What is Internet Marketing?
We tell a lot of people that we’re internet marketers. But, what does that mean exactly? What is internet marketing? What do you really need to know?
There are many definitions for internet marketing. Normally I’d try to simplify things, like I would do for one of my friends or family members. But, I know you’re interested in internet marketing, and you want some details — that’s why you’re here.
So, I’ll start with a few simple ideas then I’ll build up. In many respects, internet marketing is simply another way of saying online marketing, online business, or work-at-home internet business. The core idea is that you’re using a computer and an internet connection to generate money.
Not Just Work from Home
You don’t have to work at home to be an internet marketer. Many IM’ers, as they are called, work for large organizations, marketing companies, and research firms. The central idea is that internet marketers do marketing online, usually in an effort to advertise, pull in buyers, and ultimately sell products and services.
So, here are the two key ideas summarized:
- Most of the work is done online via the web
- Most of the work is marketing and sales related
As a quick aside, internet marketing isn’t only about search engine optimization (SEO), Google Adwords, or any other particular technology. Yes, technology is always in the mix, but internet marketing is more about the tactics, strategies, and methods to do business online.
The bottom line is that you don’t want to be fooled into thinking that internet marketing is one single thing. It’s a complex clustering of tools and techniques. And, internet marketers pick and choose what works best for them. Some internet marketers use 1-2 tools whereas others use the full spectrum. There’s not one secret or special technique which works for all internet marketers.
But, there’s more…
It’s All About Making Money Online
The heart of internet marketing is the set of actions and activities that make money for businesses, online and offline. In other words, when internet marketers talk about internet marketing, they care about one thing: making money.
Now, this might seem obvious, but internet marketers are both extremely focused and easily distracted. They are constantly looking for the Holy Grail of online cash: very little work, very high profits, and freedom.
Internet marketers therefore employ a number of tools and techniques to make money online. To make everything clear, I’ll provide several examples for you.
7 Internet Marketing Examples
eBay — Many internet marketers have used eBay as their key platform to make money online. Not only can they make money via auctions they can also use eBay to drive traffic to their sites. It’s also possible to build a customer list with eBay.
Article Marketing — With article marketing the idea is to write articles to make money. The “trick” is that you have an author bio box or author resource box. In that author credit box, you include links to your sites (e.g., sales pages, sign up pages, and so on). You can get traffic directly from article directories or from blogs and sites when people syndicate your content.
Affiliate Marketing — The concept of affiliate marketing is that you sell products for other people but you get a commission. Internet marketers often get at least 50% of the profits, but some internet marketers offer 70% commission or more.
Pay Per Click (PPC) — This is a way of driving traffic to a site via advertising. In most cases you bid on “keywords” which are the words and phrases people use to find content on search engines. The mother of all PPC systems is Google Adwords. The amount you pay per keyword or key phrase can range from just $0.01 per click through $50 or more.
Memberships — This is a more advanced internet marketing technique. You can set up a membership or club on a topic and then charge customers a fee for access. Usually memberships operate on a monthly basis, i.e., customers pay for access month by month. Although this is typically seen an an advanced online marketing technique, there are ways to set up simple memberships. Autoresponder memberships are a great example of simple yet effective memberships.
Offline Marketing — Internet marketers often make a lot of money by selling their services to small, local businesses. They still use online tactics to drive traffic, encourage people to make a purchase. Internet marketers can work with businesses offline on a pay-per-lead basis, setting up web 2.0 and social media tools, and more.
Private Label Rights (PLR) — Private label rights are “whitelabel” products, which means that the buyer has near complete control over the product. For example, you can purchase PLR products, do a little re-writing, and call the product your own in many cases. PLR is often affordable and effective. (Highly Recommended: Simple PLR Club)
We Keep It Simple
There are many other tools and strategies that comprise internet marketing. Honestly, I’ve only touched on the surface. I’ve kept this relatively jargon free and I tried to stay away from concepts like keyword analysis, squeeze pages, conversion ratios, web metrics, and the like.
We encourage people to try many different things but then focus once you see any money flow. Highly Recommended: Watch the free 10x Method video.
If you like this blog entry keep in mind that The Rhodes Brothers make everything as simple as possible. Our core objective is to help you make money online through internet marketing.
We have several affordable memberships and products to help you succeed. Yes, you can do it like “they” starting today.
How to Make Money Offline
In a previous blog posting I talked about online and offline marketing. In this blog posting I’m going to talk about how to make money offline by exploiting your online marketing skills. In effect, you’re going to learn about selling your services to businesses offline. It’s easy as pie!
Most internet marketers don’t realize how valuable their online skills are to people doing business offline. To put it another way, most online marketers are only familiar with very low prices. For example, it’s pretty easy to find 500-800 word articles for $5-15. And to be perfectly clear, I’m talking about high quality, original articles. This is not about buying PLR articles or otherwise using PLR.
If you’re an internet marketer and you want to know how to make money offline, the answer is very simple. You really just need to interact with business owners in the “real world” and let them know what you do. You would explain that you drive traffic, write articles, market with videos, build lists, and so forth.
Of course your sales pitch wouldn’t be about the marketing methods. It would be about the results that you offer to offline businesses. You wouldn’t talk about driving traffic to a web site you’d talk about getting people to a web site so that they could get directions, find a business, and buy goods offline. In simple terms, you would explain the benefits not the techniques and methods.
Here’s a real example that we have outlined in the Offline Cash Formula. You would first tell an offline business owner that you could build up a list of people for them. The list might be a simple announcement list which the offline business could use to electronically (email) distribute to coupons.
So, how would you make money from this? Let’s take a look…
You would use an autoresponder service to set this up. You’d create the form, you’d manage the email distribution, you’d provide “free” content and so on. This will all be part of a customer list building service you’d offer to an offline business owner. You could charge by the number of people on the list. Or, you could charge a flat fee. There are other pricing models you could use too. What matters is that you see how you can use your online marketing skills to generate money offline.
In the Offline Cash Formula I spend a lot of time talking about pricing because it’s so important. I know that it can be tricky so let me give you some guidance now. As a rule of thumb, I recommend that you charge 5-10 times the amount to offline businesses that you charge online.
Given this price difference, imagine doing some outsource flipping. You can buy an article online via outsourcing for $10 but then you should be able to resell that original content to a “real world” business for at leat $50. Anything less than $25 is a seriously bad business decision. This disparity allows you to pay $10 to make at least $25. That’s $15 in profit for virtually zero work. This is exactly how you can make money offline again and again.
All the best,
~ John S. Rhodes of “The Rhodes Brothers”
p.s. You could very easily buy and sell PLR to offline businesses. For example, you could join a high quality PLR membership (e.g., Simple PLR Club or PLR Newsletters) and then you could use or sell that content to offline businesses who crave content for their newsletters. This is very much like Quadrant 4 that I described yesterday.
When You Should Buy PLR
When you buy private label rights content (known as “PLR”) you’re buying the work that someone else has done. You’re buying their efforts, their time, their brainpower. You’re not just buying words.
But, many people think that’s what PLR is all about — just getting content. But really, that is just plain wrong. You need to rethink this because, to tell the complete truth…
PLR is equivalent to outsourcing. You’re buying their work; the research that someone else has done ahead of time for you in a niche. It’s that domain knowledge, and the time invested in the topic, that really matters with PLR. That’s the true value. That’s the core of any PLR that you buy. (TIP: “Is Free PLR Good?“)
I want to tell you exactly what kind of PLR you should purchase right now. I don’t think anyone has covered this topic this way previously. Stephen Wagenheim touched on this when he talked about PLR and outsourcing (”PLR is Outsourcing on the Cheap“), but he didn’t talk about what kind of PLR to buy based on the outsourcing concept.
This is really important. If you just buy and buy, you’ll end up with hard drive full of PLR content. You won’t really know why you bought all that content and you probably wasted a lot of money. (TIP: “PLR Articles — How to Use Them“)
Well, we’ve really beaten that to a pulp. Let’s refocus and consider when you should buy PLR. Below you’ll see special tips that I’ve previously only given to my best customers. Feel free to refer other people to this blog entry; help others.
You should by PLR under the four following conditions…
Number One: You should buy PLR when you do not have any knowledge about a niche. That means, outsource what you are not good at. Buy PLR when you’re clueless on a topic. You’ll quickly get smart in that niche. PLR is a shortcut to advanced knowledge, assuming you’re able to purchase or otherwise acquire PLR that is of good quality. (TIP: Read The PLR Model Blog)
Number Two: You should buy PLR when you can’t make money. What I mean is that there are times when it’s more cost effective to simply buy PLR to help your customers. For example, if your customers keep asking how to set up a WordPress blog, you might not be able to make any money from it. So, you could purchase PLR that clearly explains how to get the job done. Cheap, effective, and gets the job done. It also drives up customer satisfaction and loyalty; no problem.
Number Three: You should buy PLR when you do not enjoy a topic. If you don’t have passion about a topic, it’s very likely to show through. You’ll be exposed! Also, if you get frustrated with something and therefore you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to be able to create a good product for your customers. Simply grab some PLR and your problems go away.
Number Four: You should buy PLR when you realize you’re wasting time. Anytime you’re generating any sort of content whether it be for your website, blog or new report you’re working on, you should start with PLR. Remember, you’re buying brainpower. (TIP: “PLR - Why You’ve Just Gotta Have It“) The research that someone else has done can be found very often in rock solid PLR articles, PLR reports, e-books. In other words, PLR is a shortcut to knowledge.
Here’s the recap. PLR is just like outsourcing. If you lack knowledge, when you don’t have high ROI for your effort, when you’re burned-out or dislike a topic, or when you’re just plain wasting time, you need to consider purchasing PLR.
I’ll wrap up by saying that buying poor quality PLR is a bigger waste of time and energy than doing the work yourself. You need to know exactly how to find and review PLR. More importantly, you need to know how to evaluate PLR before you even buy it — yes, we clearly explain exactly how to do this inside PLR Exploitation.
~ John S. Rhodes of “The Rhodes Brothers”
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