Internet Marketing From An Affiliate Marketer's Perspective

Here is a post that I liked from an affiliate marketer that is fairly new and successful to the Internet Marketing arena. The post is very good and I highly recommend checking it out. You can find the original post at:

Everything I’ve Learned About Internet Marketing So Far…

Hello Hello! It’s Dan, the Deadbeat Super Affiliate.

I’m on a blogging kick this week, so here we are again…and thanks for coming back :)

OK…to the point. It’s been about a year and a half since I got started in this internet marketing game, and since then I’ve had multiple 5 figure months (profit) – but to be honest with you, it’s been one hell of a roller coaster. I’ve also learned a lot along the way, and that’s what I want to share with you.

First I want to address the mental and emotional aspect of making money online because it’s very important.

I don’t want to sound like a self-improvement “guru”, but if you don’t have the right mental and emotional fortitude, you will fail online. I can tell you this with 100% certainty. Here is what you should know:

* Making money online is an emotional roller freakin’ coaster – there are going to be times when you feel defeated, when you feel like you want to give up, and when you feel like everything you have built has been a complete waste of time. There are also going to be times when you feel like you are top of the world when you make those big sales days. While yes, I no longer struggle as much with this feeling, it’s still there, just a lot more feint…and I truly believe this feeling will never go away until I have at least a couple million dollars stashed away in the bank.

In fact, just the other day I contemplated for a minute or two that it would be so much easier to just give up and go back to college and finish my degree…because let’s face it…it is so much less stressful knowing that all you have to do is go to your job every day and you will be OK. But that’s not who I am…

And when it comes down to it, once you get locked into that corporate mindset, your dreams slowly get sucked away from you. Sure, you can make a good living as an employee. My father for example, makes REALLY good money as a senior electrical engineer for GE. To the tune of around $140k/year. That’s more money than I make right now, but my income level is not set. With my business, I have the potential to make whatever I want. Sure, it takes time…and hell, I may even screw up a time or two and lose some money, but there is no limit to what I can achieve income wise. I also know that if I continue to work and push my business, even if I fail miserably 10, 20, or even 30 times, EVENTUALLY I will hit a winner and be set for life.

* Your success lies in you, not the product you buy or the guru you follow – I know this sounds cheesy, but YOU determine whether or not you will be successful. I have heard a TON of excuses from people why they don’t make money online: “I’m waiting for guru x to launch his new product then I’ll finally start making money online”. Epic fail. The only reason you aren’t making money online is because YOU are too lazy. YOU are looking for a magic bullet. YOU are relying on someone else to make you successful. The only way you become successful with this whole make money online game is if YOU put in the work and take responsibility for your actions.

I don’t mean to sound condescending in any way here, but I am tired of hearing excuses. I don’t care about your sob story about why you can’t make this work because there are no excuses. One of my online friends is a single mom of 5 and she is KILLING it right now online. She just pulled off a 6 figure launch last month and I don’t doubt for a minute that she will have a 7 figure business in no time. If she can do it, YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE.

* Also, learn to identify the “too good to be true” feeling – I remember vividly when I created my first product about starting your own web hosting business. While I was creating it, in my head I had this delusion that I would have a $10,000/m business from this product. WRONG. In total, I think that product sold maybe $5,000 worth of copies before I realized it was a dud. The fact is, in this day and age, you won’t become rich after you ‘launch’ your first product. Realistically, we’re talking 6, 7, 8, or even 10 products before you finally get to where you want to be. Sorry if I am stomping on your dreams here, but you need to know what to expect. I wish I could explain this feeling better – it’s almost like this: In your head you have two voices. Once voice is the strongest and overrides the other. The strongest is the voice that says “You’re going to be rich!!! it’s right around the corner! Just launch this product and you are going to be set!!!”. This voice is so strong, that it overrides your weaker, more realistic voice which tells you what is most likely going to happen (not becoming instantly rich, but making some money to make the project worthwhile). I think a better example of this is during a situation where you feel like you are about to get mugged. Before the situation, your subconscious is setting off warning bells: “hmmm…those three guys up there look like they are up to no good you shouldn’t proceed”. But then you have your main voice which is overriding your subconscious because it doesn’t want to come to grips with what is really going on. It makes you blind: “No, it’s OK. They are just standing there hanging out. You are making too much out of this…keep walking you idiot! They won’t mess with you”. You continue to walk, and end up getting mugged. You look back at your thoughts, and kick yourself for not listening to your voice. In the martial arts, we training to identify and trust our subconscious voice…you should learn to do the same with your online ventures.

Alright, enough of the mental crap, let’s talk about tactics – ways to make money online.

* When getting started with MMO, just do something – If you aren’t making money online yet, just pick a method and stick with it until you are making some sort of income. I hear a lot of people talking about how they are afraid of doing the wrong thing and because of that end up doing nothing. Forget about doing the right thing…just make some freaking money first. You will naturally figure out the right course of action as time goes on.I recommend you start out as an affiliate for physical products until you get some good cash flow and experience under your belt.

* Do not go after the big idea – Above I said it’s important to just do something when getting started. However, I don’t mean go after big dream ideas. For example, say you have the idea for ‘the next Facebook’, yet you’ve never made a real business online before. This is chasing a dream. You need to realize something…sites like Facebook and Twitter are rare – so rare that I can literally only think of about 20 sites or so like that. Your chances of making a site like this successfully are worse than winning the lottery. Heck, I will even say it’s impossible unless you have years of experience and a team of people backing you

* After you figure some stuff out, I suggest you focus on making your own products and services – If you want any real longevity in the MMO world, you need to have your own products and services – no exceptions. Here’s why. When you create a product, you build a business. When your product is good, people start talking about it. When that happens, your business and brand starts to build. Imagine a snowball rolling down a hill. It starts small, but gets bigger and bigger as it rolls down the hill. As an affiliate, it’s VERY hard or nearly impossible to replicate this effect. Maybe in the Internet Marketing niche space, but no where else can you do that.

* Make a monthly continuity program - I’m not saying you do this right away. Wait until you understand how things works. Then focus on building up monthly continuity. After my upcoming launch, my focus is going to be on building up my monthly recurring and also creating niche businesses that I can sell small $5-$10/m memberships in. Here’s why memberships are important. With every new customer, your income levels build on top of each other. People also forget about monthly memberships. I signed up for this local gym – it was like $20/m. I went THREE times. I ended up paying for that damn thing for like 2 or 3 years…costing me somewhere around $500 before I finally went and cancelled the membership. My own fault, their gain.

* It’s better to focus on ONE niche at a time (once you find one that works) – I highly recommend instead of going broad and work in dozens of niches, you build up one niche business at a time. You can start this right away as an affiliate. For example, build a network of golf review blogs, opt-in pages, products, etc. Then once your business is mapped out, move onto another niche.

* Pick a niche you actually like and know something about – I’m starting to see now that in the long run you are WAY better off working in niches that you are passionate about. Here’s why. When you have a high level of knowledge in a niche, it creates a barrier of entry. It also helps you build a brand for yourself because you create quality stuff. Another goal for after my upcoming launch is to completely develop my new martial arts business. I just exposed my niche to you…but it doesn’t matter. Know why? Because I am a martial arts fiend. I have spent the last 6 years training my ass off, and through that training I have A LOT of valuable knowledge that I can share. Knowledge that no internet marketer out there can compete with (Ok…there may be a couple out there, but very very limited).

Now look…there’s an exception. You may be passionate about a niche that no one likes to spend money online…or you may be passionate about something that doesn’t have a lot of interest. I will use my father’s passion as an example. If you remember, I told you that he is an electrical engineer. Well, online there isn’t much of an interest in a topic like this because it is so specialized. So if you were trying to sell a product or make a business around training other electrical engineers, chances are your audience would be so small that it wouldn’t be profitable. However, if my father were to make a consulting service where he consults with contracters, it could work if he were to charge $2,000, $5,000, or $10,000 for his service (when low volume, make up for by price point). This is something you need to figure out for yourself by doing extensive niche research.

* The fastest way to make A LOT of money is to build relationships – Looking back at all the money I’ve made online, the majority has come from building relationships. With all the time that I’ve spent slugging it out on forums, blogs, and search engines, I’ve made the most with simple relationship building. It’s very easy and almost happens naturally as your business progresses – but you do need to work at it. Just recently I have been mingling with all the top Internet marketers out there – and it’s actually been a lot of fun and much easier than I thought. But you need to realize something. You can’t just one day get up and do this stuff. You need to have assets, and you need to have something of value you can provide.

* Provide value, and the money will follow – I know this has been said 1 million times already, but it’s true. I have tried both routes. Sure, you can create crap content (IE: You are lazy) and you will make some money in the short run. No doubt about that. However, you will find that if you create shitty content, you are always fighting upstream. You have to force this crap down peoples throats on a constant basis or else it will fall out of the spot light. However, if you create great content, it’s like moving down stream. When your content is good (and by the way, that means anything: video, articles, blog posts, products, services, etc.), people are more inclined to take notice of you, to pass the content to their friends, to spread the word on social networks, etc. When this happens, your search engine optimization work also becomes significantly easier because you don’t have build 10 million backlinks in order to trick Google into thinking it is good stuff. All that will happen over time as people read your stuff.

Here’s what I’ve learned about the Internet Marketing niche in particular

As you have noticed, one of my passionate niches is Internet Marketing. I’ve learned a lot over the passed 4 months or so about this niche. Here is what I’ve learned:

* Do not trust anyone – A lot of the bigger affiliates will lead you on – “Yeah, if you promote for me I will hit your launch hard!”. You run the promotions for them, and when it comes time for them to reciprocate, they disappear and ignore your emails. I’m not saying they are evil people – in fact I understand fully what is going on. I know it’s impossible to mail for everyone, and even if they planned to mail for them with full intent, something comes up: one of their top partners decides to do a launch during your launch week so they are obligated to help them instead of you. Maybe they decide to launch a product to their list during that date instead. Things come up. Anything can happen. There’s really not much you can do about it either – it can happen with smaller affiliates also. It’s very common thing to happen in this business.

* Some top dogs are scammers – I am not pointing fingers here, but I’ve found that some of the industry leaders in this business are borderline scammers and have no regard for their customers. I’m sure at one point they had good intentions, but once you reach that level it’s like “ah f*ck it! I have a ton of people who owe me favors so why don’t I just throw together some shit and make them promote that to their lists. I can easily make a couple million with this.”

* A lot of the leaders don’t have business sense - A lot of the gurus come from non-business backgrounds: former office workers, garbage men, janitors, etc. Because of that, they don’t understand customer service, business ethics, providing quality, etc. It’s all about making a lot of money now, and not worrying about building a long term business. IE: Screw the customer out of their money and do it as many times possible until they catch on. I’m not saying everyone is like this – but expect no courtesy in this business.

* Look out for people who use pen names – More often than not they are using a pen name because they know the product is shit and that it will hurt their real brand if they launch it under their real name. Not always, but most of the time.

* Respectable marketers are in the few

* Don’t take product claims literally - this is a huge mistake. People buy products because they think “this guy is making $10,000/m with this method, so by buying this method and working it, I will make $10,000/m in no time”. Here’s the deal. Don’t buy a product if the income claims are the reason why you are purchasing it. Purchase it with the mindset of not really making the money they claim they are making, but more so how the techniques in the product can help push your business further. Think of it as education, not something that is magically going to make you rich.

Phew! Done. That’s it! I recommend you read and re-read everything I have wrote above. I am giving you the truth about this whole make money online thing. No sugar coating, no hype, nothing. Just realistic expectations. If you don’t believe in what I am telling you right now, you are in denial. The quicker you realize that and come to grips with the real reality of making money online, the quicker you will finally start to make something out of all the time you’ve spent on the journey so far.

If you liked this post, please share it with whoever you want! Link your blog to it, post a link to it in forums, add it to your twitter and facebook status! Anything you can do to help is much appreciated!

Talk soon,

Dan Brock

Internet Marketing Information You Should Be Aware Of

Here is a post by Andrew Hanson. He is someone that I follow in the Internet Marketing world and trust completely. He always has great information and this is no exception. So many people want to make money online but there are many that are simply taking advantage of the fact that others are out there desperately seeking that one ebook or software that will set them free. It doesn't exist with out hard work and dedication. You can find the original post at:

Internet Marketing Has A Cancer and I Need Your Help

Again, it’s not really with joy that I write this post. I feel like this is all I’ve been talking about lately.

But at the same time, I can’t bear to NOT write this. I can’t bear to NOT let you know.

I went out to the World Internet Summit in London yesterday, an IM event that is pretty much bottom of the barrel in terms of pitchy-ness. There’s no content, it’s a high pressure sales environment that preys on people who simply don’t know better yet.

But I wanted to catch up with a friend and hopefully meet some more half decent marketers in London.

There’s 2 groups of people there: The newbies waiting to be sold their hopes and dreams on a platter for $2000 (2000 Pounds actually at this one… more like $3300 or thereabouts) a pop, and then the speakers & their friends, there to meet JVs and talk about how much money they make from ripping off those newbies.

I go to events alot, just to meet interesting people and sometimes learn. But the ones I’d been to more recently were a lot more content based and had a lot more experienced crowds. I quickly got jolted back to what these things were like in IM, and in many ways, what it’s like for someone new to online marketing to be trying to start up from scratch.

I spend most of my time at the bar, which is where the latter of the two groups of people in attendance hang out. I don’t want to listen to the pitches so that’s the only other option.

The conversations you here there are just grotesque.

(All of the following are based on ones I overheard yesterday)

“He gets up, speaks for an hour, sells the crowd a set of 7 PLR sites for $2000… walks away with $100k”

“Hahaha, you wouldn’t believe it, in Malaysia he had a guy during his pitch TRIP OVER running to the back of the room to sign up for his course, hahaha – brilliant!”

“Well we know why he launched it – they knew it wouldn’t work anymore in 3 months time. This way he can add another 100k a month to his business and be done with it”.

And much more…

I put them in the same group: The “speak from stage is all I do” marketers and the “product launches are all I do marketers”. There’s often a revolving door between the two groups. They are both equally as douchey.

Here’s the worst, scariest thing I heard.

Two guys were talking about a clickbank launch that had just happened. They were talking about how much the product sucked. The launcher was someone you’ve definitely heard of.

One guy asked the other guy to tell me how many sales the launch did.

The answer? 40 000 copies………………………………………………

Think about that number for a second.

To put it in perspective: I’ve been online for quite a while, doing both affiliate marketing and teaching. When I release a new product I’m happy if I sell 500 copies. They do 40 000! 80 times more than me.

If you’re reading this post you’re probably one of the people who are less likely to buy the overhyped clickbank launch type products…

If you’re like me, you probably think that those products are only for those unfortunate newbie souls who are just coming online and getting the inevitable fleecing before they realize how the game works…

BUT NO… no no… it’s not just a small group of newbies who buy this crap. It’s not just a minority of those getting started. It’s MOST people. It’s the MAJORITY. If you’re not in that group and you’re reading this post and you know better… you are in a TINY tiny sub sect. You’re one of the lucky ones!

The guys who do these launches and are the most unethical… make the most money. No one I mentioned on my list of “the wisest and most trustworthy marketers” do anything like the figures these guys do. That pisses me off but I guess that’s life.

Everything I’m about to write here I already knew, but the day that was yesterday just crystalized it in my mind and even took my understanding to a new level of depth regarding how dodgy and disgusting this IM world can really be.

The majority of product launches, ESPECIALLY Clickbank launches, where-ever you see extreme Clickbank screenshots, whenever you get more than 5 emails about the same product (with a rare few exceptions) the following is almost always the case:

1. The “System” they’re selling does not work.

Period. What they do is sit around mastermind meetings thinking of one question: “What would sell?” They think of ideas for things that those poor unfortunate souls would buy and they create products based on them. If there was a list of things needed for a good launch, laid out in priority order, the factor of whether a system works… whether anyone’s actually going to make money from it… would be at the bottom. Great sales copy at the top, bunch of JVs next, perfect upsell third… good product? Who gives a ####. As long as it’s good enough that we don’t get too many refunds, it’s fine.

This is the RULE, not the exception.

2. The “System” they’re selling, is not something they even use.

Doesn’t matter what the income screenshots say, they DON’T use it. They couldn’t use it even if it did work and even if they wanted to use it. Their entire lives are consumed by doing product launches and promoting other people’s junk so they’ll get more JVs when their launch comes around. They say they use it, and they show the income screenshots from their last launch. They DON’T use it.

3. The $67 product never contains the “secret”.

This is what these guys get taught (I’ve heard it being presented myself)

“You have a front end product, $67 or $77, but you don’t give away all the details in here! You don’t teach them all the secrets for $67 – don’t undervalue your products like that! Your front end product is supposed to be a teaser. Your $67 product is supposed to give them just enough so they understand the idea, but can’t apply it without further help”.

I’m not even kidding, I’ve heard those words being spoken from stage. So if you’re looking at one of those clickbank courses where the sales letter says you’re going to learn EVERYTHING… ALL THE SECRETS… for just $67… it’s NEVER true. There’s always an upsell you need in order to implement anything.

4. They work on the principle that most people who buy these products won’t use them.

Will the customer actually be able to make money? Who cares?

I told one guy yesterday that I have a customer support manager for our products (this was the 40 000 copies launch guy) and he was shocked. I told him we have a live support system and he couldn’t believe it.

These guys don’t care whether people implement their methods or not. Once the sale is made it’s “what can I launch next?”.

Ok guys, here’s the deal.

I’ve been writing about this stuff for quite some time and I can’t handle having this be ALL I do about it.

I need your help today.

We have to make some contribution to cutting down the number of people in that early part of their journey who don’t know that this is how things work yet.

This is what you can do.

1. Stop buying this stuff: Please, make a commitment right now that you will stop buying, or at least be EXTREMELY skeptical before you buy any clickbank IM product that shows clickbank screenshots and has a massive launch fanfare. You know they are all the same and there’s no point wasting your money. The above is how those products come about and you don’t need to be involved in that.

2. Tell someone you know: Do you know someone in IM who’s newer than you, just getting started maybe? Send them an email right now and tell them to be careful. Tell them to stop buying these products too.

3. Tell everyone you can: Do you have a blog? A Twitter or Facebook where you are in contact with other marketers particularly newer ones? Make one tweet or update about this. Tell people that they need to know about it.

4. I’ve never asked for something like this before, and I probably never will again, but if you have a blog or a Twitter or Facebook and you can’t do any of the above, send people the link to this blog post to read for themselves. Every person who hears this news and takes it on board is someone who saves themselves $67 or $197 dollars next time. Every person who hears this is another $67 that those bottom feeder launch guru scumbags don’t get.

We can help people here. We won’t change how this industry works, but we can do something.

Until next time, thanks for reading and…

Thanks for being my subscriber even though I’ve never shown you a clickbank screenshot.