The Hardest Part about Internet Marketing Is Decision Making

Posted on July 8, 2010
Filed Under General Marketing | Leave a Comment


Okay so today I woke up early 4am and started working. I like waking up this early because it gives me enough head start before I go to the office to offer support to my staff. I never used to dream of waking up this early but since I’ve been working on my time management it seemed like a good option. So now I sleep early and wake up early. I used to sleep late and woke up late, a formula that does not work for me any more…especially now that I am married and also have a staff to train all day.

Anyway, so I woke up to try and finish up my strategizing. I am currently working on my 3rd term plan. I have since identified my strategy, developed my overall goal and objectives and am now trying to work on the tactics. That is, the specifics of what to do.

Now the reason why I say the hardest part about internet marketing is decision making is because of the constant emails I get about the next best thing online. In this last 2 months alone there has been so many product launches… I could hardly keep up. All of them were great and if I had enough resources I would have found myself signing up to all of them (a crazy thought in my opinion).

Watching all their prelaunch videos empowered me with a lot of new information about the state of internet marketing. What works now, and how to leverage on my current resources. I learnt so much from outsourcing, List building, product creation to product launches.

Problem is, it all confused me in my Internet Marketing strategy development. I mean I read about so many great ideas I wasn’t sure if my strategy would work. I wanted to adopt a piece of each strategy and work it into mine but it proved futile…in fact it is still proving futile.

This is a common situation with most internet marketers. We get flooded with so many ideas and never truly know what to do. Unless you are strong you will never have your own tried and tested business model that you can modify to perfection. I suppose this is why people never make it…they jump from one strategy to the other and then conclude…Internet Marketing is a scam.

Last September (2009) I decided to shut down and did not open any email promotion…from ANYONE. For 6 months I didn’t know what was going on in the internet marketing world and even tried not to care. I wanted to focus. I developed a campaign that would take me 6 months to accomplish. I did it. From October 2009 to March 2010 I worked on 1 thing…ONE thing alone and it paid off BIG time.

Looking back I discovered that I made more during this time than I had ever made in all the years I’ve been online. In fact I am still enjoying the benefits up to now. This is why I can afford to blog and consider other things (am itching to get into list building…oh decisions decisions).

But now I want to go back to seclusion. I want to finalize my strategy, get the necessary tools (I’m currently “window” shopping for better tools  - with the extra cash I’ve made I can afford to do this), hire the right staff and then shut myself…and my staff out for another 6 months.

Don’t worry, I will continue blogging but I mean I will not be entertaining and promotional or prelaunch emails…no matter the hype.

Here is what I’m trying to say:

Ø  You will find it hard to choose a business model unless you shut down the “noise”.

Ø  Open up and check out offers while you ‘re still developing the strategy but do not get sucked in too much. Learn to say “no” no matter the urge to sign up to the next best thing.

Ø  Making a decision about your business is the most vital element of your growth. Never undermine it. Think. Think. Think.

Ø  Once you’re done thinking get up and go and don’t look back until you’ve reached your destination.

Ø  There will always be good ideas. You CAN afford to pass on offers if you feel they will distract you. Don’t fall for the scarcity strategy they use. If they shut their program down, someone else will come up with a better one tomorrow.

Hey, I think I was talking more to myself here.

Anyway -  Are you having trouble making decisions about your online business? Let me know what you think below

Understand Your Internet Marketing Strategy

Posted on July 7, 2010
Filed Under Internet marketing | 2 Comments


Yesterday I decided to leave the laptop at the office. I just wanted to spend some time with my wife without the urge to check my stats and email every now and then. It was a great relief. I really don’t know why I enslave myself with the laptop. You can’t imagine the sense of freedom I get when it is not with me. To think, oh! I can finally get to do something else other than stare at the computer screen all day and night. I won’t lie and don’t say I don’t get withdrawal “pains” every now.

Anyway, so I today I woke up a bit late i.e. 6am and spent some time chit chatting with my wife. So what’s the point with all of this Mfundo… well I am trying to say I had a clear mindset in the morning and I could think clearer.

So I thought about my business model, my marketing strategy as a whole. Marlon Sanders says you need a strategy no matter what you do online and I fully agree. I pulled out an old business plan of mine I wrote 2 years ago. Read through my plans and was amazed at how well defined it was…well, except for the strategy.

So I decided to take a look at my operations, what I have done to date and what I plan to do and how I plan to do it. I wanted to find that common link to all the activities…the strategy that drives my business.

After a careful look I discovered it, I am using an encirclement strategy (Some call it the envelope strategy). In war this strategy is used to  describe, the ability to isolate and surround enemy forces, on a strategic scale. The great executor of the strategy was Hannibal.

 

In internet marketing this strategy involves targeting several smaller untapped or underdeveloped segments within a market (niche) simultaneously. The goal is to surround the more popular websites with a number of small highly targeted (long-tail based) sites.

 

 

For example, I am launching a campaign in a Records Search niche within the next few weeks. Now there are already hundreds of bigger sites that dominate this niche. More than 20 of those sites are owned by companies that are investor funded…with millions of dollars and some are already making profits of more than $50 million annually. The sites dominate the first 10 pages of Google with multiple keywords. At a glance entering this market seems detrimental but my previous tests stated otherwise. I am getting in but am not taking these companies head on.

 

I have discovered smaller “unserved” niches within this niche. You see big companies don’t bother targeting keywords that attract say 100 visitors per month. They are after the big keywords because they have the money to compete at that level. I have discovered that there are thousands of these small long tail keywords that attract 100 visitors or less per month and I am taking them ALL.

 

My strategy is to build about 200 small sites, with highly targeted-long tail domain names having 10 or less articles each. The plan is to get at least 500 visitors to each of the sites and subsequently get 100k visitors. At a typical conversion rate of 1% I plan to make 1000 sales per month of a product that has a payout of $20.  That means $20,000 per month.

 

Now this will not happen overnight, it is a 6-8 month plan but because I know my strategy and tactics I will achieve my goal.

 

Before I conclude please note that the envelope internet marketing strategy can be successfully executed if:

 

Ø  There are a number of long-tail keywords to target and you have the tools to extract them all. I use keywordsnatcher by Jon Leger

Ø  The keywords are not targeted by too many competitors.

Ø  If you have the resources to build as much content as possible i.e. articles of niche sites

Ø  You have the resources to maintain the sites and articles i.e. build links to them, distribute them all over the internet etc.

Ø  You have a team of outsourced workers or inhouse staff that knows exactly what to do without you being there all the time

Take away points from this post:

1.       You need to know your strategy: look at your business, what you’ve been doing and find that link that connects everything you do and name it as your strategy. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it another way: “Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war.”

2.       Focus on your strategy until it brings results: do not be listen to too many ideas and next best products being launched every day. Rather work on modifying your own strategy until it is perfect. Hannibal won all his battles by executing the same strategy and improving it every time. Do the same.

3.       If you ever get overwhelmed simply leave your desktop at the office and take a break. Do other things that you love and you will get some perspective after a while.

I will be sharing more on different strategies you can use in your marketing warfare in the coming weeks. What strategy are you using and how is it working for you? Please share below.

I’m thinking about Internet Marketing Blogging Again

Posted on July 6, 2010
Filed Under Blogging | Leave a Comment


It’s been a while since I posted content in this site. In fact even the most recent content I put in here was scrapped from a blog network. I should be ashamed of myself and I am- believe me.

So why the sudden interest to blog about internet marketing again?

Well as you might remember some time ago I blogged about why I stopped blogging. My main reason for stopping was based on my focus at the time. I needed to focus on one business model until I had mastered it well. Blogging for me, at that time, was a distraction more than anything else. I mean I had a really good Adsense model coming up and didn’t need to get distracted. In the 3 months of full time blogging I saw my Adsense deep – something that had never happened (has never happened to date even after that).

Now, it has been more than a year and I have since made millions with adsense (in revenue not profits…lol) and have seen massive growth in my business. In fact, the last time I was posted a post on this blog I was unmarried, worked in my now defunct marketing company (oh! Cry the beloved country), and lived in another city.

Today I am married and loving it, live in a new city (well I lived here when I was growing up and now and back), have an office with a staff of 5 people (soon to grow to 10…in 2010 alone), have some freelancers working for me and virtual employees. And I make $800 per day with Adsense alone soon to be $1000 in less than 5 months). I would tell you how much I make per month overall but you wouldn’t believe me. Oh! And I owe one of the banks hundreds of thousands (est. $25,000.00 my ex-partner is paying the other half) for a loan taken by my previous company and failed to pay (yeah…I have been to the school of life and paid high tuition for it). This is why you will often hear me talk about starting small and growing gradually without taking any kind of loan.

I have had my Adsense account almost terminated twice for breaking the terms of service (didn’t do it on purpose), had adsense stopped in one of my powerful sites (lost $1,500 per month) for a month or so and luckly got Google to reconsider. Had one of my sites de-indexed in Google for using offensive words (again…didn’t know Google hated those words under any circumstance).

Must I go on? No? ok just this last one….I had my bank refuse to take any of my USD cheques especially those from Google. Reason? They were too risky for them. Imagine that! After 3 years of depositing these cheques  suddenly they were risky.

That alone propelled me to where I am today. I was forced to diversify my “financial partners” and my business model. I opened a business account, opened bank accounts from two other banks and started diversifying my income from cheque based affiliate programs to those that can wire the money directly to my account.  

I bought a new car, still not my dream car but it was progress from my 1995 Golf 3 model. Now drive a Pollo 2004 model. I am in the process of incorporating a company in South Africa (bigger market and have access to crucial services for my business e.g. Paypal).

As you can see, I am not where I want to be yet but I am not where I was the last time I posted something on this blog. I’ve really had my share of ups and downs in business but I am still going strong.

I have grown so much in internet marketing it’s not funny. I now know so much and will soon be unleashing it all in this site.

So if by any chance you came across this post, don’t you dare close the page before you sign up to receive my feeds. It’s a new me – I’ve grown in so many ways and I am ready to take on the world.

Now it’s your turn to share. How much have you grown since 2 years ago. Please share your story below, I can’t wait to hear from you.

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