If You Build It They Won't Come

Most of the internet marketing gurus will try to sell you whatever they specialize in doing. It is very valuable to take in the big picture of the options before investing time and money in a particular direction. You will quickly lose sight of your goals and your own preferences otherwise.

So, the first thing to decide is – do you want to sell (a) someone else’s products (affiliate marketing); (b) your own products; or (c) both.

This may seem simple. If you have something you are passionate about, go for it. But also keep in mind that this is the biggest uphill battle for you as a business owner. You do not yet know if there is a market out there for what your product(s) offers. So, unless you have lots of time and are willing to try, why not learn your craft (internet marketing skills) selling other people’s products until you learn how to sell things that people already want to buy on the internet.

That sounds simple, but many of us don’t think about that. I have about 4000 self-published, award-winning books sitting in a warehouse in Kansas to prove it. People love my books when they see them, but I have had no idea how to bring these books to their attention in the right way.

Note what I just said – two elements here – (1) how to bring these books to their attention; (2) in the right way. I did radio interviews, sent out lots of books for reviews, etc. It just did not take. Very few books sold. Then I went to the Book Expo America and talked with the publishing world people who stopped by my table (shared with other authors and book promoters). Turns out that the books (at least the one by/about my dog) are very popular with young adults, younger kids, and librarians. It is a sturdy hard cover all color, photography-heavy book with inspirational quotes from the dog and from famous people. I had no idea that this was my market, but I even tested it by entering a book contest for Young Voices – and won an award. Amazing.

So now I know my market, but how to reach them. Ads to libraries cost me money and led to no sales. So you see, what seems obvious, has still hit deadends.

On the side, this year, I learned how to build Wordpress blogs fast. Turns out that this may be my core business model. I am now learning how to sell other people’s products using Wordpress blogs (which are free other than the domain name and hosting account and can be customized by you once you put a little time into it). If you need lots of blogs (you will for a serious business), get a Hostgator reseller account, which costs far less to host dozens of websites per year than buying hosting one by one. You can also just get one account that allows you lots of subdomains and addon domains, though sometimes that can create some challenges for accessing the additional domains technically (not impossible, though).

Can you get started with a different blog model? Of course. You can get quick free accounts at Blogger.com, Squidoo. com, HubPages.com, and hundreds of other sites. The trick there is to learn how to use those, as they are popular sites and you’ll need those to point toward your own websites. But do not dare to stop with keeping your precious content on those sites – the arbitrary gods who own the hosting on those sites can shut you down, lose your account, block your account on a whim. And you are left with nothing. Better to use those outside sites (and they are very important as marketing tools for driving traffic to your site) as boosters rather than your core business.

More later.