Been at it for almost a year and made nothing, Any Advice?

Hello, I am new to internet marketing and was wondering if anyone had any tips for me.
I have been trying my hand at internet marketing for almost a year now. However I have yet to
earn more than $100 total. Now I am new so I expected a learning curve, but for the good chunk
of money I have spent learning the ropes; I expected to earn a bit more in that time period.

I have tried several different ways of going about it, from PPC,PPV, to articles and pitch pages.
Now I do not expect to make a lot to start off, in fact my goal is to make at least $100/month-$200/month
in witch I could use to continue to learn how things are done.

Now I am not willing to spend any more on ebooks and "Loop Holes" as I have already spent way too
much as it is. Now if I were to be bringing even a small amount back in, then I may be inclined to invest more.
But as it stands, I am not willing to waste any more of my hard earned money, on no working methods.

I do however have a good little bit to work with, for the time being. I have several websites, including
ClickBank review sites, a couple Blogs, and some sites made to sell ebooks, and earn adsense revenue.
Now I will not post their links as I do not want to seem like I am advertising; What I want is good sound
advise on what I should do.

I would greatly appreciate any advice, as It seems there are many here who have been successful, and
know what they are doing. I do not want to become rich, but It would be nice to make a few extra dollars a
month for various things.

Thanks for reading, and sorry if It was a bit long; or a bit much for a first post. Have a nice day everyone.

Hi Frank,

1) First, focus on one thing until you create profit. You can create significant profit with one thing.

2) Invest some of those profits to expand your empire.

3) Focus on markets with desperate buyers and test you conversion funnel.

None of those three things are rocket science, but most of us have not really followed the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) like that at one time or another.

I appreciate the tip, thanks.

BTW as soon as you have that profit, start outsourcing. But, make sure to interview thoroughly - you can waste a lot of time with people who may not be able to get the job done. This way, you get more done, but you still have the initial profits coming in. So you can expand more efficiently.

Hi Frank,

I think the problem is that you haven't taken care of the basics. Instead you just jumped right into article, pitch pages, PPC, etc.

So what are the basics?

1. Identify the target audience you want to work with.
2. Identify serious problems they have that they are hungry for solutions for.
3. Build a list of people in this target audience by offering a useful, free download that helps them with one/some of their problems.
4. Find/Develop other products to introduce to your list.

You also need to be unique in your field with branding that people will notice.

Alright, thanks for the advice, I did research a good bit before trying PPV/PPC to no success. However I will keep you steps in mind one further attempt.

My recommendation would be to find some random "practice" niche.

Create a blog and do seo on long tail keywords.

Create a very cheap e-guide on a topic important to people in that niche.

Design the blog to sell your cheap product.

Connect the blog to an aweber (or any) auto responder.

Design the auto responder to sell your cheap product


Ofcourse at first you won't do that great, but you'll get two things which are INVALUABLE.... experience & momentum.

It doesn't matter if your first product sucks, because you're doing it in a niche you DONT want to go into for real. You might make some money, but you're going into things with the mindset of failing.

Anyway, after doing this. Improve on what you're doing (in your practice niche).... until you feel you're good enough to go into a bigger/better niche.

Some areas to improve:
Copywriting
SEO
Other traffic (ppc, etc)
Outsourcing (articles for blog especially)
Tracking & testing

Anyway, thats my two cents.
Hope it helps.

I appreciate the advice, I just started on a blog; so I may do just that. Thank a bunch for the tips.

If I were you I would take a step back and study the best out there. What they do, how they do it. etc.

Who are the best?

If it comes to traffic
Study Alexa Top 50 sites. What do they do that got them there? Hard to believe but most of them were started by 1 or 2 people, like Google or Facebook.

If it comes to cash
Study bestsellers on Amazon, CB or elsewhere

After this, try to combine the ideas, see where you could add value. Or perhaps try to build the same best seller but for half price. No ideas? It may be time to do some studying, like getting acquainted with some upcoming internet technologies like HTML5, semantic web. etc. so you can be there when the tide starts.

Little time consuming, but if you think about it, by investing 1 year of your life, you gain a lifetime of freedom...Well. It is definitely worthed.

I agree with the above statement that you should really study other people and sites that are already successful in your niche. If you find a site that is...making money, well put together, and offers a good product or service you should even consider buying from them. That way you will get to see how they structure thier product and how they market to thier list and customers.

No matter which way you look at it internet marketing is really about building your list, wheather you are experienced or not.

I suggest that you put together a simple free report, set up a blog, and use an autoresponder to start building your list!

even if you are only adding a few people a day to it, it will start to add up over time.

I hope this helps get you pointed in the right direction!

Try to drive leads from all possible sources out there. The more targeted subscribers you get, the more money you'll make over the long haul.

There are many ways to build your list including PPC, JVs, SEO, Offline Marketing, Etc. This is the "driving traffic" part. The other part is "converting traffic" where you send targeted offers to the prospects & make money.

Drive it. Convert it. Repeat.

outsource to the experts as much as you can... you don't have to know it all and you would be basically managing the whole production... you can outsource SEO, linkbuilding, product creation, even templates and article writing... and so on

I am going to point you to this article, because there are a few things I noticed in your posting
http://www.jvnotifypro.com/community...ic,6106.0.html just trying to help on a positive note.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frank Hastings Jr

Hello, I am new to internet marketing and was wondering if anyone had any tips for me.
I have been trying my hand at internet marketing for almost a year now. However I have yet to
earn more than $100 total. Now I am new so I expected a learning curve, but for the good chunk
of money I have spent learning the ropes; I expected to earn a bit more in that time period.

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Hi Frank - I'm in a similar situation, albeit having two more years under my belt and earnt a few thousand dollars more. However, its not made me rich which is what I believed when first entering internet marketing.

NoSelfPromotionalLinksInBodyOfMessage.com So I recently created an internet marketing product based upon my experience. I called it 101 Doomed Online Money Making Strategies For 2011. My target market is people like you and me. I'm interested in learning what IM products failed you because it'll help my members and I by sharing your insights.

Great Stuff!
Paul

Hi Frank,
I can relate to your feelings as I have been there before........
What I would advise you is to follow one plan at a time.As you don't have a lot of time and money to experiement with less known niches,I would say that you should stick to proven niches like "weight loss", "Dating" or "Make Money".There is still a lot of room for newbies in these niches.

Next focus on one business model.You can either follow the affiliate route or create your own product.Regardless of which path you choose,you would need to have a list to generate consistent income.

In the beginning,keep your efforts focused on listbuilding.Create a simple squeeze page and drive traffic to it via article marketing,forum marketing ,PPC or media buying(if you can afford).Remember to develop strong,positive relationship with your subscribers.You can do that by sharing quality information with them for free.

Once you build a sizeable list(say 5,000-10,000 prospects for example),get on the JV scene by participating in a few product launches.You'll find it much easier to get your JV requests accepted(in the case you launch your own product) after getting on the JV leaderboard of a few launches.

In the case you don't want to create your own products(which I would highly recommend to do),you can simply keep on adding more subscribers to your list and making money by promoting affiliate products.

Whatever you do,I would suggest you to set short and long term goals .For example,your long term goal may be to make $100,000 in a year.Now it comes to around $300 per day.Suppose you are promoting a $100 product on which you get 50% commission on every sale.So your short term goal should be to drive enough traffic to generate at least 6 sales a day.

Just start small and keep scaling up by re-investing a portion of your profits.You'll find everything much easier,once you build a little momentum.

I appreciate all the advice from everyone here. I have been in a similar boat, however I believe that the answer lies in not being such a scatter brain as I have been. I am currently developing my own product and will be focusing exclusively on the launch. Until recently, I kept putting up different optimized sites that trickled in small amounts of income. Unlike some, however, I don't have the time to put up 200 of them. So, this has not proven to be the answer. Site maintenance also became a problem. Like other newbies, I am still searching for the answer. Though, what I am hearing is to "focus". Tell me, does the quality of the product matter? This is something that I believe will make a big difference in long term conversion. So, I am focusing on this as well. I would be interested to hear how product affects things. Thanks.