How To Start An Internet Business

Posted by James in Affiliate, Conversions, How To, List Building, Traffic

Streaming podcast

It seems whenever I go to a BBQ or a friends place I get into a conversation about Internet Marketing. It makes sense since friends know I quit working for a boss a few years ago and I now live at the beach. They want to know how.

my backyard

This is what I usually tell them to get started…

In my conversations I usually end up giving them the short version of Fast Web Formula (my own formula for building a 7 figure business from scratch). This is the back of the beer coaster outline:

Step 1 – Mindshift

Prepare to bend your mind and move beyond the standard thinking that so many people suffer. Amazing things can be done online only if you accept that there are different rules (especially when it comes to leverage). Many office workers are conditioned into 9-5 thinking. You HAVE to break out of that mindset to make it online.

Step 2 – Plan

Have a strategy. Most people approach internet marketing with a product in mind and then try and figure out how to sell it. Wait, there is a better way! Often nobody is interested. I prefer to start with the audience in mind. The starving crowd we often hear about in marketing speak. Usually I suggest the basic strategy of being an affiliate (I liken this to being a commission only sales person). As an affiliate we still build a list and create an authority blog where we will eventually sell our own products as well.

Step 3 – Research

Time to do some keyword research. The easiest way to do this is use Market Samurai. If not, the Google keyword tool will suffice. We look for search terms that have some traffic, advertiser competition and less than say 60,000 results in ‘quotes’ in the search listing. In this exmple I ended up finding the key phrase: ‘How to start an internet business‘ from my seed search.

This should be a buying phrase with commercial intent. Words like ‘how to’ or ‘buy’ are always useful! Next we type that into Google and pull the keyword lists from the top few ranked sites using the alexa ’search analytics’ data.

Step 4 – Money Link

Now we join a program where we can sell an offer relating to the keyword. We search for our keyword + affiliate. Often we will find a clickbank product or a CPA (cost per action) offer from somewhere like Neverblue. There are also some cool offers at CJ.com. Once we have signed up for an offer we now read the sales page and get into the mind of the buyer. Note if you already have a site that makes money you can use this technique to get yourself more traffic and links by pointing the campaign to your own site.

Step 5 – Content

Now we create or buy some content to use as a lead magnet. Ideally this can be a video (you can transcribe it later into a PDF report, MP3 podcast and blog post). This means we can use a youtube strategy of posting video content with a view to attracting clicks to a URL (web site address) displayed as a watermark in the video and in the description link next to the video. If we have no content we can rent or buy a youtube video by contacting the owner of an already existing video. If you are creating a video it can be a slideshow made with powerpoint. You can film yourself with a digital camera set to movie mode. Alternatively use screenflow or camtasia software just to make a screen video of you talking on the sales offer page whilst scrolling. See an example here.

Step 6 – Traffic

Time to get some traffic. We post our video and place links in the description to either the offer directly or your own blog. For affiliate links I suggest you use a re-directed domain. Buy a domain from namecheap and then re-direct it to the affiliate link using the built in free feature.

Later when you scale up you should host the re-directed domain on your own server so you can track traffic.

Here is the 301 re-direct index.php code I use:

(Click to enlarge picture)

If you are building a blog then get a nice keyword domain or brandable domain and build a wordpress blog on it using the C Panel wizard called Fantastico. There are a number of free tutorials on youtube for building a wordpress blog. Make sure you use the right SEO permalink structure of /%category%/%postname%/ and use six tags per post with keywords.

Step 7 – Conversions

Now we need to get that click to the offer and also build our list. It will increase conversions if we offer a bonus with purchase. If we do that we can also collect an email address for each buyer. The blog should have a name capture with a useful free report or similar. Use aweber or similar to get the names and send out bonuses. Once you have some clients (even ten) send them to a survey from Survey Monkey and ask them what else they buy / would like to buy and make it for them! The goal of course is to build a huge qualified list so that you can make money any time you need it just by sending out targeted valuable offers.

More tips

Once you have this process in play you will be ready to get “its not about the website“. Be sure to get some links to your content using bookmarking, linkvana and other methods such as podcast directories and article distribution. If you need any help with any aspect of this process or you just want to learn a bunch more profit models then you may want to access SuperFastResults.com where I answer your questions personally.

Note: I have used affiliate links in this posts.

This is an example of how you can create useful content that also pays. You can do the same thing on your site.

Please post your comments below:

...if you liked that you might want to check these out:

Tags: 301 re-direct php, fast web formula, home based internet marketing business, how to start an internet business, internet marketing strategy, james schramko, learn internet marketing, starting an internet business, superfastresults, work from home internet business, youtube marketing

Related Posts

Images:

The images are downsized due to limited space here. The original dimensions may differ.
Click on the image to open it on a new tab.