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A summary of my recommendations so farSo, as you can see, I’ve used a structured approach all learned from the IMC course materials:1. Create a salesletter and website 2. Develop an online form for customers to complete and submit 3. Create an autoresponder series My tried and tested web hosting solutionAt some point, you're going to need your own website. The name given to companies who provide facilities for you to set-up a website are called "service providers". They "host" your website on their computer system, which is always on, and always connected to the Internet, so that when someone types in your website address (or URL - short for uniform resource locator incidentally in geek speak) - your website reliably appears.There's an absolute mass of these service providers out there offering this web hosting facility. However, some are MUCH better than others. If you're a beginner entrepreneur then it's a bewildering and confusing choice. A real minefield actually. I remember feeling completely lost when I first started out, but don't worry, I've got a rock solid recommendation for you below. But first a quick story... When I set up my first website, I was a real newbie. I thought I'd done well getting hosting for $800 per year. It seemed to work okay, but I could only create one single website for that price, and as my entrepreneurial aspirations grew, I wanted the opportunity to put up more sites. The company I was using said "no, you can't do that, you need separate web hosting for each one you want - and it'll cost you another $800 each time." Hmmm. At that point I started looking around for alternatives and began scouring the Internet in depth. After literally months of looking and carefully comparing, I settled on a service provider which I have now been using for several years. It's called HostGator. It's called HostGator because it literally "gobbles up the hosting competition." Here's why... First off all it's the price. Their hosting starts at less than $8 per month. It is astonishingly cheap. Quite honestly, I was skeptical. I thought it would be low quality and unreliable - but it simply isn't. It's top-notch. They can offer that ridiculous price because they host loads and loads of websites and make their profits that way. It's robust and has always worked perfectly. Secondly - and this is quite unique - they let you host as many websites as you like ALL included in the daft low price. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I've got about a dozen uploaded and operational. It doesn't get much better than that! Thirdly, the very "un-techie" graphic front-end is a breeze to use and they throw in all manner of free stuff to enable you to run things like online forums and so on. Fourthly and finally, every single time I've wanted some help or support, then it's been forthcoming and immediate. They really have got their act together - especially with so many customers too. So, for all the reasons above, the entrepreneurbeginner.com recommendation for hosting your website is HostGator. Click on the link below to learn more and grab the special deal that they're running. Trust me, I really am absolutely sure that you won't regret it. As you know, I simply would not recommend it to you otherwise... Using audio and video content to improve your promotional campaigns
I’ve found audio and video useful too in generating an Internet income, and especially Youtube. It’s a fairly simple process to put videos on Youtube and then place links in my autoresponder messages that readers can click on to see the videos. In my case, videos of my rockschools in action, so that the written words can be brought to life.The good thing about putting links into email messages instead of sending large attachments, is that the recipients don’t have to worry about long download times (which keeps them happy), and also they don’t usually have to download any special software to playback the media files, as they’re simply streamed from the Youtube site.
It’s often been said that some of the most effective and profitable things that can be sold to generate an Internet income are digital products and information. Digital products like ebooks, audios and video (because they can be delivered electronically), and information (because most people use the Internet to search for information) - I suppose that’s what’s made this site www.entrepreneurbeginner.com so successful.Some information, like the material I’ve written for you here, is free, and this site pays its way simply by visitors now and again clicking on some of my recommendations, for which, if you buy, I am given a small percentage of the sale price. This is fine for me in this instance, but companies and individuals will also have high value proprietary information that they, quite rightly, want to make a charge for. I found myself in this position too fairly recently, and stumbled across another very useful technique that has proved to be perfect for what I wanted. Its called “membership Sites”. Let me outline my situation, and how I was able to use it to generate a further Internet income. My rockschools franchise network, Clive’s Easylearn Pop Music Schools, is only available in the UK. However, increasingly I was getting applications from all over the world. People had found out about the concept, and wanted to take advantage of our tried and tested systems to set up their rockschool businesses all over the globe. The problem was, as a small organization, we simply did not have the resources to fly halfway round the world and provide the face-to-face support, training and assistance that we are known for in the UK, and have won awards for. So, whenever we got an enquiry from abroad, we had to disappoint them, and say no we couldn’t work with them. Then one day during a net-surfing session, I came across the concept of membership sites, which, as an online business opportunity, was growing very quickly, and was a clearly-defined Internet income generator. Let me explain what it is. What actually IS a membership site?
To get that login, they have to become members and pay a subscription fee, which makes an Internet income for the owner. It’s just the same as subscribing to a magazine, or joining a health club or whatever offline, and it will work with lots of online business opportunities. For me, this was the perfect solution. Now I could repackage all of my tried and tested franchise systems and procedures, including our educational audio and video materials, knowledge base and step-by-step guidance that had turned our UK operation into a multi-million dollar a year turnover business, and offer it to the rest of the world in a profitable way to create some further Internet income. What resulted was originally the membership site www.teachmusicforprofit.com and it’s being followed by a series of other sites such as: www.turnitintoafranchise.com Profit From Your Hobbies Write to Make Money You can use the links to take a look at them now. Some are complete, some are still under some construction. They will all open in new windows, so that you can easily get back to here. You’ll notice that they utilize the salesletter concept on the home page, and then invite customers to join the membership site. Your Payment gateway - the internet income generator within membership sites.
The thing that works well about membership sites is that the software will include an integrated “payment gateway”. That means that if a customer wishes to join, then all they have to do is click the join button, complete some financial details and they become a member. They can then login and enter the site, making the Internet income element simple and straightforward for you. Online business opportunities all need simple payment gateways.The best membership site “scripts” as they’re called have all this built in. The one that I use, which I’ll discuss in more depth shortly, simply takes the member to Paypal’s secure site to process the payment. A membership site will normally offer members various different payment options - monthly, quarterly or annual memberships, for example, with discounts that you set for longer membership options. Within the site, usually new members have access to that particular month’s content - again, it’s rather like getting the new edition of a magazine that you’ve subscribed to. Often the software will also enable subscribers to buy back issues if there’s anything that takes their fancy, again, just like with a real magazine. There’s also built in options for managing your members, such as providing the opportunity for them to renew or unsubscribe - all without you having to be directly involved. Your membership site, if you decide that this is a good idea for one of your online business opportunities, will ultimately stand or fall on its content. If someone is paying for access, then they will rightly expect unique and worthwhile material on the subject of the site. You have to deserve your membership site Internet income. My www.teachmusicforprofit.com membership site provides tried and tested strategies to enable people to run a very successful rockschool business. It took almost a year to create and write and is absolutely packed with unique content to take people step-by-step through the business development process, mirroring, as I said earlier, the way that we support and develop our UK franchises. I provide one-to-one support to the members via email as well, so I feel that I’ve really earned my Internet income. www.teachmusicforprofit.com has an annual membership and internally functions slightly differently to the monthly system I outlined above. Let me explain why, as it may be a model more suited to your own entrepreneurial ideas, or be the strategy for some of the online business opportunities that you shortlist. When a customer joins www.teachmusicforprofit.com, the only membership option open to them is an annual one. This is because, as an entrepreneur starting their rockschool business, they need immediate access to the whole program - all the information in one go. Just giving them monthly magazine-style “instalments” would have the effect of slowing some people down, and it would mean that it would take a whole year, once a month, before the customer could begin their new business properly, which I felt was unfair. So, for this reason, I opted for the annual membership, where, for an annual fee, the customer had access to the complete site from day one. Of course, within the site, it’s vital to guide the customer through a structured process so that they don’t feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material. I handled this by creating a “compass” system to “point them in the right direction at all times.” So, membership sites can certainly generate an Internet income. They succeed because they deliver what customers want and are willing to pay a subscription for. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m quite a fan, and for many people, they can be a good solution for providing valuable information to people on a worldwide scale, simply and straightforwardly. I urge you to consider them carefully as one of your online business opportunities. They continue to work for me. The membership site software that I use and recommendTo make all this a success, and generate a reliable Internet income, you do need to have a good bit of software to do the job for you. The one that I use for all my membership sites is called “Easy Member Pro”. Here's a link where you can find out all about it, and also get it for for a REALLY low price. It comes will my full recommendation...However, all this is well and good, but you won’t generate an Internet income, no matter what you do, if people don’t know that you’re there - you need to market your products. Here’s how. The Internet is like a huge marketplace, isn’t it? Everyone is trying to be noticed against an ever-increasing amoung of competition and make their slice of Internet income. So how, for goodness sake, can you stand out againt all the other online business opportunities out there for customers to buy from? It’s not easy, and over 95% of all websites and online entrepreneurial schemes fail, not through lack of ideas, product or service offering, but through lack of the most essential thing - traffic. Most Internet beginner entrepreneurs come up with an idea, put up a website and, well... hope for the best. But the best rarely happens. Result? Zero Internet income. Let’s consider what you can do to avoid it in whatever online business opportunities you select. Internet Marketing: How to make sure that potential customers will buy from you.In the offline world, sales of products and services are almost always made based on trust. Take my rockschools franchise an example. Parents trust us to look after their children while we teach them. Those parents tell others that we do a good job and keep their kids safe. The kids themselves tell their friends. People trust their friends to give them good recommendations for things. Gradually, the brand and its logo get known and eventually, if the service remains top notch, people begin to recognise the brand name and trust that in advertising.It’s all a question of TRUST!
Trust - that’s what it comes down to, and online, it needs to be just the same. After all, just because we use different technology, it’s important for us all to keep in mind that, whilst delivery methods and ways of reaching customers have changed, the wants and needs of the customers haven’t. It’s easy to forget that when you’re looking at a computer monitor. You can end up feeling very separate and distanced from the people that you are aiming to reach. It’s a bit like being in your car with the windows all wound up - sort of in touch with everything going on around you, but detached from it at the same time.So, believe me - trust is what encourages people to buy from you, and will be a key factor in generating your own Internet income from online business opportunities. This website, entrepreneurbeginner.com could be thought of as an example of that developing of trust. It’s not a commercial site, and I’ve built it because I have the luxury of time do do so, and I enjoy helping beginner entrepreneurs. It pays its way with the help of people just like you who seem to trust the honesty of what I say, and, if I do make a recommendation, then you know that it’s because I truly do believe in it, or have used it myself. If you follow those recommendations by clicking through to a product or service, and buy, then I get paid a very small percentage of the resultant sale, and that’s it. The revenue stream pays for the hosting of this site, and sometimes a little more to go towards my time, most of which I give for free. This whole concept then, is built again on trust. Trust takes time to develop, and this is where the average Internet income entrepreneur makes his or her big mistake. They are often not prepared to invest that time or dedication in their customers. They want immediate Internet income through sales. Lots of money. Let me tell you, this strategy does not work on the Internet for any online business opportunities. I’d figured this out for myself, and I was starting to think that I was pretty much alone in that mindset, until I came across a chap from Canada called Ken Evoy who evidently thought exactly the same way as I did, and, not only that, had put together a system for developing Internet income that revolved around it. Let me outline it for you, because I think that it’s the final piece of the Internet income jigsaw, and you can successfully plug almost any online business opportunities into it. A formula for developing trust online and gaining more customers as a result.A guy from Canada called Ken Evoy developed a success formula. He called it CTPM. I think it’s great. Let’s look at what each of the CTPM letters mean. It’s really enlightening and straightforward...C is for ContentKen and I would both agree that, when people use the Internet, most of the time, they are not shopping for things. What they are doing is searching for information. Often that information is within a small niche that they are interested in.It’s happening all the time. For example, someone may look for fishing tips. Maybe they’re wondering what the best time of day to catch a particular fish is, or what bait to use, or how to cast the line and so on. Information, that’s what most people use the Internet for initially - and HONEST information. Not information about a product. Not information only put there to sell you something. Just honest information or, as Ken puts it... Content. Although the numbers are growing, there are still very few websites that focus on providing honest in-depth content. Why? Because most Internet income seekers don’t have the time or inclination to create “content sites”. They want the fast sell, the quick profits. But that’s NOT what their potential customers want. The fishing enthusiast wants content. He will happily spend hours reading and researching and solving his problem. He enjoys it. It is his hobby, his niche. So, in CTPM and Internet income C=Content. T is for TrafficGood content attracts people who are searching for it, and the website that provides it gets busier. In net-speak, it gets more “traffic” and not necessarily by the owner spending lots of money on advertising, but from the search engines.You see, what people forget is that the main search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Ask make their money not from directing people who are searching for information to appropriate and useful places (although that’s what they do), but rather from website owners who place their advert on their pages. In simple terms, Google and the others offer website owners the opportunity to give some space on their pages to adverts that Google supply and, when a customer clicks on the advert, then the website owner makes a small Internet income. It’s become known as pay-per-click advertising. You can read more about if by clicking this pay-per click link (LINK COMING SOON). It will open in a new window which, once you’ve read it, all you need to do is close it and you’ll be right back here. Google needs you as much as you need them. Here’s why...Anyway, the point is, for the search engines to make THEIR Internet income, they need to deliver good content to the surfers. The search engines LOVE sites with honest content on them, because they KNOW that is exactly what people are really looking for when they type their search phrases into the search box.The job of the search engine is to index every single website out there, so that when our fishing enthusiast types in “best time of day to catch a salmon” for example, he gets back, as if by magic, exactly the information he requires - and he’s hooked on Google (excuse the pun). More seriously though, he’s also hooked on the content website that provides him with the answer. Another happy surfer who will use Google again, and will also, most likely, use the fishing website that Google found for him again too. In fact, over time, if it’s good and provides honest and useful content to him, he will begin to trust it - and to trust Google too! The “as if by magic” bit where Google suggests the particular fishing website is the clever bit, and it’s something you must understand. It’s based on something that, in the online world, is known as “keywords”, and should be at the very heart of all of your online business opportunities and activities. What is a keyword and how does it work?A keyword, or to be more accurate a “keyword phrase”, is something that website owners embed in their website code. The concept is actually pretty simple. Our fishing website owner might have several phrases embedded in his site like. for example...catch a salmon Each different page of the website can have its own embedded keyword phrases - often up to five - and so the complete fishing website may have perhaps two hundred or more of these phrases. Okay, back to Google and the other search engines. These keyword phrases (together with an analysis of the text on a given page and a bunch of more complicated things), are what the search engine uses to index the website and provide the result to our fishing enthusiast. Spiders - get to like them!
Here’s how it all works. The search engines regularly send out little robot-type bits of software across the word-wide web. These robot thingy’s have become known as “spiders” (web... spiders, geddit?). These spiders search out websites that are new or have recently changed, harvest the keyword phrases and take them back to their nest - the search engine headquarters - where they are indexed.Then when someone types “catch a salmon” into the search box in Google or the other search engines, the fishing website is one that gets returned as a search result. Of course, with so many websites on the Internet, our fishing website won’t be the only one that comes up. Our fisherman will probably be faced with lots of choices - thousands perhaps, which is quite good for him, but not so good for the owner of the fishing website, as it may be the 2,000th result, and one that the fisherman never reaches. Niche it to increase your visibility and trafficSo, let’s summarise again. Honest content brings traffic to websites through keywords embedded in pages, which are found by search engines.It’s a simple and straightforward system really. The problem we’ve identified above, however, is that because there are millions of websites out there, there’s no guarantee that yours will be found by a surfer. There could be too much competition for the keyword phrase. You can pay Google and the other search engines to place you high in the rankings, but you can also do it for free. Here’s how... To stand a better chance of being successfully noticed as you seek to promote your online business opportunities, what you need to do is niche it. Let’s use our fishing website as an example again. I haven’t checked, but given that fishing is apparently one of the top hobbies in the western world, I’ll bet that there are thousands of fishing websites out there. So how can someone who is developing a fishing website get noticed with all those other competitors? The answer is to focus on a sub-genre of fishing. A very tight and specific sub-genre, and not to try to be “everything to everybody” - on the Internet, that doesn’t work. So, our fishing website will fare better if it is developed as something really specific, like “salmon-catching-tips.com”. All the content can relate to this one specific thing, and the website owner can go into much, much more detail on just this tightly-focused area. As long as there are enough people out there who want to specifically catch salmon, as opposed to generally go fishing, then the website will become a success over time. Its more focused keywords will become noticed by the spiders, and it will get traffic from specific people who want to catch salmon and are looking for detailed honest information about doing that. The site then, becomes a niche, with much less competition, and it gets known and stands out in that niche much quicker, with less competition at the search engines, and so traffic grows. That’s Content (C) and Traffic (T) - the first half of Ken’s CTPM formula - and it really works. It’s logical, and I think you can see that. I’ve used all these techniques successfully on entrepreneurbeginner.com I used exactly the same techniques to make this site www.entrepreneurbeginner.com such a success. The simple fact that you’re here reading this, means that they work. There are lots of corporate sites out there for entrepreneurs in general, but very few honest and friendly ones full of reliable and easy to understand content specifically for beginner entrepreneurs. I decided to fill that niche, and give people like you detailed information on essential things to help you get started. Things that an advanced entrepreneur wouldn’t want to know about, but the beginner would find interesting and useful - a one-stop resource for the beginner entrepreneur. I hope I’ve succeeded. Using the same overall strategy with your own online business opportunities, allow you to succeed too. You may want to make your own site more commercially-based than I have done, and drive an Internet income, but if you do, then you need to still bear in mind the CTPM formula - and especially letter three, the P of CTPM... Presell - the P of CTPMPresell is really another word for “trust” that we talked about earlier. Ken Evoy of Sitesell, basically says, and I wholeheartedly agree with him, that developing trust in people is what eventually will encourage them to buy from you. He calls that development of trust through providing honest and trustworthy expert content, “preselling” - sort preparing people to buy from you.If I was running entrepreneurbeginner.com as a major commercial site, driving a significant Internet income, I suppose that’s what I’d be doing with you, through giving you all this useful content. Patience is a virtue!Actually, I like the presell concept. I think it’s a very ethical and pleasant way to develop a business relationship. The trouble is, most people who consider the web as a potential Internet income business opportunity, are simply not prepared to put in the time and effort needed to develop that long-term trust in their potential customers. They want sales and they want them now. Fast Internet income is unlikely to be achievable whatever online business opportunities you seek to develop, as I keep telling you.As I’ve been building entrepreneurbeginner.com, I’ve been looking at hundreds of other websites out there that seek to cover some of the topics that I discuss, such as work from home etc. and most of them are awful - dreadful commercially led things full of adverts and very little else. I don’t know about you, but I would never trust these sorts of sites with my credit card, or believe much of what they say. There’s no chance of developing a good relationship with the owners of these sites, and so I found that each time I visited, my attitude was one of suspicion and cynicism - hardly the sort of frame of mind to be receptive to buying anything. All reasons why I decided to build this site, which people tell me feels different, more friendly and has proper information in it. It’s not full of fancy graphics, not overly pretty (apart from perhaps the header with the lovely beach), but I’m being told that it does what it sets out to do and people seem to trust it, and equally trust me to provide honest information. I do my best to not let my visitors down. So, my advice to you is to consider developing something similar in your own particular niche. It will be found by search engine “spiders” and humans too. Over time it will start to become trusted as a source of reliable information. If it’s good it will get more and more traffic, and your visitors will trust you. At that point you’ll have successfully “presold” them, and then finally, you can... Monetize - the M of CTPM.The biggest single mistake that all people running websites as their online business opportunities make, is to try to monetize their sites too early - to cover them with adverts and links to this that and the other, all designed to get people to spend money and enable the owner to make a “fast buck” from an Internet income.Whilst, for a commercial site, that is the ultimate goal of the Internet income entrepreneur behind it, being too hasty simply puts people off. Far better, in my view, and also Ken Evoy’s of Sitesell, is to provide good content (C), use keywords to gain more traffic (T), develop a growing user base of visitors who trust you, and thus effectively presell (P) to them BEFORE you even think about asking them to buy. People who trust you and come to rely on your good advice will equally trust any recommendations that you make on your site for products and services - and that’s how CTPM works. How to start to MonetizeIf you’re seeking out online business opportunities, then one of the best ways to begin to generate an Internet income is to offer tried and tested recommendations to things.An introduction to affiliate marketing as an Internet income generator for youOn the Internet, there is a very well developed concept called “affiliate marketing”, which basically means that if you mention a product on your website and offer a link out to a place where you can buy it, then as a thank you, the person who is doing the selling, gives you a small cash reward - usually a percentage of the sale price, if a sale results.It’s all done automatically by codes that track where clicks (and hence sales) come from. It’s a pretty slick idea and can generate you a reliable Internet income. Click on this affiliate marketing link (LINK COMING SOON), for a more detailed explanation. The point is that once people trust you, then they will also trust your recommendations, and thus, over time, you will earn your commissions and generate an Internet income. But - it’s a BIG BUT, it’s absolutely essential in my opinion, that you never, ever offer recommendations on your trusted site for things just to make an Internet income - things that aren’t very good. Your visitors will have come to trust you. If you abuse that trust by recommending rubbish then they will soon lose confidence in you and never come back. Don’t let them down! Too many Internet income seekers make this crazy mistake. If you want to be successful with your online business opportunities, make sure you don’t do it! Top quality content in a small and tightly-focused niche that you’re an expert in, is the key to Internet income success. It won’t come overnight. You’re building a business, and building a proper, sustainable long-term business takes time, energy and dedication, but what results will become a stable and solid little operation that gives you a replicable Internet income for you and your family online, and has the potential to change your life. So, developing an Internet income is possible if it’s carried out in a structured and logical way, and if you’re prepared to learn some basic techniques and take the time to build your business properly - just like in the offline world, if you were opening a shop down the high street. Summary of the success steps that I recommend you takeLet me summarise the steps that I took that have served me well, and which I’ve discussed in this section of entrepreneurbeginner.com. They are my solid and absolutely honest recommendations for you, and I encourage you to click on the links to find out more. If you do decide to buy, through any of the links, then you will be supporting entrepreneurbeginner.com too, as these are affiliate links, like those that I’ve introduced you to earlier. Okay, here goes...entrepreneurbeginner.com’s
1. Buy the Internet Marketing Center (IMC) course. Click this link for full details... |
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4. Buy the unlimited version of Easymemberpro - the membership site script. Here's a link to it for you...
5. Buy Website Header Wizard: A simple no-nonsense program to create the graphic headers for your membership site. Brilliant if you’re not artistically inclined. (LINK COMING SOON)
6. Buy cheap reliable hosting space for all your membership websites (and I recommend that you develop several over time) from Hostgator. (LINK COMING SOON)
7. Develop a CTPM niche site as a hub to bring all of you theme sites together and create traffic from Sitesell.
And that’s it. You then have all the basic tools you need to succeed as an online entrepreneur and begin generating an Internet income. The same ones that I’ve used.
The CTPM concept and all the keyword embedding, page creating and domain registration and so on can be complicated and, unless you’re a web design expert, downright difficult.
This is where Sitesell comes to the rescue. For a small annual membership fee, you get a complete solution that makes building my recommended CTPM-based websites an absolute breeze. In fact, it over-delivers.
It won’t do your membership sites - I recommend easymemberpro for that - but it will do EVERYTHING ELSE. In fact, if you’ve got a bunch of membership sites, a good idea is to develop a CTPM niche content site to gain traffic and act as a hub to send people out to your membership ones.
This website, entrepreneurbeginner.com has been built exclusively using the Sitesell tools. I strongly recommend that you make it central to your online business opportunities. It’s better if I let the founder Ken Evoy take over from here. Just click the link below...
