The Digital Marketing/Internet Marketing Data sheet:
A few years ago there was this site that I will not reference directly. It is a site for would be aspiring digital marketers but is mostly annoying idiots asking how to make monies. They come out with a wide selection of software and in the private section occasionally some pretty crazy stuff. I was fairly young at the time and got in with a creator of one of these crazy softwares. I talked to him about what he was working on and strangely he would tell me everything. He had created a software that whether a user came to your site and clicked on your ad or not, it would basically “stuff” a cookie into their browser for an affiliate program. He happened to sell it to people that began doing it with massive sites and with the biggest affiliate programs out there. People were making $50,000-$150,000 a month or some other ridiculous number. Well, one major affiliate program did not like this, and for the first time in affiliate marketing/digital marketing history, the criminal courts got involved but more importantly the feds. The owner was of a site called digital point and good lord was he making money as their biggest affiliate. Long story short, he got fucked over some, the software designer did too, and the whole thing hit the fan. This was when things really started making a transition from do whatever to make money in the industry to developing businesses.
There are people in digital marketing that have been in since the porn revolution making money. I have stories of guys doing anything and everything to make a buck, some were pretending to be girls and talking to creeps on chat sites for $300-$500 a day by getting them to sign up for dating sites. Some were pumping craigslist for every dime they could using auto posting software paired with companies that paid for leads coming to their site. Some were making $1000-$2000 a day bullshitting.
Now it’s a real industry whereas before it was somewhat underground and as a result it has lead to developments most people would have never dreamed of.
Internet Marketing/Digital Marketing is the use of technology to connect through a variety of methods with potential customers/consumers by using devices as an advertisement platform. Previously, through radio and tv for the most part advertising was expensive and ROI/conversion was limited due to what I like to call “shit at the wall marketing”. Why do I call it that? Basically imagine attempting to hit a target by taking a hand full of shit and seeing how it spreads if some lands on the target. Companies large and small were spending ridiculous amounts on attempting to connect with their target demographic who would either be interested in their product or brand. The issue was that large companies with large budgets made it hard for smaller companies to sneak in and compete on the same level and everyone was invariably wasting a lot of money incidentally targeting people who really wasn’t interested nor even knew someone who would be in their product.
Digital marketing which relies heavily on research/data and optimization in a way that before would have been impossible is like sniper marketing. If you have a few shots that can only hit your target, with proper research you are able to hit your target not just accurately with your ad but in some cases just when they are in the buying mood. Lead generation campaigns can be successful within a week or two with constantly updating lists and ever more in-depth data. Whereas before it was difficult to access say: White Males between the age of 23-30 that like basketball, boxing, and japanese swords that talk about traveling often these days it’s much easier to not only capture their lead information but put them through a sales funnel that will ensure a longer customer lifetime value than ever.
What’s customer lifetime value? Basically, if you go into a store 10 miles from your house and buy a product that ended up sucking and never go back again you had a very short customer lifetime value for that store. If however you go into a store once but because of coupon deals or the fact you like the store layout and product selection daily or weekly for say a year or two that’s a strong and decent length lifetime value. In the first scenario you were only worth $6 in the second you were worth $2,000. Website/Digital Businesses operate the same way. For instance, Roosh’s forum has a great retention rate because it’s a community that is thriving with useful information and constantly developing for free. But we’ll get back to that later. Long story short, these days you can make a lot more money for a lot less for a lot longer.
Three different profiles with slight details changed:
Three profiles of people I know in the digital marketing world to give you a perspective on how varied your money making pursuits can be in this industry.
“David” is a 27 year old serial product developer. First, he or his partner researches popular trends within social media as well as read reddit and other online communities to see what issues people have that they can either research it, interview an expert, or copy and remake other products to be the solution. Then, they research websites that they can either buy ad placement on or can become established well enough to put their product in the mix to gain traffic and eventual purchases. They also build a list of keywords that they can target through google ads as well as SEO to gain more traffic, whether buying keywords (keywords people type in when they want to purchase something obviously) or research keywords (these usually become leads you have to nurture). They may or may not create a landing page and a simple lead capture form, basically a call to action (Subscribe for a free ebook on _____) with open space for email, age, name, a few clickable interests and then save their data. They might do a test traffic run to see if people would be interested. Once they have something, they hire a ghostwriter to use their research mixed with their own as well as the other products found available into one product. Whether an ebook or a series of short videos with an instruction manual. They then create a focus group to read it and see their thoughts on it. Once done, they find all the available market places possible and commence with either marketing it themselves and throughout this process of prospecting sites, setting up traffic and list exchanges etc. etc. they are cutting into their time. With proper work and focus, after launch they can make anywhere from $5-45k depending on if they hustled. They can accomplish all of this in a month or two with the help of VAs or less, and the beauty is after the product starts to die down in traffic, you can either keep developing new campaigns to market it or flip it for 4-10 months profit to someone else who will run it.
“Kenneth” has money but no time. He is a serial investor. He joins forums and with his partner who has all the time but no money: buys either developed or slightly developed websites or partners with their owners and his partner monetizes the sites, develops a community based around it, adds in loads of fresh content, fixes site load speed time (this is important for visitor retention as well as ranking) and basically just pumps his expertise into it. They all split the proceeds 35-35-30 and as Kenneth and his partner build up a portfolio of these ventures they are able to spend more on writers/managing the sites and collecting their proceeds.
“Qatar” enjoy managing people. With a small investment from a friend he operates a simple digital marketing firm out of his mother’s basement. He is young and still in college. He has been a SEO specialist for several years. He gains clients that he or his outsourcing team handle and essentially cold calls businesses or through referrals or direct mailing gains and closes clients and gets contracts from $1-3k one time or monthly which half of is spent on tools/team members. It sounds small but overtime it grows and can become a decent income after time investment.
The Diversity Of the Industry
You can't ask objectively the easiest way to make money. Everyone has a different situation. Some are good at writing, some are solid with numbers.
In addition to those profiles above, there are people who specialize, in web development, product design/development, site flipping, lead generation, site monetization optimization, media buying, cost per click advertising, content marketing, the list goes on. How you choose to make money within digital marketing is dependent on three things.
How much time do you have a week?
What resources do you have at your disposal?
Are you better at organization and managing talent/workers or are you able to work more efficiently predominantly self sufficient?
If you don’t have time, chances are you have some money, if you do, consider joint ventures. The issue is do your due diligence or get fucked. It’s that sample. It’s a risk, but if you ensure you know who you are talking to and the person is willing to be transparent you in many cases are fine. If you have time but no money, either get a job at mcdonalds until you can put aside a few hundred to start with because contrary to popular belief, you may be able to possibly start from nothing but the upward climb is much much worse. Compared to starting with $500-$1k, it’s like without the money you are starting with 30 pound balls on each leg and you have to climb with just your arms upward versus having a goddamn batman grappling hook.
The four hats
BlackHat
Whitehat
Bluehat
Greyhat
These are not something I really feel like explaining right now but it used to basically mean: Blackhat was more creative, but they were more focused on spamming/quick cash type deals that would only last so long. Never illegal, just unethical or temporary money as the methods never lasted long enough.
Whitehat is more straight shooting, it’s the much much harder route but it is long term solid as long as you diversify. Basically, doing seo along with google guidelines, not twisting anything, sort of just trying to ensure there are no repercussions to your sites or campaigns.
Greyhat: a mix of the two, most people fall in this category that are successful
Bluehat: The best, they are creative, slightly bend the rules, incorporate the best of white hat by ensuring long term ranking and development for their sites as well as somehow being able to turn sites profitable rather quickly comparatively. As well as just being on top of new developments.
The background:
I have been involved with digital marketing for years. Up until I left college, I had a lot of success as well as ALOT of failure. I was lazy, and whenever I would make money I would get bored and change what my focus was. This is good because it made me pretty diverse but it was bad because consistency is everything. So many times I halfassed things that should never have been just because I was lazy. And despite the fact you can work out of great locations or your bedroom in your underwear, that is simply not the way to do it if you want to be successful long term. it’s a business like any other business and you have to treat it like one.
The training:
Don’t buy shit. Most courses and products you can find for free. Go bookmark AffBuzz, you’ll learn more from affiliate marketing industry news and free articles than you will really from courses. Join a few forums. Ask questions here or there. But above all, DO NOT buy anything. Your best bet is to try things, and make mistakes. Also checkout IMGrind as another great free resource. Find a mentor. And again, buying a domain and hosting and doing keyword research and just hammering things out initially will help you tremendously if you are one of the people trying to do it totally on your own. You will learn a lot more than by just reading and reading.
The top eight tools I use:
This will depend on your focus but a few that I use/have used and just do a simple google search for what they do:
Scrapebox: Linkbuilding software but more importantly scraper and all around kick ass tool.
Optimizely
Crazy Egg
Google Analytics
Wordpress as a CMS: basically what holds your website/the platform it’s built on. It’s flexible and simple to use
Term Explorer: “Keyword research tool”
Google Drive (Organizing things as well as sharing with others)
Hootsuite for Reputaton Management (It helps centralize social media)
I’ll post part 2 in a about an hour. Need to go get lunch.
I’ll go over systems vs. methods. How to get started. Five Donts. And More resources for reading. Feel free to ask any questions.
Ciao!
A few years ago there was this site that I will not reference directly. It is a site for would be aspiring digital marketers but is mostly annoying idiots asking how to make monies. They come out with a wide selection of software and in the private section occasionally some pretty crazy stuff. I was fairly young at the time and got in with a creator of one of these crazy softwares. I talked to him about what he was working on and strangely he would tell me everything. He had created a software that whether a user came to your site and clicked on your ad or not, it would basically “stuff” a cookie into their browser for an affiliate program. He happened to sell it to people that began doing it with massive sites and with the biggest affiliate programs out there. People were making $50,000-$150,000 a month or some other ridiculous number. Well, one major affiliate program did not like this, and for the first time in affiliate marketing/digital marketing history, the criminal courts got involved but more importantly the feds. The owner was of a site called digital point and good lord was he making money as their biggest affiliate. Long story short, he got fucked over some, the software designer did too, and the whole thing hit the fan. This was when things really started making a transition from do whatever to make money in the industry to developing businesses.
There are people in digital marketing that have been in since the porn revolution making money. I have stories of guys doing anything and everything to make a buck, some were pretending to be girls and talking to creeps on chat sites for $300-$500 a day by getting them to sign up for dating sites. Some were pumping craigslist for every dime they could using auto posting software paired with companies that paid for leads coming to their site. Some were making $1000-$2000 a day bullshitting.
Now it’s a real industry whereas before it was somewhat underground and as a result it has lead to developments most people would have never dreamed of.
Internet Marketing/Digital Marketing is the use of technology to connect through a variety of methods with potential customers/consumers by using devices as an advertisement platform. Previously, through radio and tv for the most part advertising was expensive and ROI/conversion was limited due to what I like to call “shit at the wall marketing”. Why do I call it that? Basically imagine attempting to hit a target by taking a hand full of shit and seeing how it spreads if some lands on the target. Companies large and small were spending ridiculous amounts on attempting to connect with their target demographic who would either be interested in their product or brand. The issue was that large companies with large budgets made it hard for smaller companies to sneak in and compete on the same level and everyone was invariably wasting a lot of money incidentally targeting people who really wasn’t interested nor even knew someone who would be in their product.
Digital marketing which relies heavily on research/data and optimization in a way that before would have been impossible is like sniper marketing. If you have a few shots that can only hit your target, with proper research you are able to hit your target not just accurately with your ad but in some cases just when they are in the buying mood. Lead generation campaigns can be successful within a week or two with constantly updating lists and ever more in-depth data. Whereas before it was difficult to access say: White Males between the age of 23-30 that like basketball, boxing, and japanese swords that talk about traveling often these days it’s much easier to not only capture their lead information but put them through a sales funnel that will ensure a longer customer lifetime value than ever.
What’s customer lifetime value? Basically, if you go into a store 10 miles from your house and buy a product that ended up sucking and never go back again you had a very short customer lifetime value for that store. If however you go into a store once but because of coupon deals or the fact you like the store layout and product selection daily or weekly for say a year or two that’s a strong and decent length lifetime value. In the first scenario you were only worth $6 in the second you were worth $2,000. Website/Digital Businesses operate the same way. For instance, Roosh’s forum has a great retention rate because it’s a community that is thriving with useful information and constantly developing for free. But we’ll get back to that later. Long story short, these days you can make a lot more money for a lot less for a lot longer.
Three different profiles with slight details changed:
Three profiles of people I know in the digital marketing world to give you a perspective on how varied your money making pursuits can be in this industry.
“David” is a 27 year old serial product developer. First, he or his partner researches popular trends within social media as well as read reddit and other online communities to see what issues people have that they can either research it, interview an expert, or copy and remake other products to be the solution. Then, they research websites that they can either buy ad placement on or can become established well enough to put their product in the mix to gain traffic and eventual purchases. They also build a list of keywords that they can target through google ads as well as SEO to gain more traffic, whether buying keywords (keywords people type in when they want to purchase something obviously) or research keywords (these usually become leads you have to nurture). They may or may not create a landing page and a simple lead capture form, basically a call to action (Subscribe for a free ebook on _____) with open space for email, age, name, a few clickable interests and then save their data. They might do a test traffic run to see if people would be interested. Once they have something, they hire a ghostwriter to use their research mixed with their own as well as the other products found available into one product. Whether an ebook or a series of short videos with an instruction manual. They then create a focus group to read it and see their thoughts on it. Once done, they find all the available market places possible and commence with either marketing it themselves and throughout this process of prospecting sites, setting up traffic and list exchanges etc. etc. they are cutting into their time. With proper work and focus, after launch they can make anywhere from $5-45k depending on if they hustled. They can accomplish all of this in a month or two with the help of VAs or less, and the beauty is after the product starts to die down in traffic, you can either keep developing new campaigns to market it or flip it for 4-10 months profit to someone else who will run it.
“Kenneth” has money but no time. He is a serial investor. He joins forums and with his partner who has all the time but no money: buys either developed or slightly developed websites or partners with their owners and his partner monetizes the sites, develops a community based around it, adds in loads of fresh content, fixes site load speed time (this is important for visitor retention as well as ranking) and basically just pumps his expertise into it. They all split the proceeds 35-35-30 and as Kenneth and his partner build up a portfolio of these ventures they are able to spend more on writers/managing the sites and collecting their proceeds.
“Qatar” enjoy managing people. With a small investment from a friend he operates a simple digital marketing firm out of his mother’s basement. He is young and still in college. He has been a SEO specialist for several years. He gains clients that he or his outsourcing team handle and essentially cold calls businesses or through referrals or direct mailing gains and closes clients and gets contracts from $1-3k one time or monthly which half of is spent on tools/team members. It sounds small but overtime it grows and can become a decent income after time investment.
The Diversity Of the Industry
You can't ask objectively the easiest way to make money. Everyone has a different situation. Some are good at writing, some are solid with numbers.
In addition to those profiles above, there are people who specialize, in web development, product design/development, site flipping, lead generation, site monetization optimization, media buying, cost per click advertising, content marketing, the list goes on. How you choose to make money within digital marketing is dependent on three things.
How much time do you have a week?
What resources do you have at your disposal?
Are you better at organization and managing talent/workers or are you able to work more efficiently predominantly self sufficient?
If you don’t have time, chances are you have some money, if you do, consider joint ventures. The issue is do your due diligence or get fucked. It’s that sample. It’s a risk, but if you ensure you know who you are talking to and the person is willing to be transparent you in many cases are fine. If you have time but no money, either get a job at mcdonalds until you can put aside a few hundred to start with because contrary to popular belief, you may be able to possibly start from nothing but the upward climb is much much worse. Compared to starting with $500-$1k, it’s like without the money you are starting with 30 pound balls on each leg and you have to climb with just your arms upward versus having a goddamn batman grappling hook.
The four hats
BlackHat
Whitehat
Bluehat
Greyhat
These are not something I really feel like explaining right now but it used to basically mean: Blackhat was more creative, but they were more focused on spamming/quick cash type deals that would only last so long. Never illegal, just unethical or temporary money as the methods never lasted long enough.
Whitehat is more straight shooting, it’s the much much harder route but it is long term solid as long as you diversify. Basically, doing seo along with google guidelines, not twisting anything, sort of just trying to ensure there are no repercussions to your sites or campaigns.
Greyhat: a mix of the two, most people fall in this category that are successful
Bluehat: The best, they are creative, slightly bend the rules, incorporate the best of white hat by ensuring long term ranking and development for their sites as well as somehow being able to turn sites profitable rather quickly comparatively. As well as just being on top of new developments.
The background:
I have been involved with digital marketing for years. Up until I left college, I had a lot of success as well as ALOT of failure. I was lazy, and whenever I would make money I would get bored and change what my focus was. This is good because it made me pretty diverse but it was bad because consistency is everything. So many times I halfassed things that should never have been just because I was lazy. And despite the fact you can work out of great locations or your bedroom in your underwear, that is simply not the way to do it if you want to be successful long term. it’s a business like any other business and you have to treat it like one.
The training:
Don’t buy shit. Most courses and products you can find for free. Go bookmark AffBuzz, you’ll learn more from affiliate marketing industry news and free articles than you will really from courses. Join a few forums. Ask questions here or there. But above all, DO NOT buy anything. Your best bet is to try things, and make mistakes. Also checkout IMGrind as another great free resource. Find a mentor. And again, buying a domain and hosting and doing keyword research and just hammering things out initially will help you tremendously if you are one of the people trying to do it totally on your own. You will learn a lot more than by just reading and reading.
The top eight tools I use:
This will depend on your focus but a few that I use/have used and just do a simple google search for what they do:
Scrapebox: Linkbuilding software but more importantly scraper and all around kick ass tool.
Optimizely
Crazy Egg
Google Analytics
Wordpress as a CMS: basically what holds your website/the platform it’s built on. It’s flexible and simple to use
Term Explorer: “Keyword research tool”
Google Drive (Organizing things as well as sharing with others)
Hootsuite for Reputaton Management (It helps centralize social media)
I’ll post part 2 in a about an hour. Need to go get lunch.
I’ll go over systems vs. methods. How to get started. Five Donts. And More resources for reading. Feel free to ask any questions.
Ciao!