As hard as it may be to believe, there are still some businesses out there that don’t have an online presence. But they don’t all want or need a huge website with complicated ordering processes, yet that is often what all the best design companies are offering.
The main reason for many businesses to get online is to raise their profile and attract more customers
I’ve been thinking of what to write in our blog to welcome 2011. Finally I decided to talk about some of the internet marketing mistakes that I’ve made in the past, not last year, but since I started venturing out online.
I hope my experience can help you avoid some pitfalls and hence smoothen your online journey in 2011.
Without further ado, here are the internet marketing mistakes I’ve made.
Mistake #1. Not believing that internet marketing is for me
This has to be the TOP mistake that I’ve made.
Back in early 2000, I was already learning about internet marketing and trying a few things without any success. My mentality was “let’s see if I can make some money online”.
I was never serious about internet marketing because I had so many other options of making money at that time.
After a few years, I failed in ALL my brick-and-mortar businesses and I was $50k in debt with the bank. At that time, online business was my last chance, as the initial investment was minimal. It was a case where I either made it online or I would have to shelve my dream and get a job.
Now it seems to be a blessing that I failed in all my offline businesses.
Mistake #2. Lacking marketing plans
Whenever I have a good idea, I’ll act on it. But there were not one, but two occasions where I spent months preparing and building a new website and when everything was ready, I realized that I had no idea how to market that website!
Of course, those websites are now sitting there collecting virtual dust, while serving as a reminder for me that I must have a foolproof marketing strategy for a new website even before I register the domain name!
Mistake #3. Hoping that there is a holy grail
There was one time when I bought a 100,000 email list from a renowned internet marketing guru, naively thinking that even if just 1% buy from me, I will be rich!
I prepared a good opt-in offer, since I knew I needed to convert it from a cold list to a warm list, and I also prepared a series of autoresponder to convert the opt-ins to buyers. Everything seemed ready, but when I massed mail to the list, I hardly got any click through, not to mention opt-in or sales.
I knew that things can’t be that simple. But sometimes you just want to prove yourself right and give up that hope!
Mistake #4. Being a cheapskate
When I first started online, I was really behaving like a cheapskate. I signed up lots of newsletters and spent time reading all the free articles I could find.
But when I started to make some money and gathered enough courage to invest in ebooks and video courses, that was when my internet marketing skills really took off.
Mistake #5. Using encrypted script
If you want to run a dynamic website such as a membership site, a forum or perhaps your own traffic exchange site, you’ll need to use a server-side script.
A big mistake that I made when I ran my first dynamic site is I bought an encrypted script, which means I can’t modify or even see the script as the developer is trying to protect its copyright.
It is very bad because whenever I experience a bug, I need to feedback to the developer and worse still, if I don’t like any function or want to add any new feature, there is nothing I can do. I even offered to buy the source-code from the developer, but was turned down.
One person’s mistake is another’s lesson. I hope you’ll find these lessons useful.
Though I’ve made some mistakes, I have also done something right during my early days. In my next post, I’ll write about things that I did right when I first started online. Stay tuned!
Recently I’m thinking of more viral marketing ideas and examples that I can use for my online businesses. As the saying goes, give and thou shall receive. Here I am giving you my best kept viral marketing ideas. If you’ve come across any others, feel free to share them in the comments below.
1. Organize a referral contest
Organizing a referral contest has been an old-schooled viral marketing idea, yet it is still extremely effective. The thing about contest is that it can stir up people’s adrenaline and encourage people to work extra hard to promote for you.
For example, you can create a referral contest with 2 chances of winning. First chance is a lucky draw, where those who refer just 4 people to your website can quality to win say $100. Second chance is top referral, where the best 3 referrals can walk away with $1000 each. This way, you can encourage everyone to refer at least 4 people while at the same time give the power affiliates a chance to show their full potential.
2. Provide free ‘viral’ online services
Whenever I talk about free viral services, I like to mention Google. Besides being a search engine, Google has really created tons of useful applications, such as Google Map, Google Doc, Google Analytics, Google Mail, etc that we can use free. Whenever we use these applications, we are indirectly helping Google to establish its branding and increase its market awareness.
In fact, this is the model that our website, LeadsLeap.com, is adopting. For example, we create free tools like Slidesense and MYOB list builder script that members can use for free. Since all our tools carries a link to our website, as more and more people use our tools, even more people are checking us out. We have been online since 2008 and you can see from our Alexa ranking that we are still very strong. This viral strategy has contributed to our success significantly.
3. Target-based referral program
Another viral strategy that we adopt is target-based referral program, where we set a minimum target for our referrals to hit. In specific, when our members reach 20 referrals, they will receive free advertising credits EVERY MONTH. This is another strategy that has worked wonders.
4. Bait post
The idea of a bait post is to turn your blog post into an online resource that other people will link to. You must have seen in forums and Q&A type of sites such as Ask Yahoo! where people reference an external site for the answer to a particular question. That’s an example of a bait post.
Of course, for a bait post to work, you must first write high quality blog that really solve people’s problem.
But does it mean as long as you write a good blog, people will link to you? Of course NOT! In most cases, a blog post becomes a ‘bait’ when it ranks high in the search engine for a particular question. What happens is when people want to answer other people’s questions, they will Google. When they find a good reference, they will post that reference in their answers.
I know what you are thinking. This sounds like mission impossible. At LeadsLeap, we don’t leave things to chance. We have lots of people linking to our blog posts because each of our blog post is an affiliate link. This means by referring people to any of our blog post, they are at the same time building their referrals!
5. ‘Sure-win’ referral program
I have a client who pays people 5 cents to every email sent out to promote his business. I call this ’sure-win’ referral program because regardless of whether people make any purchase, as long as you send out the email, you will be paid. He has been doing that since 2007 and have paid over $20k to people. I’m sure this trick has worked well for him.
6. Video marketing
The power of video marketing is well known. If you can produce useful how-to videos for your niche site and publish them on Youtube, those videos can bring you traffic for years.
This viral marketing idea is especially useful for niches that involve skills, such as cooking, scrapbooking and magic tricks because at the end of your video, you say say something like ‘for more magic tricks, please visit YourSite.com.’. Since those who watch your video are craving for more tricks, chances are they will visit your website.
7. Leverage on social networking
Last but not least is viral marketing through social networking. One good example is the use of Facebook Like. By encouraging people to ‘like’ you on their Facebook, you are exposed to all their friends who potentially have the same interest. Eventhough the exposure is short-lived, if some of their friends also start to ‘like’ you, this thing can go very viral.
Have you come across any interesting viral marketing ideas and examples? As I said, I’m looking for more ideas. If you have, please share with me and the rest of our readers in the comment section below. I thank you in advance!
Unlike UAW, AMR will require you to pay a one time fee with free lifetime updates. Well at least as long as the people behind it are still alive. The list of article directories provided by this software as I have mentioned earlier are regularly updated. Ezinearticles.com is included in their list and I had a high rate of success submitting articles even if I was using spun articles.
With AMR, you could create different accounts, it has a captcha solver but you have to pay an external party in order to use this feature. Well nothing to worry about cause it’s very cheap. It has a scheduler, and you can choose to submit a number of directories (let’s say 20 or 50) each day without the fear of overlinking. This software can also help you spin your articles easily. It has a good database of synonyms so you could at least make your article unique.
