I Made My First Ever Internet Marketing Sale!!

I wrote a Squidoo article about 3 weeks ago before I started the 30 Day Challenge.

Check it out:
http://www.squidoo.com/manually-removing-spyware

Anyway, I look in my Clickbank account and there it was: $26.93 from a spyware product.

Here is the screenshot:

I am so much more motivated since it actually works!!

I've learned so much from the 30 Day Challenge and Wealthy Affiliate.

Simply amazing.

Are You Using Features And Benefits In Your Sales Copy?

I was checking out the Wealthy Affiliate forums and I came across this neat little tip on Benefits & Features.

First of all, do you even KNOW what the difference is between a Feature and a Benefit?

Features: These are the characteristics of the product or service. They talk about what the product or service will do.
Benefits: These are the characteristics that HELP the customer. They talk about how it makes the customer's life easier.

So here's the tip:
Write the Product, the feature(s) of a product, then write the corresponding benefit(s).

Examples:
Product: Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse
Feature: This mouse can be used 10 feet away from the base of the transmitter.
Benefit: This mouse allows you to operate your computer while relaxing on your couch.

Product: School Backpack
Feature: Backpack straps are padded with extra foam for comfort.
Benefit: These backpack straps are so padded that it will feel like you're not even wearing a backpack at all.

Questions to ask:
Feature: What does this product do? What are the technical characteristics?
Benefits: How does this help your customer? Does the benefit make the customer's life easier?

When you start implementing more benefits-driven copy, you will definitely be getting more sales because you are engaging your customer's emotions towards their decision making process.

Here are more resources:
Marketing Features Vs Benefits
Sell Benefits, Not Features
Entrepreneurs: Benefits vs. Features-Know the Difference!

What A Crazy Week!!

It's been almost 6 days since my last post and I've been so busy (and lacking so much sleep!). Thank god it's Friday!

Here are the things I've accomplished this week:

• Wrote some articles (I'm still behind the 3 per day assignment)
  
• Created my tumblr.com blog for my niche
• Signed up in Clickbank and found an affiliate product to promote
  
• Submitted my blog to several social bookmarking sites including stumble, del.icio.us, netscape.com, and digg
• Created a landing page for my other niche to use for a pay per click campaign (This is for the Wealthy Affiliate 8-Week Course)
• Purchased a domain name and web hosting
• Setup Google Analytics and Feedburner for my new websites
  

Checking this morning, I have achieved ranking between #1 and #8 in Google for various phrases. I think this is really exciting because of the fact that it happened so fast. I was under the impression that getting a organic listing in Google would take weeks or even months to do.

I have yet to see my first sale, but generating traffic is so exciting!

Article Marketing Update: What is Bum Marketing?

After creating my article on squidoo for "Manually Removing Spyware", I wanted some feedback on what others thought about my article. I posted on the Wealthy Affiliate forums and a user by the name of Benjamin pointed me to his FAQ. He led me to a very good resource from Travis Sago about Bum Marketing.

Anyway, my ranking for my Squidoo article has gone from #12,000+ to #2758 over the weekend! The MAIN reason for this was that people were clicking on my article and checking it out because of the post on the wealthy affiliate forum.

The point is, that by driving traffic to the site, it can gain popularity by very simple and free methods such as:

• Forum Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Social Networking
  

I was able to drive about 30 clicks from my forum post. The Article Marketing method suggests that I create an article which refers back to my squidoo article by submitting to ezines or goarticle. The methods suggest providing helpful suggestions through forum posts, blog comments and social networking groups discussions.

I'm guessing that during the 30DC that we will using facebook and teams to help generate to each others site since this is what happened for me in the forums.

I have yet to make my first sale from this site, and from what I heard, it takes time for free traffic to generate a sale since the traffic just trickles in.

More to come in the future!

My First Squidoo Lens (UPDATE!)

One of the assignments in the Wealthy Affiliate 8-Week Action Plan was to create an article. As stated in the previous post, I decided to write about how to remove spyware manually:

http://www.squidoo.com/manually-removing-spyware

Here's an update to my first Squidoo lens:

The ranking went from 200,000+(Jul 31) to 14,535(Aug 1) to 12,710(Aug 2). I'm hoping this means I'll be gaining more traffic as my ranking goes up. So far, I've received 8 unique incoming clicks to my lens with 1 outgoing click to one of my affiliate products, but no buyers.

I was reading a post on the Wealthy Affiliate forum, and they were talking about submitting the article to digg, stumbleupon, and del.icio.us. It seemed to help my ranking a bit, so hopefully it will rise again tomorrow.

I think if I can get this right, I can probably duplicate the process again and again to make a decent amount of income.

This is really exciting stuff and I can't wait to reach my first goal: Making my first sale!

My First Squidoo Lens!

One of the tasks on Wealthy Affiliate's 8-Week Action Plan - Week 2 is to create an article. The lesson plan suggested Squidoo.com, so I figured it sounded like a good idea.

Anyway, I just wrote my first Squidoo Lens and I don't really know what to expect really. I guess it's more of an experiment rather than a deliberate money maker. I wrote about something I knew and attached some clickbank products. Hopefully, I can get some sort of feedback on how this whole article marketing thing works.

How to Manually Remove Spyware From Your PC: http://www.squidoo.com/manually-removing-spyware

I used the following steps to formulate my article:
1.) Determine a market and drill down into the niche:

• Computers -> Spyware -> Spyware Removal -> How to remove Spyware -> How to remove spyware manually.

2.) Determine the search demand: Using the general seed word for "spyware removal" listed several thousand search volume using the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool: http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/

3.) Determine products to promote in Clickbank:

• XoftSpySE
• Noadware.net - Spyware/Adware Remover
• AdawareAlert.com

4.) Write an article on how to remove spyware manually and then create a module for the 3 different products.

5.) Publish the article

I'm kind of saying to myself, "So, what now?". Does it generate natural traffic? I'm guessing people use squidoo as a resource like google, so I guess we'll see what happens.

I have much to learn!

Wealthy Affiliate 8-Week Course: End of Week 1

Wealthy Affiliate 8-Week Course - Week 1

In week 1, most of the materials were to:

• get acquainted with the forum
• post an intro in the forum
  
• get started with the resource center

So far I've read a lot of the materials in the beginner and intermediate sections.

Most of the topics included:

• Internet Marketing Basics
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising
• Common Keyword Technique
• Ad Copy Writing
• How to setup a Web Site
• Keyword Research
• Performing Market Research

MyBase

Also, I have tried the trial version of MyBase and is an excellent program. The trial version of the WebCollect plug-in is cool as well since it allows you to embed web pages into the database itself. I think I will be making this program as my primary choice for organizing my data and information.

Some of the cool features include:

• Being able to attach any type of file to a node (.doc, .pdf, ,.jpeg, etc)
• Embedded Web Browser that is able to view your saved web pages
  
• 2GB of database size (if it ever reaches that, just create a new database - Each database gets it own tab in the tree browser!)
• RTF Styles make it easy to style the page just like a Microsoft Word document
• Linking to another node allows a reference to related notes
  
• Labels allow each node to be "tagged" with multiple labels
• Custom icons: attach any 16x16 bitmap image to be used as icons for each node
• And much more... This program has waaaaay too many features.

Source: http://www.wjjsoft.com/

Information Management

I have been organizing a lot of data so that I can create a process or procedure for creating my marketing campaigns. Here is the outline that I currently am following:

1. Market Research: Discover Niche to Target
   
2. Keyword Research (Niche Demand): Analyze Niche Profitability
   
3. Product Research: Determine products to sell within niche
   
4. Keyword Research (Product Demand): Analyze Niche Profitability
   
5. Keywords Financial Analysis: Find Cheap Keywords for PPC
   
6. PPC Ad Copywriting: Write Copy for Different Ad Groups
   
7. Create Landing Page: Design Optimized Site for Ad
   
8. Testing: Split-test and tweaking

These steps are almost to be taken in order from top to bottom, so I guess I'll find out if my process can be replicated when I actually create my first campaign.

More to come in the future!

First Steps and Initial Tasks

So in this post, I want to communicate my Business, Personal and Financial Goals for my new business venture. I think it is important to see the long-term goals and then outline the small objectives to reach the big ones.

My Long-Term Vision
The main focus and reason for my business is to be able to get my free time and use the time properly. This means that I should be able to make more money than just $20/hr and be able to design how much I make. Being able to have free time means that I need to be financially well off in order to make that happen.

My Goals
Business:

1. First Affiliate sale using PPC
2. First sale using E-mail Marketing

Financial:

1. First Sale (Make $25 in a day)
   
2. Make $100 in a day
3. Make $1000 per week
4. Make $1000 in a day
5. Make $10000 per week
6. Re-Evaluate Goals

Personal (Fun):

1. Backpacking through Europe
2. 7-Day Cruise (Hawaii or Carribean Islands)
3. Travel to the Philippines
4. Buy iPhone with Business Money

I think that these goals are definitely in reach within the next couple of years. These goals help me to keep my focus and determination throughout this journey.

Motivation
Every now and then I log in to the Wealthy Affiliate forums and read the general success forum. Everyday, there is at least one person that posts about their experience of their first sale. Occasionally, there is the 1-year story about how they went from making $29/day to $1000/day. With online businesses, this is all possible because of the fact that web sites almost remain on the virual web as your own personal army of salespeople. Once a site is successful, you can easily move on to the next, which allows people to reach that $1000/day goal.

In the next few weeks I will be posting about my experience in bring my first goal to fruition, which is to make that First Sale.

The Beginning of a Journey

I just finished the last class in my education of web design through sessions.edu. Although I wanted to get started in the Internet Marketing business as soon as possible, I also wanted to make sure that I finish what I started before continuing on to the next project.

So, this begins my journey through Internet Marketing and most specifically through Affiliate Marketing. Although I have perused many different sources pertaining to Internet Marketing, I have found that Wealthy Affiliate has gotten the most positive reviews consistently among many different sites. Given that I have joined this community, I have started the first week of the 8 week plan, which will outline the path to focus on how I make money with Internet Marketing.

My main vision for this blog is to be able to post my experiences, my goals, my successes and failures until I reach what I believe is financial freedom.

Sources
Wealthy Affiliate - Internet Marketing University (http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com)
Sessions.edu - Online School of Design (http://www.sessions.edu)