I am preparing some material for the I Rock! program, and one thing that I will teach over and over again is some basic internet marketing.
I think this material will be useful to many, so I’m sharing it here. Feel free to steal it, and use it for your own secret project to conquer the world.
The first rule of internet marketing: build something remarkable
Here’s the first rule of internet marketing: create something that stands out.
It doesn’t matter if you are creating a web application, selling a product, or you simply have a blog where you share your experiences, create something that stands out.
The secret is to create something remarkable.
You can only create something remarkable by creating something that’s different.
You know, we don’t pay attention to boring things, or something that has been done over and over again, but we do like new things, or new ways to solve a problem.
So how do you create something that’s different?
In order to create something that’s different, you don’t have to meet expectations.
If everyone expects a product to behave in a certain way, they’ll notice if you’re doing it differently.
Your brain loves to learn new things, and by exposing it to unexpected events you’ll feed its curiosity, and as a bonus you’ll feel smarter at the same time.
Don’t expect everyone to be happy with your product tough. Not everyone likes to use google, or the ipod, and certainly not everyone will always agree with everything you have to say.
The second rule of internet marketing: it’s not about you!
I have to thank Kathy Sierra for opening my eyes. Repeat after me: It’s not about you, it’s only about how your users will feel as a result of interacting with your product or service.
Don’t build a business around you. Create something for your users instead, something that when they’ll visit your website their only reaction will be: “Holy shit, this is fucking great!”.
If your users think that they rock as a result of using your product or service, then you’ll need no marketing at all, because they will do everything for you.
Don’t underestimate the power of this rule. Most people are not willing to reveal all their secrets, yet that’s often what they really want to know. Give it. Teach them everything you know about your subject and make sure it’s in a format suitable for them, not for you.
Work smart, but don’t forget to work
Note: this last part of the article is exclusively about article marketing, but it’s still an interesting read.
Do you know why most people fail to make money with affiliate marketing? Because they don’t follow the instructions of course.
This chart represent how you should approach affiliate marketing (but not only that). I know I’m not an expert at it, but the process is always the same, and my point is not about making money per se anyway.
Each of those steps is crucial, and your success depends completely on how you implement those steps.
Especially the first, find something you love, is vital. Without that, how can you create something remarkable?
If you ignore that first step, you’ll end up like me, deleting all your websites like I did on the last month, simply because you didn’t give a fuck about them. Don’t repeat my mistake, you are smarter than me.
Assuming you can find something you love, doing the work is where 90% of people will fail (but not you). If you want to see some results, you have to work hard, every day. If you choose to promote your website through article marketing for example, you have to write at least 5-10 articles per day, every day, if you want to see real results.
After three months of 10 articles per day, you’ll have done the incredible job of creating 900 articles for your website (who ever thought of that to be possible?). It’s there that you can start to see if what you are doing works or not.
You may wondering why you need to automate/delegate, but it’s simple. Let’s say that your 900 articles brings you 100 visitors per day, and only one of them will make you $10. That means in one month you can only make $300 (before taxes). It’s no surprise then that you need to automate or delegate, unless you can live comfortably with $300 dollars per month of course.
But hey, that is what everyone else is doing, you can always do it differently.
And I would like to add, do it differently. Find a way to offer real value to your customers, and maybe they will be more likely to come to your website on their own without you having to create tens of promotional articles per day.
Conclusion
Does the world need yet another (insert common product or service)? Yes, if you can make something that stands out and improves our lives. I doubt that the world needed facebook when we already had myspace, but now it’s number one in the world. And it’s the same with many other things.