Don’t be surprised if you aren’t making any money from your blog

My headline may be sacrilegious in Internet marketing (IM) but there’s plenty of real-world proof to backup that statement. The road to online riches is littered with many starving and/or broke bloggers.

For a long time, many IM gurus have taught their students that all they needed to do was put up a blog, add fresh content regularly to attract loads of traffic and voila, the blogger would be able to stuff cash into your bank accounts from AdSense ads. That business model is dead.

Don’t believe me? Probably one of the best examples of this blogging model is Daniel Lyons, a talented blogger and the creator of “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.”

He created a fake persona and posted 10 or 20 items a day without much success until The New York Times ran a story revealing his identity. On that day, more than 500,000 people hit his site, by far his biggest day and earned him about a hundred bucks.

Over the course of that entire month, in which 1.5 million people visited his site, he earned a whopping total of $1,039.81.

Today, Daniel has a very different take on making money from blogging as he recently wrote in Newsweek, “I learned the hard way: while blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.”
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Video Killed the Content King

The headline is my clever attempt at spoofing the classic 1979 hit song “Video Killed the Radio Star” by a British band called The Buggles. The song celebrates the golden days of radio, describing a singer whose career is cut short by television. The song topped the music chart in several countries.

It was the first music video shown on MTV at 00:01 on August 1, 1981, the day the cable station was launched in the U.S. I found the video on YouTube, so here it is for those not old enough to remember and/or for those who just want a trip down memory lane. Enjoy! [Read more]

When to Seek Marketing Help from an Internet Marketing Coach

The Internet is bursting at the seams with all kinds of do-it-yourself marketing advice and help. That’s good and bad if you need marketing coaching for your online business.

While you have plenty of choices for free information, it takes an incredible amount of your time to sift through all that information and separate facts from hype.

First, you have to find the right answers to your specific marketing problem. Next comes the implementation, which can present its own set of new problems and then comes the waiting to see the results.

Often, things don’t work out the way you had planned and you are back to square one – seeking the right marketing advice. All you want to do is get up and running quickly so you can make money.

If you are feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, then may be it’s time to look for an Internet marketing coach to mentor you. The problem is that most marketing gurus charge you an arm and a leg for their services.

The good news is that you can invest in online marketing coaching one step at a time. Let me explain that concept in more details. [Read more]

How to Use Powerful Psychological Triggers in Your Sales Letter

Words have a significant influence on how we react to things. Let’s drill down a little deeper and look at some powerful psychological triggers or “hot buttons” that you can use to persuade your visitors to take action.

These techniques are known as psychological triggers because they trigger certain actions or thoughts in us subconsciously. These could be words, images or sounds. People use them all the time – not just in sales letters, but also in everyday life.

1. Power of association:
Association is a trigger where the person using it wants his/her audience to associate a certain emotion or  thought when using their product.

For example, a print ad or a TV commercial that shows a good-looking woman or a successful man driving a luxury car. Automatically you associate beauty and success with that image. It triggers a desire in you to want to own that same car for you to look as good or be as successful as the model. [Read more]

Online Coaching can be Lucrative Business

Making money by coaching others to solve their problems is big business. Just do a Google search for “online coaching” and you’ll find 590,000 results. There are all kinds of coaches out there, online executive coaching, online life coach, health coach online and the list goes on. There are lots of people earning a good living online by selling their coaching services, me included (see 1on1 coaching).

Who is a coach?

A coach is someone who takes his/her knowledge, experience and expertise in a particular field and teaches others to be successful in their own fields. It is not necessary for your clients to be in the same field as you, for example a leadership coach can help business owners in a variety of industries to be successful in their respective businesses. Or you could be an expert in business-to-business (B2B) copywriting and coach general copywriters to become successful specialists in B2B copywriting.

There are even coaches for coaches. A more experienced coach can teach new coaches how to master their own coaching skills. They are like mentors who are always there for you to answer questions and guide you when you are at a loss. There is very good money to be made in doing just that. [Read more]

Is “Moving The Free Line” Helping or Hurting Your Online Business?

Anyone who is involved with Internet marketing or is in the “make money niche” is well aware of the fact that you need to give away lots of free stuff to attract traffic, build your list and establish yourself if you are a virtual unknown. I agree with that business philosophy to a certain degree.

However, I am beginning to get an uncomfortable feeling when I read or hear expressions like “moving the free line” and “giving your best stuff away.” Where do you draw the line? Eventually you reach a point of “diminishing returns” (economists like to call it diminishing marginal returns).

I understand that the web is built on a foundation of free – free information, free videos, free “how-to” tutorials and so on and so forth. It’s not that I don’t believe in giving away free reports and multi-part eCourses. I do want to help people who are just starting out or are struggling. I have plenty of free resources on this site that I use to draw interested visitors and acquire new subscribers who I hope will become paying customers someday. But I believe there has to be a limit to freebies and there comes a time when you need to make a business decision. After all, it is basic human nature not to pay money for something that one can get for free. [Read more]

Business Blogs Can Humanize Your Online Venture

The Internet is a very impersonal medium of communication. Anyone can put up a website and make outrageous claims. In order to build credibility for your online business or yourself, you have to assure your readers, prospects and customers that a real person is behind that site. A business blog does exactly that.

Well-known corporations like Cisco, Dow and Chevron spend millions of dollars in advertising to humanize themselves. Here’s one of Cisco’s popular TV commercials, “Welcome to the Human Network.”

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How to Sell eBooks and Build Your Online Empire

If everybody and his brother is selling eBooks online, is it possible to still make money?

The answer is “YES.” However, there’s a “BUT” and it is – only if you learn to do it right from the get go. Otherwise you may be wasting a lot of time and money trying to figure out what eBooks to create and sell to earn a living.

Why should you build your own eBook empire?

Let’s first look at some of the advantages of setting up your online shop selling eBooks. [Read more]

Which Internet Marketing Strategy is Right for You?

The beginning of a new year is a good time to take stock of your online business and decide what marketing strategy you want to follow in 2010. I’m assuming you are just as fed up as I am with over-hyped get rich quick schemes and are only interested in sustainable business strategies.

As online marketers, we can learn a lot from our counterparts in the traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. An offline entrepreneur also wears many different hats but s/he quickly learns to focus on her/his main strength and delegates the rest to capable assistants.

In the same way, you have to make some tough decisions as to what parts of your online business you want to handle yourself and outsource the rest.

To determine which Internet marketing strategy is right for your online business, ask yourself these questions (be honest with yourself): [Read more]