Marketing Insiders Club

By David Vallieres

If you’re doing any kind of business online then you know that it isn’t as easy as most ‘guru’s’ say it is.

But, it isn’t that hard either…

This report is about the very basic things you need to do business online and the order in which you need to have them in place.

It seems obvious, but the very first thing you need is a product to promote. Without something to promote you have no business. It could be a service or physical or digital product.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your product or service or someone else’s product you’re selling as an affiliate… you need something to promote if you’re going to make money online.

The hardest part of marketing online is finding a hot product to promote.

Where do you find a hot product?

Look first to the market… find a market that is rabid, crazy and out-of-control… or as Gary Halbert called them, “a starving crowd”.

Your market must be very hot. Selecting the product becomes a piece of cake if you look at the market first and find out what they want.

Let me give you an example. One of the hottest markets right now is for secrets on how to generate highly quality traffic to your site.

After all, without the ability to get those rabid, crazy people in this market to your site, what good is it?

Let me give you another example. A hot market right now is for music online… iTunes and Rhapsody are cashing in on this huge market.

All you do is find the market and match the product to the market demand as close as possible.

Once you find the market, selecting the product to sell is easy.

A so-so product sold to a HOT market will always out-perform a great product being sold to a luke-warm or complacent and declining market.

Find the hot market first and then find a product to fill the demand.

Most people get this important step wrong… they seek out a great product only to find out later that there is no demand in that market… even for a great product.

Don’t let that happen to you. Find the market first.

After you find a product that matches the desires and wants of a hot market, we need to find a way to process the sales that will come.

Unless you’re only selling products as an affiliate, you’ll need a way to collect the money from people who want to buy your product.

This is Step 2…

If you’re an affiliate, the company you’re an affiliate for will process the payments made by customers. They will also provide all the customer service.

That’s the HUGE benefit of being and affiliate for another company. All you do is get traffic and get paid (it’s not really that simple, but it sounds good)!

The downside is you have no control over the marketing, sales process or the product.

If you create your own product you are in total control of the entire marketing process and you get to grow your customer base for future promotions.

It’s my opinion that as the creator or manufacturer of the product you’ll get richer and faster because you have control.

Those who are in control, get rich.

If you are not in control you have to serve at the pleasure of those who are.

Harsh?

That’s reality.

Those who CREATE, MANUFACTURE and DEVELOP have an advantage over those who do not.

The only one’s more powerful are those who have mastered MARKETING. Those who CONTROL the process of moving what others have created, manufactured or developed into the hands of those who want them. That’s US

I digressed…

If you have your own product, or a product you have the rights to sell you’ll need a way to collect the money.

Many people use PayPal… including me.

Even though I have heard horror stories about PayPal shutting down accounts without warning, they are a good way to get started and I, personally, have never had a problem with them – even when I did $40,000+ in orders in a couple of days a few times.

Remember, those in control have power- and PayPal is the one who controls all PayPal accounts. So you deal with it. I keep very little money in my PayPal account for the reason I mentioned above. As soon as sales come in I sweep the money to my checking account at the end of each day.

As good as PayPal is, they may arbitrarily shut you down for ANY reason.

So why risk your money? Take it out and only keep a small balance for refunds, buying stuff, etc.

Clickbank.com and 2CO.com are good alternatives, and if I had to choose one I would go with Clickbank as my primary online payment processor IF I didn’t have an online merchant account because of CB’s built-in affiliate program and (almost) guaranteed payments.

There are other alternatives.

One that I found recently is extremely user friendly and even allows you to key in customer credit card numbers yourself which is great for mail order or phone-in orders. They have limits though: $3000 per month in processing. If you do more processing than that then you need to step up to a full merchant account with them.

I am not an affiliate… I have used them and like them: http://www.propay.com

3rd party processors are a good backup system even if you have your own merchant account.

I have three: PayPal, 2CO.com and ClickBank

Plus a merchant account.

Seems like overkill?

Not really.

If I ever lost one payment method I want to make sure I don’t lose one cent because I don’t have a processor to take payments.

Let’s move on…

Step 3 is getting traffic to your site.

Now that you have a product and a payment processor you need to generate traffic to your site so you can make some sales…

Despite the many, many products being sold as ‘secrets’ to getting traffic there are really only 2 ways to get traffic to your site:

1) Paid traffic, and 2) Un-paid traffic

“Paid traffic” includes PPC ads like Google AdWords, banner advertising, offline ads, direct mail, etc…

“Un-paid traffic” includes SEO (search engine optimization) techniques, viral ebook marketing, JV traffic-swapping techniques, press releases, article writing, etc…

There isn’t enough space in this message (or even 100 messages) to cover every single one of these techniques.

So instead, I’m going to give you an overview of the few techniques I have used to generate lots of traffic to my site… and some that I have seen others use that are, well, unique if not downright clever.

Let’s start with the most powerful, most exciting, instant traffic source you will ever have available to you that is 100% free and 100% targeted.

Most people, once they hear of this technique will immediately say, “wow, it’s so obvious! and incredible!“.

Most people KNOW about this traffic source but also totally take it for granted or think they know about it already… but, and this is a big “but” it is the most powerful method I have ever used to generate fast, targeted traffic.

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