Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Are you on the "Anti-Wealth" Plan?
Though painful to say, most people go through their entire lives on
what we call the "Anti-Wealth" Plan. Others call it the "40/40/40 Plan."
That is, work 40 hours a week for someone for 40 years and retire with
$40 in the bank!
That's somewhat of an exaggeration, of course, but the U.S.
Social Security Board, for example, has reported that 85 out of 100
Americans won't possess as much as $500 in savings by age 65. And only
2% will be self-sustaining; the rest will be dependent on family,
church, or the government!
The main problem with a typical job is that when YOU stop, the money stops.
MAKE SURE you understand this: If you ever want to acquire real
wealth, you're just not going to get there trading hours for money.
The world's wealthiest people have known for hundreds of years
that if you want financial freedom, you MUST tap into at least one of
the following:
Residual Income is income that keeps coming in
month after month, year after year, from work you do just ONCE. It's
like a royalty. An example would be writing a book or recording a song
and getting paid forever on it. Wouldn't it be absolutely awesome to
have that?! Well, with SFI you can!
Leveraged Income is earning money through other
people's efforts. There are only 24 hours in a day. Hence, there's only
so much you can earn through your own efforts. But with SFI, you can
earn Leveraged Income (in the form of "override" commissions) when
affiliates you've sponsored in SFI make sales.
Earn even more Leveraged Income when they sponsor other affiliates and refer TripleClicks members who make purchases...and when your affiliates’ affiliates sponsor affiliates and refer members...and so on.
The fact is, by simply sponsoring a few good, active SFI
affiliates, you can eventually have hundreds or even THOUSANDS of
affiliates and TC members putting money in your pocket from around the world...around the clock!
But that's not even the best part. Each affiliate on your sales
team has his or her own vested interest to build and KEEP ON building
his or her business and income. This, of course, means YOUR income can
continue and grow month after month–even when you want to take a vacation or decide to retire altogether.
Rest assured, there are few things greater than returning
home from a nice vacation to find a commission check even bigger than
the month before waiting in your mailbox!
Bottom line: With SFI, not only can you earn "do-it-once,
get-paid-forever" residual-style income, you also can earn Leveraged
Income on the sales of thousands of other affiliates! If building
financial security is one of your goals, you've found the vehicle to do
it with in SFI.
Monday, January 6, 2014
10 COMMON ONLINE MARKETING METHODS (Continued)
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In our last lesson, we gave a brief description of the first five of
the 10 most common Internet SFI Affiliates.
In this lesson, we will briefly describe the last five. While space prohibits
us from giving you more than a brief introduction to these last five methods
in this lesson, future lessons will address each of these methods in more
detail.
MARKETING METHODS
Recall from our last lesson that we enumerated the most common Internet
marketing methods, particularly useful in promoting the SFI affiliate
program, as follows:
1) Gateway Pages and Search Engine Registration
3) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Online Classifieds)
4) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Affiliate and Paid Placement)
5) Building Your Own Content Rich Website
6) Utilizing an Opt-In Program
7) Hosting FFA Pages
8) Using Safelists, Announcement Lists, and Viral marketing
9) Press Releases, Relationship Building, and Offline Promotion
10) The Latest New Technique
2) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Exchange Programs)
Also, in the last lesson, we briefly described the first five. Here's
a brief description of six through 10.
UTILIZING AN OPT-IN PROGRAM
E-mail is a vehicle that works in conjunction with other interactive
features of a Website to create a flow of communication with your prospects.
In order to avoid spamming, you have to have consent from a prospect to
send them e-mail. The best way to get that consent is to have them do
something on your Website that establishes that consent. Such devices
are called "opt-in" programs.
The simplest example of an opt-in program is to have a line on your Website
which says "Join our Newsletter" and provides a form for the
viewer to submit his or her e-mail address. From there, the extent and
variety of opt-in programs that can be created is limited only by imagination.
Often effective are contests. Viewers enter a contest to win something
by entering their e-mail address. Often, there are interactive games which
pit the viewer against other players around the world, and the scores
and results of the games are communicated to the participants with e-mail.
Particularly interesting is one which has a slot machine interface on
the site which you can play for free, but if you accumulate any winnings,
you have to opt-in to collect your money.
There are many types of opt-ins. You can sign up to receive news, weather,
stock tips, pictures, and many other types of information to be received
by e-mail. There are many educational opt-in programs for school children
(and adults) including "science facts," "strange animals,"
"today in history," and other education subjects. A prayer of
the day, week, or month is available from many different sources.
You can also allow people to post information on your Website and thereby
gain consent to e-mail them. Examples of this are business directories
and FFA pages (discussed below), among many others. Remember, imagination
is the only limitation.
It is both intuitive and supported by research that an e-mail inbox is
a much more effective place to communicate with a prospect than a Website.
But, it takes the Website to get the necessary permission to communicate
by e-mail. Thus, the "Opt-In" program is a crucial step in an
effective Internet marketing campaign.
One of the most effective opt-in programs on the Internet is the SFI
marketing Group's affiliate program. As an SFI affiliate, you need only
point people from your Gateway page to the SFI page for this very effective
opt-in to be made available to your viewers.
HOSTING FFA PAGES
"FFA" stands for "Free for All" which is short for
"Free for all to post here." FFA's are Websites where you can
post a link and perhaps a short description to your Website without having
to pay an advertising fee. When you post on one of these FFA sites, you
will receive an e-mail from the site host confirming that your link was
placed and, in all likelihood, containing an advertisement as well.
It is not an effective use of your time to individually post your link
to these sites. These sites are actually rarely seen by anyone. Plus,
almost all these FFA sites have a maximum number of posts that will be
displayed. The old ones are dropped to make room for the new ones. In
many cases, this process occurs in just minutes or hours so that your
link is not on the site long enough for it to do you any good at all.
There are FFA submission services that will post your link to hundreds
of these sites at once. That makes it somewhat more time effective, but
even with that, this is still not a terribly effective way to promote
your Website. Should you use one of these submission services, be sure
to create a separate e-mail address to use. You will receive confirmation
e-mails from several hundred FFA sites after using one of these submission
services. It will choke down your e-mail. Thus, do not use your everyday
e-mail address when making such submissions.
An effective way to use FFA sites, however, is to HOST an FFA site. When
you host an FFA site, you get to send out all the confirmation e-mails
- with YOUR ad in them! There are services on the Web which will allow
you to host an FFA site on their server without charge or for a small
fee. There are also autoresponder services available (for free or a small
fee) which you can connect to your FFA site to send the confirming e-mails.
USING SAFELISTS, ANNOUNCEMENT LISTS, AND
VIRAL MARKETING
Safelists are e-mail lists which allow you to join and post advertisements
in exchange for receiving advertisements from others. You and other members
send your e-mail to a list address and from there it is distributed to
the members of the list. There are several such lists at Yahoo! Groups
and other e-mail list services. These also are only effective if done
in bulk. That is, you must create a separate "throw-away" e-mail
address to sign up for these and use group mail software to send to hundreds
of lists at once. The e-mail you will receive from being a member of hundreds
of lists will be in the thousands per day. Thus, it is imperative that
you use a different e-mail address from the one you use for daily correspondence.
It is not easy to use safelists effectively. Until you are experienced,
you should seek the tutoring of a more experienced Internet marketer in
setting this up properly. You can begin to learn, however, by going to
Yahoo! Groups and searching for lists that allow advertising. For now,
just join one or two groups to become familiar with the process. Do not
expect any results from the ads you post to just one or two groups, but
use it as a learning process. It will be much easier for you to master
the skills necessary to effectively market with safelists in bulk if you
have had some hands-on experience with the lists first.
Announcement Lists are similar to advertising lists but with a slant
toward announcing new sites rather than advertising per se. Unless you
obtain a list of "safelists" from a very trusted source, carefully
read the rules for each list before you post and keep your posts within
the guidelines for the list.
The next Internet marketing technique, VIRAL marketing, is interesting
but not very effective. Viral marketing is designed to circumvent the
spam rules by hoping the recipient of the e-mail will forward it on to
the people on his or her forwarding list. Since you have not sent the
e-mail to these other persons directly, you can not be accused of spam.
The concept is that the e-mail will spread out to many recipients like
a virus - being passed from one to another to another. Each recipient
receives the e-mail from someone with whom they have a pre-existing relationship.
Since a pre-existing relationship is an exception to most spam rules,
the e-mail is not considered spam.
All of us have had the misfortune (or perhaps good fortune, if you have
a lot of spare time) of being on a number of our friends' e-mail forwarding
lists. Every time they receive a joke that they think is funny or the
latest urban legend ("Watch out for AIDS-infected needles hidden
in theater seats or gas pump handles."), they very generously pass
it on to us and the 15 or more other people on their list. Many of the
people on their list then pass it on to 15 or more other people. Observing
this phenomenon, it occurred to a number of enterprising Internet marketers
to try to harness this distribution technique for marketing.
A consulting group I organized ran an experiment on viral marketing about
18 months ago. Our results were interesting. What we found was that in
order for the distribution to be effective (i.e. for people to keep passing
it on) it had to be either of a "hysterical" nature (ex: hidden
AIDS needles or people stealing your kidneys) or it had to be humor or
complete nonsense. Otherwise, it died in two generations (that is, it
was not passed on more than twice). In theorizing about these results,
we considered the effectiveness of an ad traveling along with one of these
hysterical or nonsensical e-mails which would survive several generations.
We concluded that the state of mind induced by either the hysteria or
the nonsense of the primary message was not conducive to generating response
to the ad. In other words, the ad did not flow with the material and thus
would not be effective.
One of the funniest things I have seen was the viral e-mail that convinced
the reader that the technology now existed for an ordinary computer monitor
to take someone's picture like a camera. You were then given a link to
a page where you were instructed to hold your face in front of the monitor
and then click a "shutter button" and count down the exposure
time. To see the results, you were taken to a full screen picture of a
surprised looking monkey - which was a pretty accurate picture of you
at the time! This particular viral achieved extremely wide distribution.
However, it could certainly not be used effectively for marketing. Who
wants to buy or join something when it has just made a monkey out of you?
Thus, while viral marketing per se does not appear to be an effective
Internet marketing technique, an understanding of its limitations can
lead us to consider the most powerful technique of all - sincere communication.
People decide whether to pay attention to e-mail based on two obvious
factors: the source and the subject. Viral e-mail, by definition, comes
from a trusted source. It also has an attention grabbing subject. Its
limitation is that it is either not serious at all (just humor or a practical
joke) or it is too serious (warning of some bizarre danger).
There is a somewhat slower, yet very effective process, however. You
can send sincere communication to someone you know (and who you know does
not mind receiving e-mail from you) and sincerely tell them about your
successful experience with an affiliate program such as SFI. Do not make
it sound like an ad in any form or fashion! Rather, let it just be a sincere
sharing with them of your experience. Mix in other things about your life
and inquire about their lives so that it is not just a single subject
e-mail. They, in turn, may become interested in your program and may later
join. If they do, they may later share their successful experience with
others that they know. And so it continues and grows! Let's not call this
process "viral marketing." Let's call it "infectious enthusiasm"!
PRESS RELEASES, RELATIONSHIP BUILDING,
AND OFFLINE PROMOTION
While the offline world does not exist to the exclusion of the online
world, neither does the online world exist to the exclusion of the offline
world. Although the SFI program is primarily online, you can certainly
use offline marketing in conjunction with your online techniques. You
should combine offline and online efforts in effective ways. For example,
you can send classified ads and press releases by e-mail to newspapers,
which will then appear in print publications. The printed announcements
and ads can then direct people online to your Website. Successful SFI
Affiliates use the two together effectively.
You can use the relationship building techniques effective in the offline
world in the online arena as well. Relationship building and "infectious
enthusiasm" are things that occur both online and offline. You can
meet people online and then build a relationship which carries over to
the offline world. You can communicate with people online that you have
met and known from the offline world. The bottom line is that it takes
trust to induce someone to buy or join. It takes a relationship of some
sort to build trust. These principles have always been true in the offline
world and they are still true in the online world. The relationship begins
when people first see your ad and they continue to judge you by everything
that follows. An ad does not sell—it starts a relationship. The resulting
relationship sells—provided it becomes a trusted relationship.
THE LATEST NEW TECHNIQUE
Have you heard of "vortals"? They are single subject portals
and they are the latest buzz. And, hey, what are "portals" anyway?
Isn't that what we used to call "Search Engines" before they
added a bunch of new features and some personalization capabilities? The
only thing constant about the Internet is that it is constantly changing!
The latest tip is that you should be on a constant search for new subject
specific portals (vortals) dealing with your subject and make sure your
site gets listed there. Search for these vortals through the search engines
by searching for words dealing with your product or service. When you
find them, read the rules for posting and post a link to your site there.
One constant is that you should always stay on top of what's new on the
Internet and be one of the first to take advantage of each new technique
as it becomes available. You will need to stay informed and be adaptive
to be successful in Internet marketing. How can you do that? There are
a bunch of experts at the SFI sites just waiting for you to read their
articles and ask them questions. Hang out with the right people and you
can not help but be successful.
CONCLUSION
Remember that these last two lessons have been just a brief introduction
to many different concepts. Do not be concerned if you are still a little
confused. Things will become clearer as we address each method in more
detail as this course continues. You can get more information immediately
by becoming an IAHBE member and accessing the expert advice there.
10 COMMON ONLINE MARKETING METHODS
WHAT YOU WILL
LEARN
MARKETING METHODS
The most common
Internet marketing methods, particularly useful in promoting the SFI affiliate
program are these:
1) Doorway Pages and Search Engine Registration
2) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Exchange Programs)
3) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Online Classifieds)
4) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Affiliate and Paid Placement)
5) Building Your Own Content-Rich Website
6) Utilizing an Opt-In Program
7) Hosting FFA Pages
8) Using Safelists, Announcement Lists, and Viral marketing
9) Press Releases, Relationship Building, and Offline Promotion
10) The Latest New Technique
Many of these methods
overlap or have much in common. Depending on what you read, there are various
ways to describe each of these methods and various names with which to identify
them. There is no particular importance to the order in which we have listed them
here. The only reason to enumerate them into the list above is for ease of learning.
We will take the first five in turn and give you a brief introduction in this
lesson. The next lesson will give you a brief introduction to the last five. Subsequent
lessons will cover each of these methods in great detail (although not necessarily
in order). Let's get right to it.
DOORWAY
PAGES AND SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION
A "doorway page"
is a Web page that is used to lead people to the target interactive site. The
doorway page contains a link to your target page. The target page is where you
hope the user will take some action, such as purchasing an affiliate product or
opting in to your program. The target page sells. The doorway page gets their
attention and leads them to the target page. Doorway pages serve two main purposes:
they are used to optimize search engine placement and they allow you to target
your initial approach to different demographics.
When you join SFI, you
are given links to different target pages that you can use to sell SFI products
or recruit affiliates. Because these pages contain what is called a "CGI
variable" to identify you as the seller or recruiter, they can not be individually
registered in the Search Engines. That is, because there is a "?" in
the URL (Website address), search engines will not accept them or will truncate
off the most important part—your ID number.
To work around this problem
with the search engines, affiliates use doorway pages. Savvy SFI affiliates design
and host a Web page on another server with a different name so that the URL does
not contain a question mark. This doorway page then links to one of the SFI target
pages, and the link, of course, contains the CGI variable identifying the affiliates
ID number to ensure proper credit. Really enterprising affiliates create several
different doorway pages, each appealing to different types of people.
Even
when there is no need to work around a cgi variable in the URL, Internet marketers
use doorway pages to target different demographics. Different things get different
people's attention. Many of the affiliates that come into SFI do so because they
are very serious about creating a successful home-based business. They find SFI
while searching for information pertaining to home-based businesses or network
marketing. They understand network marketing terminology and are seeking a comparison
of this program with the ones already familiar to them.
Other affiliates
come to SFI because they want an Internet business. They may have had little experience
with home-based businesses or network marketing. These people understand Internet
terminology and are looking for a great affiliate program. Obviously, you have
to approach these different types of people differently to attract them to the
SFI program.
Thus, it is best to have one doorway page for those seeking
a home-based, multi-level business and another doorway page for those seeking
a lucrative affiliate program. SFI well serves the needs of both, but they need
to be drawn to that realization in different ways. You may also want to have different
doorway pages for younger prospects and older prospects; one for the highly educated
and one for those with little formal education; one for those who are already
financially successful but want an Internet income and one for those who are still
struggling daily with bills and creditors. There are many different demographic
groups that you can target with different doorway pages.
The best doorway
pages are pages that attract the targeted demographic by providing useful information
or entertainment, while remaining easy to navigate. Stay tuned to future lessons
to learn how even the technically challenged can easily create useful content
for their Websites.
(Note: In SFI, doorway pages that you design yourself
must be approved by the SFI administration if they do more than just contain an
approved link or textual ad. That is, if you provide information or opinions about
SFI above and beyond insertion of an approved ad, you must seek prior approval.)
When
you have your doorway pages in place, you need to register them with the search
engines. There are many factors involved in doing this properly. You need to prepare
your pages properly with metatags, keywords, descriptions, keyword balancing,
content indications, as well as incoming and outgoing link considerations. You
then need to know the right submission procedure and schedule your submissions
properly for each major search engine or directory. There is much to say on these
subjects and each will be the topic of a future lesson in this course.
BANNER OR TEXTUAL AD PLACEMENT (EXCHANGE PROGRAMS)
To
gain traffic for your Website, you need to prepare effective banners and textual
ads. In SFI, this is already done for you. Having banners and textual ads prepared,
you need to find places on the Internet to place these banners and textual ads.
One of the earliest methods devised on the Internet was banner exchanges. You
agree with other Website owners to place their ad on your page in exchange for
placing your ad on their page. This process has been facilitated by the emergence
of several banner exchange programs. You register with the exchange program, upload
your banner, and your banner will automatically appear on other registered Web
pages throughout the world. In exchange, they provide code for you to put on your
Web page, which hosts rotating banners from other sites. These are not particularly
effective, mainly because placement in context on a page is rarely achieved. Context
placement is crucial to an ad or banner being effective in drawing traffic.
Banner
exchanges are very useful for one purpose, however. Most of the exchange programs
allow you to target the types of pages on which your banners will be placed. If
you happen to have a high-traffic Website which appeals to one demographic, but
your target in a particular affiliate program is another demographic, you can
"exchange" your traffic through use of an exchange program. Say your
site draws high traffic from retired people who love to garden and travel. With
a banner exchange, you can have your banner targeted to sites which appeal to
home-based entrepreneurs. In return, you host banners on your site which target
the group which frequents your site (advertising, for example, gardening tools
or motor homes). Since effective context placement is much more likely to be achieved
in this situation, it usually works fairly well for all parties involved.
BANNER OR TEXTUAL AD PLACEMENT (ONLINE CLASSIFIEDS)
One
of the easiest ways to get your banners and ads on a high-traffic Website is to
place them on some online classified ad pages. Several major sites allow you to
place classified ads for free. There are others, such as Yahoo!, that charge fees
for placement of classifieds. These can be effective depending upon the volume
of ads being submitted at any given time. If it is a high traffic site, your ad
will only appear for a matter of hours before it is pushed too far down by new
submissions to be useful. Daily attention and resubmission is crucial to an effective
classified ad campaign on the free sites.
There are links to the many online
classified sites that have been effective for SFI affiliates on the SFI Team Resource
Center (http://www.sfiteam.com/).
Starting with classified ads is a good way to get your feet wet in Internet marketing.
BANNER OR TEXTUAL AD PLACEMENT (AFFILIATE AND
PAID PLACEMENT)
You can also pay to have your banner or ad placed
on other Websites. This is a broad category that
covers many different possible
arrangements. You can pay for placement for a period of time. You can pay only
for clicks actually received through your ad on a site. You can pay only for sales
or sign-ups that come through a particular site. Affiliate programs encompass
the latter of these options. There are services where you can register an affiliate
program and people who go to these services can sign up to host your ads. When
they sign up, they download your banner or ad to their site. The service independently
tracks and verifies the clicks, sales, or sign-ups, that originate from particular
affiliate sites and facilitates the payments that are due.
covers many different possible
arrangements. You can pay for placement for a period of time. You can pay only
for clicks actually received through your ad on a site. You can pay only for sales
or sign-ups that come through a particular site. Affiliate programs encompass
the latter of these options. There are services where you can register an affiliate
program and people who go to these services can sign up to host your ads. When
they sign up, they download your banner or ad to their site. The service independently
tracks and verifies the clicks, sales, or sign-ups, that originate from particular
affiliate sites and facilitates the payments that are due.
Also included
in this category are ezine ads. Ezines are e-mail newsletters that people have
opted-in to receive. They are full of interesting content so that people actually
read them when they show up in their inboxes. You can pay the ezine publisher
to include your ad and a link to your site in an ezine edition. Ideally, your
ad will fit into the context of the information in that particular ezine edition.
"Pay-pers"—services
which pay people to receive and read e-mail or host software which displays ads
on their screen—also fall under this category. You can pay to have your e-mail
ad sent to people who have agreed to receive the e-mail for a small fee per e-mail.
This is not spam because the people who receive the e-mail have opted to receive
it in exchange for a small payment per e-mail received and read. These programs
are very effective because the e-mails are actually read and the links clicked.
BUILDING YOUR OWN
CONTENT RICH WEBSITE
As explained in our first lesson on Spam,
except for safelists and paid ads purchased from opt-in programs, you cannot rely
on e-mail for Internet marketing. You must use Websites and opt-in programs instead.
We discussed the doorway site concept at the beginning of this lesson. Whether
a doorway page or an independent target site, the most effective Internet marketing
method available is to have a site with rich substantive content and entertaining
attention grabbers. There are hundreds of thousands of Websites on the Internet
now that consist of nothing more than banner ads thrown on a page. They are all
worthless! There is no point in creating a Website if it does not have content.
Your Website must have both value and ease of use to be effective in drawing and
keeping traffic. (As stated above, do not be dismayed if you feel incapable at
this time of creating such a site. Just relax and keep reading your SFI materials.)
CONCLUSION
Remember that this
lesson is just a brief introduction to many different concepts. Do not be concerned
if you are still a little confused. Things will become clearer as we address each
method in more detail. If you are itching to get started with your Internet marketing
campaign, you can start with posting classified ads.
You can move onto the other methods as we discuss them in more detail in future
lessons.
https://www.sfimg.com/Training/Lessons/4
INTERNET TRAFFIC
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In this lesson you will learn how to analyze Internet Traffic. You will be
reminded that Internet traffic consists of human beings with desires and interests
and goals of their own. You will learn how to get into the "flow"
of Internet traffic using value and ease of use, combined with effective traffic
building strategies.https://www.sfimg.com/Training/Lessons/3
IT'S LIKE WATER
Think of what we know about early humans and how they migrated and settled.
Water is a basic human need. If early man did not live close to water, then
he had to bargain for it from others who transported the water into his area.
People who did not live close to water had to have several vessels to store
what water they could get their hands on. The consequence was that people who
settled far from any river or stream had to spend a great deal of their time
and resources trying to obtain and store water -- and they never really had
more than just enough to get by. On the other hand, people who settled near
a large river or stream could freely dip out all the water they needed in abundance.
When it came to water, positioning was everything. Any map will show that large
successful settlements are usually close to free flowing water.
Analogies have been made between money and water. It has been suggested that
if you position yourself where money freely flows, you will obtain a lot more
of it with less effort than if you position yourself in some remote location
relative to the "money stream". The analogy to water is equally useful
when applied to Internet traffic.
ANALYZING INTERNET TRAFFIC
MARKETING FORCES IN HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Similar to how the forces of nature and history determined where rivers flow
across the earth's surface, the history and forces of the Internet have shaped
how Internet traffic flows across the wires and ether. For the most part, people
make their initial connection to Cyberspace in one of two fashions: they either
dial in from home or work, or they connect through a network at work. In order
to do this, they have to have software that creates a TCP/IP socket. To view
the World Wide Web, they also need software called an Internet browser. That
socket and that browser are the first opportunities for anyone to get their
attention in Cyberspace. Some socket software allows for ads to be shown as
the Internet connection is established.
Browsers have three features that control Internet traffic. Those three features
are "Home Page", "Favorites" or "Bookmarks," and
"History." The Home Page is all important. That is the first page
you see when you open your browser. You see this page over and over on a daily
basis. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide their subscribers software
which sets the ISP's page as the subscribers' home page and even sets some of
their favorites. Even though many subscribers may eventually change their home
page, ISPs, by their very nature, have a natural tap into much of the Internet's
traffic. ISPs that provide an expansive and encyclopedic digital environment
along with their access, such as AOL, really have a tap into the traffic. Software
companies that make browsers (and there are really only two players here - Microsoft
and Netscape) can have pre-set bookmarks and favorites. Operating systems can
control consumers' choices of an ISP by having software built into the operating
system. (Sometimes it seems like there is a battle for your attention going
on inside your computer when various software packages pop up and ask to be
made the "default" software.) The fairness of this type of competition
has been the subject of a major antitrust action by the Justice Department against
Microsoft.
The History feature of a browser, on the other hand, just makes it more likely
that you will return to a page once you have been there before. This, in addition
to the other features, makes it more likely that pages with traffic will gain
even more traffic.
Other types of software-based online marketing include software that resides
on your screen independent of a Web browser and displays ads while you surf.
You are paid or otherwise rewarded for the time you spend using this software.
An example is All Advantage.
THE ROLE OF CONSUMER
CHOICE
Once a user gets beyond these built-in features vying for his or her attention,
it becomes more a matter of choice. The Internet user can type in a URL and
go to Web pages that have come to the user's attention through word of mouth
or some other media. From there, the user is likely to follow links to other
similar pages. As memories may fail, typing errors may occur and links may be
outdated; this process only takes the user so far. The next thing a user looks
for on the Web is a way to directly find things of interest to him or her. Search
engines fulfill that function and have been the most popular sites on the Web.
Yahoo! was the original Web search engine and thus, by mere force of history,
has been one of the most popular sites on the Web. As a general rule, search
engines and the large digital environments of the media companies (such as AOL,
Go.com, MSNBC, etc.) maintain the top traffic rankings. Because search engines
exist, the choice and interests of the user are a strong factor, dispersing
Internet traffic according to demographics. That is, unlike the traditional
broadcast media, traffic branches off to different sites according to people's
interests.
UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
Stephani Richardson, the administrator of the SFI Discussion Board and one
of the most successful affiliates in SFI, advises that you put yourself in the
position of the persons you are trying to recruit. Think from their perspective
rather than your own. This, of course, is excellent advice! People on the Web
are looking for content. They seek information applicable to themselves. To
be a successful Internet marketer, you must take time to think about how people
use the Internet.
When staring at their Web browser, people have these choices: They can type
in a URL that someone told them about, they can read their home page and follow
links from it, they can look at a page in their history or in their favorites,
they can go to one of the very popular sites and follow links, or they can go
to a search engine and follow links or compose a search phrase. In order to be the target of a link or be listed in a search engine,
you must have a Web presence.
TWO IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES FOR YOUR WEB
PRESENCE: VALUE AND FLOW
The first principle illuminating how people use the Web is that it takes value
for a Website to be "sticky." A 1998 article in Science magazine stated
that Web surfers are constantly making a judgment about continuing to visit
a Website or exiting the site. Two factors come into play: the value of the
current page and the promise of value in future site pages. That is, even if
the current page has a low perceived value, if there is an indication that the
quality of pages may improve, users will stay on the site for another page or
two more. But if there is no value, they will leave the site very quickly. This
is why we hear so often that "content is king." When they leave for
lack of value, they are never coming back.
The second principle is that there must be a balance between the difficulty
of using a Website and the rewards the user obtains from the Website. The term
"flow" has been used to describe what occurs when a user loses himself
in a Website. Flow occurs when the user becomes so absorbed that time and task
temporarily become unimportant. Whatever the user started out to do online gets
temporarily forgotten while they enjoy your site. When flow occurs, direction,
inhibitions, and caution give way to impulse, and the user is much more likely
to join or buy something promoted on the site. The site must be both interesting
and easy to navigate for this to occur.
Flow is also a concept that applies to movement from one Website to another.
Banners or textual links must be in context and create a smooth transition from
one site to another to be effective. Otherwise, the flow is broken and interest
is lost.
TRAFFIC BUILDING
Once you have planned a Website that has value and creates flow, you need to
direct traffic to your site. The four important goals of traffic building are:
1) obtaining the right domain name, 2) obtaining good publicity, 3) obtaining
an effective portal presence, and 4) utilizing and maintaining flow in the placement
of your Internet ads. Ads, of course, can be free, exchanged, or paid. All of
these will be discussed in detail in future lessons.
CONCLUSION
To be an effective Internet marketer, you need to analyze and understand Internet
traffic and, very importantly, you must understand that the "traffic"
consists of human beings with feelings and interests and desires. You must understand
that they are looking for what they want to find - not what you want them to
find. You must understand that they will get there through their methods - not
the methods you may prefer for them to use. The old broadcast media methods
of controlling attention do not work so well on the Internet. It's a new game.
You must use valuable content and ease of use to create flow. You must properly
position your site within the flow of Internet traffic. Once you get this right
(and you will), you are on the road to becoming a very successful Internet entrepreneur.
https://www.sfimg.com/Training/Lessons/3
THE POTENTIAL OF INTERNET INCOME
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In
this lesson, you will learn the three factors which assure us of continued exponential
Internet growth. These three factors are: Moore's Law, acceptance of digital environments,
and convergence. You will learn how these principles prove that Internet marketing
will have exponential growth and exponential results for decades to come. You
will learn how to best position yourself as a home-based entrepreneur to take
advantage of the digital opportunities that lie ahead.
MOORE'S
LAW
Moore's Law describes the falling cost of digital technology.
When my daughter was born in 1980, the price of the memory chip for a home PC
was $1,000.00 (not the whole PC, mind you, just the memory). When my daughter
was one year old, the same amount of memory cost only $500.00. When she was three
years old, the price was $250.00. When she started the first grade, the same amount
of memory cost only $62.50. When she graduated from high school in 1998, the price
of that same amount of memory had fallen to less that $0.25. Now, as she begins
her junior year in college, the cost for the same amount of memory as in that
original PC is just pennies. I assure you that nothing else we have purchased
over her lifetime has decreased in cost anything like that! We, of course, upgraded
the amount of memory we used over the years. Each time we upgraded, we spent about
the same amount of money but got more and more computing power. So, what really
happened was that our computing power increased by four times every three years
for the same cost.
Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel Corporation,
made mathematical observations in the 1960's of the engineering practices which
allowed miniaturization in semiconductor technology. This miniaturization applies
to processors and other computer components as well as memory chips. What he observed
mathematically is that computers can be made four times more powerful every three
years for the same cost. Some argue that this same formula has held true for a
full century, if you include the mechanical computers of the early 1900's and
the old-fashioned transistors that followed.
If you knew that you could
get four times more raw materials every three years with no increase in cost in
a given business, would you want to get into that business? The overwhelming answer
everywhere is, of course, a resounding "yes!"
All businesses,
even traditional brick and mortar businesses, must market their goods and services.
Because businesses look for the lowest cost to perform their processes, more and
more marketing information and marketing processes, even for brick-and-mortar
businesses, will become digital.
Moore's Law ensures that Internet businesses,
especially Internet marketing, will continue to grow and flourish at an astounding
rate. Will Moore's Law continue to hold true in the future? Can engineers keep
making computer chips cheaper? Intel's engineers assure us that Moore's Law will
continue to operate for several more device generations, if not indefinitely.
ACCEPTANCE OF DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS
The
next factor that ensures continued growth for Internet businesses is the acceptance
by consumers of digital environments. People have taken to Cyberspace. Despite
the many predictions to the contrary, people have warmed up to digital environments
with enthusiasm. Many Web communities have been formed and their participants
report feeling all warm and cozy in those digital environments. Participants have
developed a strong sense of identity with some of the digital communities. As
Moore's Law continues to operate, our technology becomes more and more capable
of producing engrossing digital environments in which even larger numbers of people
will enthusiastically participate. Online communities are forming in much the
same way that communities have formed in the physical world throughout history—only
much faster. The success stories of Yahoo! and eBay and others make it pure folly
to think that brick-and-mortar business will go on as usual, unaffected by the
Internet.
CONVERGENCE
The
third factor assuring a prosperous future for Internet entrepreneurs is convergence.
Simply defined, convergence is the coming together of separate things. Convergence
is now occurring at both the industry level and the consumer level. On the industry
level, computing, communications, and media companies are merging to form such
multimedia ventures as MSNBC and Disney's Go Network. On the consumer level, new
devices are being used to combine computing with phones and televisions. In the
very near future, consumers will replace their phones, TVs, and PCs with one central
media center (which may have several satellite devices for convenience and portability).
Even our money is fast becoming digital, as we have automatic bank deposits of
our earnings while we buy things with credit and debit cards. What this means
is that digital products and processes become more and more important as the Internet
gets closer and closer to people's everyday lives.
THE
POTENTIAL
These three factors—Moore's Law, acceptance of digital
environments, and convergence—assure us that the potential of the Internet
for the home-based entrepreneur is nothing less than incredible. In fact, the
belief in these three factors has been driving our economy for some time now.
Venture capitalists are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into purely digital
ventures. In the digital world, the large corporations have to compete, not just
with each other but also with the home-based entrepreneurs. The large conglomerates
no longer have the exclusive advantage. Given the low cost of computing power,
individual entrepreneurs now have at their disposal the raw materials to develop
digital products and processes and make them available to the world. Even more
importantly, individual entrepreneurs can band together in digital environments
(such as SFI's Full-Circle Success) to combine their skills and knowledge and
use convergence to their advantage in a very efficient way, rivaling the large
companies with the results.
HOW TO POSITION
YOURSELF
To obtain convergence, you must bring together computing
power, media content, and information processing. To obtain the economies of scale,
you should position yourself within a digital community where resources can be
shared. Despite the low cost of computing, there is still power in numbers with
regard to media content and information processing. To position yourself as a
marketer for one of the fastest growing digital communities in existence is without
doubt the smartest move you could possibly make right now. Having done that, you
can use your individual creativity, skills, and resources in an environment of
freedom employing the low cost computing power at your disposal to obtain your
financial goals. Due to the three factors discussed in this lesson, there is an
unprecedented opportunity available to you right now as an SFI affiliate. You
have but to take advantage of it.
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