The Reality About (Internet) Business

I read an article today by John Vito Caviani. He titled his article "There's No Such Thing As An Internet Business."

And he's right.

Too many people are lured by the magic of this great new type of business, where you supposedly can get rich with very little actual work, just because it's an online business.

There's a whole lot of hype and fancy words being spewed out, trying to make us believe this...

But (in Vito's words)...

"Here is the reality about business. The internet is just a tool. It's a great tool, but I don't care if you use the internet or the Pony Express, business will always work the same way:

Business is, and always has been, about a relationship of value between a customer and a supplier or vendor.


Real Marketing can be broken down into 3 parts:

1. a set of processes for creating value for customers.
2. a set of processes for communicating value to customers.
3. a set of processes for delivering value to customers.

Most people using the internet as a tool, do not do all three.


Beyond that, there are only three ways to grow a business:

1. Increase the size of a transaction with your customer.
2. Increase the number of customers.
3. Increase the frequency of transactions with current customers.

So, you tell me, where is the source of the great mystery that requires words like amazing, astounding, killer; pictures of fast cars, big houses, harems of women at your feet, etc.

The sooner you see that it's a big mind game aimed directly at your desire to be financially well off, the better off and more financially secure you will be.

The good thing about the truth is that you don't need to be smart or rich to see it.

At its essence, business is about the relationship between you and your customer.

If someone is trying to tell you how easy it is to establish that relationship of trust and mutual respect, run in the other direction. Everything worth while in life requires effort, and you don't need to be in a hurry. There are plenty of good ideas to go around.

So, business is business. It has functioned the same way for thousands of years and will continue to function the same way well into the future.

There is no such thing as an internet business.

God bless,
Vito

See what he means? All business, whether online or in the "real world", depends on building relationships with your customers.

The Internet is just a tool for doing it in a brand new way.

Thief in the Night...

I woke up in the wee early hours this morning. Since it was Saturday, and I could go back to sleep whenever the mood struck, I headed for the computer.

There was an email from List Bandit. It's a traffic program we recently joined (one side-effect of getting that free site, The 7 Dollar Mall). How it works... you get people to sign up, and then you can email your downline.

Not a new idea.

But here's where it gets interesting. They keep re-shuffling the matrix, so sometimes you can send messages to people you didn't sign up yourself.

Since we joined so recently and have barely begun to promote the program, we don't have any personally-sponsored downline members yet. But this morning, the email came reminding me that the matrix had been re-shuffled. Suddenly Tom and I had a whole 50 people in our downline.

So I sent them a message about Paul Kleinmeulman's new Espired.com membership site.

I also read a few posts in the List Bandit forum. Someone recommended sending messages that draw people to your squeeze page.... That, of course, is infinitely better than what I had just done. It is the ultimate way to benefit from List Bandit.

See, the main idea of List Bandit is to help build your list. Instead of sending traffic directly to the affiliate product you are promoting, you need to give them something in exchange for them signing up on your list.

But you can't build a list unless you have a way to capture names and email addresses (a "name squeeze page"). And you can't send people to a squeeze page until you have a series of messages set up ready to be delivered automatically.

So, sending any ad was better than sending nothing at all to those 50 people. But here we are again, looking down the barrel of that same gun.

Do you remember our new list of priorities?

• Set up messages in autoresponder
• Create squeeze page
• Send traffic to page.
  

I have already started working on getting some messages ready. Next, I'll discover how our autoresponder works, and get the messages loaded.

After that, I need to create the squeeze page... and figure out what "bait" to use. We'll need to give away something of value, some must-have info that can either be delivered in an email message (first one of the series).... or to be downloaded.

Of course, I'm still fuzzy on how to set up a page where people can download a product, so I may just start out with a report that can be sent via email.

Either way, the bait has to be compelling, or people will not want to give their name and email address... right?

With the right product, and a squeeze page that presents it right, now it's time to send the visitors to the squeeze page. That's where List Bandit comes in... and other traffic and advertising resources.

So, I certainly have my job cut out for me over the next days... or weeks. I'll keep you posted!

By the way, did you catch the "thief in the night"? You know. That's List Bandit at 3:00 a.m...........

Yeah, I know. I have a corny sense of humor.

Do You Want To Be Espired?

Today I received an email message from Paul Klienmeulman. He has a brand new membership site, so I took a look....

I quickly realized this is worth sharing with everyone we can. Paul is someone Tom and I respect online because he knows how to achieve success as an Internet Marketer, and he gives great, actually useful advice.


~~ Announcing The Launch Of Espired Membership... ~~

It's not often that you hear about an Australian making it big online, but that is exactly what Paul Kleinmeulman is doing. And because internet marketing has allowed him to achieve his dreams of income, travel and family time, he wants to give back.

Espired Membership is Paul Kleinmeulman's way of giving back to the internet community by showing you how he was able to become so successful so quickly.

He shares with you what works and what doesn't when building a successful business online.... Here are some of the topics Paul covers.

• Unchanging Internet Marketing Principles...
  
• Product Creation Methods...
  
• Killer Copywriting Methods...
  
• Traffic Techniques...
  
• List Building And Email Marketing Methods...
  
• Affiliate Marketing Tactics...
  
• Outsourcing Systems...
  

For all the details check out...
http://www.Espired.com/?201

Oh, I almost forgot. After you become a member, you can earn a residual income by inviting others to sign up.

There are helpful promotional tools inside, like sig-files and email messages. For example, I "borrowed" lots of the wording above from their sample blog post. I also added my version of one resource at the bottom of this page. Scroll down and take a look. (It would probably look even better on a white background, but it's not bad.)

This membership is a great "product" to promote because it truly helps people, is extremely affordable, and will give you an ongoing source of extra income. It would just be pocket change at first, of course, but it would keep on coming. And as more people sign up, it would grow. It could grow pretty big, in fact, if you keep on finding new members.

Since the membership is both useful and easily affordable, most people will continue their membership indefinitely. And you'll get paid the commission each month they stay a member.

That's called "residual income" because you only do the work once (to invite the new member), and then continue to be paid month after month.

And the whole time, you are growing as a marketer, because you are (finally) learning what you need to know inside the members area. Isn't that exciting and "e-spiring"?

Come Get Espired!

Okay... Call Me a Slow Learner.

Yes, you can call me a slow learner. Just when I thought I was getting more focused, something came along and looked promising... Yep. It sounded downright easy.

And it was free. Well, I guess that should have been my first clue to walk away.

In fact, it involved a "free website".

Deja vu...... Because that's where we started with this blog. Remember? (Check my first couple of blog posts if you forgot.)

Next thing you know, I had spent way more time and energy pursuing this "easy" thing than I ever imagined I would.

Now, I don't think this was a TOTAL waste of time... in fact this free website could be just what someone needs. Just not me... not now. Because Tom and I already have enough irons in the fire, and we just need to do more with what we have already started!

But now we have it... and it's not so bad.

This free website is called The 7 Dollar Mall. It's brand new. The email was from the owner himself, and he has a good track record.

The allure that snagged me was when Richard Madison said this could be the solution to getting started without all the learning curve involved in getting your own products, putting them on the web, and all the technical stuff.

Here's an excerpt of his letter:
------------------------------------------------------------------

"What would you be willing to pay for your very own high traffic information product mall? These are not just any information products. They are the very popular 7 Dollar Products that have been taking the Internet marketing world by storm!

"What if we loaded hundreds of quality 7 Dollar Products and you could earn up to 100% commission on each and every one?

"And if I said there were residual revenue programs that can earn you affiliate revenue on auto-pilot?

"And what if I told you there was nothing to download, install, no databases to configure, no updates to perform?

"And if I told you you could get it for FREE. Zero!

"And finally, even if you purchased all the UPGRADES possible to unlock the full potential of this product, it would cost less than $50. One Time (not Monthly)

"So - I'm now telling you that. All of it.

"Seriously.

"Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself..."
------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmmm... Do you see why I was drawn in?

• Residual income streams built in.... (get paid over and over)
• They work "on auto-pilot"... (set-it-and-forget-it)
• Nothing to download or install, no databases to configure...
• Popular, in-demand, affordable, quality products

Sounds pretty easy for the technically-challenged Internet newbie to get something started! In fact, it's not a bad way to go if you don't already have other income-producing projects in the works.

You can look at my mall site here, as you are probably curious by now to see what it looks like. (I didn't even look at a sample site before signing up.)

If you want to give it a try, go here to get your own website. You will have the option of going with the free version, or upgrading for under $50.00 (one time) to get more features.

I do envision the mall fitting in with our existing ventures. If I didn't, I would not have bothered with it. However, I sure did not expect to spend so much time starting yet another avenue when I already had other projects that needed attention.

Well, at the end of the day, Tom and I took a good look at where we were. Then we refocused on where we needed to be.

The bottom line sounds simple enough... "just put up a name capture page and promote a good affiliate program."

That should be our first goal. And there are several steps needed to accomplish it:

1. Prepare autoresponder messages
2. Load them into an autoresponder
3. Make a "squeeze" page (name capture page)
4. Send traffic to it

So that's the main focus at this point. We've gotta start with where we are now, and get something going. We must lay that foundation first... Then we can continue to improve on it.

Those steps will take a little time because there's still a learning curve on some of them. But that's the only intelligent way to go.