Despite the hard lessons being taught many still believe that just having that one week of great sales will put them over the top. They don’t care that the refund rate is 25% or higher and that those who purchased are slamming them on the forums. “Who cares I got my money and I am out of here anyway”. Leaving behind more confusion among those trying to learn and the SE’s clamping down again.

While in the long run these will not hurt the legitimate guys and gals it still costs them in lost time when they need to go back and create even more great content and hope that their customers realize that it is not you they need to avoid.

So are there any examples of selling without selling. Some TV commercials come to mind like the Bud Weiser commercials where tho horses are playing football and then going way back is the Burger King commercial where they would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. These are not as subtle as some of the examples I have come across but it will give you an idea of what we are looking for.

Deep down we know we are being sold when we see any commercial because that is what we are told from a very young age. A company pays the TV stations or a network money to run their advertisements selling the companies products. So when we see a company like Burger King or Nike on TV we expect that we are watching an advertisement and you almost instinctively look for the “pitch”.

I have to agree with many who have said that there is really no such thing as selling without selling but more likely finding the best way to demonstrate the benefits of your product.

So to begin I added it as a sub page under my Staying Healthy page.

I have not had a chance to do much since signing up but I have watched a few of the videos and they compliment my Total Fitness workouts quite nicely. Of course I will still use my heart rate to monitor my activity level so I will know if I need to go harder or ease up.

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.

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.

Oh well we are learning soooo much and putting it to use that I can’t see any reason not to continue trying to pass it along.

You may remember in some previous posts I was starting a tutorial on putting up a free website and selling the product you just created from all the PLR you purchased or downloaded from a free PLR site.

What makes this different from all the other people out there trying to teach you how to make money online? I am going to let the product drive the campaign. Where you are normally asked “What do you like to do?” or “What are your hobbies?” or, what gave rise to this whole notion, “What is your passion?”.

What I decided to do is let the product I choose decide my passion. I do this as an affiliate but I need my own product. I think money can be made without your own product but for me having my own will give me the leverage that I feel that I need.

So starting with the next post I will begin my Tutorial on dusting off those PDF and ZIP files, randomly choosing one and then deciding if you can make money online with your choice.

I have a great quote to share with you today and I will incorporate this with my little tutorial, somehow.

“Cheerfulness is the atmosphere in which all things thrive.” Johann Paul Richter

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?

I am not sure what problem I should tackle first as I have several. These problems are totally unrelated to making money online and that is probably why I don’t want to tackle them.

These problems sit on my shoulder and cause me to lose what little confidence I have and are the sole contributor to my hitting the wall and feeling unable to move. Like being in a vehicle teetering on a mountain ledge I am frozen and afraid that the wrong move will plummet me into the abyss.

I read a post from a gentlemen the other day admitting that he was addicted to Internet Marketing. All I can say is welcome. I think he is in better shape than I am as he has made money. That seems to allude me.

I am waiting for the last bit of my affiliate earnings to disappear from my Clickbank account.  If you have ever made a sale on Clickbank and then could not make any more, you know what I am talking about. About the 6th month in you start seeing your commission start to go down due to fees.

The only thing that I could think of was that I would hate to be close to getting paid and then the sales stopped. My sales stopped after only one sale so I was spared that at least.

Well tomorrow I shall have to pick myself up, dust myself off, listen to Winner Words at least once or twice and then jump back into the Internet Marketing fray. The thought of making money online is addictive and I am just another junkie loving every minute.

As for the non Internet Marketing tasks I will pick one and do the following:

• Write down the task so that I can fully understand what needs done.
• Make an inventory list of what information, tools and supplies that I need.
• Take stock of what I already have so that I don’t waste money purchasing something twice.
• Break the task down into smaller tasks.
• Get Started

As you can tell I do have the basics down for getting things done. My problem is in finding the motivation to actually do them. This is because my only motivation at the moment is to be online and be successful at affiliate marketing and creating my own product. Nuff said.

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.

OK I have my pages back. You have to mouse over the Pages tab at the top left and all of the pages will appear.

With all my time constraints I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this Suffusion template.

When you go to the “Appearance” selection you see a selection under Themes that says Suffusion options and when you click on that you get this

Welcome to Suffusion! But first…
DON’T PANIC!!

The words “DON’T PANIC” are Huge much larger than I am showing here. Much larger. I wonder if I should panic anyway?

So, bear with me as I slog through all this information and do some experimentation. Perhaps you noticed a minor change I made to my site today but not if you’re a first timer so just pretend not to notice if you were here recently.

Just got the keys to my brand new WordPress template and it has so much functionality that I need you to bear with me while I get used to the controls.

I hope I don’t put it in the ditch by giving it too much gas.

Once I can maneuver around without hitting anything I will create a post to show you how easy it is to get your own website up and running with WordPress.

Did you notice all my pages are gone.