The Cheap Internet Marketer

Recently I was asked a question about niches — specifically, a person was confused about how to tell if an online  niche was going to be profitable or not. 

Here’s an excerpt from my answer that you might find very helpful if you’re also confused about how to find niches.

Find a fairly large market that interests you (being passionate about the subject is nice but not required, but it does need to be interesting) and that can be broken down into some niches and sub-niches.  Then look to see what type products the people in the market and niches are buying.  Find a similar product and get it out there and promote it, and you should be able to make some money. T he reason for niches and sub-niches is so you can build a list with your first product and then later sell the subscribers different but related products.

Buyers is the real key — some markets and niches are made up of people who are looking mainly for information or freebies (or who have no money to spend, i.e. most college kids), but are not actually buying.  If you find that people in your niche are lookers, not buyers, drop that market and move on to a better one.

If you take your time and do a thorough job on your research, identifying good niches is really not hard.  The key is good research, and knowing what to look for and where to look.  This is one of the things I really like about “The Niche Detector” — there’s a lot of information on how to do the basic research to find profitable niches.  And while you are finding your niches, you are also building a target list of  long-tailed keywords that you can use in your articles and ad campaigns.  And you learn to do this using all free resources.  If you’re looking for an easy to use but effective research system, this is for you.

Remember — Buyers — always look for Buyers, and you’ll be on the right track. 

Here is my long answer to the first big question that most newcomers to Internet Marketing ask. 

You can get started using all free resources and spend zero dollars, but to be honest, it’s tough to do.  Let me explain how to spend zero dollars, and also explain why it’s not really a great idea.

First, you will want to get started selling affiliate products.  You can sign up at ClickBank and Commission Junction and other sites to sell affiliate products for no charge.  Most Marketers start with affiliate products and then add their own products later.  And just about all Marketers, even the big guys, continue to sell affiliate products along with their own products.  Affiliate selling is great. 

How do you sell your affiliate products?  Well, you can set up a blog at one of the free blog sites like Blogger.com, MyBlogSite.com, Wordpress.com and several others.   You can also set up simple free web sites on Hubpages or Squidoo and a few other sites.

Here’s why spending zero dollars to get started is not such a great idea — in order to use one of these sites, you are required to agree to their Terms of Service — and this puts the free sites are in control of your site and your content.  They are allowing you to use their web space, but only if you agree to play by their rules.  And they can change their rules at any time with no advance notice.  

Lots of people use these free sites and you can put up some very good looking blogs and websites, but you must be very careful to read and to comply with their Terms of Service, and keep up-to-date backups of all your content.  The free sites can (and will) lock your blog/website and/or delete your content if they decide it’s too commercial or objectionable in some way.   And if you don’t have current backups when this happens, it’s too bad. 

The free sites are in control of your content, and they can decide to shut you down with no notice.  And writing your content and designing your web site takes a lot of time and effort.  You don’t want some unknown person at one of these sites to dump all your work — and believe me, it definitely does happen.

Given the problems just mentioned, your best bet is to buy web hosting and your own URL, and host your own web site and blog.   There are a lot of really excellent web hosting services available, way too many to even begin to list.  I personally use BlueHost and love them, and I buy my domains through them, but you can use any hosting service you want, and buy domains through any company you want.

Moving on — to be successful long term in Internet Marketing, you’ll need to build your list.  The “Can SPAM Act” that was passed several years ago changed list building for everyone.  At one time you could get list-managing software and host your list on your own site, but it’s no longer a good option.  So you need an AutoResponder service that will keep you in compliance with Can SPAM, which requires double-optins, among other things. 

There are quite a few autoresponder services out there, the two biggest and best are AWeber and GetResponse.  It’s possible to use free autoresponder services, but they’re typically not great, and most people eventually change to one of the paid services. 

This is where you run into problems, because you can’t transfer your list from one service to another.  If you change your autoresponder service, you are not allowed to just move your list of subscribers from the old service to the new one.  Instead, everyone on your list is required to go through the opt-in process again.  And a whole lot of people will not bother to do this, so you lose a lot of your subscribers.  Getting subscribers takes a lot of work, you don’t want to have to start over.

Okay, we’ve discussed the pros and cons — so if you decide to buy services, how much does all of this cost? 

It depends on the company, of course, but estimate $9 or $10 per month for web hosting.  URLs cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per year, depending on the ending — .com is the most expensive, .net and .org and others cost less.  So you can get a year’s web hosting and one domain (URL) for less than $150 per year.  An autoresponder service is more expensive and their charges change depending on how many subscribers you have, but you should probably budget about $200 per year. 

If you have the money, plan on spending at least $350 per year on your business tools.   You don’t have to spend it all at one time, you can start with web hosting for a couple months and one URL, then add the autoresponder once you get up and running.   If you can possibly afford it, purchasing your own web hosting, URL and autoresponder service is the best thing you can do to safeguard your business.

One of the most popular internet selling methods today is purchasing and reselling  products with Resale Rights.   Resale Rights products can be ebooks, software, MP3 audios, single articles or a series of articles, videos, or reports.   Put very simply, you buy the  product and then resell it, depending on the type of Rights you purchased and what your License allows you to do.

There’s a lot of confusion about the differences in the type of Resale Rights products, so here’s a short explanation of the main types of rights.

Resale Rights (RR) – Some products come with Resale Rights automatically, other require you to purchase  the resale rights to the product separately, but you always have to purchase the product.  The product will come with a License, which tells you what you can and cannot do with the product, and you usually receive a Sales Page that you can set up on your website.  You are normally not allowed to make any changes to the product.

Master Resale Rights (MRR) — You receive all the rights included with Resale Rights, PLUS you can sell the rights on to your customers.  This means you can choose to sell the product only, or sell the product with resale rights.   Check the License for details, but normally you are not allowed to make any changes to MRR products.

Private Label Rights (PLR) — You have quite a bit of flexibility in the way you use the product, and you will be given the source code so you can make changes.  You can edit it, break it apart into articles, claim authorship, add affiliate links, and sell or publish it in almost any form.  Again, always check the License for details.

Public Domain Content — Very similar to PLR, can be changed and edited or published as is, and can be sold commercially.  Content that is considered to be in the Public Domain will have been created between 1923 and 1963 and will have not had the copyright renewed.  

Print this list out and keep it for your reference.  The main thing to remember is that you will always receive a License that tells you what you can and cannot do with that specific product.   When in doubt, check the license.

Make Money Online with PLR

Here’s a link to a Free Report from Jimmy D. Brown titled “Private Label Rights (PLR) Secrets” that gives you some excellent information on how to use PLR products to create your own money-making Small Report business.  It’s free and it will give you great ideas on how to make some cash.

So you’ve decided to get into Internet Marketing — but now you’re not sure what to do next.  Okay, let’s start simply.

The first step you have to take is deciding HOW you’re going to sell — are you planning to sell affiliate products?  Do you want to create your own products, or sell Private Label Rights products?  Do you want to create and sell e-courses or coaching? 

There’s no right or wrong answer here, and there are other selling methods available to you, too, but these I’ve listed are the most commonly used methods.  As a beginner, you should pick one method and concentrate all you efforts there until you see results (sales), but you can certainly plan to eventually use several methods of selling. 

Once you’ve picked your method, the next thing to do is find your Target Market — the group of people you’re going to sell to.  You want to decide on a fairly broad Target Market, and then narrow your focus to come up with your first product.   You’re looking for a Market where you can build a list and then sell multiple related products to your list members.  Or to put it another way, you want a Market that contains many smaller Niches — then you’ll pick one of the Niches, find a product, and start selling.   (If Niches confuses you, download my Free report called “Simple Niches” and read it, it’ll make a lot more sense.  Look for the popover.)

Take your time here and do some careful research, it will definitely pay off.  If you jump into creating web or blog content or a product without doing enough research, you may find that your Market doesn’t buy, or is not looking for what you are selling.  You want to be sure you’re targeting a Market that has money and buys. 

If doing all this research sounds difficult and time consuming, take a deep breath and relax – Niche research is not difficult if you have a good system to follow.   The Niche Detector  gives you a step-by-step system to follow that is simple but effective, follow the methods and you’ll quickly find a good, targeted market full of buyers, and you’ll have done some great keyword research, too.  I really love the way it finds good Markets and Niches, and at the same time gives you grea keywords.   It’s good to do this research, but getting it done quickly is even better.  I follow The Niche Detector system, and it works very well for me.

For most people, internet marketing is all about setting up multiple income streams, most people make a few hundred dollars a month off of this project, another hundred or two from the next project, etc.  All the little (and every now and then, not so little) streams join together to create a large river of income.

If you want to get to that nice large river of income, the first step you must take is to sit down in a quiet spot with a pen and some paper, and make a Plan.  It can be a flow chart, or a couple of written paragraphs, or a bulleted list.  The format doesn’t matter, as long as it shows your objectives for your business, and how you are going to meet those objectives. 

Making a plan is extremely important because it helps you focus on What you want to do, and How you’re going to do it.  Once you have the plan, put it where you can look at it regularly, and than look at it often to make sure you’re staying with your plan.  

Now you may be thinking, what a crock, I need to spend my time making some money, not making a plan.   And I do understand, making money is everyone’s objective, but please  take the time to formulate your plan and write it down.  Why?

Well,  most people who go into Internet Marketing fail because of two main reasons.  The first — they read and research, and never actually do anything.  This is the number one reason for failure.  You have to make some decisions and Take Action.  Lots of people never make it past this.

Know what the number two reason for failure is?  Not sticking with anything long enough to see results, chasing every new product that’s lauched or every new method you read about.  People don’t have a plan of action, and flounder all over looking for magic to happen.  And there is no magic to Internet Marketing, it’s a business like any offline business — it takes work, and you need to have a Plan, and you need to Work The Plan.  

There are quite a few methods of selling in Internet Marketing, and you can be successful with any one of them if you stay focused and don’t allow yourself to get frustrated and give up and quit.   That’s where the Plan comes in.  Read it regularly, make sure you’re following it and not leaving things out.  Use it to help you stay on track.

So if you haven’t made your Plan yet, please do it today, you’ll need it sooner than you think.   It really is that important.