Best wishes to all Newbie Marketers

[iancunn]

Hi All,

My name is Ian Cunningham and I have had 15 years experience in I.T. and became a freelance contractor in 2005 and have never looked back.

I became more involved in SEO and Web Site Hosting in 2008 in my spare time but believed that it was too saturated a market and too many time wasters, so gave up on that in 2009.

After many contracts (and working abroard throughout late 2009 and 2010. I decided to get more heavily interested in Internet Marketing in October 2010 and have been dedicating more time to it since then.

I am no longer a newbie and feel that I've hit an experience level now whereby I can offer help to people who are brand-brand-BRAND new to the this industry.

I absolutely hate and detest all of the scam products that are out there, but I do believe that with persistent and dedicated perserverance that decent marketing products can be found.

I am going to start up a thread about scam products and would love to hear peoples opinions/experiences they've had bad or good and would like to offer advice wherever possible. (If it's not beyond me of course as I'm still learning myself)

Will look forward to sharing my experiences with you all.

(P.S. - If you are looking to me for advice on making a fast buck then you'll be sorely disappointed as that's not my remit, however, if you are looking to be in this for the long haul and want to build up a reputation on line, whereby you're selling you're own products/or being an affiliate to other then I think that I could give you some motivation. Thanks.

 

[janellelk]

Welcome! I'm new too but just wanted to say hi. It sounds like with your experience in the field, you'll be a much needed addition to the board!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ian,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

Glad to hear you are motivated to help others and welcome aboard.

 

[djbaxter]

Welcome to 5 Star Forums, Ian.

 

[zeemzeem]

just found this place, been an aff marketer for a while just saying hi!

 

[iancunn]

...and hi back to yourself as well

 

[johnllino]

Hi Ian! it seems that you'll help a lot of newbies here in the forum because of your experiences! Welcome., =)

 

[Sharessat]

Hi Ian,

I too am in IT and have been for a little over 12 yrs now. I currently work (day job) for HP as a Technical Consultant for one of their larger clients. I have been in the Internet Marketing industry for about 5 years not give or take and would love to share my experiences good and bad with people who are truly interested in hearing them.

I think you are spot on with your statement of being dedicated and persistent in your pursuit of finding the right marketing system/ company out there. There are some good ones and there are some not so good ones to be nice about it. But it is very doable and with a little guidance I am sure you will do well in this industry.

Feel free to ping me if you have any direct questions you wish to ask anytime.

 

[iancunn]

Hi Sharessat

Glad that you agree, there are also mistakes that get made and you have to be willing to learn from your own mistakes and then take this forward.

Even if you are genuine you may inadvertently upset people along the way (be in unintentional), just in the same way that they can upset you.

What is most important of all is to follow your passions within this sort of work, trying to engage with people before trying to market umpteen amounts of products is the way to do it, (although I believe that probably the mistake most people make, is doing this the other way around.)

I'm currently in the process with trying to engage with my audience through similar interests. This should invoke trust amongst the people that are communicated with and will lead to an organic way of growing your internet marketing presence.

People do not like sales shoved into their faces and this has been the case even long before the internet was even around. Make friends, contribute as reguarly as you can and don't invade peoples privacy are the rules that I'm going by at the time being

 

[Sharessat]

Hello Iancunn,

I could not agree with you more. I think you have hit the nail directly on the head. Now please allow me to provide my opinion as to why this is the case. Most people who are doing it right have one of the following situations. They either have learned this lesson the hard way from trial and error, or they have had a very open and willing mentor to guide them down this path and have been taught the discipline it takes to be successful at it.

I find that when people in general join a MLM or a business opportunity they are interested in one thing making money online. They for the most part have no idea what it really take to be successful at it if they did most of them would never start in the first place. They are sold on the idea of making lots of money fast which can be done, but only after years of building the foundation first.

This is never explained on any sales page you only find out about this after you have signed up, and by then most people are thinking "well that is not what I was told". So they ignore it or quit. Well that is just my opinion... What do you think?

 

[iancunn]

I think you're partly right yes, people expect some sort of magic button that's going to keep generating cash.

However, I know that it takes a lot of hard work to be successful.

There is though, another however and that is the sales pages for 99.9% percent of the time "doesn't tell you what the product does," it just says...I'm so wonderful, I'm so great...blah..blah..blah..blah.

Now that isn't the problem of the purchaser, that is the problem of the person selling it.

Why on earth would people part with their cash when they -

a) - Don't know what a system does, or
b) - They just expect it to work with very little effort, they part with their cash expecting it to work within days and it doesn't so then they just go and buy another product, then another product and on and on.... until they've spent so much money they are skint expecting the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to come.

So to re-iterate, yes, people have got to put the effort in, but then they also need to have more information about what they're buying.

 

[Sharessat]

Iacunn,

I think we are both saying the same thing just in different ways. I totally agree with you when you say the sales pages only talk about how great a product or service is and how much it will benefit the buyer. But that is sales 101 that is exactly what it is supposed to do. The idea in my mind is, provide the buyer with a dream and sale them on the fact that you can provide that dream.

The trick is however providing a realistic understanding of what it takes to get to the dream you sold them on. The sales page never provides that info and very little if anything on what the product actually does (how it works). So yes I agree the seller should provide this info, and most don't or if they do it is after you have parted with your money not before. Kind of Backward You Think?

 

[iancunn]

Absolutely spot on, yes that is a backward thing.

I believe that a product that provides a step-by-step oriented approach is what's needed (of course bearing in mind the fact that there is a whole stack of work that's involved before hand before even a single cent can be made.)

A lot of marketing products continually speak of building up an e-mail list. This is another gripe of mine, the products make this assumption that building a list is dead easy...yeah of course it's sintch isn't it?!?

First of all people will want to part with their e-mail address and Name (as of course that is the minimum that most of these sales pitches will ask for even if they're not trying to make a sale, this will then start the autoresponders going). But let's say for example these autoresponders are continuing to send, day after day after day and really the consumer is only interested in a small, (maybe minute) sub-niche of what's trying to be sold therefore can be mis-targeted.

As well as the above, there is also the fact that most people don't want to go on these mailing lists in the first place and will be very unlikely to part with their details anyway.

A client list needs to be built up through trust and that is by chatting/blogging with like minded individuals who have similiar interests and passions to yourself, but then of course this audience has to be found to. So within this there are three steps (look upon it as a simple a, b, c)

This is what I believe should be the correct steps in getting traffic.

a) If you are serious about making money, spend time deciding on the subject that makes you tick.
b) Is there a sub-niche of this that you are more interested in, then decide upon this.
c) Start blogging/contributing to forums..etc.. with people who are interested in this same area as you.

Even when you get to step c) there is a hell of a lot of work that needs to be done to get peoples interest, but once you do, then you can start building up your list with these people (I suppose this would be step d) then you will be able to start making money on the subject that you are interested in therefore the buyer and seller are showing the same passion within that subject as each other.

So to summarise both the buyer and seller can look at things in the wrong way. The buyer (particularly newbies) start off with the attitude of making money straight away before engaging with their target audience (part of the backward thinking like you say).

The bad marketers will catch onto this and promise the world without actually telling anything (the seller) will then hook in the unsuspecting newbie who is keen to make money straight away by getting them to buy the product. Before you know it, the person is going from product to product to product, without making any money. (The irony is that they are so keen to make money they are actually parting with a lot more, strange isn't it?)

 

[Sharessat]

Hi Iancunn,

Yes that is strange but so true in more cases than not. I know this first hand because I was that buyer jumping from one product or system to the next, spending money month after month trying to make money. I also had the mindset that I would be able to make lots of money overnight (after all the Internet is huge right?). However after years and God knows how much money I spent. I found that there is no silver bullet to kill the big bad werewolf, there is no get rich overnight scheme out there to making money, there is no step by step manual that shows you how to make money online successfully fast.

They are not out there because they don't exist. The only way to make money online is through time and patience, the key as you hinted at is trust, if you are selling to someone they have to trust you, of course there are those few impulse buyers but most people want to know like and trust the person they are buying from before they do it. So let me ask you this question. How many people have you ever meat online or off and instantly know all about them, liked them, and trusted that what they told you was good as gold? Unless you are special the answer is probably none.

So yes a list is a great and very effective way to make money online but like you said it takes time to first of all build a targeted list and second of all built the trust and likability with your list for them to want to spend their money with you, again this is earned through honest communication and time. I could not agree with you more my friend!