Learn Internet Marketing Strategies For Your Business

The most popular price point for “big ticket” programs online seems to be $1997, and if you’re like me, you probably wonder if they’re really worth it, or is that just a number settled on inside the secret back room of internet marketing.

The answer is yes, no, maybe, sometimes, and “it depends.”

In reality, the answer relies much less on the product itself, but in the results you get from taking action on what you purchase.

Let’s take a couple of examples that are hot right now: Affiliate Dot Com and my own SIMPLE 2 event.

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I was in Staples yesterday, and I don’t know about you, but I love walking through an office supply store during back to school time.

All the binders, the pens, gadgets, etc., charge me up.

It reminds me of how it felt when I was a kid, and the possibilities of a new year of learning were ahead. Wondering if I’d like my teachers, who I’d be friends with, if I’d get to sit next to the girl I had a crush on…

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Today, I’d like to share a very practical process you can take your business through for accelerated growth.

I call it the Connect-Create-Collaborate model, and it’s the cornerstone of my own success in business. Most people try to do these steps in the wrong order, and struggle with the frustrations of poor results.

If you have the 6 elements of a S.I.M.P.L.E. business in mind, this 3-phase path is sure to lead you to success.

Phase 1: Connect People To Solutions

Since you know your industry better than the average customer in that marketplace, you are in a great position to help people locate existing solutions to their problems. You most likely use those resources, tools, and experts yourself – or you did at one point to help you get to where you are now.

Listen to the crowds of potential customers and what they’re griping about. Help them to solve those problems by connecting them to the solutions. This could mean you share a software tool that addresses the issue, or bringing their attention to a leading expert’s training program that’s already up and running.

You can also serve as a filter by reviewing books or courses that help audiences take action and implement those solutions.

During this phase, you’ll likely be able to generate revenue as an affiliate of those products and services. And regardless of the income, by serving the marketplace, you’ll gain credibility and social capital that will prove beneficial in stages 2 and 3 of this model.

Phase 2: Create The Missing Solutions To Fill The Gaps In Your Marketplace

Whether your Phase 1 takes a few days, or a few months, you’ll come away with an added benefit: market research to discover what people are buying, and what they’re still hungry for. Once you’ve identified what’s missing, you can then create your own products and services to fill in those gaps.

The trouble most entrepreneurs run into is they try this step first. Then they struggle to stand out within a crowded marketplace.

By filling in the gaps, you can serve a niche of your field profitably. And since you already built up a relationship with your audience in Phase 1, you have an eager market that has already told you what they want!

The missing piece you create could deal more specifically to solve additional problems that go unnoticed by the others in your field. Or perhaps you deliver your services and products in ways that the others haven’t considered. For example, your audience may want more individual attention than what the “gurus” in your field are willing to offer.

During this phase, you’ll generate revenue from selling your own products and services, while continuing to earn revenue recommending the Phase 1 solutions you had already identified.

Phase 3: Collaborate With Customers And Competitors For Faster Growth

Once you have your own products and services, you gain status in your field as a solution provider. And this allows you to sit at the “big table” in your industry.

You’ll now be able to partner with others as they help you grow your business with referrals and collaborative projects.

An important step in this process is to connect your products and services to an affiliate management software. This provides an incentive to your partners to promote you with the reward of sharing in the revenue (i.e., a commission). If you don’t have such a system in place, you can always swap marketing promotions. But using an affiliate program makes the process fair.

You’ll be able to turn your customers into affiliate partners, too. As each additional customer enjoys your products and services, doorways to their circle of influence become open to you as well.

And you’ll start hearing “yes” more often to those in your field for joint projects and promotions. No longer will you be the “best kept secret” of your field, but the go-to-expert that you deserve to be.

Repeat All 3 Phases For Exponential Growth

Perhaps the best part of these 3 phases is you can repeat the process for continuous growth. In fact, I’ve used this system over a dozen times over the last few years to become the leading teacher of internet marketing strategies for do-it-yourself entrepreneurs. I know your success is inevitable if you follow this path as well.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. In doing my live 3-day SIMPLE event, each of these 3 phases gets a full day of training. There are a lot of moving pieces to get right if you’re going to truly succeed. Get to the next one if you’d like my personal help in growing your business!

Today, I’d like to pinpoint 5 internet marketing skill sets you need to master to be in control of your success within the SIMPLE framework and the Connect-Create-Collaborate model I base my business and training on.

#1: Productivity And Time Management

Some blame the economy for their poor results, but I would be that most people aren’t growing their businesses due to a lack of focus. You need to have a system in place that keeps you on track and makes the most out of your time.

Personally, I prefer to use mindmaps to help set and stay focused on specific goals within my daily, weekly, monthly, and annual time frames. Much more powerful than to-do lists, mindmaps allow you to categorize and prioritize those activities that simply must be done to move forward.

Whatever you use, if you find that you end your day feeling like you got nothing accomplished, then that system isn’t working for you. Your system should give you momentum.

#2: Relationship Marketing Through Email And Social Media

Communicating with prospects and existing customers will likely be the #1 demand on your time. And it should be because a S.I.M.P.L.E. business is based on people!

So you need to know how to manage your autoresponder system to automate the delivery of your messages. You need to know how to use sites like Twitter and Facebook to ensure your business is being represented authentically. And you should be investing some of your time reaching out to people with questions and answers in an interactive way. You can’t afford to let others determine how your brand is perceived; be in the forefront with online relationship marketing.

#3: Website Basics

You certainly don’t need to become a graphic designer or full-fledged webmaster to succeed in your business. But if you don’t know how to edit your webpages, create blog content, then you’re going to waste a lot of money!

With software tools like WordPress driving modern websites, you truly have no real excuse to ignore this skill set.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen entrepreneurs face is finding themselves locked out of their own websites, or waiting for weeks for their webmaster to “get it right” with changes you ask for. It’s crucial that you know how to register your own domains and do basic things within your hosting account. Creating blog posts, uploading PDFs and other files to your site, and even checking your traffic stats are skills you’ll always benefit from.

#4: Creating And Selling Information Products

A crucial part of the S.I.M.P.L.E./Connect-Create-Collaborate model of business is creating and selling information products. This is how you can take advantage of this golden age of information that we live in.

Creating free reports, hosting teleseminars, publishing ebooks: these are easier than ever before to do yourself. And the speed of selling and delivering these types of products will make your customers raving fans.

Best of all, when you know how to create digital information products with low-cost tools and resources, you can realize high margins of profitability that your offline business friends will drool over!

#5: Affiliate Management

If you want to enjoy the accelerated growth that comes from the promotional efforts of your customers and your joint venture partners, then setting up and running an affiliate program is essential.

The software systems that are used to track the sales and traffic being sent by your partners continues to improve in both features and in simplicity. Without these systems, you’ll be relying solely on your own efforts. I imagine if this is where you are now, you feel like a hamster in its wheel, exhausting itself with every revolution!

When you get a handle on your affiliate system, you’ll have an automated sales team doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Outsource These Skills At Your Peril

Although you can hire people to do these skills for you, ultimately you’ll see better results if you have mastered them yourself. This way, you’ll never be held hostage by a webmaster, employee, or virtual assistant who comes up short. You’ll also avoid being taken advantage of by high-priced service providers who rely on your ignorance for their exhorbitant fees.

More importantly, I hope you take action on what you learn from me and other internet marketing teachers. And if you’d like to quickly learn how to implement these strategies and master these skills, do join the others at the IM Success Library and at the upcoming SIMPLE 2 Internet Marketing Conference in Baltimore this September so I can help you personally.

And be sure to share your comments below about your strengths and weaknesses in these 5 areas.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. These 5 are not the only skills to master, but if you are missing these in particular, you’re going to have a very difficult time achieving the level of success you’re aiming for.

Next related article

So I’m patiently waiting for my SIMPLE home study course to be completed based on the live event I held 2 weeks ago. Over the next 6 weeks, the audio, video, transcripts, and bonus 30 day implementation program will be compiled and ready for release. I’m shooting for my birthday (April 26) for the program to be available.

To tell you the truth, I’m very excited about it, but it’s a daunting task bringing all the pieces together!

In the meantime, I’d like to teach a virtual workshop to help you with your business even before the SIMPLE home study course is ready. I’ve narrowed down the areas I would personally enjoy teaching this time of year to 3, and I need your help to pick which one to actually do.

So please take a quick moment to rank these 3 potential virtual workshops as it would fit what you need right now.

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Since you’re reading this today, I can assume that you are a past, or current customer of mine, or an active affiliate, which makes you eligible for a special event I’m hosting this summer.

I’ll be hosting “Bob The Teacher’s Class Reunion” in Northwest Florida in mid June or mid July. The details are being finalized, but basically…

• if you’d like to hang out at a warm, white sandy beach this summer,
• if you want to pick up a few more profitable internet marketing strategies for your business,
• if you’d like to connect with potential joint venture partners and affiliates,
• if you’d like to get away from your home office cocoon (or that soul-sucking day job) for a couple of days,
• if you’d like a unique seminar experience where you are not pressured to buy something every 90 minutes,
• if you’d like to mastermind your business products and services,
• if you’ve enjoyed learning from me in the past and want to connect in person…

then please show your interest with a comment below!

Tell me what course or coaching program you’ve enjoyed the most, and how it’s improved how you do your business.

Bob

p.s. The official invites will be going out on April 20, but if you comment below, I’ll send you a special link early.

This video you’re about to watch rocks!

One of the faculty members at SIMPLE is Lon Naylor, from ScreenCastProfit.com. He just made this video today to demonstrate his mad skills with Camtasia and Sony Vegas. He was inspired by the Google Super Bowl ad that aired during the Saints win against the Colts.

Enjoy!

Press play

Although we can’t promise you’ll turn into a video genius just by attending SIMPLE, Lon will be breaking down how he puts these videos together and how you can profit from screencast videos as an affiliate marketer and as a product creator – 2 of the essential pieces of the SIMPLE profit formula.

Get your ticket to SIMPLE before we sell out

Bob

p.s. Lon will be at SIMPLE the whole weekend, too. Like all the speakers and VIPs I invited to this event, he’s even better in person!

We’re a few days away from SIMPLE, and for many of the people coming, it will be their very first event. I’m honored and privileged to host that experience for them.

And it reminds me of my very first event I ever attended.

What a jump start that was for my business! But I almost didn’t go.

I was still working full time then. It wasn’t easy to take off work. In all ten years in the classroom I missed a total of 11 days!

But something in my gut told me that I needed to get there. I had been trying to get going with my internet marketing business and was slowly gaining traction. This was in September of 2006. I had invested about $3000 in mentoring at that point; another $4000 in wasted Adwords; and lots of little expenses on ebooks and gizmos that added up to a lot, especially on my teaching salary.

Fortunately, the event – The Internet Marketing Main Event II – was in Baltimore. Literally 15 minutes from my house. If it wasn’t so close, I would have let any number of excuses get in my way for going.

Boy would that have been a tragic mistake!

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Over at IM Success Library, I’ve started coaching my brother through the start up phases of his new website, RestaurantManagerSecrets.com.

So that you can learn along with him, and see the exact strategic and tactical advice is the same for you as it is for my brother, you can eavesdrop through the process. This is called “Fishbowl Coaching”, where I coach & teach him, but you get to watch along the way.

Here’s a segment of the first session we did earlier in the week. The entire first session was based on getting a game plan together for the 3-phases of the SIMPLE formula, and focusing on phase 1, which is connecting to an appropriate affiliate product.

But before we get to the product, it was important to do a few things on the back side of his website.

Take a look!

And if you’d like to learn from the rest of Session 1, and be part of the next 2 sessions, jump over to the IMSL Case Study page.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. And for more help with your cPanel and the back side of your website, go to DiscovercPanel.com, or upgrade your account at IMSL to the Gold or Platinum level.

I’m at NAMS now after an awesome 2 day mastermind in Las Vegas.

I’m a bit exhausted, to tell you the truth, since I had to fly overnight through Philly to get to Atlanta.

Anyway, I have a Friday freebie for you that I think you’ll really like.  

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As you think of how you’ll manage your time and resources for the next year, use this list of the top 5 profit activities to guide you.

1. Build a List

First and foremost you need to be building a list.  You need to be building a list.   Now this doesn’t just mean building a list of contacts.  It doesn’t just mean building an e-mail list in an auto responder.   It means you’re building up a group of people who know who you are, who anticipate hearing from you and are willing and able to follow what you’re doing and take action on what you’re offering.

So it comes in the form of an e-mail list like a service like Aweber.  It also comes in the format of your social networks like Facebook friends or fans or Twitter followers in other resources.  You’ve got to be the person that people want to connect to.  If you’re promoting something anonymously there’s no real way for you to build a list very effectively.  People want to connect with a human being.  They want to get to know you.  They want to get to know your business, your personal life a little bit.  They just want to get to know you so they know they can trust you.

So you’ve got to be focused on building up your list.

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