Guest Post by Paul
I wanted to write an article that covered the high level concepts behind a long term internet marketing plan (1 year+) so that you can see into the future and understand the income potential that can be earned from consistent and intelligent action.
I am an online marketer that believes in creating sustained, long-term and secure growth just like any offline business. It’s not a get rich quick scheme but it’s an absolute proven model that I always advise my subscribers to pay attention to. There are many top internet marketers (I’m actually at a conference with one as I write this) who follow this exact model – so this article can be worth gold if you follow it to the letter.
Here’s where you start:
First of all, let’s take a long term view of this. Many businesses evolve over time, each step is taken one at a time. So you need to think of an area in which there is ample room for growth. Here is your growth path:-
1) Affiliate marketing
2) Product creation
3) Membership sites or recurring monthly incomes
For those of you who are new to the industry I’ll translate. Firstly, you sell other people’s products. Then when you’re ready and consider yourself an expert in your niche then you create a product. Finally, and the most powerful of all, you need to set up a membership site and start trying to create a recurring income out of your subscribers.
This strategy is hugely powerful and it’s a long term approach – something that is going to bring an income that has longevity.
Choose Your Niche
With the three steps that I have just mentioned in your mind you are now in prime position to choose your niche. Remember, in the long term you want to create a recurring income through a membership site – this means you need to choose a niche that you can see yourself being a voice of authority in. Take my advice and choose something you’re interested in.
Build Your List
Building your list sounds really hard but actually it’s pretty easy. You need to create what’s called a squeeze page – a squeeze page is a simple page that is designed to capture the names and email addresses of those people who visit your site.
This is a must. Build your subscriber list.
Not sure how to? Don’t worry – it’s easy. Like I said at the start of this article – I am talking concepts, not technicalities because technicalities are always easy to overcome, so we’ll go into how later.
Build A Relationship With Your Subscribers
People who know and trust you will be more inclined to buy from your web sites. FACT. You need to provide your subscribers with relevant and useful information that provides real value. This means no sales pitches for the first few weeks at least. You’re an expert in the field (even if you’re not, you should have done your research so that you’re more educated than the average person) and so you should be able to provide your subscribers with real value.
Only Then Do You Monetise Your List…
Once you’ve built a relationship with your list you can pitch your first product. The product must be excellent and it must genuinely help your subscribers by solving a problem.
Not sure what products are good and what are bad? Email the product vendor and ask for a review copy – he’ll usually be more than happy to send you the review copy as long as you can demonstrate your expertise in internet marketing (they’d be mad not to – you’ll be driving sales for them!).
At This Point You Start Looking At Product Creation
Once you really feel like you can add some value of your own to the niche that you’re in, you can start looking at creating products of your own. The powerful thing about product creation is that you can attract an army of affiliates to do the sales for you – this creates a snowball effect and is where you can start to make some really good money without doing a whole lot of work.
Finally, recurring income time…
Your final step – and by this stage you should already be earning a good amount online – you need to create a recurring income. This is where you start looking into building your own membership site.
It’s a heck of a lot of work, and so you may want to outsource some of your work, but once you can populate a membership site to a level that provides real value to your subscribers then you can start using your list to promote it.
If you can get 20 membership site sales per month every month then your recurring income can grow at $400 / month (assuming your membership site costs $20/month to join).
Furthermore, you’d then build an army of affiliates to drive traffic to your membership site and take home 50% of the income of those sales too.
This Is The Only Strategy You Need To Follow
Save your money – you don’t need to buy any more information products about online marketing because this is the high level strategy that you need to follow to create a long-term, profitable and secure online business.
Resource Box:
If you’re serious about creating an online business and want to learn the specifics that I’ve outlined in this article then don’t miss what I have here: http://www.amshortcuts.com/cfs. You’ll also be able to contact me if you have any questions about this article.