One of the keys to success at selling products on the Internet is to identify who the Good Guys of the Internet Marketing world are and learn from them.
In the title of this posting I have added the words ‘Important Blog’ for a reason. I really want you to learn some lessons that it has taken me a long time to discover. Over the next few days I will give you a real short cut to some great people who have deservedly won my admiration. I want you to understand why I am a fan of these people.
I will start with a brief potted history so that you know that I have the right credentials to be giving you any advice at all.
I put my first website in either late 1992 or early 1993 – not sure. Since then been involved (not alone) in building over 2000 websites. Rather tired of just doing that.
I didn’t get involved in trying to make money on-line for myself though until about three years ago. Some of my clients were making significant income from their websites and I thought – well why not me. Let’s give this thing a shot.
The timing in many ways was perfect because I met a guy called Adam Eason who was running a Hypnotherapy clinic here on the south coast of England. I saw him giving a talk to a networking group and realised that here was a charismatic character who had the audience in the palm of his hands.
A little checking out and I saw the potential because he was a leading figure in his field (a little heavy academically – but hey I could influence that and give him the common touch). What a perfect pairing – his considerable knowledge and my technical background – just right for info products.
A partnership was born and some real quality products were made – I won’t go through the traumatic story of the expensive mistakes we made putting together those earliest products. Suffice to say that we had hundreds of CDs produced and then went on to sell 98 percent of our products as digital MP3 downloads. (what do I hear you say – test the market!! hmmm yes) I still have hundreds of CDs in my attic. If anybody has a retail outlet and would like to sell some hypnosis CDs – sale or return – do get in touch. I’m serious.
So on to the marketing. What a minefield.
I wanted to learn from the best and delved into product after product about traffic generation, list building, Google domination, Search Engine Optimisation techniques. I purchased and purchased and found fluff, black hat techniques (typically – how to trick Google) – the list goes on. You know what – so much of it was rubbish.
The problem was (and is) that more and more people were jumping on each band wagon as it came along. Quite easy to spot when you are on as many lists as I was. For several weeks you would see almost identical letters coming out and there would be one new buzz word phrase that was common to all of them for several days up to the launch. . Eg For quite some time nearly everywhere I turned in my e-mails I would see “The Rich Jerk” in the text somewhere. Yep – I finished up buying it – I was still falling for the hype at that time.
Most of the advice in all of the hyped up pre-launches are totally unsustainable over the long run. Now the problem is that some of the products may be good – it was (and is) impossible to tell because the same approach and sensationalising is done for all good or bac.
I just don’t know and totally ignore all that stuff now – burnt far too many times.
I will not even begin to name and shame. I could but the list would be
as long as my arm and what’s the point. I don’t regret bumping into
these guys – I have learned what to avoid. Don’t be vindictive – you learn from everything.
So a new approach had to be found to identify the GOOD GUYS. They just had to be there.
SO – I got off all of the e-mail lists good and bad – crikey!!! how had I got on so many?
Next step – checked out the guys that I suspected might have some true substance I looked to see if they had a blog. Now this is important. It takes a lot more discipline and commitment to look after a blog. It takes time and is in fact very revealing about the person.
HERE IS WHERE I REALLY REWARD YOU FOR READING THIS BLOG.
Here is the real wisdom of how to find people of real value to follow (important word – FOLLOW)
Web 2.0 as it is called has thrown up so many new ways to find out about people in social networks. OK – let me get one thing straight I am not just talking about My Space and Facebook. They are important but you have to use them in combination with other things. I will be dealing with this over the next few days.
THERE WAS HOWEVER AN AMAZING DISCOVERY ON MY PART
My learning curve has been extremely steep over the last three or four weeks – and the tirgger was something I have written about when I first used it – twittering.
The first twitter I followed was a guy called Ed Dale and I couldn’t believe the quality content of all his materials – especially his videos.
I am going to devote the whole of tomorrows blog about Ed and a bunch of his mates who are doing great things from that UK outpost Australia.
But I would like to end today by displaying here one of his videos that really shows how great his material is.
Now I have had many people say to me over the years – you’ve built my nice new site – why isn’t it up there at the top of Google. Well I wish that I had been in possession of this exceptionally good explanation of what Google thinks of your new site – as I would have steered them in the direction of this video.
Bear in mind that this is out of context – I will tell you more about the series that it comes from tomorrow.
But without further ado – I will leave you in the very capable hands of Ed. (35 minutes long by the way so do come back later – this is worth absorbing)
See my previous blogs about twittering:
wats-on.net/2008/04/22/twittering-with-ed-dale-and-john-reese/
wats-on.net/2008/04/24/thomas-power-linked-me-on-ecademy-because-of-twitter/
If you want to find out more about twittering in the meantime you can follow me on my twitter at www.twitter.com/keithwatson
