WHY I MADE NOTHING MY FIRST 6 MONTHS OF INTERNET MARKETING
I was just like everyone else when I first started trying to make money online. I didn’t have a clue so I read other blogs like John Chow and Yaro Starak and thought they had the right formula: start blogging and get famous and the money will start coming in. It may work for them but they are wasting your time trying to make you believe you have a chance too. They make money from duping you in and charging you for overpriced membership programs (Starak) and tons of affiliate products (Chow).
For my first 6 to 9 months, a $100 month would be a great month for me. And with all the time I was spending blogging, trying to get paid for surveys, and trying different ways to make money, a $100 was probably the same as $1.00 an hour. I was clueless. I made some money at CashCrate and sites like it but I knew that referring people was the best way to make money but I didn’t know how to get the traffic.
Now days there are all sorts of other diversions and time wasters that weren’t there when I started. You have Facebook and now the whole Internet world trying to tell you that you should be making money on Twitter. In my opinion that is bullshit and people are sheep. Of course some people are making money but the liklihood you can is very low.
I didn’t make money for my first 6 months because I didn’t understand that I needed targeted traffic and not just any traffic. If you want to make money you need to sell something and then find the people who are looking to buy what you are selling. If you are selling computers online, you need to find people who are looking to buy computers. Whatever you are selling, you need to find people that are interested in specifically what you are trying to sell.
If you are trying to make money with CashCrate referrals, you need to find people who are LOOKING for ways to make money. Period. Any other type of person is NOT going to convert. Having lots of followers on Twitter is NOT GOING TO CONVERT INTO CASHCRATE REFERRALS. Period again.
You hear that social media is the wave of the future and that you should be all over it making money. You hear about traffic exchanges and all sorts of other things to get more traffic to your blogs. If only you had traffic! But until you learn how to get TARGETED TRAFFIC, you won’t make a dime.
Keep chasing that social media and hanging around the forums hoping for the big secret. It won’t get you anywhere but you can keep doing it. Most of what you really need to know is right here on this blog if you will just take the time to read it.
I’ve been coming to your site off and on for a while now and have read quite a number of posts, but I got to say this one really stood out from the rest and I totally agree with you and what you are saying.
The mistake I find a lot of new people make is that they spend 1 hour on making their blog and then expect the traffic to come rolling in, but this is simply not the case and most often they then turn to alternative forms of traffic, such as traffic exchanges as you mentioned. I have tried this and I know it doesn’t work from experience, I have also tried advertising on paid to read email sites, which provide incredibly cheap advertising but the problem still exists and that the traffic isn’t targeted or better yet I like to call it unqualified visitors.
It’s all about the search engine traffic in my opinion, people are searching for something specific eg. “getting paid online” if that is what your site is about and is informative then you are very likely to turn that visitor into a conversion, this forms the very basics of affiliate marketing and can lead people into a very profitable online income.
I would like to ask you though and I apologise if you have already wrote about this and I have missed it, but do you think pay per click advertising such as adwords and facebook etc is worth while in trying to get traffic and conversions or are you more in favor of letting search engines provide the traffic to you?
Great post,
Adam
Adam,
I have never dabbled in PPC and I don’t participate in Facebook and hardly any Twitter so unfortunately, I am not much help there. I know that PPC can be tricky and you can lose a lot if you are not careful so go slowly with that if you try it.
Ok, so what is the way to get Targeted Traffic? I have read writing EZine Articles can be a way, I have a few myself, but it is expensive to keep writing articles with them. Can I be successful in writing one article and using Blog Comment Demon 2 to get targeted traffic?
I have used PPC advertising myself and it has helped with getting Cashcrate referrals, and there really isn’t any businesses in my area that excepts soliciting so I can hand out flyers to people. What is a good way to get targeted traffic? I have read numoruous sites on this and they all say about the same as what you say.
This whole blog is about getting targeted traffic. Pick keywords, get anchored links, and keep getting links until you reach the first page in Google. “how to bake a cake” is a keyword phrase that is NOT targeted and won’t make you money. “how to make money” is a keyord phrase that will make you money.
“Franksite1″ is a keyword that will not make you a dime in 1000 years.