Truth About Internet Marketing – Never Told by Gurus
by encyclopedia on March 23, 2010
in Entrepreneurship
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Everybody wants to start their internet business and make money online.
It sounds magical, having a website, and making money while even sleeping, right?
This is what all the internet marketing gurus tell us. They show us the pictures from a nice beach, having a beer while working on a laptop. They tell us how easy it is to make money online.
So called gurus are good at what they do, and they know how to create the dream job before selling it to us.
Since their job is to sell you the dream and make money out of it, they will never tell you a little secret about internet marketing.
Internet Marketing is BORING as Hell
Yes, you’ve heard it right. I’m telling you the truth; internet marketing is one of the most boring things you can do for living.
How come? Don’t I always tell you that I love internet marketing. I really enjoy what I do?
Yes, but let’s talk about reality for a minute.
Overall, probably 1% of internet marketing is fun, creative and enjoyable. It is the part when you need to use your right brain.
How about the rest 99%?
It’s data entry & so many repetitive tasks, all the left brain stuff you need to do to be able to succeed.
This is where most beginners fail.
Most beginners fail because they believe in the dreams sold by so called gurus, and their expectations are sky high.
They all want to work less, make more money, and do it fast…
If you are a beginner in internet marketing, forget about all the dreams sold by gurus.
Start fresh, and get ready to countless hours of work, mostly boring, data entry type work.
How About Automation & Scaling?
Unless you excel in doing all the tasks by yourself, you will never be able to automate & scale by hiring other people.
Automation and scaling is an art in itself, and most gurus make it sound like child’s play, in reality, it is not.
If you can make $10/day with what you do, it won’t be a piece of cake to do the same thing 1000 times, and make $10,000/day. Trust me on this.
You Have Killed My Dreams, What Am I Gonna Do Next?
If you are serious about making money online, start with setting your expectations low. Forget about all the hype you’ve thought by so called gurus.
Get ready to work hard, I mean really hard.
Learn every single task, and start creating a system by using your right brain. Always think about how you can automate the task you are working on.
Next time your neighborhood’s friendly guru tells you “it’s so much fun & easy to make money online”, you know the truth & you can tell him “yeah, right”.
by encyclpedia on March 21, 2010
in Entrepreneurship, Personal Growth
Hard Work for Success
Spring is here, and the weather in New York is gorgeous. After a long, and freezing winter, this weather is exactly what we have been waiting for.
All the streets are packed with people, walking around, shopping, trying to get the best out of this wonderful weather.
And I’m at my wonderful midtown office, writing this blog post on a lovely Sunday afternoon. What is wrong with me?
Entrepreneur BS
Ok, here’s the deal, I won’t bore you with a long blog post, instead I’ll simply cut to the chase.
Most of the entrepreneurs I meet are great at talk, motivation, and all the blah blah. They talk about how luck is so important, how they have tried that, thought about this and that, etc.
I can comfortably say that 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs or self-employed people I’ve met till day have all one missing ingredient in common, and it is hard work.
Feel free to lie to everybody about how hard you work, how dedicated you are, etc.
When you go to bed, and put your head on your pillow, ask this question to yourself, and be honest;
Do I work hard enough?
You can lie to anybody else, but not to yourself.
Please, ask this to yourself tonight and be honest.
Frequency or Individual User Cap for CPM & CPV
by encyclopedia kirtok on March 19, 2010
in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing 101, Media Buying, PPV Marketing
Frequency Capping for Higher Profits
Optimization is a key factor in success for internet marketing campaigns. There are so many variables needed to be tested until a campaign is fully tested & optimized.
One of these variables is frequency capping or also called as individual user capping.
If you are new to media buying, or CPV Marketing, you have to understand the frequency cap concept before setting up your first campaign.
What is a Frequency Cap or Individual User Cap?
Frequency cap or individual user cap is the number of times a unique visitor sees your ads within a given time. For CPM ads, when time period is not specified, the default time period is 24 hours.
In plain English, if frequency cap for a campaign is 2, it means a unique visitor will only see your ad maximum of 2 times within 24 hour period.
Why Do You Need to Set a Frequency Cap?
* Some sites have autorefresh javascript within their code. When you visit these types of sites, every X seconds, the site refreshes itself, by counting each refresh as an extra impression, and charging the CPM advertisers. So, a visitor might leave a page open, leave the computer and come back several hours later. Meanwhile, your ad can be shown to the same user thousands of times, by wasting your advertising budget.
* If a site is getting more than average page views per user numbers, you have to be careful. Forums, social sites, user generated content sites usually fit in this category.
Setting Individual User Cap for CPV/PPV Campaigns
Deciding on individual user caps for CPV campaigns is little different than CPM campaigns. You have to think about cookie length, audience target size (super targeted, or not, etc.), and start by testing.
Every PPV traffic company has its own settings. Below is a screenshot from Trafficvance. It’s pretty self-explanatory.
On CPV campaigns, I usually start with the default settings (1 view per 12 hours), and keep testing it. Some campaigns on CPV tend to lose its profitability after a while, and this is when you start playing with the individual user cap, and find the optimum settings by testing.
Branding or Performance Campaign
If your campaign’s goal is branding, you might want to be more flexible with frequency capping. Even if a visitor sees your banner several times a day, and you are charged for it, it might be worth. At the end, you’d like to promote the brand, and show them the ad as much as possible.
Some branding campaigns don’t even set frequency caps, and that’s also fine.
But if you are running a performance based campaign, you have to take frequency capping seriously, and test until you find the most optimized level for your campaign.
Frequency capping might easily turn a losing campaign into a profitable one. So, make sure you work on it before your next CPM or CPV campaign.
What Are You Afraid of? Take Action NOW
by encyclopedia on March 18, 2010
in Affiliate Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Personal Growth
Take Action NOW
I have met a number of people who are new to making money online since I’ve been in this business.
Most of the people who are new to internet marketing world are good at tons of skills such as being smart, doing extensive research, following trend setters, learning new things daily, etc. But, most of them have one thing in common: Being afraid of taking action.
Being afraid of taking action is like cancer. If you can diagnose the problem, understand the reasons for it, and start treating it, you might be successful. But if you spend months, even years with being afraid, it might be too late to take action on.
Why am I Afraid to Take Action?
Ask this question to yourself, be honest, and come up with your reason(s).
Do you spend countless of hours reading about a topic (e.g. google adwords), feel like you know everything about the topic, but don’t know how to launch your first campaign?
Do you lack of knowhow due to insufficient research & study?
Are you scared to take action because you don’t have the luxury of spending any money online?
Take a piece of paper, and write down: “Reason(s) Stopping me to Take Action:”
Ask every possible question you can think of to find out the reason(s) of being scared to take action, and write it/them down on the paper.
Solve the Problem
In the first step, if you were honest to yourself, you should have a piece of paper with the reason(s) that stop you from taking action with a title of “Reason(s) Stopping me to Take Action:“, correct?
Now, cross out the word Reason(s) and write down Excuse(s) instead.
There is absolutely NO reason to stop you from at least trying. All the reasons you’ve come up are your own excuses.
Take Action Today
Whatever the excuse you have, there’s a solution out there. Most of the solutions are in your mind. You should start with changing your mindset, and get ready to make money online.
Don’t ever be scared of failing in internet marketing, but always remember to take bearable risks for your situation, such as not risking your retirement fund.
Your success in internet marketing depends on your actions, so don’t wait another day, and take action today!
Also, check out this post I’ve written about 5 Reasons You Fail To Make Money Online to get you started with some ideas.
thnx
