Are You A Quitter?

By Terry Dean

Are You Going to be a Quitter?

This should be a required question for all budding entrepreneurs.

Are you going to Quit if you don't succeed at first?

If we remove all of the Internet Hype you hear every day and reveal to you the cold hard facts about success online, can you handle it?

I talk to hundreds of people every week by email and I keep finding a common thread. The ones who are the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who failed the most times but refused to quit.

As a matter of fact, I have yet to meet anyone who has told me every ad they placed worked and that every time they tried something it made money. With as many people as I deal with, you would expect that I would have met that individual by now. It hasn't happened yet.

Everyone has their failures. Everyone has their ads that didn't work. Everyone had their product that bombed. Everyone had their mistakes.

Another aspect that has held true though is that those who refused to quit were the ones who were now making money from their businesses.

If they started a business...and then took a systematic approach to finding out what worked for their business, it didn't matter how many times they failed. They would eventually find out what worked.

Notice that I said the successful ones were "systematic" in their approach to their business though.

Many marketers are taking a "random" approach to their Internet businesses. They are searching for anything that might all of sudden catapult them to Internet success.

They say to everyone around them, "Maybe this company might just be it, or maybe this type of ad might work, or maybe I am just in the wrong business."

If you acting like a "random" marketer, you are definitely cruising down the road of failure.

Successful marketers don't act randomly. They follow a plan. They test the ads. They track the ads. They compare the ads. They know exactly how much money was made with every penny they spend.

You cannot jump from one ad type to another and keep looking for the "magic bullet" if you want to create the business you dream of on the Internet.

Don't be an advertising quitter. Select a type of Internet advertising and keep working it and tested it until you make it successful for you. If you have a nice sized ad budget, you might select two types of ads to try, but never do more than this at one time.

Below I am going to give you 5 types of Internet Advertising that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt can work for you if you apply yourself to them.

Instead of randomly jumping here and there trying to find out how to find success, select ONE of these techniques and start applying yourself to it until it starts working for you.

Test different ads with it. Test different places to advertise with it. Test different web pages to bring your prospects to. Test different follow-up systems on your prospects. Consider having a professional write your ad for you.

Above all though, don't quit!

Look at each of these proven Internet marketing techniques and decide which one is right for you, your business, and your budget. Then, start testing it...and don't ever quit using it.

1. Classified Ads in Ezines

This is a method that has helped many small businesses start building online. Because of the quick lead time and the low cost of placing these types of ads, it is a great choice for those who have a small budget.

You can start off by advertising in a couple of targeted ezines for your market that are known to be proven winners. Ask some people in message boards or newsgroups which ezines they have advertised in and made money from.

Use a systematic approach though. Create 2 or 3 good classified ads and try each of them in the ezine one after another and see which one pulls in the most leads for you.

Use an automated follow-up system where you can get several autoresponders and have the leads each going to a separate autoresponder.

Track which one works the best for you. If one of the ads shows up as extremely profitable, then keep running it in that ezine and add 3 - 5 more ezines to your advertising with that same ad. Test them each with separate autoresponders. Never stop tracking your ads.

If none of the ads produces a profitable result for you, try them in a different ezine which has been recommended to you by others. Or try having a classified ad written for you by a professional ad writer.

Don't consider quitting an option.

Also, consider in all of these advertising methods, your web site and/or follow-up system need to be created with as much motivating ad copy as possible. Most people will need to purchase and study some good books on ad copy to figure out how to write a letter that can sell.

2. Networking Online

If you have absolutely NO money at all, you may want to consider networking your way to success online. Simply start participating in discussions online by asking questions and posting helpful answers to other people's questions.

This can be done in discussion groups, newsgroups, or mailing lists. To find the right groups to participate in, create several keywords you would use to find your type of business, and use these three search engines:

For Discussion Groups, use http://www.forumone.com
For Newsgroups, use http://www.dejanews.com
For Mailing Lists, use http://www.liszt.com

Once you have found 5 - 10 active groups on your subject, start participating. Note: I did not say advertise. Most of these groups have very strict policies regarding advertising.

You can discuss, but you can't advertise.

Set up a daily system where you visit all of your selected groups and make it a practice to post to at least a couple of the groups each day. Become a participant that people recognize there.

At the same time, include a link to a page on your site where people reading your message can read more about your products or services.

The way to best track your results would be to set up separate sales pages on your site for each group you participate in. For example: you may have 10 pages on your site selling the same product...but you know which group you mentioned it in. Then, when you check your web site stats, you can know where the people are coming from.

The advantage of marketing this way is that you won't be spending any money...the disadvantage is that there really isn't any way to roll out a major marketing campaign when you find a winner.

3. Banner Advertising

If you can get banner advertising to work for your product or service, then you might have just found the largest cash flow online.

Once you have a banner advertising campaign that is making money for you, it is very easy to expand it out with thousands of targeted sites which are available with banner advertising space. This is the most plenteous type of advertising available so it is the easiest one to roll out major campaigns on once you find the winning combination.

The problem is that banner advertising can often be the most difficult form of advertising to create a successful campaign in. The average click-through rate on banner ads is 1/2 a percent...which means you get one click through for every 200 impressions.

There are some very easy ways to increase your click-through rates by using "trick" banners...which we cover in other articles at http://www.bizpromo.com/free

To run your banner campaign, create 3 - 5 different banners and start placing them in small numbers.

A cheap way to test at first is to join one or more of the free banner exchanges and try out your banners for free at first. Then, once you found a working banner, you can start paying for impressions of it.

Have each of your banners link to a specific page on your site which is selling ONE specific product. Don't allow your prospects to get confused when they come to your site. Make it a simple choice for them to make which you can track on your site.

Then, once you find a banner which is making money for you, roll it out by buying larger numbers of impressions or finding more sites to advertise it on.

4. Press Releases

This is probably the most powerful traffic builder available if you have a strong Unique Web Position for your site.

If you stand out and your site or product is worthy of media attention, then this is an awesome method to start creating a traffic jam at your site.

A good tool to use in promoting your site through free press is the Gebbie all-in-one media directory which lists all of the contact information of the media. A free sample which will enable you to get started can be obtained by visiting this address.

http://www.gebbieinc.com

Once you have the directory or the sample, you can start studying (Gebbie has some info on this as well) how to write effective press releases.

Just because your first press release may not be published, don't let that bother you. Try again. Learn more about what they want. Then, do it again.

You can receive more traffic from having your web site published in a magazine, newspaper, radio, or TV broadcast than hundreds of ads you place for yourself.

So, if you decide Free Press will work for your unique product or service, don't quit!

5. Offline Ads

Too many times when advertising out web sites we forget about how effective off-line advertising can be. Placing an ad in a card deck or magazine is a great way to get very targeted visitors to your site who are ready to spend money.

Many of the people who visit you from other web sites are just lookers...and never really intend to purchase anything from you. The bulk of the people who visit you from offline advertising are much more ready to spend money if you provide the benefits they need.

Leads produced this way are much more expensive though...costing between 50 cents to $10.00 apiece on average. So, you had better have that killer ad copy ready to close them when they get to your site.

A good way to save money when advertising is to use postcard decks and sell off ads on the postcard you purchase. This way you can make back all of your money and essentially get your ad to run for FREE. What better way to test than with free advertising?

When using this type of advertising, I recommend taking them to what I call a "lead generation" page. Basically, what you do on this type of page is present a few benefits to them and ask them to leave their contact info such as name, email, and mailing address for more information. Then, you can start a follow-up system both online and by direct mail to them for maximum effectiveness.

Don't waste any of these higher priced and usually higher qualified leads.

* Don't Quit *

No matter which advertising method you choose, make a decision to stick to it until you have it working for you.

The key to any successful business is that you keep working on it until you have it working for you.