Here’s what happens when I make first contact with many of my consulting customers, subscribers or Information Marketer’sZone Members –

1. They are frustrated and baffled by poor results of their existing websites — OR —

2. They haven’t the first clue of what to do first – create a website, start a blog, advertise, write articles, build a list or produce a product

Not surprising that they are not getting results, that’s why we begin by simplifying and making the intial steps to making money online more effective.

Challenge #1:  Have you chosen a market where you are offering value – in other words, are you offering a definable set of people something that they desparately want?  If not, then there’s no sense wasting another minute because we KNOW the end result will be poor.  Oh…and another clarification – notice I said “something that they want” – not “something that they need”.  This is where experts run into problems – they are too smart for their market.  You can’t be ahead of your market – you must start by understanding what people want, then you can move them subtly to what they need – but first, you must market to them from where THEY are not YOU.

Challenge #2:  Do you understand the basic process.  For instance:

1. People search for something online

2. People arrive at your website (ideally a landing page that gives them a “taste” of what you have to offer in exchange for their contact information) – the dance begins…

3. People get to know, trust and like you by seeing your content and willingness to help BUT you don’t give them everything, just a taste — slow dancing

4. You present your offer to them with the critcal elements of building anticipation, growing trust and credibility, including social proof (testimonials, case studies, stories) and cap it off by an offer they cannot refuse

That is the process you want to get down to near perfection – this is the heartbeat of your internet business – a landing page with a giveaway and a sales page all with the umbrella of an autoresponder-driven list building system designed to walk your prospects through the pre-selling stage. 

I can tell you that 0% of newbies or even experienced marketers that come to us with poor results have this process down effectively – and boy…what a huge difference when you do.

Challenge #3:  Traffic.  There are a few problems here.  First, when you first launch the process in Challenge #2 – you can’t expect to convert many visitors into buyers unless you get REALLY lucky – so you are likely facing the reality that less than 1 in 300 or even 1 in 500 visitors will buy – but you need to go through that process so you can make improvements until you get to 2 or 3 in 100 people buying.  But…most peope that come to us are getting less than 50 visitors per day to their site…so do the math, they will likely see less than 1 sale every 10-days – pretty discouraging right? 

Second, traffic is generated by targeting keywords – either through online optimization (articles, sales pages, blog posts, etc…), through backlinks (where you are able to leave a link to your site from another website) or paid advertising such as pay-per-click – they all depend on targeting keywords that you believe will be used by people who seek out and are willing to pay for your products or services.  By choosing not to target specific keywords or to target the wrong keywords will mean many people will visit your site who are not really looking for what you have to offer which means that 1 in 200 or 1 in 500 may even turn into 1 in 1000 or more before you get a sale. 

What’s the solution?

Drive more traffic.  In the beginning expect that you will go through this test and refinement step – give yourself a month where you aim to get 200-300 visitors each day and tweak your landing and sales pages (and even your offering if necessary) every 2-3 days depending on your findings. 

Without decent traffic, you can’t get past this step – I would say this is why 75% of newbies with websites and products end up quitting when really this is just an interim step on the way to much greater success. 

Drive more relevant traffic:  By using free keyword suggestion tools and free competitive analysis tools online you can get very good at targeting a shortlist of keywords that are far more likely to be used by desparate searchers who really want to buy what you have – WHAM, that means more sales for you.

Think about reaching just 1 sale in 100 visitors with 200-300 visitors to your site each day – now you are making 2-3 sales each day, that’s more exciting isn’t it? 

How do you get to 200-300 visitors each day – that takes some knowledge of traffic generation and can be done using content generation, SEO along with paid advertising depending on your time and level of investment capability. 

The great part about understanding these 3 challenges is that you now have a way that you absolutely KNOW will make you money on the internet, it is just a matter of overcoming each of these 3 challenges. 

Of course, that is how we organize the training, tools and support available in Information Marketer’sZone – so if you want a helping hand as you build your profit and wealth machine on the internet, we would be happy to help you get there.