HERE’S A SIMPLE METHOD TO SNEAK IN ON A MARKETING FUNNEL AS AN INTERNET MARKETING BEGINNER

You’ve been studying online marketing strategies and getting into or have been doing internet marketing or online marketing to make a profit and to do this you have to market or sell something, whether it’s your own products or someone else’s products.  This is as basic as it gets.  But, I want to show you a little trick to come into the perfect position in a marketing funnel as a beginner.

Most serious online sales (and offline) follow a specific process or cycle of events.

Buyers Behavior Stage 1:

The potential buyer decides that he has a problem or need something.

Buyers Behavior Stage 2:

He begins to research the problem and sound out possible solutions. Many people find free information/solutions to their problems at this stage and drop out of the cycle.  Many times in this step friends come into play because of the trust/influence level, but they still recommend products that have helped them and then it’s on to Step 3 to do research and find reviews on these recommended products.

Buyers Behavior Stage 3:

His research and his own particular leanings make him begin to favor a particular type of solution or product. He now starts looking at review and comparison sites.

Buyers Behavior Stage 4:

Having read a few reviews he’s now favoring a particular product, and seeking reassurance, looking for the best price or the best bonus.

Although it’s only four stages, it can become complicated on how to implement this whole process into your business.  The so called gurus have figured this out to a science and can take their prospects through the whole thing until the last stage where they buy their products leaving them with a nice helping of cash in their bank account.  So I want to break this down into one small action step and give you something to take away from this that can be done right away without having to be a super ninja guru.

Check out Stage 3, reviewing the products.  This is a great place to come into this funnel as a beginner because the buyer has already concluded they have a problem, need a solution and have a handful of products to review and then make a choice on which one to buy.  Generally buyers will not drop out of the funnel at this point because they have invested valuable time getting this far.

I’m sure you have some products that you have bought along the way sitting on a shelf collecting dust at this point.  So dust ‘em off and create a blog post, Hubpage, or an Ezine article (the best would be to do all three) and put your review or recommendation about the product with your affiliate link inside the article.  Pick a couple that you gained the most knowledge about and even implemented in your business already.  Just make sure you at least have the name of the product first and then the word review in your title so you have a chance at being found in the search engines.  Be creative with your title, but make sure those two elements are in there.  You want it to stand out from the other reviews out there.

One suggestion.  Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income gets the best conversion rates of a product review by creating a video of some sort along with the review explaining to others how to use the product.  I know some other marketers that video themselves opening up the product package when it arrives, flipping through the book, opening the CD cases and then following up with a “how to” video.  You could also create an audio or pod cast outlining some of the key points of the product and how they can put it to use.  This works because of the personal interaction and not just a bunch of words.

I you want to crush it out of the park, then become an expert about the product you are reviewing, not just someone who has read the book, listened to the cd’s or downloaded the software and used it a couple of times.  Pick the ones you are passionate about and can answer questions that may come about from those who are responding to you about the product.  These will most likely be the ones you have implemented in your business up to this point.  In your review think about the objections your buyer may have and answer them up front.  This creates value and puts you in front of everybody else out there that has reviewed the same product.  Also, by creating these “how to” videos, audios or how ever you chose to present them while presenting yourself as the expert and the resource to go to, the potential buyer feels comfortable buying the product from you.

So go through your library, pick the ones you want to review and get going.  This is an action step that does require a little work on your part, but once you get started you’ll see how much fun and easy it will become.

I hope this article has helped you in some way, shape or form.  Let me know what you think in the comments below.  Also, if you have created product reviews, what has been your experience and some of your tips.

Talk soon,

P.S.  If you have an iPhone I highly recommend you download Pat’s Smart Passive Income app.  Super cool app that you can take on the go to get all of his information, including blog posts, Twitter stream and podcasts.  And best of all it’s FREE.

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DIRTY LITTLE SEO TRICKS-ARE THEY WORTH IT!

Using SEO tricks to get your website high rankings in the search engines is one of the most talked about topics circulating the internet these days.  And people are trying to beat Google for search engine traffic.  Think about this for just a second, Google is a multi-billion dollar company and has some of the best people working for them.  How do you think one person or a small team can beat out such a big company?  Answer is, you probably can’t and you will be spinning your wheels, wasting your time and money trying to figure all their rules out.

Sure your website might see some traffic for a bit and them blammo, you suddenly start to see a decline.  The Google Slap as marketers call it, has beat you.  All that work for nothing, and it could actually hurt your site in the long run.  I have tried these sneaky little tricks myself on a test website to see how some of these work.  I spent a little money, but what I saw was nothing mind shattering.  And this was for a keyword with moderate competition.

Google has a set of rules they want every website to abid by and if you break that trust, they will break your website.  But you can work with these set of rules and work them to your advantage and I can prove it to you with a website that is ran by one of my good friends.

He has had this site for several years with some traffic, but not what he has seen in the past year.  Keep in mind both he and I run our websites using Quansite, which is a wordpress blog platform, but we pay a monthly fee that comes with a ton of features including built in SEO factors.  The best thing with this system is you get to focus on your content and not how to fool Google.

What he started doing is ramping up his blog post frequency along with writing good quality content about hot topics in the news.  What’s more hot right now than smart phones?  In fact he wrote a blog post about the upcoming Samsung Attain and with using NO dirty little tricks is sitting on page 1 of Google.  Just a little hint….Google loves fresh content on blogs. Here are some of his stats over the past year:

• Alexa rank from 19,000,000 to 1,273,143
• U.S. rank from 1,600,000 to 215,705
• Google page rank from 0 to 2
• Traffic from almost nothing to 700 visitors a day
• 26% of visitors are new with a returning rate of 74%

Here are some screenshots from his Google Analytics account.

That’s pretty impressive, right?  Exactly.  And no rocket science involved.  At times his website will hit 100 visitors by 10am and this number will continue to grow with no trickery and good solid content.

So this just goes to show you if you work with Google and not against them you can see very impressive results.

What are your thoughts on this hot topic?  Speak up and leave a comment on your own experiences.

Talk soon,

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I wanted to share with you a little secret ninja trick that you can implement right away in your online business.  Have you ever thought about how YOU can get one of the guru’s in the industry to leave a comment on YOUR blog post?  It can take as little as 5 minutes to implement.  No joke.  I have broken it down into 5 simple steps for you.

1.  Find some interesting content created by a guru in the industry.  This can be an article, video or even one their blog posts you found of value and want to share it.  You could search for Hubpages, Squidoo pages, YouTube and Facebook, to name a few.  Another great resource to finding great material being posted by the leading experts is MLMURLS.

2. Create your blog post, but change the heading to something different.  Not so different it loses the effect.   You could use their wording, but change it up a bit so it’s not exactly the same. (you don’t want to blatantly steal their headline)

3.  Your first paragraph outlines what you liked about the content.  And in that paragraph you want to link back to their URL where you found the information.

4.  Your second paragraph you want to share what you like about the author of the content your sharing.

5.  VERY IMPORTANT STEP: Go back to your blog post as you were a new visitor to your site and click the link that you set up in your first paragraph.

That’s it. You may be wondering why step 5 is so important and what clicking the link does?  Once you click the link, sometimes it will alert the author that you shared their content and they will come to your blog to see what you wrote.  Or they check their traffic stats to see where their visitors are coming from and your information will be there sparking their attention.  Since you are essentially sending them free traffic and you have wrote a nice piece about them, they may be inclined to leave you a comment thanking you for sharing their information.

I have to give props to my man Ty Tribble for this little “crazy” ninja trick, as he calls it.  This is just one of many so called “tricks” you can find in his new MLM Blog Secrets.

Talk soon,

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What is this ONE key element many people miss when writing a blog post?  It may seem like a simple idea, but it is essential when putting your posts together and that is, talk to your reader as you would like a face to face conversation.  Network marketing is about relationships and you can’t develop a true one by talking to them as just a number out there.  In any business if your treated like just another number to them and not a valued customer, you look elsewhere for service.  This same concept applies in network marketing.  So when you write, use words like “you”, “your” and so on.  Don’t use words like “we”.  Also, if you come off to salesy or pitchy, you are going to loose your readers and visitors to your site.

One of the things that helps me when putting together a post, is to visualize your reader as they were right there in front of you having a day to day conversation.  Just write like you would talk.

So think about this the next time your in front of your computer getting ready to post some great content.  If you continue to write as if your reader is just another number to you, you are going to miss the boat.

P.S. If you want some more great tips and tricks to using blogging in your network marketing business, I would highly recommend getting these free videos from the #1 blogger in our industry, Ty Tribble.

Talk soon,

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Blogging is taking off like a wildfire. People are blogging about  just about anything you can think of. From the daily routine of their cat, to technology reviews, to politics.

Until the blogosphere sorts itself out and matures a bit more, it may be difficult to tell exactly how this new frontier of instant publishing can help you and your business grow. But don’t worry – you’ll start getting a flood of new ideas in the coming months.

For now, the most important thing you can do is develop the right mindset about business blogging. What you think about something, and how you strategize appyling it in your business very often has more to do with succes than the technology, tool, or resource itself.

With that in mind, here is the most important thing you can do. Keep your eye on people.

DO NOT get stuck on the “technology.” That’s what drove all the pie-in-the-sky dot.com dreamers into the financial abyss. It’s people and personal communication that matter most, and should always be at the center of all your thoughts, strategies, and actions.

Blogging is just a tool. But it’s a tool that can and should become a major support arm of your business. Why?

Because it exponentially multiplies the world’s oldest, most favored, and trusted form of information sharing — word of mouth.

Just ask yourself, whom do you trust the most to give you advice, recommendations, and information about opportunities, purchases, or choices? Someone you know and trust, right? Someone who you feel is just like you.

That type of trust comes from personal communication, social interaction, and the joining together of like-minded individuals. Blogging simply magnifies and expands that sense of community and more personalized communication, and then expands the reach across the entire world!

Link trust; with respect, positioning, and word-of-mouth and you have the makings of a powerful marketing arm that can initiate an ever-growing stream of highly targeted prospects.

Remember, it’s the relationships that matter most. Keep your eye on that fact, and you’ll always have the right mindset for business blogging that’s a benefit for you and your readers.

Talk soon,

P.S. Blogging can explode your business if done right, but sometimes it’s difficult to know where to get started and what service to use.  I was there once too, so if you find yourself there also, I would like to share with you where I got started.  You can click The Quansite Revolution link below and see for yourself.

The Quansite Revolution

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How to start your network marketing business on the internet?

So where exactly do you start at?  Well, below I have a proven blueprint to move your business forward on the internet.  These are the exact same steps I and many other top marketers have taken to start branding You, Inc. on the internet.  There are four key components to start your network marketing business on the internet.  But, I want to start out by saying that network marketing is no longer about pitching your business, it’s about teaching and educating others.

So, what are the exact steps to start your network marketing business on the internet?

Step 1 – Attraction Marketing:  You must learn the skill of attraction marketing, bar none.  This is a have to step.  If you don’t learn attraction marketing, then don’t bother with continuing to the next step because you will still be in the pitching mode, like the rookies, and not the teaching mode, like the pros.  Let me ask you a question….When was the last time you pitched your business to one of your friends and after you were done they jumped up and down with excitement and signed on the dotted line immediately?  It hasn’t, has it.  More than likely they hope you never bring it up again.  Now, instead, what if a friend of yours came up to ask you about your business and you started teaching and educating them about network marketing?  You are now in control of the conversation instead of the other way around.  And more importantly you didn’t pitch them anything, they asked you remember, so if and when they would like to start a network marketing business, they will come back to you.  This, my friend, is the power of attraction marketing and is a lot more fun than “throwing up” your business all over people.  Two resources for learning attraction marketing that I would not be without are Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring and Ann Sieg’s Renegade Network Marketer.

Step 2 – Register a Domain:  Ok, now that you have opened your eyes to a whole new world in network marketing, it’s time to get to the fun stuff and really get into starting your network marketing business on the internet.  You must register a domain.  If you don’t have your own domain, it will look like this is your hobby and not a true business.  You are buying virtual real estate which is real estate on the internet.  I always tell people to first start off with buying your own name with the .com version.  So it would be, www.yourname.com.  If the .com version isn’t available, I would try the .net version.  Very simple step and cheap too.  You can go through Godaddy and get your own domains for $10 or less a year.   I’ll get to this in a minute, but don’t host your website there.

Step 3 – Blogging with an Autoresponder:  Although this sounds intimidating, it really is simple.  You could get your blog and autoresponder up and running in less than an hour.  I’m going to make this short and sweet because I don’t want to get into all the benefits and features of different systems in this post.  I will give you a link to what I use and let you decide for yourself.  If you want to go cheap, then go for the free version of Wordpress for your blog.  But I warn you, you get what you pay for and this is free.  Nuff said.  I looked into many different blogging platforms and systems and I found one that actually goes to work for you so you can focus on content and not all the fancy, schmancy bells and whistles and the programming that goes into it.  I chose a system called Blog i360.  It’s quite amazing what this system is.  It’s not only a blog, but the hub to your entire business which can be ran from just this one system.  Blog i360 will also host your website using the domain you bought through Godaddy.  Now with the autoresponder.  An autoresponder is just like it sounds.  You set up a series of emails that will automatically respond every time someone signs into your list, putting it on autopilot, 24/7.  You can also create one email in real time and send it to your list, which could consist of thousands of people.  Don’t try to go free on this one.  I know some marketers who have tried and got burned, so spend a little cash on a good autoresponder.  Many network marketers, including myself, have went with Aweber.  The Aweber code works great with Blog i360, all you do is cut and paste.

Step 4 – Article Marketing and Social Media:  Article marketing is simple.  You create an article for your blog to post to your tribe or crew (these are people who are following you and reading your stuff).  The other cool thing about this is the leverage you can create.  You can create one article and then create a Hubpage or Squidoo page with the same content.  These are both free resources for you and easy to set up.  The reasoning for this is, you have created more content out there on the world wide web and easier for people to find you when searching for your particular topic.  I will be teaching you SEO or Search Engine Optimization for network marketers in another post, but in a nutshell this simply means you create keywords that your market is searching for on the internet.  So when they type those keywords into a search engine like Google, hopefully your articles will be on the first page.

Social media is the place to be right now.  The ones I would start with are Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Reever.  Millions of people are on these sites many hours of the day, so you want to tap into these resources very quickly.  Now, don’t go bananas here because if you do this the wrong way you are screwed.  Here’s what I mean.  Remember, network marketing on the internet (and off the internet) is not about pitching, it’s about teaching and educating.  So don’t go to these sites and start spamming your business opportunity all over the place.  You want to attract people to you by your knowledge and skillsets.  If you start pitching, you will get a bad rap quicker than you can say rap.  One thing I would recommend is when you are on these sites talking with others or putting up your video’s, try to redirect them back to your blog or your home, so to speak.  You want to start networking with others and lead them back to your blog.  For instance I might put a “tweet” together on Twitter that says to my followers, How to Start Your Network Marketing Business on the Internet? and put a link back to this article.

Here’s a quick tip on how to leverage your time so you don’t have to post the same thing twice using social media.  You can have Facebook read your Twitter account so your “tweets” go to your Facebook page, cutting your time in half.  Also, if you choose to use Blog i360, you can post a video to your blog and have it automatically post to up to fifeteen video sites including Youtube and Reever with the click of a button.  Just think of how much time this would save you and exposure on the net, it’s priceless.

So there you have it.  A short e-course on how to put your network marketing business on the internet and go to work for you 24/7.  I leave you with this.  Please, please take action.  I see so many network marketers just reading information that could move their business forward, but they never take action.  So don’t be one of those people.  None of this information does any good in your head.  Don’t worry about perfection right away.  Just get out their and do it.  I’m reminded here of a quote from Bob the Teacher and that is T.A.R.L, which means Take Action Revise Later.

I know this was a lot of information to take in at once, but I would like to hear your thoughts on what you just read.

Talk soon,

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I wanted to give you a little Twitter marketing tip today.  But before I get to that, if your not using Twitter, get on this thing as fast as you can because it is becoming a great business tool and I would hate for you to be left behind.

So what is this powerful new viral Twitter marketing tip?  It’s very simple to use and you don’t have to be a computer “geek” or programmer to get it working for you.  This is something you can implement immediately and if you can follow some simple directions, your good.

First, create some text at the bottom of whatever you are promoting that says something like, Tweet this post…Your followers will thank you! Or Tweet this video….Your followers will thank you!  Be creative.  This will work with just about anything.  Now highlight the text you just wrote and create a hyperlink for it.  Your hyperlink will look like this=>

http://twitter.com/home?status=

After the equal sign you want to put what you want the tweet to say when someone clicks on your text link.  You see, when someone clicks on your text/hyperlink it will open up Twitter, they will sign into their account and whatever you put after the equal sign will show up in their update box automatically and they just have to hit update and presto, it’s in the Twitter stream.

So you could put this under a post on your blog or a video and when someone clicks to “tweet” it, it not only could become viral and create a ton of free traffic, you could also create some followers on Twitter.

P.S. To see how this works, go ahead and click on the banner below, log into your Twitter account and watch what happens.

P.P.S Now that I’ve shared this gem with you, leave a comment and let me know what you think and how this could help your business.  Or, if you are already using this, let me know how it has helped your business out.

Learn, Laugh, Profit and Give,

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John Reese, the idea guru behind the free traffic generator called Blogrush, has decided to shut down the website over the next 24 hours.  He has said while Blogrush is servicing a few million impressions a day, he doesn’t see things improving for the users.  So if you have the Blogrush widget code on your website, you will need to remove it.

Unfortunately I have to agree with John on this one.  I have been using Blogrush for about five months now and have not seen a ton of traffic from it.

I know this is a bummer for John to see one of his ideas crash and not go the way he planned, but the positive and more important lesson to take away from this is that he took ACTION.  He came up with this Blogrush idea at 4am and got the ball rolling.  He didn’t just sit on it thinking about all the ways it wouldn’t work, he just got started and figured it all out along the way.  A true entrepreneur.

I want to thank John for the idea, implementing it and giving it everything he had to make it work, because although I didn’t get the traffic I thought would come from it, I did receive visitors coming to my site from just putting up the widget.  Thanks again John.

Go make a difference

One life at a time,

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Have you heard of this thing called Twitter?  Odds are you have and you may be wondering what it is and what the hype is all about or maybe you are thinking of using it yourself.  I wondered that myself when I first heard of it and couldn’t believe I was actually doing this.  It felt kind of childish, but once I seen it in action, I was hooked.  I was looking on the internet yesterday at CNN.com and came across an article about the Twitter craze.  They say it’s the fastest growing web startup today.  But real quick on what Twitter is.  First, it is a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook.  But instead of a complex system, it’s a very basic and simple web application known as “micro-blogging”.  Better yet, it’s free to set up an account and takes less than 5 minutes.  Then you can start sending “tweets” to the twitter world.  Yes, tweetsJ  That’s what they call it.  I just call it posts.  The reason it’s called “micro-blogging” is that you only have a maximum of 140 characters to use, so your update or post has to be quick and simple.  It marries the mass appeal of blogging with the rat-a-tat-tat of text messaging.  You can post anything you want, personal or business.  Just be creative.

  To use Twitter, first go to the site and sign up for a username, set up your profile and then start typing in the entry field.  It’s that simple.  Users “follow” one another and, if they choose, receive a notification when new messages arrive. Twitterers can create updates through Twitter.com as well as by cell phone and on sites like Facebook.  I use my Palm Treo 755p and use a program called Motwit to send my updates.  I couldn’t get my cell phone number to register through Twitter and it seems I’m not the only one having problems with it.  So, Motwit is a handy little application. 

 So, how does this help your business?  This is HUGE for your business.  More and more internet and network marketing professionals are tuning in to Twitter.  This thing is becoming viral, meaning once people catch on, it will start growing exponentially.  It may be there now.  Not only can you communicate with your current network, you can tap into an entirely different network that you may have not been able to reach.  This could drive a ton of FREE traffic to your blog or website.  It may take a bit for people to start to notice and follow you, but you will be amazed after you get started. When I first got started, I would have one person start following me every couple of days.  All of a sudden, one day I had 18 people start following me and my updates.  Some days the numbers a lower, but it seems at least 10 people find and start following me per day.  Do you see the potential here?  You have opened a completely new funnel of people to communicate with.  CAUTION:  Once you get started, it can get a little addictive, but it is worth your while.

If you would like to follow me, you can do so by clicking here=> www.twitter.com/timlargent

Now for your FREE video.  Mike Klingler from the Renegade University has put together a great video on using twitter to build your internet network marketing business.  To view the video click here and enjoy.

Hope to see you there!

To your success,

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Are you tired and frustrated of buying dead end leads?  Well, I was too and being in the network marketing industry for ten years, I have bought my share of leads ranging in price.  It seems that after you have made your names list, as we all did, with little or no results, buying leads and cold calling seems to be the place people go to keep their business going.  In your spare time in the evening you start making the calls and the phone seems to weigh a ton.  It gets harder and harder to pick it up because the fear of rejection.  This may sound familiar.  Numbers that have been disconnected, a teenager just playing around on their family computer responded to the survey, people who have no idea what your talking about, people who hang up on you before you can even talk with them, they don’t remember filling out the survey and the infamous answering machine in which you leave a message time after time with no return calls.  You get frustrated and either quit or buy more leads thinking you got a bad batch and the process starts over.

So, I finally had enough just like you may have and said to myself, why can’t I create my own leads that WANT to listen to me.  When you buy leads, each lead is sold to three to four other individuals in different companies.  So, not only are you calling them, they are calling them.  I have had my share of people telling me to take their name off my list because they keep getting phone calls and they are not interested.  Now, for a heavy price tag, you can buy leads that are sold just to you, but again you are going to pay big money for these and you may get the same results.  The lead company has a generic home-based business capture page where an individual can fill out a survey about how to get started.  As you may already know, most of the people you contact have no interest in starting a home-based business.  I actually had a lady tell me that the survey she filled out said if she filled it out she would get a free box of pampers, so she filled it out.  She had no interest what’s-so-ever on starting a business, but I paid money for that lead.  I thanked her for her time, got off the phone and just had to laugh.  Talk about frustrating.  So I thought why can’t I create a lead capture page like these companies do or start a blog with an autoresponder and start building a list of my own people who are interested in listening to me.  So I started researching internet and attraction marketing and came across a ton of websites talking about how to get started.  After a lot of reading and research, I came across some individuals that made perfect sense to me.  So I studied them and got started.  You can check out what I got started with by looking at my Marketing Resources page above or just by clicking here.

My recommendation for beginners is starting a blog with an autoresponder.  The beauty of using the autoresponder is that you can communicate with thousands of people with one email or newsletter and it works 24-7 once you set it up.  There are several blogs and autoresponders to choose from, but I use Blog i360 for my blog host and Aweber for my autoresponder.  I use them because you don’t have to have all the techie skills required to set these up.  It will take some time to get it all up and running, but will not require you to take all the time and money to learn how to set a website up.  Now you ask, but I’m not a writer.  I thought that myself, but if you are writing about your passion and interests, it will just start flowing from your fingertips.  Who knows, you might surprise yourselfJ.   I do suggest reading about copywriting and how to write effectively.  The key here again is TAKE ACTION and get started.  You will learn from your own mistakes and will only make you better.  Learn as you go and take small steps.

P.S.  If you have questions at any time, feel free to email me at tlargent@myresidualbiz.net.

To your success,

Largent

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