In this section we will be showing you some Internet marketing secrets and systems that can help you set up and run your own online business. There are many different systems, schemes and scams that make up the world that is Internet marketing. We aim to give you a choice of methods and it is up to you which method (or methods) you use; that is, if you want to enter this exciting and lucrative business. As we stated previously, if you don't put in the effort and the time, you will be wasting your time. If you are well informed, motivated and prepared to spend money to make money you cannot fail. It is reported that 95% of online business fail. Why? Because people have that 'free Internet' mentality and aren't prepared to do the yards when it matters most.

If you set up a business in your home town, say, a grocery store, you will need to invest money. It is naturally assumed that this is what you would have to do. You would have to buy some stock and plant, you would have to lease the premises, paint it up to look good, pay for signage, advertising, and all the other capital costs. Many of us have no problem understanding this concept. Maybe this is why a lot of small businesses in the 'real' world fail too, as most people expect to start their business and draw money from it from day one. The truth is, although you do make money from day one, if you don't invest it back into the business then you wont be making a living off it for long. Taxes, insurances and other outgoings take their toll. A savvy businessman will live cheap and reinvest money back into the business for the first couple of years, thus ensuring a rock-solid trading base for the future.

So back to the Internet. We can save a lot of time and money because we don't need a premises, stock, plant and all the material costs incurred in a 'real world' business, (though if you are going to be marketing an actual product, for example weight-loss formula, software etc. bear in mind you will need to factor in your stock, postage, insurances etc.). Online, the fastest and easiest item to market is information. People want information, that is why they are on the Internet. Whether they are looking for the latest sports scores, TV guide, car parts, pornography, ways to get rich, ideas for homework.. you name it, people are looking for it online. If you can come up with something that people want, and are willing to pay for, then it is relatively easy to sell it to them online. All you need is the means of displaying your product, a means of telling others about it, and a means of delivering it to them. Online, this is quite easy to do. You have a web page to display, you advertise to tell people about your product, you either email it to, or tell the customer where to go to download your product.

Sounds easy, and in a lot of ways it is. There are simple formulae that we can follow to avoid the traps that certainly exist out there in the badlands. Most first-time (and even some old-time) marketers fall into these traps. There is nothing worse that wasting time and money on something, especially if that is your new career! One of the obvious ways to success is to find someone who is doing well and emulate their success. Check out what they are selling, how they are marketing it, how much they charge and generally everything you can about them (knowing your competitors is a great marketing technique, and should be used whether their product is the same as yours or not). Trouble is, a lot of people are doing just this. One 'netrepeneur' comes up with a great idea, and pretty soon there are a hundred imitators. They will probably make some money, and this is a valid business idea. As long as you don't steal the other persons stuff this is a good way to get started in online marketing. The problem is, a lot of people out there do just that, steal your material and post it as their own. There is no real way of stopping this. Anyone can copy this page and paste it in its entirety on another page. Unless we stumbled across it, or someone told us about it, we would never know. If we had charged access to this site, then it makes it even more like theft, as we would be losing income from someone posting it somewhere else, and maybe charging people there for it. All we can say in these cases is that there are copyright laws, and they are enforceable online.

Another way of getting into marketing is to buy in to an existing system that is already working and earning money for the marketers . There are a few of these around, and they have made some people very rich indeed. They are easy to operate, and one we found also teaches vital emarketing skills, while your system pulls in money for you. We are referring to the excellent CookieCutter* system. If you want to get right into marketing and making money, there is no better system than this. To read all about it, you can go here. We set up a CookieCutter* and tried it for ourselves, and we can vouch for its success. We were making money literally from day one. For ease of setup, low cost and fast results, we were very impressed. There is another system that uses the basic CC system and expands on the theme, integrating a two-tier marketing angle to this already successful formula. International Resources is a switched on company that are making big waves in the online marketing community, and they have developed a CookieCutter* 'add-on'. You can read about it here. We highly recommend using a combination of these systems for first-time users.

Ok, so you don't want to go that particular way. You want to set up your own system, selling your own product and rake in all that money. So what is there to market? What do you have that other people really want? Money is a good one, or at least the way to make money. Lets face it, human greed is one powerful emotion. Information on the way to make money is probably the most sought after product. Coming second would be software that streamlines the money making process, mass emailers, ebook writers, login helpers and the like. You will find most sites like to offer one, if not all, of these programs as 'free bonuses' you will get for signing up with them. Fair enough, we sure can use anything that is going to make our life easier. The thing is, that a lot of these utilities are free to download from shareware.com, or download.com. If you know where to look, most, if not all, these utilities are out there for the asking. Our advise is to sign up for as many ezines (including ours...Ed.) and email lists as you can, They not only contain invaluable information about marketing online, they also have good links on where to find the utilities mentioned above.

You will also need autoresponders. Autoresponders (ARs) are utilities that reply to the many, many emails you will receive as an emarketer. The scenario is that you have a product, say information on how to earn 5,000 dollars a day for surfing the web (OK OK, we are making this up!) Now you can expect to get a few hundred clicks on your link to inquire about this amazing new scheme. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life answering emails, you need an AR to handle the work for you. When someone clicks for more information, they are mailing the AR. It responds by instantly sending your information (that you have programmed into it) to the requester. It also catches the requesters email address, and forwards this on to you, including any message that the requester may have included in the mail. Most ARs simply need a blank email sent to them to respond.

Now, it is well known that most people need a little prompting when buying something. Imagine you are at the car lot, looking over that 62 Corvette. What is the salesman doing? He is hovering and telling you exactly what you want to hear, giving you good reasons for buying the car. He continually prompts you and chats to you about the car, the weather, the sports results, in fact anything to strike up a relationship with you. Pretty soon you are so pumped you want to buy him the car. If he just went away, you probably wouldn't buy. If he talks to you, you might possibly buy, and that's the difference he wants. Our ARs work away for us like that car dealer. You can program in as many follow-up replies as you want. Most agree that 5 to 7 follow-ups are needed to clinch a deal. We set these up so that the initial reply goes out immediately. This satisfies the 'instant gratification' that is part of all of us. It gives the respondent something to think about. Before they clicked on your link, they were a 'suspect'. The instant they click your link they become a 'prospect'. We like prospects in the marketing business. It shows they are a little more than tire kickers. Still, we need to pump them up a little bit more to clinch that sale. So 1 day after our initial reply, our ARs send out a follow-up letter, gently reminding the prospect that we are still here. It is most important that we have a 'remove me from further mailings' link on our follow-up. Why? Because sending unsolicited email is both illegal and unethical. Any sap can send out thousands of emails to lists leeched or bought on the net, (most of which are out of date or just plain fiction... buyer beware!) Not only is it highly annoying to have this stuff sent to you, it is downright bad business practice and will result in irreparable damage to your online reputation. If we have an 'out' in the form of a removal link, we satisfy both the law and our own moral code. If the prospect has gone cold on the idea they simply remove themselves from the AR's mail list and the case is closed on that sale. If they choose not to be removed, 2 days after that another follow-up will be sent to them, again gently reminding them of the benefits of joining your system. And so on, until all the follow-ups are sent. If the prospect hasn't taken the bait by now, it is unlikely they will at a later date (though not totally out of the question). Don't worry, there will be another prospect along shortly. Remember, the Internet is a huge place with new blood coming online all the time, so there is a virtual marketers heaven waiting out there. So, ARs make our life a lot easier, and are probably the most powerful tool we can use to get our business booming. You will definitely need to get one so check the links provided for good AR sites here.

Which brings us to one of the fundamental questions in online marketing. We know that for every free service on the net there is someone who charges for it. So, if we need an Autoresponder, or we need to advertise, do we 'go free' or 'go paid'? Free or paid? Well, as usual there are pros and cons for both. Take our AR's. There is a great AR service out there called SmartBot Pro. This is an excellent free AR service. So what's the catch? On every reply that SmartBot send out is a small ad, and this is seen by literally thousands of people who are in the marketing business, or thinking about getting into it. What a fantastic idea! These guys deserve all the money they get. A hidden disadvantage though is that because it is free, a lot of people use the service. This can lead to delays and bogged down servers, though we hear that most of these problems have been avoided. And, sometimes, people just don't like ads on their responder messages. So the only way to get around that is to pay for the privilege of having no ads. Most AR services charge around 20 dollars a month. This is very reasonable considering the work they do and the money they can rake in for you. Remember to factor this cost in to your online business. Another option is to sign up for a site that offers AR services as part of its everyday membership privileges. You will find the link to an excellent site called the Internet Warriors, who run such a service, (amongst others), listed on our opportunities page here.

Free advertising is on offer everywhere we look on the net. Everyone uses it at some point. We even have free advertising in our ezine! People like the fact that they can get their message out for as little as possible and therefore make as much profit as possible. Fair enough, we used free advertising to promote this website, and we tracked the results. We took the time to look around. We read about other peoples' experience with free ads and took the best options we could find. The free method is fine if you have time, but don't expect huge results from your free ads. Think about it. If something is free in real life, it is probably given away as a promotion or has some other meaning behind it. Most times, free stuff is free because it wasn't selling well anyway. The whole point is, that if you use free services then you pay in other ways, with ads in your responders, ads on your free website or simply your ads buried amongst thousands of others in the 'free' areas of newspapers or online classifieds. That said, there are always exceptions to the rule. You can read about a very good free service by clicking here.

If you want good results, then well placed paid ads are the way to go. A big problem with free ads is that there is a huge industry out there dealing in free advertising, and often the only people reading free ads are the very people who placed them, mainly to check if they are there or not. We have had very limited response from the free ads we placed and tracked. Think about this. If you put an ad in a newspaper with about 2,000 other ads, who is going to be scanning those ads, and who of those scanners are going to be prospects for you? Chances are there will be 100 other ads selling exactly the same thing you are selling. Why would someone go for your ad over the next guy? Even in paid ads we see many ads selling the same or similar products. So what do we do? What will make suspects into your prospects is your headline and ad copy. Consider the following..

Make 5,000 dollars a day surfing the net.

You too can make money by being online. Send $5.00 to Joe Bloggs, Anywhere.

Wow! Makes us want to sign up right away doesn't it? NOT! What is wrong with this ad? It's boring. It doesn't really 'plug' us in or excite us at all. We would guess that only the most desperate suspect would even respond to this ad. So what makes an ad exciting? Using 'action' words and dynamic script can make all the difference.

How Do I Make $5,000 a Week Surfing The Net?

That's Right! I make 5 thousand dollars every week using my secret system! First 100 applicants only. Act now! Send $5.00 to Net Marketing Inc. Anywhere.

Makes you want to mail him just to see what kind of scam the guy is pulling, doesn't it? Why? The Headline is a great hook. And what about that secret system? People will naturally want to know what that is. People love secrets, and love it even more when they are exposed (that is the whole premise for this site anyway..Ed.). Plus, it is only 5 dollars. Most people spend more than that on coffee every day. Natural instinct makes us want to hit links like that to see what all the fuss is about. Ad copywriters have known this for years. Ever bought something in a store and not really known why? Maybe the copywriter got to you before your common sense took over. Still, we can use this stuff to lure potential customers right to our door. If you are serious about emarketing, you will want to learn how to write an ad that pulls. You can find a report about great ad writing here.

Now you know how to write a good ad, and you should know what works and what doesn't. The product you sell in a lot of cases is immaterial. Some of the more unscrupulous people out there charge big money for nothing. Not only does this give genuine emarketers an ill deserved reputation, it means we have to work harder to sell 'real' product to our customers. Still, this is the playing field. You may be able to sleep straight in bed selling 'junk' but we sure couldn't. We would encourage you to sell a decent product, not some rehashed reports or information. Take the info on this page for example. Companies out there charge up to $49.95 for access to similar stuff. Fair enough, they probably do it far more professionally than we cover it here. Essentially, the information is the same, and most of those companies are run by marketing professionals that have many, many years of experience. If you are serious about marketing as a career, we recommend signing up with some of these sites. We have an opportunities page for sites we think offer a great deal to marketing newcomers. 

So product is important in that you should sell something that people want, and, once they buy, feel they are better off. Many sites sell product for big money, yet when we buy it we feel ripped off. Pornography sites are a classic example (so we have been told ...Ed.) where the ads 'tease' us with what is inside, yet often, once we get there, the product is disappointing. Once that $49.95 has gone through the credit card server it is hard to get it back. Our point is that you really don't want people thinking you ripped them off. For continued successful business on the Internet (or anywhere for that matter) you need satisfied customers. Statistics show that it costs around six times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one, so in the sheers interests of smart business you want to make sure your product is worth what people are paying for it. 

So what is a great product? A great product is one that the majority of people want, costs you very little, and is easily marketed. Selling information online satisfies all these requirements. Say, for example, you knew a way of advertising for free in local newspapers across your country and wrote a report on how to do it. People would pay good money for that information wouldn't they? All you have to do is get it out there. Of course, if you did know how to advertise like that then you immediately have an advantage over others. For the rest of us, we could use ezine advertising, paid or free classifieds, or high profile banner ads, such as those you see at the top of sites like Delphi forums, Lycos and such. You could expect to pay anywhere from $1000 to $3000 a day for the privilege though. The upside of that, and what these site owners know, is that your ad will be seen by around a million people a day. If you expect about 2-5% click- through on your ad, that translates into sales and big profits. 

That brings us to a valuable point. It is all really a numbers game. Get your ad seen by thousands, or millions, and the sales will start to roll in. Problem is, everyone knows all about the need this created, and companies were formed specialising in 'saturation' type ads, classified ads, free for alls (FFA's), opt-in lists and so on. How many headlines do you see that claim 'Get your ad seen by thousands!" or similar? On the Internet, the quick make money. People a lot sharper than us spot a market and fill it literally overnight. Pretty soon, specialised ad companies are there to get your ad seen everywhere! This is a good thing for those companies, but creates ad overload to the average net surfer. Ads are everywhere, and while there are still millions to be made they will be here for a long long time yet. This is where your copy writing skills will make a difference. Be noticed among the crowd and people will buy from you. There are a lot of car dealers in your town right? Who sells the most cars? The one who is most visible to the most people. They may not be any cheaper or have higher quality cars, they have visibility in the market, and that translates into sales. So be visible, get noticed and place your ads wisely. If this simple code is adhered to, your success is virtually guaranteed. 

Now you need a place to display your product. You have many options here as well, and it is really up to you how you go about this. Getting a web page online is very easy now with the likes of Xoom, Maxpages, Freeservers, Geocities and many others offering excellent services. Once you have your product ready to go, you can set up a free page with any of the hosts around the Internet. Most will place a small banner or frame on your website, and some have a paid option to remove the banners and advertising. Some give you the option of your own domain name, which we feel is very cool, and most important to your business credibility. Imagine you are selling a product called HappyCat. You set up a page with our fictional host neocommunties.com. Once you set your page up, your web page URL becomes something like this: 

http://www.neocommunities.com/yourplace/09876/happycat.html 

This just doesn't portray a professional image. Freeservers, one of the free website hosting companies actually offer you your own domain name, with a slight difference that gives you the opportunity to look more professional, yet still pay nothing for your hosting. Again, they place a banner at the top of every page, though they do have a small monthly charge if you want the ad removed. We recommend this option. Your URL then ends up something like this: 

http://www.happycat.8m.com 

We think this looks a lot more respectable. Remember, appearances do count on the Internet, just like they do in real life. Of course, if you want to go the whole way, you can buy your own domain name from Internic or other agent. In the example above, if happycat.com was available we could buy it for $70.00 for the first two years, then $35 per year after that. This of course only covers the domain name registration, we still have to find a place to host our page. There are other companies, like Namesecure who offer a different type of deal, where you pay the $70.00 registration fee, a $25.00 setup fee and then $24.95 per year for your site to be hosted on their domain. Also included are tools and utilities to help you get your page looking fine. These types of deals are good value. We scouted around different ISP's and we found that companies like Freeservers and Namesecure are very reasonable in their rates. Some ISP's were charging upwards of $30.00 per month hosting, (more if you want over 10MB of space) with extras like email addresses costing even more. We recommend you use one of the companies listed and utilise their great website building tools and services. Not only do you get a professional result, you will pull more sales because of it. 

So you have your product and your site. Next you have to set yourself up to actually take the money from people. How? By using online credit card and cheque (that's check for you Americans... Ed.) companies. You can always set up your own secure server, indeed there are software applications available for just this purpose. That is OK if you are an eBay, or a Lycos sized company. For us mere mortals however, until we make our first few million we are better off to use the many excellent banking services out there. Most are very reasonably priced. They charge a signup fee, usually around the 30 to 50 dollar mark, and some charge a small fee on each cheque or credit card transaction. As your balance mounts, the company will pay out at regular intervals by mailing you a cheque. Very cool, and this gives your site an air of respectability too. Some links for cheque and credit card companies are here. 

At the end of the day, all you need is that special report that you think people will want. If they don't, they wont buy it, its that simple. If they do, then it will sell like hot-cakes, as long as you advertise wisely and get the message out there. It is a simple formula, and one that is making millionaires every single day on the Internet. Will you be the next? (If you are, we want a cut!......Ed.) 

Well, that's about it for now. We aim to update these pages as we find information we can share with you, so check back often. You now know the basics of how to market online, and if you use this knowledge coupled with the resources out there you will be well on your way to success in your new online career. 

Good Luck and Good Fortune! 

*CookieCutter is a registered Trademark.

Secrets You Should Know. This site is intended for entertainment purposes only.