StealthMoonlighter: The Online Marketer

Actually,  you only need one marketing system and an ambitious plan backed by solid organization skills.

This is the last lesson in this series and we’ll start with a quick review of what we have covered.

- OLD School Internet Marketing is Dead
- Forget the Myth of Getting Something for Nothing
- Paying to Play to Turn a Profit
- Get Leads From Traffic, Turn Traffic Into Leads

The final piece to the puzzle the “System”. Here’s why…

These days, every distributorship online since 2004 has some sort of membership area or “Back Office”. Your success in the organization is equal in proportion to your skill in using your back office. For instance, you use your back office to check your earnings, view and contact your downline, mail out messages and promotions (to leads!), find your affiliate link or distributor code. Some back offices even offer ways to link to company produced lead capture pages.

Most of the time, however, online marketers are not so lucky. Sales managers are only human – some are just out to make a quick buck. This leaves you caught up in the middle with product or a program that you want to sell, but with little if any support in selling it.

And if you’re totally inexperienced in selling of any sort, you may find yourself clueless as to how to get traffic that turns into leads and ultimately converts to sales.

What do you do if you’re failing, struggling, not making sales, getting low (or no) commissions, not finding leads, not converting enough traffics to leads, and not qualifying those leads and converting them into sales?

What do you do???

Do things systematically. Realize that you are a professional. You have a business and your main intent is to make money – even earn a living – as an online marketing product distributor. Here is your FIRST basic business system:

#1. Learn to use your program’s back office. If recorded training modules are available take the time to view and work through them.

#2. Seek out and work closely with a mentor. Distributors may have luck asking their upline or “team leader” for help or to be pointed in the direction of someone who does have time to spend as a mentor. If you’re an affiliate marketer, you might have luck by first feeling out the forums to see who is actually experiencing success selling what you sell. Get their insight into how to sell more of it.

3. Cut your lead generation and conversion time in have by using the most powerful submission system online today – Leadsomatic! Over the years scores of submission services have come and gone. Leadsomatic is a product of Veretekk functionality that has endured the test of time. You can sign up for free and start using the submission tools to benefit your business. This system was developed by Internet marketing gurus Mike Darling and Thomas Prendergast, the founders of the Veretekk lead generation and automated marketing system. Enjoy the free system! For a small fee you can have access to the full strength of Leadsomatic’s submission tools.

Simple, no? But wait… there’s more!

Here is your SECOND business system. These are things you can do to make sure you experience the success you crave.. and DESERVE!

1. Set some goals — and put them in writing. For example, you may decide to sell X amount of product in Y number of days. You may might make that a reality by creating Z number of articles, Squidoo lenses, HubPages, etc.

2. Vividly imagine success. If you’ve gotten to this point and you’ve done nothing but fail, take a few hours of “alone time” to vividly imagine what success will look like. Will it be a positive number in you PayPal or AlertPay account? Hearing your phone ring all day long as people clamor to follow you in a successful distributorship? Speaking at the local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club explaining how your business can benefit the community?

3. Create a schedule – and stick to it! For example, if you’re going to boost your sales, set aside one hour a day to write, one hour a week to update your Squidoo lenses and HubPages, 45 minutes a day to surf Traffic Exchanges, 45 minutes every other day to update your social networking sites and blogs.

4. Don’t expect instant results! Not everyone of you is at the same level when it comes to writing in general, and getting around on the Internet in particular. Building a good email follow up series takes time and creativity. Setting up a good squeeze page can be technically challenging. And when it comes to finding advertising outlets, do you gamble your money with Google AdWords, or do you try your luck with cheap but plentiful ad blasters and free FFA pages?

5. Start a dated journal – and write in it each day! If you went all out for 16 hours on a weekend, make a record of that. If you skipped a day and a half because you had stomach flu, write it down. You need to see how your time is being spent. This will help you understand why you are experiencing success/failure.

6. Learn and use advertisement tracking techniques. You can’t keep score if you don’t know what’s bringing you results – good, bad, or none. Professionals know where the money is going so that they can avoid needing to ask the friends and relatives for “fiscal bail outs”.

No review today because this topic is too important. Let’s continue with the understanding that you do have a product or program to sell right now, and that a sales page already exists for that item.

Your job: get more people to that sales page and ultimately sell more of that product.

You need a lead capture page – a “squeeze” page. What’s a lead capture page? It’s most like the page you visited to get to this part of this ecourse:

http://veretekk.stealthmoonlighter.com

Squeeze pages are easy to make. Once you learn how to create them, you’ll be way ahead of your competition. But the price of admission (remember that?) for your own army of squeeze pages involves getting your own domain and hosting account. It means “going pro”.

Now, as a business owner you should be ready, willing, and able to pay this modest price of admission. Why? Because you will, after all, be making much more money by having these than your competition is make (or rather NOT making) without these.

OK, then there’s this next step: developing and delivering your message.

What’s that? Didn’t know you had a message to deliver? Isn’t that the purpose of your affiliate manager’s sales page?

NO! Remember, it’s up to you to have an informed customer in order to effectively sell more of your product. Amateur marketers assume that “success” is assured by making the sale when the visitor sees the sales page.

But you and me – we’re professionals now. We use email follow up messages to give our readers (potential clients and potential sales team mates) “inside information”. The way we do this is simple. It involves placing a product squeeze page on your website (your domain name listed with your web hosting account) and, once someone fills in name and email address information, you begin to send them a series of messages related to your product, program, service, or idea.

It’s the same simple steps that got you to this, Message #4, of my email follow up series. Let me explain…

1. You saw my lead capture page or other news about this ecourse
2. You signed up and “opted in” to receive these messages
3. You’re now learning how easy it is to turn traffic into leads
4. By the end of this Traffic & Lead Generation series you may or may not agree to go further and get personal training from me as I show you how to get leads, customers, and an active downline for life

At this point you may be wondering how YOU can get people to read what you have to say about your product, program, service, or idea.

It’s so simple. Just advertise.

But advertise sensibly. Inexpensively. On the internet it is possible to pay so little for quite a lot of advertising.

What poor distributors and failing affiliate marketers don’t understand is how to work with that low cost advertising to turn it into a living (as in high 5- to 6-figure income). Don’t worry because that’s exactly what I will show you. Just keep your eyes open for tomorrow’s lesson: “You Need a System… A GOOD One”

It’s inevitable. As an online marketer you will continually need to pay some money in order to realize a profit.

Last time, we looked at what you need in order to do business on the Internet – or even OFF-line for that matter. Let’s take a closer look…

1. You need a product to sell. Internet marketers can find things to sell all over the Internet. Just go to ClickBank, LinkShare, ShareASale, Commission Junction, Joe Bucks, Exclusive Health Affiliates, AsSeenOnTV.com… and the list goes on. Those of you who are involved in network marketing as product distributors are familiar with products like Herbalife, Trivita, Mary Kay, Avon, Tupperware… and that list goes on, too. In fact, if you’re reading this right now, you probably already have a product, service, program, or idea to sell. So it’s obvious you need…

2. A place to “hang your shingle”. In the brick & mortar world that can be as simple as handing out business cards (i.e., your “paper shingle”) and as complicated as renting office space, hiring staff, and running newspaper and Yellow Pages ads (i.e., the “in your face shingle”). A more simple, cost effective, efficient, accepted, recommeded, and cooler way of doing business is to have your own website.

BUT not just your standard company website. No! This is the thing that poor distributors and struggling affiliate marketers don’t understand. If you’ve been struggling and getting no where, then you’re about to “get it”.

What you need is a way to, as we say in direct sales, qualify your customers. You need a lead capture page – a “squeeze” page. Or even an army of these. When people find your “squeeze” page they’ll give you their email address and name if they seriously want or need what you’re offering. As for the people who leave without requesting info… well, you’ve both just saved each other a bunch of time. But in order to bring those people to your “squeeze” page you need…

3. A way to draw potential customers to your lead capture page. You need traffic that can be turned into leads. Next, you need to qualify those leads and turn a potential customer into an informed individual, and then into a buyer of your product or service. And if all you want is to sell more and more of your product, then continue to Item #4 below. But once the sale is made…

4. The product gets delivered. As a distributor of physical product you must get items into our customer’s hands. Online distribution usually has standard delivery channels. If you’re an affiliate marketer of digital products, the transer happens instantly over the Internet. Once delivery of any product is made, the transaction is complete. But what if your customer wants to make money selling more of the thing you just delivered? You then need…

5. A way to deliver instructions about promoting and selling the product. If the client that buys your product wants to have success selling more of the product he/she just bought from you, you need to make that client an informed product seller/distributor. In this case, you need a method of delivering helpful information on the sales strategy and techniques you’ve used to become successful. A “step-by-step” system for success may work once you determine that your potential sales partner is teachable and serious enough to follow through.

Seems simple, no? Again, all you need is…

1. a product to sell
2. a place to “hang your shingle”
3. a way to draw a crowd of customers
4. a method of receiving payment and making delivery
5. a way to deliver instructions about promoting and selling the product

Time for you to think about your own situation. What do you not have yet? A product to sell? A squeeze page (or several) for the product(s) you’re trying to promote? A method for gather leads, turning those leads into potential clients and ultimately into paying customers? A dependable method of receiving payment and making delivery? And, when you do find people who want to make money selling the things you make money selling, do you (or does your affiliate manager) have a logical and easy-to-follow system for promoting and selling those products?

In short, do you have a good support system for the work that you do as an affiliate marketer or product distributor?

And if you are ever put in a position to help others in your organization, do you have the tools to teach them? If you sell a product that pays commissions on the sames made by others in your sales team or downline, do you have a willingness to help those new sellers succeed?

If it’s a matter of being willing to help others sell more product – even if their success at selling makes them more money than you – then remember that quote from the first installment?

“You can get whatever you want, if you can help enough people get whatever they want.”
– Zig Ziglar

OK, now let’s see about getting the leads you need to find the customers and build your team of super affiliates and distributors. Next lesson: “Get leads from traffic to turn traffic into leads”.

If you’re in Internet Marketing, you can forget the myth of getting something for nothing. Remember these sayings?

• Nothing in life is _______.
• You get what you _______ for.
• There’s no such thing as a _______ lunch.

I know you can fill in the blanks. But here’s the dilema:

As an affiliate marketer, you want to keep your expenses as low as possible when it comes to selling other people’s products, programs, and services. After all, you’ve already lost money buying a hard drive full of “How To” information from first one guru then another.

Which of these phrases describes you right now?

1. you work every day but you’re still broke
2. you’re hanging onto your steady job by a thread; layoffs are emenent
3. you just got laid off
4. you’re chronically unemployed

Bottom line, you want your very own legitimate method for making money from home, but you can’t afford to loose anymore time, effort, or money chasing another guru’s dream scheme.

The price of admission to making a steady dependable income in any business – off or on-line – is still just that: a Price.

Think about this: if you want to make money for without taking on some sort of financial responsibility to get it, then I’ve got just the thing. It’s called a job. Go get one NOW if you’re desperate for money. But look out! Unless you go into commissioned or direct sales you’ll NEVER be adequately paid for the work you put in.

But wait… isn’t online marketing just that? A sales gig? Commissioned sales, no less?

Yes. Absolutely. But there’s none of the “face to face”, flesh pumping, fancy (and expensive) wining and dining, trappings involved here. More about that later, but first…

Let’s be sensible. All you need to “make it” in online sales is

1. a product to sell
2. a place to “hang your shingle”
3. a way to draw a crowd of customers
4. a method of receiving payment and making delivery
5. a way to deliver instructions about promoting and selling the product

The first and second of these four things can be found free in the world of the affiliate marketer.

The last three? We’ll get into that tomorrow when we discuss, “Paying to play to turn a profit”.

“You can get whatever you want, if you can help enough people get whatever they want.”
– Zig Ziglar

Have you been promoting products from ClickBank, LinkShare, Commission Junction, or other affiliate marketplaces? Are you a distributor in business for yourself as you get people happily involved in Herbalife, Trivita, Mary Kay, Avon, etc.?

Who’s there to help you?

Helping others by showing them how to sell makes more sense, doesn’t it? Some affiliate managers and distribution team leaders miss that opportunity in a big way. They operate from the OLD School mentality. They all have lives to lead outside of “the business”. So the occasionally leave you and me to fend for ourselves. They might post sample sales letters, text ads, forum signatures, and banners on their promotion areas, but they don’t actually teach or show us how to be creative or innovative in using them.

Listen. The field is wide open for Leaders. Become a leader, and you become a hero to your organization.

You can help others find useful and resourceful ways to promote and sell digital and physical products – and you don’t have to be the product’s affiliate manager or main distribution outlet to do it.

You do, however, need to be a leader!

It’s simple. Just be able and willing to show others how to make money with the products you sell yourself. Take the initiative to build a team of super affiliates. Simply teach them by showing them how to…

1. create content (i.e., ads, lead capture pages, articles and/or press releases)
2. get traffic
3. create leads from that traffic
4. convert those leads into sales

… just like I’m about to show you how to do.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s lesson, “Forget the Myth of Getting Something for Nothing”.