Money for Nothing?

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Larry

“Any thing worth doing, is worth doing for money.”

So often I think we forget or look past that idea. But we all have hobbies that we pour insane amounts of money into. Through these hours pursuing these activities or pursuits, we develop a fair amount of knowledge on the subject. So why not take something you love doing, and seeing if you can make some money off of it?

People pay for knowledge, in one form or another. If you have knowledge that you are giving away, someone will pay you put their endorsement—or more truthfully, their advertisement—in front of your captive audience.

You can sell your knowledge in the form of digital—and physical—products.

You can recommend other products that you may use or favor and get a commission for each sale.

There are lots of components to running any sort of hobby site like this and you will need some good instruction to make it work. That's exactly what the Internet Marketing Training Center is for. It will help you with the knowledge necessary to start making money on the Internet. Build a website? Yes. Shopping Carts? Yes. Digital Products? Yes. Affiliate Programs? Yes again. Everything you need to know to carve out a little niche for yourself and your hobby on the Internet you will learn in the IMTC programs.

The goal of the IMTC courses is to make you an expert with the tools you will need to take your idea from a spark to fun way to make some extra money—or to build yourself a money making empire! It's easy to make some money on the Internet, but it requires lots of work and knowledge to build a money making machine! The knowledge part is easy. The Internet Marketing Training Center is perfect for your needs. It's the “work” part you will have to provide. But the point of making money off of your hobbies and interests is that it doesn't quite FEEL like work if you love it, right?

Writing about games or comic books, sharing secrets of your tennis game, or even just household cleaning tips, chances are people are out there looking in your field of interest for information. Why not give it to them? Why not make a little bit of MONEY giving it to them. Heck, if you want to, why not try to make a LOT of money doing what you love?

Head over to the Internet Marketing Training Center for more information on what the courses cover, check out some of the success stories to see how learning valuable skills helped transform their lives.

Mobile Marketing: The Next Untapped Resource?

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Larry

If you want an audience, you don't stand in the middle of the woods shouting.

If you want an audience, you have to go where the people are.

Each time a new trend or technology develops, the spam follows. We can see this in Facebook, we can see this in Twitter, heck, I think email is just another way for us all to collect junk mail now. But there are a great number of new tools that have been picking up steam the last few years that you may want to take note of. One in particular is Mobile Marketing, or “text message (SMS) marketing”.

People just don't have the time anymore to be checking email all day, Facebook and Twitter have so much noise now that it's easy to get lost. But everyone checks their phone when they get a text message. It's so incredible easy just to pull the phone out of the pocket and take a look at what you got.

Of course, this is a precarious area. You don't want to spam people, especially as a business, there's not quicker way to get on your customer's bad side. We use the same principles we did we email. We have to have the customer “opt-in” to receive messages and then be careful what we send them.

What's the Point of Mobile Marketing?

Mobile Marketing is not the tool to make the hard sell. It's not a tool for selling at all. The focus should be complete and utter brand loyalty and recognition. After all, those people who don't have the unlimited text plan have to PAY to receive your texts, so it better be something good! Radio stations are making effective use of mobile marketing with contests that get the audience to actually text in during a special time. Doing so gives the audience a chance at a prize. Periodic discounts sent out en masse can trigger an influx of targeted business, especially if the audience has opted in to very specific lists.

You want your audience to be excited to hear from you and Mobile Marketing is the perfect medium for that. Discounts, contests, and very specific, targeted communications are the strength. And what business doesn't want those tools in their tool belt?

The point is, that there are many ways to market. Trends will come and go. A captive audience is hard to beat, especially when they have asked you to be the captor.

How Often Should You Blog?

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Larry

Blogging is currently a very hot trend. It cannot be ignored if you are doing any sort of marketing on the Internet. Well written blog posts create valuable content that show your expertise. An active blog shows that you are current in your industry. Daily posting proves that your site is important to the search engines and the public.

Blog Fresh Content

The biggest reason blogging is hot right now is that it ranks very well with search engines. But let's not ignore the truth that blogging is just a great way to get information out and connect with people. The Internet has put a severe hurting on printed materials and one of the reasons is because that something is published on the Internet instantly. With RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter sharing, hundreds, thousands, even MILLIONS of people could actually be aware of your content in a matter of moments. It becomes obvious that it is important to have well written articles at this point, since the information is available so quickly and by so many people.

Blog Tightly Focused Content

While it's possible that a huge number of people will have immediate access to your content—and some will delayed access as people check-in to their Facebook, Twitter, and email accounts—not all these people will be eager to read your content. Especially if it doesn't catch them right away. You want to make sure that when people come looking for your material later, it is tightly focused and available to be found through search engines. The tighter the focus of the article, the more likely it will be to score well. Stick to a few terms that are important and complimentary to your topic at hand, especially when optimizing for search engines.

Interaction With Readers / Customers

Remember the reason you are writing is for your audience. You are giving them information, even if that information is only for their entertainment purposes—let's call that gossip or daydreaming. Daily blogging will help build up that rapport with your readers, even if they never reach out to communicate directly with you, they are still accessing your content. Give them something of value—in the form of information or their guilty pleasures, there are certainly A LOT of sites out there doing that on a daily basis—and they will be more inclined to come back, read through your content, and SHARE your content with their friends. Make them laugh and you have them right where you want them.

Blog to Keep Them Coming Back for More

Remember, you have to entice your readers with fresh content, that is tightly focused and appeals to your target audience. When these conditions are met, your site will spread through social sharing and find value in search engines that will allow the content to be relevant and valuable even past the immediate moment of sharing.

Branding Your Blog, Your Business

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Larry

One thing small businesses often overlook is branding. It's important that people be able to recognize your products of services. That way your work can advertise for you.

Since many people are using blogs as a fast and cheap way to set up a website, it may become clear that if there is no distinct brand, there is no real business behind this person. The graphics are weak and there is no coherent theme throughout the site. Even if they have a header that's been done for them, there is still nothing to unify their website to any of their products. It could be a quick-scam business, especially if the website is weak or still in development.

Branding Your Business

There is a reason the Nike swoosh is on all of their shoes and their apparel lines. The reason is brand recognition. That means people can identify that shoe or that shirt with just a quick glance and understand what the company stands for. Nike has come to mean quality. Nike has come to mean status. This was important when Nike was JUST a shoe and then expanded into their workout gear, t-shirts, hats, etc. The brand recognition meant that the shirts were expected to be the same quality as the shoes. It would follow that if Nike makes great athletic shoes, they are BOUND to make great athletic performance-wear.

It doesn't have to be expensive to brand yourself, your products or your services. Get a professional logo done (I'm going to go out on a limb and say avoid cheap, by cheap I mean avoid going to fiverr.com. There is a reason it's cheap. Do your homework, find out what other work this person or business has done. Only when you are sure they can do quality work that isn't going to cost you your first-born child, THEN you can hire them.)

Ask for the originals as well as formats you already know how to use. Slap the logo on all your products and on your site! (Well, don't “slap” it all over, but definitely make sure it's visible and easily identified to you.)

Having Your Brand Designed

What do you want your brand to “inspire”? What sort of feeling do you want someone to get from your brand/logo? Do you want to be seen as professional (clean, simple), fun (energetic, less measured), technical (very clean, very measured and possible complex)?

Do you have colors you are partial too? Colors that inspire a certain feeling? You will want o try to carry these over into as much as you can. “Men In Black” ? Figure there will probably be a strong presence of black and something that ties well with it. Like a silver or gray tone. Something that lets the black speak volumes.

Learn your colors and utilize them in the website. Hopefully, you are using a theme that allows you easily manipulate a lot of the elements of the theme yourself. Try to stick to a smaller number of colors. Research brands that you like. How many colors do they use? How do the logos and colors speak to you? Have you decided what you want YOUR brand to say to people?

The point is, that there is a reason businesses use a brand. It establishes a presence, it identifies the product or service. You want to have a brand for those very same reasons. You want to look just as professional as any long standing company. It might be the difference between someone feeling comfortable enough to try to do business with you.

Do It Yourself…or Not?

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Larry

“Do It Yourself” has become an industry to itself. We see books “For Dummies”, “How To”, and all sort of “Do It Yourself” articles, books, and videos. “DIY” (do it yourself) is a keystone of any entrepreneurship. And the big question always is, “is it cheaper/faster/better to do it yourself, or to pay someone else to do it?”

Society functions well BECAUSE we have separated and specialized function. This is how we evolve and grow. If people are allowed to concentrate on certain tasks, they will become more efficient, better, and cheaper. But there are a lot of things that you can do for yourself as a business person.

A good way to determine if something might be a DIY task is how time consuming a task will be once the learning curve have been reached. Will it take HOURS away from you when you could spend hours on another task that will make you more money? In that case, it might be more worthwhile to pay someone to do it. If it's going to take a week for someone to get out and do it—and it's something that is going to be repetitive—I can almost guarantee that it would be cheaper, faster, more efficient and less stressful to learn a little bit and do it yourself. Building a house? Go ahead and pay for that one. Repainting your bedroom? Save a little cash and knock it out yourself.

Time Consumption (including education)
Difficulty/specialization of knowledge
Cost of a Professional's Services

We are increasingly opened up to a world that is more and more DIY friendly. Everyone with Internet access can have a blog (website) and market that website for almost nothing! Heck, with a smartphone and the WordPress app, you can control content on the blog from almost anywhere!

The point being, you can do almost anything thing these days with enough time and interest. The question becomes, how best to spend your resources (time and money).

Are you a good fit for being a DIYer? Come us out at Internet Marketing Training Center for more details on the an Internet Lifestyle!

Success in Business: Mastery of the Tools

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Larry

Have you ever heard the old riddle, “How do you eat an elephant?”

The answer is, “One bite at a time!”

Success in Business: Mastery of the Tools

I mention this because one of the keys to success is having a mastery of specific skill sets or tools. Entering a new industry almost always dictates you learn to use and master new tools. The Internet Marketing Training Center is based on Tom Antion's mentorship program and will involve a mastery of a lot of those same tools used in his program, as well as learning new ones as the Internet expands and changes.

Time and again in the mentorship program we have stressed that you need to learn specific tasks. A lot of the people who fail, do so because they do not invest time in developing those skills. We have made guides and reference material available for almost all the tasks you will need to learn, but many people want to skip ahead, get it done, get it finished and they end up confused or lost and not at all understanding how things tie together.

If you plan to sell anything on the Internet, you better learn how to use that shopping cart (Kickstart Cart Training)! Go through the trainings step-by-step. Do a few PRETEND products. Practice! Not all of the pages on your website need to be available to the entire world! Keep some pages hidden and you can test out all sorts of things in the shopping cart and on the website. You'll MAKE mistakes yes. But that's how you learn! Mistakes and repetition. And you don't want to be making mistakes when it's down to the wire.

Please, don't be in such a rush that you don't learn the necessary skills to be able to run your own business. Go through the training materials. Ask for help if you need it. Remember, the first lessons aren't the advanced stuff. It's the base stuff that you NEED to know before you get started.

Final tip: Take some time to make sure you have your business setup (tested and running smoothly) before you get started with the marketing of your products. It does you no good if you have hundreds of people want to buy your book if you've setup the shopping cart wrong and are going to need help to fix it. Foundations first, painting and decorating later.

The Concepts of Internet Marketing

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Larry

Marketing is not a new concept. The Internet is no longer new, but it continues to evolve almost daily so that there are new opportunities and new ways for doing things. I don't think anyone could have predicted the rise of Facebook or Twitter, yet these are becoming business essentials.

One thing we all hate is junk mail. We we started getting junk email someone, somewhere, (sadly, it wasn't me) coined the term “spam” and now we can use it for quite a few things. Basically, spam is unsolicited marketing. With the advent of social media like Facebook and Twitter, we can now “opt-in” or “subscribe” to the information we want. We DO want to here about specials deals from our favorite stores. We do want to hear what our favorite celebrities are doing without having to go buy a gossip rag—as well as getting the low down straight from the horses mouth. We want to hear about when our favorite movies, video games, tech gadgets come out. We want to be connected! We just want to control that.

So, this is all great if you are a giant company. You aren't really marketing or promoting, your just kind of expanding your presence. What if you are the little guy? The little business? The entrepreneur? That's where the marketing comes in.

You have to get out there and get in front of the traffic. There are all sort of avenues for that on the Internet. Not all of them may apply to your business. Some will, and some will need to be tied into other more traditional forms of promotion.

For instance, our children are growing up with the Internet as entertainment. There are all sorts of games, all sorts of forums, all sorts of ways to entertain themselves. If they aren't creating themselves, they can FIND people out there creating. There are kids on YouTube, making a fortune being stupid. There are adults making a fortune on the YouTube being ridiculous. Unfortunately, “ridiculous” is often funny and if you can draw people in (we're taking about word-or-mouth campaigns that takeoff) and when the people show up, businesses want to pay to sell them something. If you have the attention of the public, there are businesses that want to stand right next to you and bask in the glow—showing off their latest product of course.

That's what you want to do. You want to get in front of the people show off what you have. That's what we teach over the Internet Marketing Training Center. We teach the concepts of marketing on the Internet and how best to apply those concepts.

Don't believe me? Check out some of the people who are getting rich off of applying the principals of Internet Marketing.

Ilya Pozin : Made his first million by the time he was 25.

Gloria Starr: Travels the World as an Image Consultant. Grew her business on the Internet.

“Why” Internet Marketing?

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Larry

We've explained a little bit about what Internet Marketing is—search engine optimization, list building strategies, social media, etc.—but we never talk about WHY you do it.

For a lot of people, it's “because they told me I should” or “to increase my Google Ranking”. It's important to understand why you are doing something as much as what you are doing.

Simply, we Market on the Internet so that our clients can find us. A lot of people think that we Market so that the search engines can find the site, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans if real people aren't finding the website and converting.

The website should be easy to use, with—now here's the important part—content that is relevant to the end-user. If you are trying to “work” the format just so that search engines “like” your site, you may end up failing the very people you are trying to reach. Information should be presented so that people can easily find information.

Let me back track for a second. The whole point of a search engine is to find relevant information. For instance, if you type in “Seafood Restaurants in Virginia Beach” you don't want to find results for California. That information isn't relevant. The same thing goes with your site. You want it to be optimized and marketing to people who are looking specifically for what you are selling. You want to be the authority on that subject.

And “search engine optimization” is not the only aspect of Internet Markeing. The point of Internet Marketing is to get your product or service in front of people. Go where the people are. Right now that also includes YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter. This also includes forums and article directories. This also includes decent copywriting. Come check out all the wonderful tings about Internet Marketing you will learn over at the Internet Marketing Training Center.

If you take away anything, take away this: Internet Marketing is a whole system of promoting your business. Don't focus so strongly on one thing that you fail to promote in other avenues.

Nick

Get a New Job…

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Larry

Unemployment seems to be rather stagnant these days. It's stuck around 10% right now as the average for the US. Some places are higher, some are a bit lower. As a country, we got down around 3.6% in October 2000. That was 10 years ago. There was a boom in the dot coms and then things leveled off. In January 09, things took a turn for the worse and we've been flirting around 10% ever since.

We've lost a lot of jobs in industries that might never come back. If you were in one of these industries, what can you do? Well, I've got some news for you. It's time to move on. Let me tell you how.

Internet Marketing is a field that continues to grow. The Internet has become our second brain. Need directions? Got a smartphone? You're good. We have access to so much information, ALL of the time now. We spend out time on Facebook talking to our friends, we do all of our shopping on Amazon, we download new books to Kindle or other ebook readers, we download music to our mp3 players. It's pretty clear, that the Internet is here to stay. Businesses continue to join the internet… in fact there are an incredible number of businesses that have no actual storefront, no actual inventory—and yet they are making money on the Internet.

How can you get into Internet Marketing? How can you learn what you need to know to make yourself valuable to almost any business? Or if you want to start your OWN business? We can help with that too. We are IMTC. The Internet Marketing Training Center. We teach Internet Marketing that encompasses website design, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), copywriting, list building, and even product creation.

Internet Marketing is a growing industry that continues to explore the fields of social media, viral marketing techniques, and traditional marketing practices on the Internet. Now is a good time to get into the field.

Interested in more details? Visit the Internet Marketing Training Center and develop a new career!