One of the most common phenomena in internet marketing is that of program-hopping; people start with one program which they market, often a network marketing opportunity, a high yield income or two-tier commission program, and they eventually lose faith in the program because it isn’t selling. Then they ‘hop’ over to another and the next minute they can’t sell that either, and so it continues. The product is blamed, never the marketing utilized to sell the product, and the situation continues until eventually they give up and say “internet marketing doesn’t work”

Fact is, it was never internet marketing that failed, but the methods employed.

It’s not the product. There are so many products out there and so many people marketing every one of them successfully that the argument holds no water. There are no bad products, only bad marketers. The key to marketing may, of course, be found in many places, and the following have been given credit when success has been realized, and blamed when failure was the result:

  1. Poor graphics and website design.
  2. Bad sales copy and a sales page that does not flow.
  3. Bad choice of domain name or product name.
  4. Inferior technical infrastructure

Yes it’s true that all of the above may well have an effect on a marketing campaign. But the key factor is always going to be the same.

It’s traffic. Whether you’re promoting the ugliest site on the planet, and I have seen many of those make big money, or the simplest site requiring almost no technical wizardry, and actually they work best, you’re going to need traffic. Lots of traffic. Consider this: given an average click-through rate of 2% (2% of the people receiving your ad will click on the link), you will need at least 1000 prospects to send to in order to get 20 visitors. And if those that arrive at your site convert at, say, 10%, you would get 2 signups from those 1000 visitors. You would need a 50% sales conversion rate to get one sale, almost unheard of. Fact is, in many cases, we get responses, especially from large membership lists, of around 0.2%… You need LARGE numbers to promote to if you want enough people to see your offer. And with so many marketers promoting the same products to these lists, how will you stand out?

Being outstanding has never been the result of following the sheep. I see the ‘sheep’s ads’ daily in my email or on twitter and they all look the same. If you want to stand out, stop being a Clone Marketer. Stop doing what everyone else does, which is follow the path of least resistance.

Having a successful Internet business is about building an infrastructure that continuously brings traffic to your door, even when you don’t promote. I recently had a week days where I was very busy with part-time work that I enjoy, that of teaching psychologically-challenged youngsters thinking skills, and I did nothing in my Internet business for the entire week. My traffic went UP.

Six months ago, my Alexa ranking for this domain was #2 675 000 – yesterday, my 4 week average was #176 000. Over the next few weeks I will explain how to build a sustainable infrastructure without buying list memberships, without spending money at Google Adwords, using mostly free resources and doing a little work.

Smarter, not harder. Watch this space.

Here to Help,

Derek .