Staying Healthy and Making Money Online

This is a rough time to be in the advertising business. Internet marketing is pushing it out of the way, people are way too overstimulated, nobody is spending and, of course, there’s that pesky recession to think about.

You may not have noticed, but this Google thing has become kind of a big deal. The company itself is worth somewhere around 200 billion dollars, and it’s continuing to grow. You may also notice that the company offers almost all of its services for free. That’s because most of those things aren’t really its business.

No, Google is in the advertising business, internet marketing style. What Google realized early on and profited immensely from is the fact that people are looking for stuff. Yes, I know this seems obvious, but give me a minute and I’ll explain.

There was a time when advertising was dominated by a few big companies, spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns to reach millions of people in the hopes that some percentage of those people, hopefully a large one but probably a small one, would actually buy their products. Google wasn’t really interested in those people.

Google realized that there were millions of businesses, and if they could offer lots of businesses lots of way to reach customers for pennies, they could make a lot of money. Billions. And since they knew that there were lots of people searching for lots of things, they were in a position to dominate the advertising business. Internet marketing wasn’t born with them, but it did grow with them.

This method of connecting hungry customers with ready businesses really is a revolution in the advertising business. Internet marketing means that you don’t have to fight with other advertisers trying to sift the great hordes of people who don’t want to listen to you to begin with, trying to find that one person who actually wants what you have.

There are two sides of internet marketing; finding that hungry customer, and building relationships. The hungry customer part is the obvious one. If someone is searching for a way to stop feline incontinence and you have a way to stop feline incontinence, then it should be obvious that rather than shouting to the masses about what you have, you should be talking with the person who already wants what you have. The internet allows you do this, usually for pennies.

The other aspect is not as obvious, although you almost certainly have seen it done. That’s the conversation side of it. If you use Amazon, you’ve seen one of the masters of this at work. Amazon doesn’t just sell to you; they make an effort to get to know you, to offer things they think you might like, to listen to what you’re saying. They don’t use an advertising business, internet marketing is what they use to get to the top.

You can do this, too. And you should do this too. You need to put a fence around your customers to stop them from wandering off, and to make sure you’re giving them what they want and need.

If you’re running an advertising business and want to survive all the problems you’re going to face, you need to be in the business of offering these new ways to clients, to show them how to find that hungry customer and keep them. You know what going to save your advertising business? Internet marketing.

The internet offers a chance for some of us to make an income from home and for the first time feel the freedom that not being an employee gives you. But the truth is many of us love our jobs and we would not feel secure without it.

I plan on retiring from my job and will need to make a bit more money than I will be getting as a retiree. You have to face the facts when they present themselves and the fact is we probably wont have enough money to support ourselves and there may no longer be a social security check to fall back on.

So that is why I am growing my internet business now and hope it holds up in the future. One way to do that is being diversified as possible and that is why I joined GVO.

GVO is short for Global Virtual Opportunities and is a site I stumble on when I started experimenting with safe lists. I am trying out a couple of safe lists and see if they can get me any subscribers. GVO is a great place to promote because it offers promotional materials targeted towards safe lists and Traffic Exchanges.

Both safe lists and traffic exchanges have made HUGE changes recently and that is making them more attractive for list building.

So look out for my next post when I will go more in depth about both of these.

For a quick lesson on what not to do – don’t put dates on your posts like I do and also never mention when it is in your headline. Unless of course you actually are able to post regularly which you can see I am not.

Is it just you trying to make some money online? Are you feeling alone? Does your family and friends think you are just wasting time? Still waiting for that first sale or even worse that second sale (me)?

If so then you are not alone because you have me sharing the pain. We didn’t think it would be easy but never expected it to be this hard.

I have officially been a self-proclaimed internet marketer for over 2 years and have yet to find the success that I am looking for. Does that discourage me? Honestly, sometimes but for me there is no other way to go. I actually think that I can make a full time income selling products on the internet.

What about you? Are you in the same proverbial boat? Do you have a goal of making money online that seems to allude you? What can we do about it? Many times I thought I had the answer only to get disappointed again.

So the next time you are online and feeling lonely then stop over here. Leave a comment or just read a post. But most of all know that you are not alone and that there is probably a small army of us.

With the economy sucking it is easy to fall back into the scarcity mentality and start doubting yourself. Leslie Householder says that hope is truly the poor man’s bread and if you can find that spark that gets you motivated that is all you need. I mean it is all pretty well summed up in one thought and that is:

IF YOU QUIT YOU WILL NEVER REALIZE YOUR DREAMS SO DON’T QUIT

I may never realize my goal but even if I don’t I can look myself straight in the eye knowing that I set a goal, wrote it down and never stopped trying to reach it. Like the billionaire said “All you can do, is all you can do” are you doing all you can do?

Today at Staying Healthy and Making Money Online:

The title of my post today comes from needing to run to the store to pick up “a few things” for my wife. Of course I had to get unmentionables, are you a newlywed?

Anyway I was thinking about all the traffic that may be on the road right now with people just running an errand for someone else. If you relate that to the traffic we get as internet marketers, I wonder how much is just people on the net doing an errand for someone else?

Would this  be traffic we would want to avoid? I doubt much shopping is done by this traffic and when it is on the internet I doubt they ever return if they do.

But, the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that we are happy with a sale or even a sign up no matter where it comes from.

When I think of driving traffic my mind instantly thinks of advertising which  would include PPC of course because I was trying that also. My first attempts at advertising were with the Ad sites like AdlandPro and USFreeAds.

Finding a stampede and getting in front of it and getting run over with sales is one of my favorite ways of thinking about internet marketing. This concept does not “drive” traffic but rather finds it and just gets in front of it.