Ethical Internet Marketer – Make More Money Online… Ethically!

When selling a product, a lot of people make the mistake of developing their product first, and then trying to find a market for it. Of course, the process should be reversed.

Find a market first that spends money, then find out what they want and give it to them.

It is certainly easier said than done, but there are a lot of places online where you can do your market research for free. They’ve done most of the work for you already. You just need to know where to go and what to do to connect all the dots.

Let me show you the process I go through when I’m trying to brainstorm for ideas.

For starters, I’m always aware of trends and current events in the real world. I read several newspapers each day, many magazines, both general and niche-specific, I watch the news, I listen to the radio. Occasionally something that I hear or read will stick with me. I may record my thoughts on my portable voice recorder; jot down some notes, whatever happens to be convenient for me. Sometimes I’ll call my office voice mail and leave myself a message.

But at some point I’ll have several broad ideas to research. I want to look deeper. And I want to make sure there is a good market for them before I even think about creating a product.

So I’ll begin completing the following steps:

Google Zeitgeist – www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

To begin with, I check out the hottest search trends at Google Zeitgeist. If I am targeting the US market, I’ll click on “U.S. Zeitgeist,” otherwise I’ll look at “Zeitgeist Around the World.” At this point I am just looking for ideas.

If I see that a particular topic is hot, I’ll make a note of it and look at more targeted sub-niches later on at more specialized sites (which I’ll show you shortly).

Lycos Top 50 – 50.lycos.com

The Lycos Top 50 is another site, like Google Zeitgeist, where I will review the latest trends and look for hot topics to explore further. I will also look at Yahoo! Buzz for ideas as well (see below).

Yahoo! Buzz – buzz.yahoo.com

eBay Pulse – pulse.ebay.com

The eBay Pulse site is a great place to start looking at sub-niches. What I will do is select the category first (using the topics I’ve gathered from looking at the previous sites), then look for profitable sub-niches by then selecting a sub-category.

The best chance for success is if I am as specific as possible with my niche selection. In the example below, I don’t want to sell to the “crafts” niche.

I want to sell to grandmothers who enjoy giving their latch rug hooking gifts to their families and friends. Whatever. You get the idea.

Also, I’ll always check the largest stores as well to see what they’re selling. There has to be a reason they are the largest stores. They must be doing something right.

eBay also puts out a PDF report of their hottest categories each month, available at
pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf.

Now that I have some potential sub-niches to work with, I want to see how much of a market there is there…. ( to be continued…).

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My friend Dirk Wagner has just released his latest “Dirk’s Crazy Week” deal where you’ll find great videos about how to put niche marketing into action and actually make money from it.

And it’s priced incredibly low: tinyurl.com/3y3s4l

In the last few days I have been checking the number of backlinks for several of my niche marketing domains…

I was a little irritated that none of my domains was showing up any backlinks in MSN Search even though most of my domains have at least a few dozen links pointing to my sites in Yahoo and Google. Now I have found the explanation for this: MSN decided to turn off advanced query syntax as there were too many automated (software generated) queries. Queries like inurl: or linkdomain: have stopped working. This is really a pity because you won’t have any hints anymore how well your domain is doing in MSN. The number of backlinks has been an indicator of search engine success for quite a while now. I hope, it will be enabled again very soon…

Your subconcious mind can feed on thoughts of defeat or thoughts of success.

It’s a bit of a chain reaction. What you decide to think about or dwell on will leave an impression on your mind that will effect everything you do day in and day out.

A Man is as Big as the Measure of His Thinking

It’s simple really. If you give up and get frustrated with something, that frustration will have a negative impact on the rest of your activities. On the other hand if you plow through something, work hard and find a solution, the impact of that victory will be seen throughout your activities…

Confidence stems from convincing yourself you can…

I often see people arguing online and getting all worked up because of some issue or whatever… And a lot of times you will see emotion come out of people that you know is impacting their attitude at least in the short term.

I’m not saying I’m always level… but you can’t get too caught up emotionally or negatively in something that really isn’t necessary. Sometimes we must battle; other times it’s not going to make an impact anyway… just walk away and do something else.

You are the master of your attitude and because of that, you can control your effectiveness, productivity, and results online or offline in your business or personal life.

The choice is really yours to think what you think. It may take some effort to train yourself to think a certain way, but it’s worth it. That effort will translate to your subconscious and make for a better YOU.
You can decide to control your subconscious or turn it over to itself and let it control you.

Think Positive… not negative.

A lot of people will joke when someone starts chatting about positive attitudes and such… but I can guarantee you there is something to it. You will have much better relationships and results in your life if you are positive rather than negative…

A book worth picking up and reading about building a positive attitude is:
Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by W. Stone

I at least suggest taking a peek. This approach to life has made my life better and happier…
Many years ago I was at a stage in my life walking down the road of negativity and let my subconscious mind control my actions… that is no longer the case and I’m now much more effective in all aspects of my life.

This doesn’t mean I don’t get brake through episodes of negativity… I’m still human… but I have trained my mind to be much more positive and as a result have improved my life drastically…

Take it and Act!

Detlev

This time, I am going to review a product that I must warn you from. I purchased Michelle Andrew’s “Instant Money Vault” (no longer available) and to say that I was disappointed about the content is still an understatement…

First of all, during my purchase I reloaded the page 2 or 3 times and noted that she offered her product with 2 different price tags – $39.99 and $29. Some days ago, I saw a price of $47. Obviously, she was still split-testing her salesletter. After more than 3 weeks that this product has been on the market, I was thinking that this stage should have been over now (nevertheless split-testing IS a very good thing to do!!). Anyway, I purchased it for $29 and started reading it (she’s offering an audio version, too).

And what I read really surprised me: It was the content from a Private Label Ebook by Michael Rasmussen that I had purchased the rights to more than a year ago! “Michelle” has taken that ebook and just added an introduction about some “Instant Affiliate Websites” which you should purchase (they are a bonus for a lot of ebooks related to making money with Google Adwords) through her link (which gives her an instant $20 commission). Of course, it is legitimate to make recommendations for related products. I’m doing that too if suitable.

But…

“She” doesn’t even explain what you have to do to make money with these “Instant Affiliate Websites”. Yet, she goes on explaining why she’s recommending that you upgrade to the PRO version. Of course, the “PRO version” has many more features and some free vouchers for Google Adwords and Yahoo advertising worth $100. Then “she” says “Later I will show you how to turn $100 worth of advertising into $5000 of profit“. I still have to find that chapter where she is explaining anything like that…

Why am I putting the “she” in brackets?

Because I found out that this is not a true identity. In reality, this is another website by a guy called “Mark Warren” – founder of the “Ultimate Wealth Package”. And surprise, surprise, this “Ultimate Wealth Package” seems to consist of the same business which is selling review sites to people who in turn have to promote them on Google Adwords.

I know, an income like the one in their screenshots can be earned. They are not showing you the whole story, though. Because if you are advertising in such an overcrowded field like Internet marketing, Weight Loss or Forex where you’ll find the most profitable products, your Google Adwords costs will be extremely high. You may be lucky if you can break even with your commissions. Most of the times, they are just showing you their income without mentioning anything about their advertising costs…

The kicker was that this package was promoted by Andrew Fox just yesterday:

“Michelle told me some of the tactic’s I taught her in my product ‘The Guru Slayer’ really helped explode her income.”

– Yeah, sure….!!

And another statement from Andrew: “I’ve just reviewed it and there are *DEFINITELY* some gold nuggets inside this one… “

– Mmmmmhh, I wonder where he had seen those “gold nuggets”… Maybe, I need a better shovel…

The testimonials and screenshots are most likely from Mark Warren himself who is making good money with his “Ultimate Wealth Package”. To me, this a try from him to extend his reach as probably not enough people are still promoting his Ultimate Wealth Package. Because in the Internet marketing field, the attention span for new products is not very long. If something is on the market for more than 3 months, it’s considered “old hat” already even if it’s a phenomenal product. Sad, but true…!

So my recommendation is to stay away from this product. You won’t find any new “insider secrets” in that “Instant Money Vault” – just a bunch of “old” Private Label Ebooks and even the main product is a relabeled Private Label Internet Marketing Ebook. Compliments for the salesletter, though. It really sucks people in and newbies are very likely to make a purchase.

If you want a good product which will explain all the Internet marketing basics to you then I’d rather recommend Holly Mann’s ebook called “Honest Riches” which I had reviewed some time ago.

Let me know what you think of my review by making a comment on this post.

Creativity…

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectivity of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide.

All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them moiré popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.