Internet Marketing Workshop | Selling The Sausage Not The Sizzle?

Are we selling the sausage but not the sizzle of our Internet Marketing Workshop this Saturday 10th October?   When we first came up with the plan for “The Really Useful Internet Day” we wanted to avoid all the hype and over-excitement that you get at the bigger events.

http://www.themoneygym.com/internetday/booking.htm

We wanted to put on a down to earth day, that would do three things:

1. Give you some simple step by step actions that you can take, to start making a second (passive) income online

2. If you are a business owner, give you some ideas for creating extra profits, and the knowledge to put those ideas into action.

3. Give you some insights into the mindset of the most successful people who make money online, and what really made the difference for them.

So far, so good, you might think.

However, I’m wondering if we are wrong to be selling the sausage and not the sizzle. Because we all know that people don’t want the sausage but always buy the sizzle!

So…………..what is the sizzle of an internet marketing workshop?

The sizzle is the promise that by attending this workshop you will be able to leave your job, close your business and spend the rest of your days travelling the world with your laptop, checking your bank balance occasionally.

Well, to be honest, if I sent the kids to live with their dad, I could actually do that now, but I love the little blighters and will have to wait for them to go to college, before I up sticks and go live somewhere much cheaper and just commute back and forward to the UK.

Read more..

Why Internet Marketing Is A Really Big Issue By Judith Morgan

At The Money Gym, one of the issues which always brings forth the most controversy, the most heated debate, is Internet Marketing.

Why is it such a Big Issue?

I am grateful to The Money Gym for teaching me a lot about marketing and about internet marketing specifically and latterly also about social networking.   Where would we be in this day and age without understanding how to use to world wide web to our advantage?

When I think back to my early days in business the choices were direct mail, still effective by the way if you know how to do it well, or expensive advertising which can be a bit hit and miss for my money.

And both of those took a very long time to achieve results and both were also costly; you lay out your cash before you know whether or not it will bring you the clients and customers you so desperately need and want.   Not much of a model for success, that.

The web offers us the chance to get almost instant feedback from our market, whether or not they like and will pay for our latest offering.   And you can find that our for free (if you dont count your time into the equation).

That’s why I love and appreciate what I have learned.   And why I use it almost every day in my businesses and in my life, both online and off, because some of the marketing lessons apply equally well offline too.

But my bugbear, if you will, and where I take issue with the multi-millionaires who teach us how to do this, is that they sell a dream. And the dream is that you can make passive income from a hotel balcony in the sunshine with just your laptop.

And you get to spend all day counting your money.

Just this week a client asked if it were possible to make £1,000 pcm within six months……

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Internet Marketing | Zero To Hero Online | Matt’s Progress

As the discussions rumble on about whether internet marketing is the “Emperor’s New Clothes” ex-Navy man Matt Jones has taken up the baton, and is quietly working his way through the Money Gym Membership Club Magic tuition videos, with a bit of coaching from me.
Read the first post here >>>	Read the second post here >>>
Read the third post here >>>	Read the fourth post here >>>
He’s agreed to post his progress in becoming a newbie internet zero, to internet marketing here in the comments here – so, over to you Matt!

Internet Marketing | Emperor’s New Clothes | Part 3

Read Part 1 Here >>>

Read Part 2 Here >>>

Wow!  This debate about whether it’s possible to create a real live passive income online – defined as enough to live on without having to actually do anything, once set up – has really hit a nerve on both the blog and our private Google Group!  Several success stories, many tales of woe.

I’m going to be posting up a selection of comments from the google group later but in the meantime I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to run two experiments.

1.  Taking an internet newbie from zero to hero with one of our products

There’s a new guy just signed up to our Membership Club Magic group – name of Matt.  Matt will tell his own story soon, but basically he’s a bright guy, who has just been made redundant, wife, two kids including a brand new baby. He’s been looking for another job and has some potential offers on the table but in the meantime, he’s come across internet marketing and specifically me and our Membership Club Magic product, and for the next two months, he’s able to work on his internet project every week day, for at least 3 hours.

I figure, being ex-Navy, Matt can “follow the bloody instructions” as Frank Kern calls it.  He’s got the desire, he’s got the time and hopefully he can focus.

I’ve offered Matt a once a week coaching call, daily focus emails as well as office-hour skype backup coaching & support  in return for his giving me a weekly update on how he’s doing, what his challenges are, how he feels about it all and anything else he wants to share.

He’s got a great idea for a specialist niche membership site, with plenty of scope for extra revenue streams above and beyond the membership fees themselves, and it’s got the potential to be licensed nationwide, if not globally, if he can get the business model right.

So, we will follow Matt’s story with interest.

2.  Taking an experienced internet marketer (me) and following a step by step system meant for newbies

Tried this  recently with the InfoMillionaire system and sorry, Trey and Frank, while your content is great and I’m going to carry on subscribing as I’m learning stuff all the time from you, your system is NOT for newbies to internet marketing.  There’s not enough support when you need it – a forum would have been good – and even I kept getting stuck.  Also, even though I’ve been using them since 2003, I managed to blow £200 accidentally on Google Adwords when I took my eye off the ball for a couple of days, because one day nothing was happening as my budget was too low, the next day your suggestions kicked in and it went ballistic.  £200 over 2 days and no sales from a site that converts at 0.6% normally, so I was doing something wrong and I dont’ know what.

So my next experiment is going to be following a system highly recommended by Martin Avis, who I like, respect and trust.  He recommended this step by step product  in 2008 and is still recommending it and describes it thusly:

“  …..‘My Online Income System’ from a lady by the name of Kimberley Hoffman.  I’d never heard of it and don’t normally buy random products ‘to order’ but was sufficiently intrigued by the sales message to stump up for it.   What I found was that Kimberley had pretty much created what I was planning to write – a beginners’ guide to making regular money from Clickbank.  It is step-by-step, very clearly written and it covers all the important stuff you need to know.  I love that lady – she has saved me a whole lot of work!  If you are experienced in Internet marketing then this is probably not for you (unless you are experienced in knowledge but are still not making any money). But if you want to learn how you can make a regular income as an affiliate marketer and eventually look forward to sizable checks arriving each week, then this course is highly recommended” Martin Avis

Well, I’m experinced all right, but I’ve never managed to crack Clickbank, either as an affiliate or as a publisher (our Money Gym book is on there) so it sounds perfect.

Actually, it’s funny how the universe throws things at you, as just this week I noticed on our Google Analytics an upsurge in traffic to our Clickbank sales page from one particular Clickbank affiliate, and we have sold one ebook per week from this traffic, so I was thinking I should turn my attention to it sometime soon.

£33 later, I’m now working through Day 1 and I’ll let you know how I get on.  It’s very step by step, day by day, so that’s working for me so far.

Hey, I might email Martin Avis and ask him if I can interview him on how he managed to “make it” in passive income online and what he thinks it takes!

Internet Marketing | Emperor’s New Clothes | Part 2

Read Part 1 Here >>> To continue the story….

Example #2 – The Money Gym Internet Marketing Home Study System.

Between Christmas and New Year 2006, I laid out the 12 Simple Steps To Creating An Online Business as followed by me when creating the Money Gym.  It’s a bit dated in terms of the delivery methods, it’s video but not lovely Camtasia Theatre video, but the content is very relevant and the principles outlined in the Home Study System are still relevant three years later.

I never got around to finishing the final module, but do you know what?

Nobody to date has ever noticed (in spite of paying over £1500 for it) because nobody “just following the bloody instructions” and worked through the system step by step.

Now, we are paying someone to recreate it in Camtasia Theatre style, because it is still a great step by step system and we want to carry on including it in Money Gym Gold and Silver and need it to be upgraded.

Aha!!

Example #3 – Guy Thompson

I forgot to point out to Judith in our meeeting that, albeit not in 90 days, one of our Money Gym clients, Guy Thompson, a really lovely man and great contributor to the Money Gym community, is “just following the bloody instructions” and is getting there on the making money online front.

(I must ask Guy how it’s going and report back to you, actually I have an idea that could help Guy and help my argument and help you too! )

Guy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1988, but even so he spent the next fifteen years as legal adviser to online information businesses headquartered in New York.

In spite of having a demanding “day job”, Guy has written an ebook on the topic of Multiple Sclerosis , got his first sales page up for that ebook, he’s finished the first of his “Guy’s Guides” to making money online (ideal for people with Multiple Sclerosis)  and he is an active Twitterer and has even become an Ezine Articles Expert Author on Multiple Sclerosis.

Phew!  Put’s the rest of us to shame doesn’t he?  Imagine what Guy could achieve if he was working full time on this!  He’s pretty focused in the time that he has got to advance his internet business, isn’t he?

I am so determined to prove that “internet marketing” works, that I’m going to bloody well make it work for The Money Gym.  In fact, if asked what I will be doing when rich as Croesus and just about to pop my clogs, in between playing poker in Los Vegas, I’ll be working on my internet marketing projects.

By which I mean that I want to make a meaningful stream of ongoing passive income – by which I mean PROFIT – from our ebook and other passive income products.

How it works at the moment is that we get a stream of organic traffic – 4000 to 7000 unique visitors – to our website at http://www.TheMoneyGym.com from my various online marketing activities, from articles to videos, to Twitter and Hubpages, Facebook and links in from other sites.

However, I regard all our information products as front end marketing materials, rather than profitable products in their own right, because we don’t make enough from sales of said products to keep Steve, Judith and I in the style to which we would like to become accustomed, if we never wanted to work again.

So they are “marketing that pays for itself” which is great and actually the holy grail of most traditional business models….

But a true passive income business – selling totally passive products profitably – cannot depend on organic traffic alone, because any moment, the search engines could change the way they index websites and your traffic could disappear overnight.  It’s happened, to Brad Fallon with his “wedding favors” site – famous story in the world of internet marketing.

Nicola’s Definition Of A Successful Internet Marketing Business

A true passive income business depends on dependable “paid for traffic” from various sources such as Google Adwords, arriving at a website which converts that traffic at predictable levels, to subscribers and/or sales and which makes a profit for the owner, over and above what they pay for the traffic.

(Or one that drives “paid for” traffic to the sales page of an affiliate product, which converts to sales of that affiliate product, but for the purposes of this series of articles, I’m going to focus on you selling your own product)

And I’m going to set a goal now to make Internet Marketing work with the Money Gym products and also share the stories of some of our Money Gym clients – like Guy – who are “just following the bloody instructions”.

Oh my God!  I feel the “Money Gym Online” book coming on.  Written in instalments on the blog with interaction from our readers and subscribers.  Cool.

So keeping it really simple (another challenge online and for me particularly) what do I consider you need to create a successful passive income generating internet business?

1.    Successful Internet Marketing For Beginners

• A Domain name – either one with key words in (if working in a niche) or a generic one like www.ABCEnterprises.com
• Hosting – we use FunkyDomainNames.com to register our domains and provide hosting – they have a 24 telephone helpline which you WILL use at some point!
• An ebook to sell – write your own, pick one at Clickbank.com or buy one  with resale rights.
• A sales page to sell it from – if you have a resale rights ebook make sure it comes with a sales page.  If selling your own ebook, use Sales Letter Generator by Armand Morin, which breaks it down into simple parts/tasks and takes away the overwhelm.
• A shopping cart – we love TotalBusinessCart.com – to integrate with your PayPal account so you can take money, follow up with prospects in an automated yet personal fashion, manage your database of contacts, products, mailing list, broadcast facility, affilate scheme and much more!
• A blog to generate organic traffic.  We recommend Wordpress which installs on your own domain with one click via your hosting control panel (Cpanel) at FunkyDomainNames.com.
• A Twitter account to generate organic traffic – mine is second only to Google organic for traffic generation to our website.

Tomorrow I’ll cover what you will need for more intermediate and advanced actions but you could look at your internet business right now and compare it to this list.  Remember, it’s not what you do, but what you are NOT doing that’s making the difference.

In the meantime, I would love to hear what you think about Internet Marketing and hear your stories.  Use the comments box here to share your thoughts.

Resources mentioned in this article:

“31 Days To Millionaire Marketing Miracles” by Tracy Repchuk
Free membership and excellent free report

Guy Thompson’s Multiple Sclerosis Guide
http://www.multiplesclerosisguide.com/,

“Guy’s Guides” to making money online (ideal for people with Multiple Sclerosis)
http://www.guysguidesonline.com/

Guy Thompson On Twitter https://twitter.com/Guy_Thompson

Articles on Multiple Sclerosis
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Guy_Thompson

Domain Names & Hosting (with one-click blog install)
FunkyDomainNames.com

Armand Morin’s Sales Letter Generator (preview feature works better with Internet Explorer than Firefox btw)

TotalBusinessCart.com – everything you will ever need to run your online business under one affordable roof

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com

Clickbank – to find products to sell or to sell your own products

Internet Marketing | Emperor’s New Clothes | Part 1

There are  some virtual storm clouds brewing at the Money Gym.  Judith and I came the closest we have ever been to a row the other day at our board meeting while talking about me re-writing my book for 2009 and beyond, and the topic was the same old recurring theme of Internet Marketing – Is It The Emperor’s New Clothes?

This topic has also been rumbling around our Money Gym Mastermind Google Group as Marion Ryan (one of our Money Gym coaches and no slouch at making money online herself with her Rockin’ Blogging service) asked “Is anyone out there making any real money with affiliate marketing?”

Just to clarify, when we are talking about Internet Marketing, we are not talking about “Marketing Your Business Online” which all of us at The Money Gym totally love, do effortlessly and succeed in all day every day, but “Internet Marketing” as defined as the ability to create automated flows of passive income from selling information products (your own or someone else’s) online without having to deliver a service, workshops, coaching, all those things that involve you actually doing something and turning up for work in the real world.

Judith says ”Internet Marketing simply isn’t viable and perhaps all the gurus are selling a dream, albeit one that we all want. We cannot point to any single success story within the Money Gym community, including ourselves as principals of the business, and that that simply isn’t good enough for our clients, they deserve better.   We are not in authenticity and even worse, we could be misleading our clients”.

Although Tim Ferris’ “4 Hour Work Week” book is one of her all time favourites, and leans heavily on his passive income made online by selling a product, Judith feels very strongly that when I re-write OUR book I should not imply that you can make millions online very easily.  That I should be more realistic and not hang out the internet dream in the book as, in her opinion, there is no real evidence in our circle that it works.   She considers that we might even remove it as a separate Lane Of The Wealth Highway in our teachings in the Money Gym coaching programme , including it instead only as part of our business module.

I passionately believe the opposite and I say it does work because I know a LOT of people – met at many seminars over the years – who make their living like that.  And a very good living – defined by me as more than £5000 or $10,000 per month upwards to the “millions a year” merchants.

I believe they earn that because of the lifestyles they lead,  the fact that they are able to afford to go to all the seminars, cruises, the Maverick Adventures all around the world, the houses they live in, the cars they drive and that they never seem short of cash.

Judith’s logic asks: “well, if it works, how come specifically none of our Money Gym clients while able to become wealthy, even millionaires, through the other lanes of the Wealth Highway, have ever yet managed to become an internet millionaire or even make any meaningful recurring passive sums of money working online?   If you yourself, Nicola, have been – to use your own words – diddling about online since before God was a lad, how come you are not one of the internet millionaires living the life you describe above?”

I say, because none of us ever do it right.  We never keep it simple and “just follow the bloody instructions” to quote Frank Kern.

Actually it’s very rare that any of  us simply just do it.

Example #1

Last year, we hosted a 90-day Money Gym Internet Challenge, where our clients were supposed to define their internet goals and then, with our support, achieve them in 90 days.

Some set goals to finish their ebook, some set goals to make their first $10 online, some set goals like “get my first 100 subscribers to my ezine list” and I really did my best to help them keep it real, set realistic goals and then work out how they were going to achieve them.

We were supposed to post up our goals for each day, actions taken and achievements to a special Focus Day google group we set up.

So, did anyone do that?

Some, for a while.

Did even one person finish the challenge or achieve their goals set?

No.

What went wrong?  Well, I always say that the difference between success or failure is more about what you don’t do, than what you do do.

They didn’t get focused, didn’t take consistent action, they got discouraged, they just gave up.  Sometimes life just got in the way.

Just think for a moment about one of your goals, one that you constantly fail in achieving.  Think about the one single thing, that if you did it, would absolutely guarantee success.  Now think about why you don’t do and why you don’t do that thing.

But I’m getting distracted here…one of my issues with my own internet marketing success by the way.

Tracy Repchuk talks about the fact that 92% of people who go to internet marketing seminars will NEVER succeed and it’s true.  They will buy more and more stuff, hoping for the magic wand, the secret key….hang on, this is sounding just like the people who go to property investment seminars, business building seminars, stockmarket trading seminars.   It’s sounding like wealth creation in general.

Tracy also talks about the importance of getting focused in her excellent best selling book “31 Days To Millionaire Marketing Miracles” which, incidentally, was written in days and took just 58 days to become an Amazon best seller. Focus works and she’s demonstrated that.   But Tracy Repchuk was a successful business person before she discovered internet marketing and lots of the gurus were too.   Judith would say this just proves her point; “Tracy is selling more information on how to do it rather than just selling something online like Tim Ferris for example!”

So is it possible for ordinary people to create a passive income online?  Or are they wasting their time, chasing a dream?

The Money Gym Internet Challenge wasn’t a total waste of all our time because, a year later, some are just getting to the point of finishing their ebooks, have websites up online and have mailing lists and some even have membership sites.

But hardly anyone is “just following the bloody instructions” and getting on with it, step by step.

Read Part 2 Here >>>