Improve Your Internet Marketing

One of the questions I see a lot on forums is “How can I make $xxx”. Invariably, many of the responses are along the lines of “Just pick something, take action, and stick to it”. I also see a lot of “Look, it takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears; don’t just come here and expect us to tell you how to make $1000 in 2 weeks”.

The truth is, it isn’t impossible to make $1000 in 2 weeks, and in fact it can even be fairly easy if you want to make $1000 in the next 30 days. Nor does it necessarily mean a huge learning curve. What it does require is thinking outside the box, and the willingness to put in the effort. “Easy” doesn’t mean “effortless”, but in this case it does mean “very doable”.
Of course, if you intend to go the “traditional” IM route, it may NOT be easy, and you will spend a LOT of time, money, and effort if you want to become an expert in PPC, or a super-affiliate, or build up a large, viable list, etc.

However, with a little creativity and ingenuity, you can “easily” make $1000 (or $2000, or $5000…).

Here are some “easy” methods you can use starting today. Some of these are drawn directly from experience, some from posts I’ve written on this blog or other marketing forums.

Websites

Create simple, one-page websites for local small businesses. In many cases, you can use material they already have, such as a brochure, logo, advertisement, etc. for the page without needing much more in the way of graphic arts or design.

Example: Create a simple town portal such as “Cloverfield Cuisine”, with a homepage showing a local map, and a list of restaurants. Then go to the local restaurants in the neighborhood and offer to create a webpage for them with their menu and phone # for $99, plus $25/month ‘maintainance’ to update the menu, change the specials, etc. If you get even just 2-3 restaurants each week, you’ll not only make your $1000/month, but you will have created a nice recurring revenue stream. And once you get one, you can use that to sell the others with. You can use this same approach with other small, local retail businesses and professionals. You will still find most small local businesses do not have a web page or address.

Info-Products

Approach local repair shops, tradespeople, craftspeople, trainers, etc. Offer to build a new revenue source for them by creating and selling an info-product of their expertise online. They don’t have to learn or do anything, and in return you split the revenues 50-50.

Example: Approach a local fitness trainer, upholstery or furniture repair shop, seamstress or dressmaker, etc. Spend a few days videotaping them doing their thing. Use something like Windows Moviemaker to turn it into a series of clean video segments. Ask them to spend an hour watching the video and narrating what they are doing while you record it. Transcribe the recording and turn it into a PDF. Create a simple sales page and put your new, unique info-product up on Clickbank.

CPA Offers

CPA offers don’t require selling, just getting someone to fill out a form of some sort. You don’t even need a landing page, just drive traffic directly to the offer using your affiliate link.

One simple way to drive traffic to CPA offers is with video. Create a video that is either funny, or bizarre, or controversial. Paste or watermark your CPA affiliate link onto the video and upload it to Youtube and other video sites (make sure you pick an offer that doesn’t prohibit this).

You can create screen-capture videos by downloading Camtasia’s 30-day free trial, or use pre-fab professional videos from istockphoto.com for $10-$20, or even find a “good” video already on one of the video sharing sites, and email the poster to ask for permission to use it.

Copeac, Rocket Profits, and Hydramedia all have many good CPA offers.

Affiliate Products

Do some keyword research to find a few topics that interest you and have high search volume, i.e. as Golf, Fitness, a hobby, etc. Pick an affiliate product in that niche. Register a domain name - you can get .info domain names for 2 bucks, and you’ll find many more keyword-relevant .info names available than .com names. Now forward the domain name to the affiliate product landing page using your affiliate link (you don’t even need a hosting account if you’re just forwarding the domain).

Start writing and submitting articles, using your new, forwarded domain in the resource box, and in the article body where allowable. Write a few articles each day, and pretty soon you’ll start to see sales happening.

WSO’s
(”WSO’s” are “Warrior Special Offers”, a board on the Warrior Forum for selling your own products and reports)

What are you good at? Have some graphic arts skills? Writing skills? Run a WSO offering your services. If your skills are good, you can probably keep yourself as busy earning money as you want to be.

Don’t have specific, easily marketable skills? Run a creative WSO for your time.

Example: niche research. Run a WSO offering 10 “uncommon” niches with traffic. Spend some hours on Ebay drilling down their category lists and using the search function to find non-obvious category niches that have high numbers of auctions for many different products. Come up with a list of 25-30. Then use Wordtracker’s free keyword tool to start creating cross-referenced lists of relevant keywords with high search volumes. Pick the 10 niches with the ‘best” keyword lists (most high-volume search terms). Take that list of 10 niches, then search for and compile articles from the article directories (make sure to keep the resource boxes). Compile a report citing the 10 niches, include your keyword research, and the articles. Do some more searches on the niches, click on the ads that come up on the search pages, and click on the advertised products. Find a few that have affiliate programs. Include links to the affiliate programs in the report.

Now you have a worthy WSO that lists 10 niches, plus keyword research, plus articles (for building a minisite or autoresponder series, for instance), plus affiliate programs that can monetize the niches.

Creativity & ingenuity…