US.We.Me.Owners.Operators.Neighbors.Friends

Internet Marketing - How to make money

I started in the Internet Business as a fluke. It is now my full time job. I’m not a millionaire yet but on my way and you to can become a millionaire. Here is my story.

How I started a Internet Business

About four years ago I received a spam email offering to sell me the riches to ebay. I paid the $29.95 and purchased a booklet (that arrived 10 days later) that explained how to bid on ebay. What was the best time to start and stop bids and all kinds of other useful information. FOR 29.95 I LEARNED THINGS ABOUT MAKING MONEY ON EBAY I NEVER IMAGINED!

Click Here to Get Your Own Ebay Book Like I Started with!


On the back of the pamphlet it had an offering from another company out of St. George, Utah that had a “secret” warehouse full of items you could sell on Ebay and they would drop ship the product for you. It included purses, bicycles, camping goods, leather goods, globes, biker apparel and all kinds of nifty things. I paid them my $129.95 to sign up for their service and posted the pictures they furnished of the goods in their “secret” warehouse and begun waiting for sales to come rolling in.

It may have been timing but the sales were pretty good. I was so happy I was shocked. I sold about $2,000 worth of goods in about two weeks. I was really jazzed. Just one problem. The company didn’t ship anything. Ebay customers were going crazy wanting to know where their products were and within days they were already given me negative Ebay ratings. In despair I started searching the Internet to find products that were the same or similar to the “secret” products I had sold. I even went to Wal-Mart and purchased products for several times the price I had sold the products to these customers. At that point I was just trying to keep Ebay from closing my account.

That was my beginning on the Internet. Great huh? It was a disaster! But from that disaster I met some manufactures that would sell me products, learned about drop shipping, learned that the fees Ebay and Paypal charged were exorbitant and learned that even I a Janitor’s son from a small rural town could master the Internet as a online merchant. More shock.

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In the last four years these are the secrets I have learned about making money on the Internet

1. EBAY: It isn’t all it is cracked up to be. The bargains aren’t really bargains (you can get better prices, in most cases, by dealing with the merchant outside of Ebay) and the fees that are charged merchants simply make the merchant have to drive up the price of the item. Merchants have to pay a listing fee, a selling fee, fees for putting color in their ads, listing the item for additional days, listing the item for shorter days and on and on. Buyers pay these fees so except for the occasional slip by the merchant where he forgot to put in a bottom selling price or use one of the other tricks to keep bidding high there are no bargains on Ebay.
   
   Now having said that I will tell you that EBAY IS AN EXCELLENT PLACE TO START if you are just beginning an online business. You will learn about advertising and what sells and doesn’t sell on the Internet. You will also learn about merchant fees, charge backs, unreasonable customers and the arbitrary power that Ebay and PayPal exercise in shutting down your account with no basis whatsoever, You will also learn that PayPal under their user agreement can shut down your account for no reason and keep your money for 180 days before they have to return it.
   
   My walking away advice as to PayPal and Ebay is don’t do business with them. Learn what you must as fast as you can and then shut down your PayPal and Ebay accounts. (If you want to see some testimonials about how PayPal and Ebay have ripped off people go to Paypal Sucks.com by Clicking here
   
   
   
2. Classified Ads. This is probably the best advertising you will ever get. I’m constantly amazed at the number of people that actually shop online by using online classifieds. Simply go to your favorite Search Engine such as Google, MSN or Yahoo and type in the words classified ads or online classified ads. My advise would be to put a classified ad in every free classified that you can along with a pic and a good description of your product. Also, use a separate Hotmail account because spammers will pick up your email address from these classified ads and be trying to sell you that Nigeria Ponzi Scheme so beware. As for me I don’t ship outside of the USA no matter how much money they tell me they are willing to pay. I also don’t ship to Hawaii or Alaska only because I found Hawaii to be a breeding ground for crooks and Alaska shipments can get pricey.
   
   Once you have finished posting to all the free classifieds post to some of the low end 1-3 dollar classifieds. I never spend more than $5 on a classified ad and then only if that ad is good for 5-6 months. If they want $5 for a one month ad it is a no go because the same money can be better spend elsewhere advertising on the Internet.
   
   Free Classifieds from USfreeads!
   
3. Affiliates. This CAN be good but you have to be careful. There are some affiliate programs where the primary site is barely making it. If you see delays in payment, unusually high thresholds before payment or prolonged periods before payment these are all indicators of a site in trouble. Another thing to watch for is a site with an affiliate program but no means to contact them. When signing up for an affiliate program make sure there is contact information such as a physical address, email and phone number before signing up. If the site is unable or unwilling to provide this information and they are otherwise an unknown in the affiliate industry move on. Our personal preferences for affiliate programs include Friendfinder.com and Amazon.com. Both have good payout histories and longevity in the affiliate program. Our only complaints with Amazon.com is they were one of the first affiliate programs and have not updated all products to reflect impressions and their information is not available until the next day. This may seem like a small issue but when your site is talking 100,000 clicks a day it is important to know within a couple of hours whether visitors are going to click through on a new advertiser or pass. Time is money so look for sites that cater to you and your traffic.
   
   
4. EzineArticles.com and Go Articles.com Probably one of the easiest ways to promote your site. These are article based sites where contributors (anyone) can write an article on anything and put it into their database. For now this is easy gravy for new websites to ad contact to their websites.
   
   Simply log into EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com and copy the articles into your site. All they ask is you maintain the info as to where you got the article and who wrote it. We have written hundreds of articles for these sites. We always write under fictitious names and make sure the article is rich in specific keywords. For example if you are writing an article on the US Army 101st Airborne Division in Iraq and the Motor pool you would want to repeat these keywords a dozen times or more in your 500-600 word article. This will make it appealing to those wanting to use the article on their sites (remember your own website is in the article resulting in an automatic link back) . Contribute to these sites often and use them as a resource to write your own articles for your own site. Now having told you all this there seems to be two patterns going on with search engines. The first is to down rank sites that are wholly dependent on article type sites for link backs or sites whose content is heavily slanted from such article sites so be sure to write plenty of your own content using article sites as reference points also.
   
   
5. Linking Once the grand master of site ranking it has lost its emphasis with most major search engines. For example, we have a number of sites with 3 or less links that have not been off the first page of search engines for more than four years now. Content is King. Links are great and we believe links from similarly sites will help you rank but they will not alone propel you into the top search engine rankings.
   
   
6. E-Books One of the most under-rated means of Internet Revenue available. Like they say in the Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come.”
   Likewise, if you take the time to write thoughtful well researched item readers will pay $1 - $20.00 to read the information. We have noticed of late sites such as GoArticles.com have become specialized and are starting to charge for articles. For example if you have a wealth of information on Bypass Surgery and can provide testimonials and recommendations prospective patients may well be willing to pay a small fee for this information. But remember simply writing an e-book is not sufficient. You must also market that book and Internet Marketing can be quite complex.
   
   
7. Learn HTML We learned the importance of basic HTML the hard way. We started with a US based webmaster that only knew how to hook up to Paypal and use Microsoft Publisher (yes we were very lucky to have succeeded under these conditions) and went from there to a US based Webmaster that charged us for sneezing. Now that we look back we realize that we were being charged 2-3 hours for something that can be done in 10 minutes. But that is only one of the reasons to learn basic HTML.
   
   Most Webmasters do not consider you their friend, business partner or care about the success of your business. You are a one time drain on their creativity and then they are off to a new challenge. Unless you want to be constantly hiring new Webmaster (and every one bad mouths the old webmaster and insists your site must be completely redone) learn to add text, change contact info, and add some pics and things like that.
   
   By learning basic HTML you will know when the webmaster is cheating you and when the quote is too high or not high enough. You should know how to start a new line or new paragraph or start a list or change Meta tags or insert Google Ad Sense or insert text or ad, delete or modify pictures and other such basics. There are many, many online blogs and help sites where you can learn basic html. Know where your site is hosted and how to access the ftp and copy it to your desktop where you can turn it into a text file for modification. Learn how to make the changes in txt and then rename it to HTML and upload it back onto the ftp site. If you will learn just these few basic things it will give you a sense of freedom and the ability to fix most “emergencies” that are costing you big bucks now because of your own ignorance. Learn basic HTML.
   
   
8. Dealing with Webmasters My experience with Webmasters is quite varied. I have used Webmasters with only basic skills to Webmasters that were the absolute master of their trade. Basically, there are three types of Webmasters when it comes to the technical aspect of the trade. There are guys that can throw up a website for a brochure, vanity site or other similar type site and I call these sites the look and see sites. These types of sites give general information but there is nothing to purchase (this site would be a look and see site in that it’s purpose is to disseminate information as opposed to having a shopping cart for you to buy products or services) and they are the simplest of websites.
   
   The second groups of webmasters are the ecommerce or webmasters that can build dynamic sites. These types of sites will allow you to change out pictures, change prices, add new categories or add new products without knowing any programming code at all. Finally, the third type of webmaster will be an expert in search engine optimization and he will know about keywords, ranking in the search engines and incorporating artistic design into search engine ranking.
   
   If you are any internet marketer you have already figured out that hiring the third type of webmaster will save hours of time and expense. The problem is finding them. Every webmaster tells you that he is a search engine expert. Few are. Many webmasters will provide you a list of sites that are ranking on the first page of Google for certain keywords. This is typically a ruse. Anyone can get page one rankings with unusual keywords. Even you.
   
   The only real choice you will have is in choosing between a guy that programs basic HTML that will require his constant involvement to update products and pricing and someone that can build you an ecommerce site programmed in a language (PHP) that will allow you to make product and pricing changes without involving the webmaster. You are thinking that this decision is a no brainer but don’t be so fast. First, Google, Yahoo, and MSN all rank HTML sites higher than dynamic links. Why you ask? Well with a dynamic site every time you change something out a new URL is created and so the search engines don’t like finding a link that in just a few hours may no longer be good. It makes them look bad displaying dead links.
   
   So how do you find a webmaster that knows what they are doing? Cheaply as possible. Most US based webmasters want $50 per hour or better and although I have found most competent I have found few that rate the $50 per hour or better. For me I have turned to Guru.com a website where you can input your project and webmasters from around the world (there are a number of such sites including Elance.com but I have found Guru.com to be the simplest to use and I have generally been pleased with the quality of work from that sites contract webmasters) will bid on your project. By using Guru you can expect bids on your project from $8.00 per hour to $20.00 per hour for competent webmasters from around the world. I have had good success with webmasters from India and England, average results from webmasters out of Pakistan, poor results with webmasters from Romania and over pricing from webmasters out of the USA. My recommendation is that until you have substantial experience in developing websites that you ask for bids by finding a website with features that you like and asking for bids to build a site just like it with all it’s features. Webmasters hate this but it will give you a completely functional site and typically for an ecommerce site you can get this done for $300 - $800 whereas I have been quoted $10,000 and upwards by USA Webmasters for the same site.
   
   Once your site is done have only absolutely necessary changes done until you have been in business 1-2 years. Otherwise, the cost of constant little changes and “gee I wish I had this feature or that feature” will result in a hotch potch of a site that will be more difficult to manage and drive cost into your business. However, having said that keep a log of all the features that you would like so when you get ready to redo the site you will know exactly what you want (I consider the first website an experiment).
   
   
9. Thomas Registry.com If you have been wanting to start an online business the challenge has been what you can sell. The answer is anything that is movable. Cars, plumbing parts, collectables, quilts, antiques and everything else that isn’t glued down. The rule of thumb is if it can be shipped it can be sold. Now having said that keep in mind that if you sale a $5 item with a $2 profit (which is still a good profit) you are going to have to sell many of those to sustain a lively hood. Particularly if it is a product that requires shipping and will otherwise consume your time.
   
   My advice is to sale information or a product with a sufficient profit margin that it is worth your time. For me I have drawn that line at $40.00. If I can’t make a $40.00 profit on an item I don’t carry it. Along these lines stocking and inventorying merchandise is time consuming and costly. Even Wal-Mart has adopted JIT Inventory (JIT stands for just in time which means Wal-Mart anticipates running out Thursday so new inventory arrives Wednesday night) and so should you. But better yet is carry no inventory and have the distributor or manufacture of the products ship the goods for you.
   
   To locate manufactures that will be willing to ship products go to Thomas Register.com where there a list and list of manufactures and the products they sale. Email and call them to find out who will drop ship (the practice of manufacture shipping directly to the consumer) their products directly to the customer. This means you only have to pay for the product after the customer has already paid you.
   
   
10. Pay Per Click PPC Advertising Although simple in principle this is one of the most complicated and costly forms of advertising. Pay Per Click is advertising that search engines utilize to bring customers to your website. You have seen the ads on Google, MSN or Yahoo that say “Sponsored Results” and may have wondered what this is. They are PPC advertisers. Each time you click on one of those sponsored advertisers you are taken to the advertiser’s site and the advertiser is charged a fee. These fees depend on how many other websites are willing to bid for specific search terms. For example if you are selling wheelbarrows you may find that the cost to get first place on the sponsored results (which are higher on the most search engine pages than the organic results) could range from 10 cents to 5.00 dollars depending on who is bidding and how badly they want that term. The trick with PPC is to know your profit margin, your conversion rate to impressions and to not let your ego get ahold of you when placing bids. Let me explain. If you get a profit of $50.00 on an item from your website (after deducting credit card discounts, cost of shipment and price of goods) you know that every time you make a sale you get $50.00 to keep. But advertising on the Internet is unlike any advertising you have every done. First, impressions are each time that you ad is displayed. You have no control over exactly when the advertisement will be displayed or to whom it will be displayed (although Google has introduced an ability to monitor when it will be displayed in a window of time similar to waiting on the cable TV guy and MSN has introduced the ability to market to certain sexes and occupations but then their demographics are not verified and highly dependent on people telling the truth when they sign up for MSN products such as Hotmail) and finally, one day you can have 1000 impressions between 12 -1 and the next day in the same time slot get 50. It all depends on when the search engines display your ads.
    
    
    So impressions aside you advertise for keywords and when someone clicks on your site you are charged. Typically, you can expect 1 sale out of every 100-300 clicks. That means if you paid 10 cents for each click and there where 300 you made $20.00. However, if you paid .20 cents you lost $10.00.
    
    What I have observed about people that advertise on the Internet in PPC engines is most of them have no idea what they are doing. They are small business people that are working out of their home trying to supplement their income. For example I recently observed the PPC for Mary Kay Cosmetics and found that some of these women were paying $2.00 to $3.00 per click and upwards. That means that for every sale they made they spent at least $200.00. However, it was like an endless supply of Mary Kay Drones running ads then running out of money then new drones running ads and running out of money and so on and so on. If you allow your ego to take over your bidding you may be first on the search page but you will also be first in the bankruptcy court. Know your profit and how many impressions it takes for you to make a sale and at what point you can no longer increase bidding without loosing money.
    
    To sign up for Google Adsense Click here or if you want to sign up for Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) Click here or if you want to sign up with MSN AdCenter then Click here
    
    If you are just starting out go with MSN Adcenter in that the cost to advertise is much less and they will eat up your money much slower. The have the fewest impressions and clicks of the top three and the most complex control panel but it is also a PPC Center where you don’t have to monitor it 24/7 for fear you are going to wake up and find you spent $500.00 overnight in advertising and only received 1 order for $9.95. Think I’m kidding? Google Adwords has this crazy PPC program that looks at your site and then decides how much they can gouch you for (I literally have been told by their automated system that it wanted $5.00 for every click on items selling for less than $5.00) so my recommendation is learn how PPC works with MSN AdCenter first.
    
    

    Visitors to your website

    Keeping track of the visitors to your website is one of the simplest and most important things you can do. Statistic Counters are one of the greatest tools you will have at your disposal. They can tell you when someone came to your website, what pages they visited, how long they were at your website, whether they purchased anything, the city the person came to your website from, their computers IP address and finally the very keywords the person typed into the search engine (oh yeah and which site or search engine they came from) to come from your site. If you have a site on masonry or grass that me be pretty bland but when you have a site on Jessica Simpson Click here to see our Jessica Simpson site it can get a little creepy seeing what people type in search terms to find pictures of Jessica Simpson.
    
    For us the best is Click here for StatCounter.com and they have both a free and a paid version. We started with the free version which only has a 100 log size and then switched to the paid version more out of curiosity. Boy were we stupid. All the years we had been on the free version the log size was not large enough to give us the stats as to our most popular pages. To our shock and demise our most popular page being pulled in the search engines was blank. Nothing on it but a big red X where I had goofed trying to load a product. Who knows how many thousands of dollars we had missed out on because we were to cheap to pony up with the $10.00. Don’t let it happen to you. Get the paid version of the Stat Counter from the beginning. I’d like to make some money off this referral but sadly (for us) Stat Counter doesn’t have an affiliate program that we could find so just sign up and we will call this one on us. (You could click on one of our sponsors ads if you wanted to help us out:)
    
    

    Newsletters

    The philosophy here is simple. You don’t know anything dummy. Subscribe to every webmaster newsletter you can get your hands on and read them all. Subscribe and read, subscribe and read, subscribe and read. When we first started in business we probably spend two hours a day doing nothing but reading newsletters. Later you will get better at skimming for the “good stuff” but for now read every webmaster newsletter you can get your hands on. Almost all are free (we only subscribed if they were free) and you will learn something from every one of them. Our favorite from the beginning has been the newsletter offered at Webpronews.com
    
    

    Blogs, Blogs and Blogs

    I just don’t get this. They seem to al be run by amateurs or absolute big name company professionals like the Republican Party. I see almost no blogs being run by the average small businessman but I can tell you that as much a pain as they seem to be they work. Search Engines rank you higher if you have a blog that has content about you, people are reading them and at least 1 billion people are writing in them. So either start your own blog and monitor the forums or hire one of those guys from India to write you content onto a blog. Either way you are going to need a blog. By the way why not take a break and visit one now so you can see what a free blog looks like. You can get one at Quick Blog from GoDaddy.com
    
    

    Buying a Domain Name and Hosting that Domain Name

    You are going to need a domain name. I'm pasting a link where you can get one cheap. When picking a domain name keep it simple. The smartest advertiser I ever knew said when picking a name make it say what you do. For example if you sell salt then the name of your company should be, "We sale salt." Likewise, in picking a domain name select one that is the name of your product. If your product is candy bars then buy the domain name candybars.com
    Enough for now. Buy your domain name now.
    
    
    
    
    

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