with links to vendors with good videos will be to your advantage.

I have been testing USFreeAds by telling the readers to watch the video by giving a click. Then they are on the vendor’s page with the video.

I’ll let you know if that works.

Conclusion

Well, I hope I haven’t confused everybody with my ranting.

I’m only trying to help.

John

Internet Business Tool Center