Getting Started With Internet Marketing

My method for marketing involves lots of free resources so you can minimize the amount of money you have to spend to get started.  I teach you how and you execute so along the way, using free tools, we both generate wealth.

Not everything in life is free so where I feel it is important that you consider purchasing a tool, I will let you know and in most cases, I do not have a vested interest in the sale of those tools.  In some instances, the paid tool is better than a free version as with some free tools, the creators or authors may be lax in updating or fixing bugs and in these cases, it is worth your time to avoid headaches by paying for the tool.

At a very basic level, I will begin with the steps you need to get yourself started.  Your goal should be at mastering one program or income stream and then expanding into other programs or income streams.  Why?  Because in order to create consistent residual money, you need multiple programs or income streams.  This allows you to spread your risk by not putting all your eggs in one basket.

If a program has hiccups or tanks for any reason, unless you have others you are working it can be a painful experience.  I know as this happened to me when I first started out.  Digging a hole is easy but if you fall in, it’s much harder to climb back out.  So learn from my mistakes and I will help you develop strategies for your own ’safety net’.

One word of caution.  Do not expect out the gate to hit a home run.  Some programs, if things are aligned well and you have laid your groundwork properly, you can knock it out of the park.  If that does happen, do not let yourself become comfortable and lax thinking “wow, that was easy, now I can relax”.  For many programs, it takes consistent effort and persistence to build long term wealth but I will tell you that you will reach a point when it starts snowballing and runs into auto-pilot mode.  This is what everyone should be striving for.  For any venture, you will need to continually tweak and adjust what you do, especially to accommodate the changing climate of the internet landscape.  Stay on top of your game and your chances of succeeding are high.

Here are the basics of what you need to get started:

A program of some kind.  Preferably one that generates high dollar returns but programs with small returns are good too.  Just keep in mind it takes the same amount of effort, time and resources to promote either type.

Resources to get your programs off the ground.  This includes tools, software, ad copy, advertising sources, etc…

Advertising. There are many ways to go here and free stuff works great, especially Web 2.0 social networking which is totally free and a great way to build your ‘brand’ and recognition so that you attract people to you.  Some form of paid advertising is a must and if you have a low budget, that’s fine as you can get a lot done with inexpensive solo-ads and various other vehicles.

Time. This is probably the biggest area people fail to consider when getting started.  During your ramp up phase for any program or income stream, even if it’s a ready to go affiliate marketing program, you have to put in the time.  Nothing runs on autopilot out the gate and even after you have established yourself, there is ongoing maintenance you have to account for which involves some of your time.

For me personally, my time is precious and valuable and everyone has their own perspective on what their time costs to them.  I am raising my daughter alone so for me, it is important that I do not get caught up in unfocused “busy” work that takes away from the time I want to spend with her in helping her grow.   So I look for programs that have an abundance of tools, have a great support team of mentors and will not take up tons of my time on an ongoing, daily basis.

I am at the point now where I work my programs about 4 hours a day.  But I won’t lie to you – there were plenty of weeks and months where I pulled all nighters learning and working on getting things off the ground and the work I put in during this time is what allows me to spend a few hours a day on my income streams.

To start off, you will need to make sure you have some free tools.  Here is what I use and I provide the links where you can download and install them.

Squeeze Page Creator – very simple squeeze page creator

Loaded Squeeze – this is an easy tool to quickly create base squeeze pages which you can easily modify in Kompozer.

http://cantstandmyboss.com/download/loadedsqueeze.rar – you will have to unzip this file and then run it to install on your computer.

UPDATE: For squeeze pages, I now provide tons of free templates to my team members and do not recommend using this tool as it did not work with well with my new Vista machine.

HTML/Website Editor – use this to edit HTML and website pages

Kompozer – in my opinion, the best tool for editing website pages.  Simple to use, easy to understand.

http://kompozer.net/download.php

FTP Program – use this to upload files to your hosting account from your computer

FileZilla – awesome FTP software which is what you will use to upload files to your hosting account.  You can also use the hosting company’s built in file uploader but an FTP program is best.

http://filezilla-project.org/

Zip File Archiver – use this to unzip and zip files

WinRar – my favorite and it’s free to use.  You just have to close the pop up that appears every time you run it but you can also pay to remove that if you want.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/194276

In future posts I will cover ‘how to use these tools’ and provide an overview of my process for choosing  programs to promote.

To Your Success!

-Eddie
aka Loaded Beach Bum

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