Signing Your Life Away

Part 13: A Sense of Belonging.

There are two words that anyone who teaches Internet marketing tends to over use (me included!): ‘simply’ and ‘just’.

Yes, both words apply when the person you are teaching has a little experience, but for someone who has never built a web page, never sold anything online and is totally new to this often arcane world of contra-intuitive processes and seemingly meaningless technobabble, ‘simply’ ‘just’ doesn’t hack it.

So in today’s installment I’ll try to avoid both words.

This part is called ‘a sense of belonging’ because when you first start out in Internet marketing, there are a surprising number of things you need to join. Things that the more experienced of us take for granted.

Note that there is a big difference between someone who has a blog and someone who makes money online. A regular blogger is not a marketer. He or she is a diarist of sorts, a journal keeper, a writer. For many, ‘being online’ is an end in itself. Making money from the endeavour is not required.

But as soon as you want to start making money from your blog (or website) – you have to start joining things.

For example, the fastest way to make a few cents here and there is by putting AdSense on your site. But that entails opening an account with Google.

Want to track your site’s visitors? Google again – this time their Analytics program.

GadgetSpots, the new viral classified ad network that I’ve been using, promoting and profiting from recently is another thing that you may want to sign up for.

Maybe you want to sell a special report that you’ve written from your blog pages? Then you will need to have a way to take the money when people buy. Another signup – this time to PayPal, perhaps.

Do you think other people might be interested in offering your book for sale to their readers? Then you need to sign up for an affiliate program. ClickBank or PayDotCom are the ones that most Internet marketers use, but there are other choices if you look around.

If you are serious about learning the ropes of Internet marketing, you will certainly benefit from joining a few online forums, like the Warriors Forum, for example.

Perhaps you know of a great ebook by someone else that would appeal to your blog’s audience and would like to offer it to them for a cut of the price? That’s called affiliate marketing and yes, you’ll have to sign up to the vendor’s affiliate program. That may well be ClickBank or PayDotCom, but it is increasingly likely to be an in-house private affiliate management system.

Once you’ve done these things for yourself, you know that they are no big deal. None of them is hard and most only need to be done once. But if you’ve never done them before, it really doesn’t matter how many times people like me tell you that they are easy, they still loom in front of you like icebergs in the fog.

I know people with great ideas to offer, who have written superb ebooks, but who never get past first base because the idea of opening an account at PayPal or ClickBank is too hard for them to endure. But note I said the ‘idea’ is too hard. The blockage is often in their own fear of officialdom, and not based on any reality of procedural complexity.

As a well-known sporting goods manufacturer is fond of saying, ‘Just do it!’ (Darn, I used the ‘J’ word!)

If you have enjoyed this article, please social bookmark it!:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.