I’ve been marketing stuff online for over 12 years now full time. In internet time, that’s a LONG time.
I’ve seen all kinds of wiz bang courses about how to make money online.
Many of them are great courses that contain good information about this tactic or that tactic.
So today, I want to simplify how to make a living online for you by backing up to the 10,000 foot level.
At a very high level, all you really need is two things to succeed online.
The first thing you need is to…
…”Build An Audience!”
It’s the first and foremost important thing you can do to be successful.
Build an audience of people that know how you are, that trust what you say, and that remember you.
Carrie Wilkerson calls it, “filling your stadium.”
The first rule of marketing is to get people’s attention and the second rule is to get them to listen to what you have to say.
If you want to get paid for life from your internet marketing activities, you first and foremost have to build an audience.
There are…
…Two Ways To Build Your Audience Online.
The FIRST way to build your audience online is by creating awesome CONTENT.
Not ordinary content, but awesome content that gets indexed, shared, talked about, referred, and passed around.
Content so good that Google, Bing, and Yahoo will place it at the top of their search engines.
Your content can take many shapes, forms and sizes.
Your content can be in the form of…
1. Blog posts (like this one)
2. Special reports
3. Videos
4. Audio or podcasts
5. Survey results
6. Graphics like infographics
7. Breaking news
8. Product or service reviews
9. etc…
There are a myriad of ways to produce your content, but the one key ingredient is that it needs to be interesting, shocking, educational, or fun.
It Needs To Be Shareworthy.
Sometimes we call this content marketing or education-based marketing.
Great Examples of Content Marketing Are…
1. MarketingProfs – They’ve built a huge following through providing great content. The majority of their content is created by their users.
2. Hubspot – Hubspot produces a huge amount of content and uses every way imaginable to spread it out on the internet.
3. Copyblogger – This blog produces great content from guest writers and their internal team, which produces a huge amount of leads for their products.
4. Kissmetrics – This companies uses guest blog posting as their primary content marketing strategy. You’ll see a lot of their posts on other blogs.
5. Marketo – This company, like Hubspot, generates an enormous about of traffic with their content.
These are just a few examples of great content marketers. I could name many more companies and individuals who focus on creating and spreading great content to build an audience.
The SECOND way to build your audience is through ADVERTISING.
By that I mean, you pay to get the opportunity to gain people’s attention.
Paid advertising can come in the form of…
1. Pay per click ads
- With PPC ads you pay when people click on your ad. Google Adwords, Bing and Facebook have PPC ad networks.
2. Pay per view ads
- With PPV ad you pay when a number of people view your ad. Google Disply Network, Facebook ads and banner ad networks use the PPV model.
3. Direct site buy ads
- This involves going directly to the owner of the site and buying ad space from them.
4. Text link ads
- You can buy text links on major sites through text link brokers with text link ads.
5. Solo ads
- This involves buying ads in email newsletters or from email list owners.
There’s a lot of ways to buy advertising online and a myriad of tools to help you do it.
The single most important element to buying advertising online is having a funnel that converts a prospect into a buyer so that you can afford to buy the advertising.
These are the two major ways to build an audience, content marketing and advertising.
Okay, building an audience is the first step to succeeding online.
The second step sounds crazy simple, but it is undeniably critical.
Give Your Audience Exactly What They Want!
Yes, again that sounds simple.
But it’s amazing just how simple marketing becomes when a truly great product hits the market.
I’m reminded of this every time I visit the local Apple store.
The place is ALWAYS crammed with people that are fanatics about Apple products.
Every time I go in that store I buy something.
So, to give your audience what they want, you have to KNOW what it is they want.
There are lots of ways to do this.
You can…
1. Conduct online surveys
2. Call up and interview happy customers
3. Call up and interview disgruntled customers
3. Do customer focus groups
4. See what products they’re buying from your competitors
5. Notice buying trends in other markets
6. Scour discussion boards, Facebook groups, Twitter feeds, forums and your own help desk files for frustrations
Always be looking for unmet needs in your market.
When you find them, either create a product that meets their needs or find a product that you can promote that meets their needs.
An Important Suggestion…
Here’s a very important suggestion or piece of advice that I wish someone had given to me when I was starting out online.
Always, always, always try to SUBSCRIPTION BASED products and services that satisfy your market’s unmet needs.
You’ve heard me say this before and I’ll continue to harp on this principle.
Subscription based products will generate a predictable income stream for you and create wealth.
Finding success online is as simple as building an audience and giving that audience what they want.
You should start building your audience right NOW.
You can monetize your audience later on when you either create or find products that fill their unmet needs.
To your continued success.
P.S. The absolute BEST ebook I’ve ever read on the topic of online success is, “Make Your Site Sell.” It came out several years ago, but it’s all applicable today as it was when it first came out.
And best of all…it’s free. You can download it for free from this web page right now.
About David Frey
David Frey is the Founder, MarketingBlogger.com. He is also the author of the best selling book, "The Small Business Marketing Bible" and many other marketing courses. To find out more about this author, visit www.WhoIsDavidFrey.com.
Thanks for the information David. It’s an awesome reminder!
I am extremely interested in further building my audience through webinars and telesummits.
How do you suggest I get started. I’ve tried to contact several marketers, yet they do not respond.
LaTonya Johnson recently posted..How to Make Money Online- 101
Twitter: David_Frey
says:
LaTonya, you need to pick one topic for your telesummit.
Then create your telesummit invitation page. Make it look extremely professional. Your potential experts will judge you and whether they want to participate based on that page.
Then make a list of about 40 experts and contact them every way you can.
Phone, Facebook, Twitter, Email (we used every form possible when we were doing our summits)
People are busy. They probably aren’t ignoring you. Don’t take it personally. Just keep trying. Good entrepreneurs appreciate a determined person.
David Frey – MarketingBlogger.com recently posted..Here’s The Fastest Way to Succeed At Anything
GREAT, proven insight Mr. David Frey, master of online marketing! Funny thing. When I started online (also 12 years ago) I kept seeing the SiteSell book, and it was $20 at that time. Everything else was selling for the proverbial $67 and $97. I probably spent $1000 on different books and training before I finally forked over the $20 for SiteSell.
Dang, had I STARTED with that book, I would have saved a lot of time and money. It’s a good lesson in value, and perceived value, actually!
Have an awesome day!
EXPECT Success!
Jackie Ulmer
Jackie Ulmer recently posted..Do Your Prospects Think Your Business is Too Expensive?
To one of my favorite ladies, “the” Jackie Ulmer.
It’s great to see you over here girl. Yeah, believe it or not, I still refer to some of the SiteSell books every now and then. They’re all free now and they’re a treasure. When someone wants to start learning how to market online, I just send them to that book. Even though it’s a bit outdated (no social media stuff) it’s still an awesome starting point.
BTW, I was looking at some of Lexi’s photos yesterday. The song, “Girls just wanna have fun” came to mind. She’s such a talented, fun lov’in girl.
See ya soon.
David
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David,
Great post and thanks for keeping it simple. As the saying goes, “The teacher will appear when the student is ready!” Thanks for showing up
Dave,
I’m still learning new stuff every day in this business. So we’re learning together
Hi David
Great post. I see you recommend Ken Evoy’s book. Could you give me your take on whether it’s best to use SBI or blog? I have recently signed up for SBI but wondering whether blogging is a better choice.
Thanks
Mark
Mark,
That’s hard to answer because both are good choices.
The SBI sites, if done correctly, get great seo value.
One this is for sure, wordpress is WAY more flexible.
There are plugins for all kinds of things. That’s hard
for SBI to compete with.
But with SBI, you get a huge amount of support from
the company itself and the people who use their product.
It’s also dead simple to get started with SBI.
But I would say, if you’re attempting to build a world class
site/blog, you probably want to go through the learning curve
with wordpress and develop something truly inspiring and impressive.
Twitter: Louise_Myers
says:
David, thanks for the great tips, and the lead on the free book. I’ll check it out. I also appreciate your honest appraisal of SBI vs. WordPress in the comment above. Glad to have found your blog!
Louise Myers Graphic Design recently posted..Have You Tried the Best Secret to Increase Klout?
Twitter: rtmixmktg
says:
David,
Great advice and ideas about how to build an audience and how to provide them with what they really want. Thanks for continually providing great information (what we all want!).
Tom Treanor recently posted..Your Social Media Strategy: What’s not “The Wild West”?
Twitter: Ileane
says:
Hi David,
Thanks for the reinforcing the concept of having subscription based products. It is something that I have been thinking about doing and I’ll stick around here to get more advice from you on the topic. Do you have one specific post you can direct me to?
I’ve heard a lot about SiteSell from Lisa Irby so I know it is a quality product. Thanks for the ebook link.
Ileane recently posted..How to Boost Your Brand on Facebook and Drive Traffic to Your Blog
And last but not least, I think, is to interact with your audience, give them your feedback, answer their questions, and then gain their trust.
Hey David
That is a great post. We have been in online marketing for 4 years now and can’t agree more on what you have stated in this post. Quality content and proper advertising and marketing are the keys to succeed online. Also try and build healthy relationship with the audience pays in long run. Thanks for this useful insight.
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You enlighten my mind on how to succeed my business online, thanks much for sharing this great tips. It really help us on how to more effective on it.
Hi David,
Thanks for sharing this significant information in the most simple language. I agree an awesome content can bring a lot of buyers for the products. It is imperative on the part of the online marketer to ascertain the needs of the audience and provide them what they want. The methods mentioned for creating a good content and for paid advertising are very helpful.
It’s lengthy and very detailed but it’s really worth reading. Your enthusiasm is just bouncing off the page. It’s honest and appreciative at the same time.
Great and special tips for online success! I just pleased to read all these tips and want to follow. Thanks for these awesome tips.
Muktii Andy recently posted..Understanding The Libor Scandal
Twitter: poconofoothills
says:
Great ideas, but don’t discount the power of Social Media Marketing either. Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest are the current powerhouses in SEO, but you can also drive traffic with StumbleUpon, Digg, G+ and by using services like Squidoo, HubPages, and E-Zine Articles. You just have to be careful not to post duplicate content across platforms.
John Fisher recently posted..Wood Planers
Twitter: sabatekle
says:
People should pay for all the great content you just posted. I know I have.
Saba recently posted..Russell Brunson Scam
Very well said, David. I never been to online marketing since I am just planning to start a small business. Well, I am not that good in sales talk but I write more. Building an audience is quite difficult at first especially when you are less than a plain business man. You haven’t established a name that customers may trust. But I agree when you said that it is the first rule in marketing.
KeithRobinson recently posted..4 Free SEO Tools
Twitter: ppc_pros
says:
Love infographics and they DO get a lot of attention in our ADD culture since they give the benefits of delivering otherwise boring information (most of the time) in a cool, easily digestible graphic that my 10 year old would actually not mind reading. In addition, when it comes to traffic generation through advertising I’m a hard core Adwords guy. That’s our testing ground and the way we test our sites,keywords, and markets before we dive deep into them. Great write up David
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Hello David, I enjoyed your article. I wanted to say online is an interesting place and by following right type of strategies anyone can achieve succeed doing business. I’m being learning by browsing and researching various educative articles about online business and this post is one of the best educative place for newbies. Thanks for keeping up this post.
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