Now I've recently completed a third course this summer in marketing and web building. To say the least, my head was full to bursting - until I sat down and scratched it all out on a yellow pad.
The simple priorities are these:
You have to make profitable sales to stay in business.
You have to market to get leads and convert these to buyers.
You have to research and review your progress against plans you made.
Now, these three programs agreed on these three, but differed in how to get them done - and in the sequence you should work on them.
There were simply a few points they also agreed on as to how to do this - but they didn't agree on an order:
Build your web presence with a web host and a domain name.
Use a WordPress blog to add content.
Add monetized links that are relevant and contribute to the content.
Promote actively - often three times more than you would spend on anything else.
3. Table of Contents
Online Sunshine Plan ....................................................................
0. Introduction...........................................................................1
How to get the most out of this book ......................................6
How this book is set up ...........................................................9
I. Purpose/Passion - what drives you, what makes you
really happy? ..........................................................................12
Articles: ..................................................................................16
II. Business Basics ................................................................48
Articles: ..................................................................................54
III. Market Research .............................................................115
What is marketing? What is a market? ................................115
How to research for your community-market ....................118
Keywords, their care and feeding: Niches...........................122
Keywords, Their Care and Feeding: Finding Them ............127
A possible approach to keyword research ...........................131
The short version of keyword research - 9 steps: ...............135
The convention analogy .......................................................136
How search engines used to work .......................................139
Where to look for your keyword research - Part I - Basics . 141
Where to look for your keyword research - Part 2 - The Real
World ....................................................................................144
Where's the money? I'm from Missouri - show me.............146
Finding and Building Your Community..............................150
Learning from the Experts in your Niche.............................151
Finding your way out of this wet paper bag ........................153
Articles: .................................................................................155
IV. Your Sales Funnel - ........................................................179
Lining up your chickens .......................................................179
Collecting up your eggs into baskets. ..................................182
That narrow end of the funnel isn't, really. ........................184
Copywriting - how to talk your walk ...................................187
Articles: ................................................................................193
V. Search Engine Optimization ...........................................212
Why do people think search engines are important? .........212
Search Engine Myths ...........................................................214
Strategies old and new .........................................................216
4. Names to follow and why .....................................................221
Recommended Products ......................................................221
Articles: ................................................................................222
VI. Promotion .......................................................................242
Networking and Promotion ................................................242
Social Media Defined...........................................................244
The care and feeding of social media ..................................247
There is no ROI in Social Media Marketing .......................250
So how do you convert viewers to clients through Social
Media? ..................................................................................252
Now for the Social Media All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet ............254
Write once, publish many ways, many formats .................260
Addtional Online Promotion ..............................................263
Offline and Classic Promotion ............................................266
Articles .................................................................................267
VII. Summary ........................................................................310
5. The Online Sunshine Plan
Setting your strategic Internet marketing scheduling may
be the key to your sanity and profits...
Now I've recently completed a third course this summer in marketing and
web building. To say the least, my head was full to bursting - until I sat
down and scratched it all out on a yellow pad.
The simple priorities are these:
1. You have to make profitable sales to stay in business.
2. You have to market to get leads and convert these to buyers.
3. You have to research and review your progress against plans you
made.
Now, these three programs agreed on these three, but differed in how to get
them done - and in the sequence you should work on them.
There were simply a few points they also agreed on as to how to do this - but
they didn't agree on an order:
• Build your web presence with a web host and a domain name.
• Use a WordPress blog to add content.
• Add monetized links that are relevant and contribute to the content.
• Promote actively - often three times more than you would spend on
anything else.
Since these courses were all built on search engine discovery, they all had
basic SEO tactics in that training. Two of the three were hinged on social
media marketing (which is a bit of an oxymoron, since social media shun
marketers...)
But our point is how to organize this. I've read the stories where a person
41
6. Dr. Robert C. Worstell
spent months on building up an ecommerce site only to make nothing on it
(and thank Gawd for his day job...) My first training was devoted utterly to
learning how to use their proprietary web-building software.
And the other extreme was a course where they spend hours telling you how
to do social marketing - 15/16's of the course, in fact - and then gave the
final hour was on how to monetize. Meaning that the bulk of their students
would simply opt for more training - since what they taught in that
sequence would keep the person broke.
However, the breakthrough was in the third one. Here, they said to do your
research and find your market first - but that you were also finding how to
monetize it as part of that research. Then you built your blog and started
promoting.
Let me break with all three - they are all right and also wrong.
• You don't build anything overnight.
• You do continuously build and refine what you already had going.
• Promotion is a big part of marketing, but you also have to monetize
constantly to convert viewers to buyers.
• And you have to have a plan, plus review the metrics of that plan to
make any success.
Part of this was learning and breaking down a Jack Humphrey 60-day plan.
Which was great - but it really was a finite recipe and couldn't be used
without a great deal of other data. (Which is why they only gave it to you
behind a hefty paid subscription.)
When gridded out, that plan really boiled down to a repeating set of actions,
plus adding one or two new promotional outlets each week. 8 weeks of basic
content addition, plus tons of promotion.
But it was even simpler than that.
Weekly schedule:
1. Research and Review: Review your previous week, all metrics,
and create your to-do list.
2. Monetize: Find new income sources (affiliates or new products)
that you can add - and sign up for them or create them for your sales
42
7. The Online Sunshine Plan
funnel.
3. Promote: Content - add more link-bait (truly memorable blog
posts) to your site.
4. Promote: Comment - find where people are linking to your site
and comment on theirs. Or Stumbleupon, Digg, or Twitter about
them, if no direct comment possible.
5. Promote: Converse - join in the conversation on various forums
which have to do with your niche.
So: Research/Review - Monetize - Promote - Promote - Promote.
This also follows a longer cycle of what you are going to be doing. In the
beginning, you need to spend a sizable amount of time defining your niche
and the long-tail keywords you want to optimize for (and write content
about). Part of this will be finding if that niche is actually one where people
spend money - and you'll be finding affiliates or products that can be sold
within that niche. Once you have these two established, you can spend the
rest of the time promoting and getting yourself - and your products -
known.
Those are the bare bones - and you can see that this has lots more below it
to make it work.
But I hope you can use this to streamline what you're doing and so become
more profitable...
PS. Note that this is only five days worth of work. Take the weekend off with
your family - or go read a book - or go hiking -- or do some more of
whatever you still need to get done with your jobs.. Your choice.
43
8. Thrivelearning Guide
Find ways how to improve your life, run a
successful online business, get your freedom
back.
Thrivelearning System - A Guide
I've searched over the Internet for really workable programs for more than a
couple of decades. The main criteria was that they had to work and they had
to help people actually improve their lives. The goal is that people are enabled
to get their abundance which is already native.
People don't know how simple it is to have a peaceful, free life. They don't
know that starting an online business does have a learning curve, but when
you find the right mentor and the right partners, it can be really simple and
successful.
So these programs each individually work. But the real power is that they
integrate into a powerful system that is more effective than the single parts.
There are two approaches to this - Spiritual and Business
Spiritual: You should be able to have all the freedom, peace,
and abundance you could ever want.
Business: You can and should know how to leverage the
Internet to make your own online success.
Like many, I was caught up in the “get rich quick” “how to make money
online” schemes that are very often pushed with Internet Marketing.
And it took me a long time (over a year) to learn enough to earn my money
back out
of the scheme I bought into. (No, I had to attend “Hard Luck U” and sweat it
out with a keyboard and Google searches - it wasn’t found in the “training” I
bought.) And that company has improved considerably since that time - it
was lessons all around, the way I saw it.
9. But since then, I’ve really discovered how to thrive - by discovering and
testing the exact techniques of self-help and spiritual training which will
attract any amount of money or abundance you want. No “institute” required,
no expensive ”schooling” or “coaching” - learn at your own pace, from your
own home.
Now I am starting to regularly earn money working at home, mostly from
online affiliate sales and my own books . It’s not hard to learn, if you want to
invest your time (and a little cash here and there.) But you only get out what
you invest of your self…
Here’s the programs I found that actually work:
Spiritual
1. Find your inner peace - Use Release Technique
2. Learn how to remain calm under stress - Use Silva Life System
3. Thrive financially with your Millionaire Mindset - Learn from T. Harv
Eker
4. Simply Wake Up and Live! - Dorothea Brande's classic.
5. Get a library of proven, workable materials - Spiritual Training
Materials
Business
1. Do market research for products which can factually earn you online
income - Chris Malta's Worldwide Brands
2. Master social network marketing - Charles Heflin’s Synnd
3. Get a site builder and web host with decades of experience -Ken
Evoy's Site Build It!
4. Find the simplicities to protecting yourself legally – Dr. Frederick
Graves' Jurisdictionary
5. Get and stay scam free from here on out - Get Scam Free (book and
online course)
10. Release Technique
Release Technique is simply learning to actually
look at what is happening around you and letting
go of what you don't want. Too easy, actually.
Some people have to know more about such a
technique before they can really put it to use in
their lives. Larry Crane used it to save his life. He
was already a millionaire - even on the cover of
Time - but found he wanted to commit suicide because of his own inner
stress. He met a guy named Lester Levenson, who taught him to release the
inner programs which caused that. Larry changed his life – and has been
teaching and promoting this course ever since.
Silva Life System
Laura found herself in trouble. Her health was
failing, she couldn't keep a job, she was
desperately "in love" with someone who only took
advantage of her. Then she rediscovered for
herself the system of active meditation she had been involved with since
childhood, literally growing up around it. Once she put this to use in her own
life, she became more and more successful as she applied it. Now happily
married with several children, she has devoted her life to continuing her
father's proven program of active meditation. More people than ever have
found how easy it is to meditate through Jose and Laura Silvas' works. There
are reportedly millions internationally who are using Silva materials to gain
calm, successful lives. You can, too.
11. Millionaire Mind Intensive
The key point is that you have to re-learn all
you've learned up to this point about money.
What he starts out to begin with is to tell you,
“Don’t believe anything I say, but try these ideas
out in your own life - and trust these ideas you
are trying.”How Eker gets you to re-train your
millionaires mind isn't all that new. But he took
up the study of millionaire and rich-people psychology in earnest so solve his
own inability to make and hold onto money. While he made (and lost)
millions early in his life, it was his own studies into how people did this which
made him an international success. Now he spends his time only in helping
others to adjust their own Millionaire Mindset
Wake Up and Live
I was introduced to it by Earl Nightingale (of "Our
Changing World" fame). It was in his "Strangest
Secret" recording where he introduced her now
famous credo:
"Act as though it were impossible to fail."
And she explains how she got to that point in this book. The first section is an
autobiography of sorts, explaining the gist of her discovered philosophy of life
- and how that credo lead her straight to an amazing career after a rather
mundane existence prior. Newly republished in an easy-to-read format, this
book is an essential classic for anyone's library.
12. Spiritual Training Materials
For anyone to really make their way through life,
they have to find and follow mentors. With our
modern Internet Age, you no longer have to take
time out and travel to distant lands in order to sit
at the feet of a Master and absorb their knowledge.
Even the long-passed can reveal their secrets from
their book sand materials. I've assembled a short
list of books which have been proved time and again to hold the secrets to all
health,wealth, success, and relationships. The path is there - you have only to
walk it. Build your library today!
Web Site Builder
Site Build It! is the only product that takes the
time to prepare you to build a profitable business,
before you jump into building your site. For the
beginner, your learning curve will be shorter and
you’ll bypass any show-stopping errors. For those experienced in site-
building, SBI! deepens your level of understanding. No matter who you are,
you are guided all the way until you succeed. This approach symbolizes SBI!’s
steady-and-sure approach. It’s definitely not GRQ (Get Rich Quick) and keeps
you from getting distracted by false promises or dead-end tools and strategies
that end up costing more money. Experienced users will appreciate avoiding
time-wasters that don't help you succeed. Think of it as a simple, direct, hype-
free path that leads to success. Check it out for yourself.
Profitable Market Research
The reason Chris started WWB is just because he
knew how profitable it was to sell for others - but
ran into the same shady operators so many of us
do. He sat out building a company which did the
13. homework for you - so you only need login to their single interface where
they've already predigested the product discovery, keyword research, and
verified the drop-shippers as legit. No middlemen, no scammers. Just you,
your hard work, and your filling bank account. Not for the faint at heart - this
is only for those serious about doing the homework necessary to find salable,
profitable products to sell.
Social Network Marketing
Once you have a product and a website, you need
to promote it. Charles Heflin has been marketing
at least as long as the World Wide Web has
existed. And he formed Social Media Science just to study the social media
phenomenon. Per their website: "Social Media Science is dedicated to the
science of online social media as it applies to gaining visibility for you ronline
or offline business. We are dedicated to educating the business community
through a robust educational system as well as providing cutting edge
software tools to make marketing your business easier, more effective and
measurable. See what sets us apart." It's only here where you learn how to
really market online.
Get a Winning Lawyer -
Defend Your Company
Dr. Frederick Graves is a lawyer who has taken on
the formidable task of educating people how to
figure out what the hell is going on. But it's not all
that complicated. For any business, if you
understand the legal system, you can avoid
situations which would lead you into any unnecessary involvement in the
courts. Technically, you learn enough to use the laws to do what they are
supposed to - protect against inequality and bullying behavior. The point is
that when you do need to get a lawyer, you can also ensure that he's doing
what you're paying him for. With all else you need to follow in business, you
don't also need the excess expense which legal costs can bring.
14. FTC Disclaimer
Self-help and Spiritual Training are highly personal. You get out only what
you put into them. There are no "typical results." None of the above should be
considered as a “business opportunity”. These are personal training programs
and materials which you alone can determine if they assist your own progress
or help improve your life.
Caveat Emptor, and all that.