Are You A Quitter?
- Terry Dean -
Are You Going to be a Quitter?
This should be a required question for all budding entrepreneurs.
Are you going to Quit if you don't succeed at first?
If we remove all of the Internet Hype you hear every day and reveal to you the cold hard
facts about success online, can you handle it?
I talk to hundreds of people every week by email and I keep finding a common thread. The
ones who are the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who failed the most times but
refused to quit.
As a matter of fact, I have yet to meet anyone who has told me every ad they placed worked
and that every time they tried something it made money. With as many people as I deal
with, you would expect that I would have met that individual by now. It hasn't happened
yet.
Everyone has their failures. Everyone has their ads that didn't work. Everyone had their
product that bombed. Everyone had their mistakes.
Another aspect that has held true though is that those who refused to quit were the ones
who were now making money from their businesses.
If they started a business...and then took a systematic approach to finding out what
worked for their business, it didn't matter how many times they failed. They would
eventually find out what worked.
Notice that I said the successful ones were "systematic" in their approach to
their business though.
Many marketers are taking a "random" approach to their Internet businesses. They
are searching for anything that might all of sudden catapult them to Internet success.
They say to everyone around them, "Maybe this company might just be it, or maybe this
type of ad might work, or maybe I am just in the wrong business."
If you acting like a "random" marketer, you are definitely cruising down the
road of failure.
Successful marketers don't act randomly. They follow a plan. They test the ads. They track
the ads. They compare the ads. They know exactly how much money was made with every penny
they spend.
You cannot jump from one ad type to another and keep looking for the "magic
bullet" if you want to create the business you dream of on the Internet.
Don't be an advertising quitter. Select a type of Internet advertising and keep working it
and tested it until you make it successful for you. If you have a nice sized ad budget,
you might select two types of ads to try, but never do more than this at one time.
Below I am going to give you 5 types of Internet Advertising that I know beyond a shadow
of a doubt can work for you if you apply yourself to them.
Instead of randomly jumping here and there trying to find out how to find success, select
ONE of these techniques and start applying yourself to it until it starts working for you.
Test different ads with it. Test different places to advertise with it. Test different web
pages to bring your prospects to. Test different follow-up systems on your prospects.
Consider having a professional write your ad for you.
Above all though, don't quit!
Look at each of these proven Internet marketing techniques and decide which one is right
for you, your business, and your budget. Then, start testing it...and don't ever quit
using it.
1. Classified Ads in Ezines
This is a method that has helped many small businesses start building online. Because of
the quick lead time and the low cost of placing these types of ads, it is a great choice
for those who have a small budget.
You can start off by advertising in a couple of targeted ezines for your market that are
known to be proven winners. Ask some people in message boards or newsgroups which ezines
they have advertised in and made money from.
Use a systematic approach though. Create 2 or 3 good classified ads and try each of them
in the ezine one after another and see which one pulls in the most leads for you.
Use an automated follow-up system like the one at http://www.zinfo.net
where you can get several autoresponders for free and have the leads each going to
a separate autoresponder.
Track which one works the best for you. If one of the ads shows up as extremely
profitable, then keep running it in that ezine and add 3 - 5 more ezines to your
advertising with that same ad. Test them each with separate autoresponders. Never stop
tracking your ads.
If none of the ads produces a profitable result for you, try them in a different ezine
which has been recommended to you by others. Or try having a classified ad written for you
by a professional ad writer.
Don't consider quitting an option.
Also, consider in all of these advertising methods, your web site and/or follow-up system
need to be created with as much motivating ad copy as possible. Most people will need to
purchase and study some good books on ad copy to figure out how to write a letter that can
sell.
2. Networking Online
If you have absolutely NO money at all, you may want to consider networking your way to
success online. Simply start participating in discussions online by asking questions and
posting helpful answers to other people's questions.
This can be done in discussion groups, newsgroups, or mailing lists. To find the right
groups to participate in, create several keywords you would use to find your type of
business, and use these three search engines:
For Discussion Groups, use http://www.forumone.com
For Newsgroups, use http://www.dejanews.com
For Mailing Lists, use http://www.liszt.com
Once you have found 5 - 10 active groups on your subject, start participating. Note: I did
not say advertise. Most of these groups have very strict policies regarding advertising.
You can discuss, but you can't advertise.
Set up a daily system where you visit all of your selected groups and make it a practice
to post to at least a couple of the groups each day. Become a participant that people
recognize there.
At the same time, include a link to a page on your site where people reading your message
can read more about your products or services.
The way to best track your results would be to set up separate sales pages on your site
for each group you participate in. For example: you may have 10 pages on your site selling
the same product...but you know which group you mentioned it in. Then, when you check your
web site stats, you can know where the people are coming from.
The advantage of marketing this way is that you won't be spending any money...the
disadvantage is that there really isn't any way to roll out a major marketing campaign
when you find a winner.
3. Banner Advertising
If you can get banner advertising to work for your product or service, then you might have
just found the largest cash flow online.
Once you have a banner advertising campaign that is making money for you, it is very easy
to expand it out with thousands of targeted sites which are available with banner
advertising space. This is the most plenteous type of advertising available so it is the
easiest one to roll out major campaigns on once you find the winning combination.
The problem is that banner advertising can often be the most difficult form of advertising
to create a successful campaign in. The average click-through rate on banner ads is 1/2 a
percent...which means you get one click through for every 200 impressions.
There are some very easy ways to increase your click-through rates by using
"trick" banners...you should study up on these banners with some of our other
free reports at http://www.bizpromo.com
To run your banner campaign, create 3 - 5 different banners and start placing them in
small numbers.
A cheap way to test at first is to join one or more of the free banner exchanges and try
out your banners for free at first. Then, once you found a working banner, you can start
paying for impressions of it.
Have each of your banners link to a specific page on your site which is selling ONE
specific product. Don't allow your prospects to get confused when they come to your site.
Make it a simple choice for them to make which you can track on your site.
Then, once you find a banner which is making money for you, roll it out by buying larger
numbers of impressions or finding more sites to advertise it on.
4. Press Releases
This is probably the most powerful traffic builder available if you have a strong Unique
Web Position for your site.
If you stand out and your site or product is worthy of media attention, then this is an
awesome method to start creating a traffic jam at your site.
A good tool to use in promoting your site through free press is the Gebbie all-in-one
media directory which lists all of the contact information of the media. A free sample
which will enable you to get started can be obtained by visiting this address.
http://www.gebbieinc.com/misc/bizpromo.htm
Once you have the directory or the sample, you can start studying (Gebbie has some info on
this as well) how to write effective press releases.
Just because your first press release may not be published, don't let that bother you. Try
again. Learn more about what they want. Then, do it again.
You can receive more traffic from having your web site published in a magazine, newspaper,
radio, or TV broadcast than hundreds of ads you place for yourself.
So, if you decide Free Press will work for your unique product or service, don't quit!
5. Offline Ads
Too many times when advertising out web sites we forget about how effective off-line
advertising can be. Placing an ad in a card deck or magazine is a great way to get very
targeted visitors to your site who are ready to spend money.
Many of the people who visit you from other web sites are just lookers...and never really
intend to purchase anything from you. The bulk of the people who visit you from offline
advertising are much more ready to spend money if you provide the benefits
they need.
Leads produced this way are much more expensive though...costing between 50 cents to
$10.00 apiece on average. So, you had better have that killer ad copy ready to close them
when they get to your site.
A good way to save money when advertising is to use postcard decks and sell off ads on the
postcard you purchase. This way you can make back all of your money and essentially get
your ad to run for FREE. What better way to test than with free advertising?
When using this type of advertising, I recommend taking them to what I call a "lead
generation" page. Basically, what you do on this type of page is present a few
benefits to them and ask them to leave their contact info such as name, email, and mailing
address for more information. Then, you can start a follow-up system both online and by
direct mail to them for maximum effectiveness.
Don't waste any of these higher priced and usually higher qualified leads.
* Don't Quit *
No matter which advertising method you choose, make a decision to stick to it until you
have it working for you.
The key to any successful business is that you keep working on it until you have it
working for you.
Terry Dean is the webmaster at
http://www.bizpromo.com Visit today for turn-key web site solutions, turn-key products you can sell, and answers to all of your Internet marketing questions. For "115 Internet marketing tips" please send an email to..
115tips@aweber.com
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