Okay, you’ve heard the term ‘Internet marketing’ but you’re not sure what it means, right? Some of you might think it means selling products on the Internet, while others may think it’s to do with building websites, and others might think it’s about Facebook. It’s all that and lots more.
Internet marketing is the ‘umbrella’ term for everything related to sharing information on the Internet. Notice I didn’t say ‘selling’. That’s because there are thousands and thousands of sites that share information for free. Yep, it’s my favourite word, too!
From Wikipedia to Nicoleonthenet.com, countless sites have free info for you. Google free information and see how many sites come up and the variety of subjects available.
In this blog series, the focus is on the types of work people can do in Internet marketing. Copywriting, article writing, article submitting, web design, web copy, blogging, guest blogging, eBook writing, graphic design, building websites, Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, LinkedIn marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, offline marketing, and the list goes on. It would go on further but I’m on holiday and my list is at home. Hence the shorter post. I just wanted to keep in touch.
Thanks for all your comments. I do read them all and appreciate your feedback.
Take care
Shan

When you have information that someone else wants, you have a potential goldmine. You’ve been in bookstores and libraries and seen for yourself the sheer number of non-fiction books, CDs, and DVDs that are available. Now they’re coming into the online marketplace, for millions of buyers desperate for advice, information and wisdom at all hours.

If you sell non-fiction info products, you could target a single niche of consumers and make substantial profits, e.g. weight loss for the over-50′s. You could have your own empire and be the virtual expert for that niche. Don’t want to limit yourself? Okay, how about taking that single niche but developing it into, say, money-saving tips for the over-50′s, or holidays for the over-50′s. If you’re wondering why I suggested the over-50′s, okay, I’m over 50 lol. Getting back to it – you could offer solutions to multitudes of people needing information if you branched out from that one niche. It’s like looking at a tree and seeing the trunk with all the branches going off it.

You’ve probably heard that print publishers only give authors a small portion of what’s left after the agent and publishing house fees. If you sell information products online, you’ll be able to charge more and keep virtually all the profit.

Generally, a non-fiction book at Barnes and Noble would cost an average of $9.95 to $29.95. When you’re selling information products for instant download on the internet, you can price them higher. The selling point usually starts at $27 and goes all the way up to $97. Even if you outsource the creation of your info product, you’ll recoup your investment after a short period of sales.

So, why are people downloading so many information products? We’re in an age of high-tech development. Your readers could be anywhere – in an airport, in bed, eating their lunch, on a train – reading your eBook on their laptop. This sort of tech was only dreamt of 20 years ago. It’s mind-boggling.

People want information now, not tomorrow, certainly not the next day. If their child is up sick and crying at 4:30 in the morning, a mom can’t drive to a bookstore to buy a self-help book – but she can log onto her computer and download your eBook. She’ll be acting on your advice in minutes. Does that feel good, or what.

Another reason info products are so popular online is because they usually come with money-back guarantees, something we all look for.

When you go through the ‘Everything Else’ section on eBay.com and look at Information Products, you see a tiny amount of information being sold. Tiny, that is, compared with the billions of other information products you find on the internet. Most people go on the internet looking for information which has spawned a business opportunity: selling information products.

Information products come in all types. CD’s, DVD’s, eBooks, books, webinars, teleseminars, coaching courses, reports, emails, to name a few. Some websites offer free information, some offer so-called free information, but you have to part with your email address. If you read my previous post, you’ll know what that can lead to.

If you want to sell information on the internet, be a virtual expert in your niche, your field. Others will ask for your help and you’ll provide solutions for them. That’ll help them build trust in you. Remember that you can’t give a customer a big smile when they visit your website, so you have to do something else to encourage them to buy from you. Practice writing sales copy (or outsource it) that wipes out their doubts and fears and makes them trust you.

At that point, if your long-term strategy is to make money from selling information on the internet, make sure that what you deliver goes beyond their expectations. Go the extra mile for them. Customers can’t be bought; they expect a cracking service from you so give it to them. If they’re happy with your service, they’ll buy from you again. And again. And again. Just ask Tiffany Dow and Peggy Baron how much I’ve bought off them!

If you want to know how to make money selling information products on the internet, look at the successful marketers who already do it. Find out about list building, social networking, autoresponders, and testing. There are loads of opportunities for people who want to sell info online, and a never ending stream of people hungry for information.

When you start exploring Internet marketing, you sign up for all the freebies you can, so you get put on zillions of mailing lists. Most of the IM’ers who own those lists bombard you with every offer going, treating you like a cash machine. If there’s a particular marketer you like the look of, or he/she sounds perfectly believable, you may end up buying all his/her products. I did that too, until the day I bought a product that was a rehash of a product I had bought from him/her a few months earlier. I politely told him/her where to stick it.

The veil was lifted. Ok, you don’t like that. How about ‘the fog cleared’, ‘my eyes were opened’? Oh – you like that one. Right. My eyes were opened and I started looking more closely at the testimonials on sales letters. There’s a saying in the UK, ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ – let’s just say there’s a lot of that going on in IM circles! Some people would call it ‘incestuous’. So I started looking around for other people who might be a bit more trustworthy and who, if I got on their mailing list, wouldn’t be trying to sell me every shonky (dodgy) scheme/product/course in the universe.

I found Nicole Dean. Then I found Peggy Baron. After Peggy, I found Susanne Myers, and then I found Tiffany Dow. These four ladies stopped me chucking it all in. I listened to Nicole Dean’s podcasts on iTunes which opened up the good, clean, honest side of internet marketing to me, and I heard Connie Ragen Green, Susanne Myers, Paul Evans from Nicheology.com and loads of others being interviewed by Nicole.

There are honest internet marketers around. Best not to lift any stones or you’ll find the other sort.

It’s like re-learning a skill I used to have. I liked writing stories when I was at school then enjoyed writing essays at college. One of my subjects was creative writing. It was great fun! Cathartic, creative and slightly crazy at times. When let loose with a computer and a bit of an idea, it’s staggering where your mind can take you.

Adults – using the wisdom that comes  with maturity – effectively censor the world around them to make sense of it, and it shows in their writing unless they choose to give their imagination the chance to simply ‘go for it’. I sometimes suggest to clients that they ‘write it down’ when they’re unable to speak the words to describe how they’re feeling. It isn’t always a negative situation the client finds it difficult to describe. Seeing the client write the expression ‘I was so excited, I thought my t-shirt would explode’ then seeing the huge grin across his face was fantastic!

I asked a colleague how she viewed writing. She said, ‘I need to be able to write like I need air to breathe.’

Someone else said, ‘I’d forgotten how to write. Just having the pen and paper on the table gave me a freedom I haven’t felt in such a long time. It’s just been about business letters these last few years. This – this is a tool I can use that’s for me. I can share it with others if I want to, but it’s mostly just for me.’

Those words ‘this is a tool I can use that’s for me’ are true. Writing is a tool you can use for anything, not just for emails and texts. Words can release your internal pressure, be your creativity and your lifeline.

Some years ago, I was in therapy and was so locked in within myself that I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t talk about anything. My therapist encouraged me to write so I wrote poetry. I wrote between therapy appointments and would take my writing to her the next appointment and she would give me therapy on what I’d written. That wonderful therapist, Marilyn Hyde, helped to set me free.   Years later, she still likes to see my writing.