The Internet Business Academy

You have been building your list for some time now. Perhaps you have 100 subscribers to your list, or maybe you have 500 or 5000.

You have heard that some internet marketers can earn up to one dollar for every name on their list, per month, but you aren’t near that. Why?

One of the most important things to know and remember about list building is that list building is not just about assembling a collection of emails. If that were the case, you could buy a list of one million and make one million per month, right?

So the key with list building is not the volume of subscribers, but the relationship with those subscribers. Sure, as your volume of subscribers goes up, your revenue goes up, holding the relationship with your subscribers constant.

The mathematical formula for revenue from your list is: List size x relationship with list x quality of list = revenue from list.

It is just that simple. But it is multiplicative, not additive in nature. No matter how large one or two of the elements of your revenue formula is, if any of the elements is = to 0, your total revenue will be 0.

If you have a relationship quantity of 0, then your revenue will be 0.

So how do you develop relationship with your subscribers?

You must communicate with your subscribers. Note I say subscribers, not list. You must communicate with your subscribers personally, not as a group. Sure, your auto responder will go out to the entire list, but as much as is possible, personalize the list. Use the subscribers’ name. Write the email to each person individually by using the word ‘you’, never, ‘my list’ or ‘you guys’ or ‘my subscribers’.

Ask your subscribers questions. Ask them what they want to learn about. Encourage them to ask questions. Then answer the questions in your auto responder campaign. Your subscribers will begin to feel a sense of community. They will begin to relate to you personally–hence a relationship.

As your relationship with your subscribers grows, so will your revenue.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

This is critical to your long term success online. Ask one hundred online marketing experts whether they would choose twenty profit-producing websites or one profit producing list and they should all choose the list. Why? Because the list has long-term value.

Long after the coolest new product launch has come and gone, you will still have your list. You can continue to introduce your list to the newest products, whether they are your own products or they are someone else’s. If you lose your web hosting account for any reason, if you still have your list, you can switch to another account, and you haven’t really lost anything long-term.

But without a list, you would be dead in the water.

So how do you write an auto responder series? First of all, write like you are writing to a friend. In the first email, welcome them to your list, and explain to them what your list is all about.

For example, if your list offers dog training tips and techniques, tell them that. If you are going to recommend products to them from time to time, tell them that. Let them know why you are interested in their welfare.

After your first email, you might send an informative email every 2-5 days, giving them tips and techniques related to your topic. Send out survey emails, asking what they want to learn about, then put the answers to those questions in your next email.

Once you have developed a relationship with your email list, you can begin to email them recommendations of products you have used and you believe would benefit them.

Write daily. Just think, if you wrote one email a day, in one year you would have 365 emails in your auto responder. I cannot think of one expert that has that many emails written–and you could have it in less than a year, just 20 minutes a day.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

Link popularity. We should all know that link popularity adds to our natural search engine rankings, and that the more link popular we are, the higher our natural search engine rankings, all other things being equal.

How does article writing play into link popularity?

All I can look at specifically is my own success with natural search engine rankings. I have multiple keyword phrases that consistently rank in the top ten search engine results in Yahoo and Google, and many of those in the top 1, 2, or 3 spots.

About 90% of my online traffic generating time, SEO energy, and link popularity work is done writing articles. Sure, it is time consuming. And I can’t really pay anybody else to do it. I simply have to sit down and write. And it is boring sometimes. But article writing has done wonders for my link popularity and natural search engine rankings.

Follow these steps:

1) Write 10 articles in your niche.

2) Write a bio for yourself and include a link to your main web page or squeeze page.

3) Submit your article to as many article directories as you can. Note: If you are submitting for maximum link popularity, the more you submit to, the better. Each one should create a backlink to you. If you are submitting for the purpose of hits via your articles, then you need only submit to the top 10 article directories. I recommend sending all ten articles out to at least 100 article directories, to get started (massive action), then submit most of your articles in the future to the biggest 10 article directories. Once a month, submit a few to the entire list, to keep your backlinks fresh.

4) Monitor your search engine rankings.

5) Start over.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

You need your own website. Whether you have your own product or not, you need your own website.

You see, if you are using someone else’s to build your business, and they choose to change the way they do business, you might lose your business. But if you own your own website, then you can make adjustments when someone else makes changes.

This applies even if you are selling someone else’s product. Either sell the product at your website, or at least send them to your website first so you can capture their email and name, then direct to the affiliate site. This allows you to have control over the sales process, rather than just blindly sending potential consumers directly to the affiliate website.

Create a squeeze page, a dedicated page that simply asks for an email and name before they are directed to the affiliate site. Offer a free book or other bonus in exchange for their information. By doing this, then you will have more control. If they do not buy from the affiliate site, you can send them additional information in the future, or even send them to a different affiliate site in the future.

By owning your own website, you maintain control of your sales process and sales funnel.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

Internet marketing. What is internet marketing? Internet marketing is the process of marketing online, via the internet.

Internet marketing is probably the most important piece of the revenue-creation process online. You see, no matter how good of a product you have, if your internet marketing is lousy, you will not be successful. And if you have a truly horrible product, if your internet marketing is good, you will become successful, at least in the short run.

So how do you get started?

This will sound too simple for some of you. But it is the truth. Simply get started.

You can read and study and buy manual after manual and never get anywhere. Or you can take what you know and apply it. If you have never done anything in internet marketing, get a manual on the basic steps to internet marketing and follow every step. Do not be concerned that you do not understand a step, or that you do not think the step is necessary. What do you know? Until you have done it, you are inexperienced, and all the head knowledge in the world will not make up for the fact that you have never done it.

Here is a basic order of necessary events to get started. If you know how to do a step, do it immediately. If not, immediately search this article database for the basic information, and then do it. You will be far more successful than if you try to learn everything first.

1) Find your niche. What do you know a lot about? How do you want to help others?

2) Create a web site or web page.

3) Get an auto responder. If you are even thinking about selling anything online, you need an auto responder.

4) Put an opt in box or squeeze page on your web site.

5) Write a series of auto responder letters.

6) Build a relationship with your list.

7) Create your own products or find someone else’s to promote.

8) Repeat steps 1) through 7).

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

Article marketing is one of my favorite forms of traffic generation. Although it builds traffic slowly and sometimes sporadically, I like it because the clicks are generally from people who already like me.

What I mean by ‘already like me’ is that they already identify with my style, and like it enough to click through to my site. This makes this person a far more qualified lead than one that clicks through from just about any ad source out there.

How does article marketing work? Article marketing involves writing articles that pertain to the subject matter of your website, and submitting these articles for publication online.

There are many online directories that publish articles for the purpose of disseminating good information, or even to add web pages to their own site. Whatever their purpose, it doesn’t matter to me. I simply like the fact that they publish my article, market it online, and people have a chance to read my article.

One of the keys to the effectiveness of article writing is to include a link back to your site at the bottom of the article. When the reader has finished reading your article, if they like your style and want to know more about you, they will click through to your site. Now, if you set this process up for maximum list building effect, you will have that link go to a squeeze page that collects their information first, then they will directed to your site after they have submitted their name and email address.

You will write informative articles about your web site topic. One thing here about giving away information. Sometimes you may feel as though you don’t want to give people your best information, especially if you sell information on your web site. However, people will evaluate your for-sale information on the quality of your free information. If you are just giving away useless ‘filler information’, your reader will assume that that is the same quality information they will receive from you when they pay you for it.

If, on the other hand, you offer truly valuable information in your articles or other free content, then your potential customers will be able to effectively evaluate the quality of your material.

What to write about? Write about anything that gives your potential customer information that they can really use. For example, if you have a web site that sells office supply products, then the following are good topics:

How to select a good printer

The five steps to selecting a good pen

How to choose the best accounting software

The best ways to purchase office supplies in bulk

These are all topics that potential office supply customers will be happy to read.

How to write a good article?

Keep your ultimate purpose in mind as you are writing and balance that with providing good information.

Remember, your primary purpose when writing is to compel the readers to click through to your squeeze page, submit their name and email address, and eventually become a purchaser of your product online.

Follow these steps for writing an article:

1) Select a topic. This can be anything related to your line of business. For example, if you sell shoes online, the following topics would be good:

How to find shoes that fit right

Best brands of shoes for durability

Best brands of shoes for comfort

How to choose a shoe company

How to find your perfect shoe

You should be getting the idea here. Simply choose topics that people ask about everyday. Answer people’s questions.

2) Write a title. The title is extremely important. If the title does not strike a reader’s fancy, and compel them to read the article, they will never have a chance to evaluate your through your article, or click through to your site.

Here are several suggestions for article title formats:

How to…..

The (insert number here) ways you can benefit from __________

The top (insert number here) keys to _______________

What do _____________ like (need, love, hate, etc.) the most (least, worst, greatest, etc.)?

What is the best (worst, hardest, lousiest, etc.) way to _______________?

When you first start writing article titles, it will be difficult at first. It may not feel natural. It may feel awkward at first. The easiest way to get better is to write many article titles. You will find that after writing a hundred or so titles, they will begin to flow more easily.

So give it a try. Using the above suggestions for titles, try to write one hundred article titles. Get creative. Experiment with adjectives. Try using many different adjectives in your article titles.

Once you have become comfortable writing titles, and you are going to write the title for your article, type it in quotes into some of the big search engines. You want you proposed title to come back as having no results found. The reason for this is that after you have submitted your articles, you can monitor their propagation on the web by typing in the article name in quotes. Since you started out with no results, unless someone else just happens to write something with exactly the same title, you will have an idea of how may sites have your article.

3) Organize your article. This is important, because you want to have a natural – feeling flow as you go through the article. This will be different each time you write, based on the article content and style.

If you are writing an article about the five aspects of something, then you would naturally have an introductory paragraph, one that simply introduces yourself or your topic. Next, you would have five paragraphs, one for each of the five aspects (or keys, points, ways, methods, whatever). Following this, you will have a concluding paragraph, one that simply sums up the five aspects of your topic, and how they can benefit the reader.

4) Writing your article. It is important that you write in a friendly, easy to read, style. You are not writing a scientific article that has to have perfect grammar and multiple cites (unless of course you quote something). You are writing an informative article that should be extremely easy to read. Grammar is not extremely important, although if it is too out of control, you may turn a reader off. Generally, you should write like you are talking to a friend, telling him the information you are writing about. One note here: your article should typically be between 500 and 700 words long. Many directories will not publish shorter articles than that, and many of the ezines that will utilize your articles will not publish anything much longer than 700 words.

5) Adding your biography. This is one of the most important things you can have in your article, since this is how the reader will click through to your squeeze page, if they want more information.

A biography might look something like this:

Sean Mize is a successful entrepreneur, both in the offline and online arenas. To read more tips and techniques like the ones in this article, please click here: (your URL here)

Now the reader can click through to your site to get more information.

6) Submit your article to multiple article directories. Go online and search the term “article directories” to find current lists of directories. Once you find the list, you can begin signing up with each one. Nearly all the article directories require you to have an author account, so you will have to manually create an account with each directory. Most of them will require a confirmation email, so what I find easiest to do when I am signing up to many new directories at a time is to do it assembly line style. I will fill out their online forms, one at a time. Then, once I have done that, I will check my email and there will be a confirmation email from each one. I will click through each of the links in the confirmation emails. Next, I will go back to each directory and submit my article.

After a few days, I will begin to notice traffic from my articles. The traffic tends to come in spurts, as the biggest traffic you will receive will be after and ezine or online newsletter publishes one of your articles in their publication.

Article marketing is not something you can do just once and see results, typically, and certainly not in any kind of long-term nature. Just like any other form of traffic generation you do, you need to consistently get new visitors to your pages everyday. With article marketing, that means writing an article and sending it out to article directories every day. It is time-consuming, but remember, it produces some of the best qualified leads, and at a low cost—only your time. If you are just getting started, this is one of the best ways to utilize your time.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

I do not know much about SEO.

But that is OK. Some of my sites rank far higher than a lot of optimized sites. Well, I guess there are optimized sites out there. The search engines tell me that my sites are ranked in the top ten consistently. Hmmm. I do not do any SEO at all. No white hat. No black hat. Nothing.

Don’t believe me? Type in my name and each of the following keyword phrases into the various search engines: secrets of internet success, internet marketing secrets, time management, christian success, christian time management, christian leadership, christian article bank, christian article directory, list building, secrets of list building, list building secrets, email list secrets, and traffic generation. When you find my sites (so you will know what you are looking for), type in the keyword phrases without my name and you will see the natural search engine rankings for my sites. Go into cached results. You will see that my sites have not been around for long. But they outrank longtime black hat, white hat, what hat!

So what do I do? Articles. That is about it. When I first started I did some directory listing stuff and asked for a few links.

But I would rather write articles. It is a great feeling when I type in one of my keywords and one of my articles is in the top ten results. And an even greater feeling when I get a click from a natural search engine click through from an article.

If you aren’t writing articles, you are missing out on one of the best contributors to natural search engine rankings.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

It is so easy to get caught up in the massive amount of knowledge that is floating around. If you are like me, you get many emails everyday touting the latest newest best program for getting ric.h online. If you want to learn about getting started online and you go surfing, you can spend hours, download thousands of pages of information, read it all, and not be any further along than you were when you started looking for information. You literally get lost in the avalanche of information.

I advocate the KISS principle—keep it simple, stupid.

I believe there are two legitimate ways to make mo.ney online—Create your own product and sell it, or find someone else’s product and sell it. Either way you have to sell. Period. No way around it.

You might ask about all the multi-level and pyramid and ‘just invest 10 dollars and you will get millions in two weeks’ programs. Do you read scam? Move on. Do not pass go. Spend your money on a dinner out.

To make real money online you must sell. Sell what you create or sell what someone else creates. But you must sell. I really believe that anyone that tells you differently is just downright not honest.

If you are just getting started, sell someone else’s product.

Your game plan will look like this:

Start with just a squeeze page (web page with just a headline, 3 bullet points and an opt in box to collect names and emails)

Build a list.

Develop a relationship with your list. Teach them what you know, however little it may be.

Recommend products to your list that you have used.

Once you have been building a list for awhile, and are comfortable with it, and are regularly corresponding with it, begin to develop your own product.

Once you have your own product, simply begin to promote it to your list.

You may have noticed that I recommend starting with a list, rather than a sales page. Remember, if you are selling something for someone else, you do not need a sales page.

By the way, never send traffic directly to an affiliate site. Always send the traffic to your squeeze page first. That way they can opt in to your list and you can send that same traffic to the site multiple times. If you send them directly to a web site, and they do not buy, you have lost whatever you spent on traffic.

By the way–a note on traffic. There is fre.e traffic. But it takes time, effort, and energy. If you have the money, buy traffic and write articles. That’s it. If you can’t spend money, write articles – lot’s of them. When you start making money, invest it in traffic, not a new program.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

Email marketing. Oh, the good old days when you could email everyone anytime. Enter CAN-SPAM. Now only the good guys (and gals) can email market.

Works for me. What about you?

My guess is, if you are successful, you aren’t reading this article. So I assume you are not successful.

Here’s what you need to know to effectively email market in 2006 (and probably in 2007 and onwards).

1) You must build your own personal email list. Relationship rules in 2006. If you have a relationship with your list, you will email market effectively. If not, you are dead in the water.

2) You must send out great content. I receive a few hundred emails a day. I only read a few of them. Which ones? Some would try to tell me that I read the ones with the best headlines. I disagree. I open the ones that I believe will have the best content. I couldn’t care less if the writer can write a headline. I remember that yesterday when I opened and read his email, I either did or did not learn anything. If I didn’t, I probably do not open the email today. If I did, I will open one more email. You must send out great content. Your open rate should be directly proportionate to the quality of your emails, over time, not a one-time headline.

3) You must only recommend superior products. If you do not, your subscribers will opt out of your list. And that is loss. If you only recommend superior products, your subscribers will love you. Give it a try.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.

You have been online for awhile, working on creating your own product. Maybe you have one already. Maybe you have a list already. But you have no income.

You need affiliate revenue.

What is affiliate revenue? Affiliate revenue is income you derive from the promotion of affiliate products.

I earn nearly one dollar per month per subscriber on one of my affiliate revenue email campaigns. How do I do it?

I simply build a relationship with my subscribers by offering them top-notch information about which they are hungry and thirsty, then I recommend they visit specially-selected affiliate web sites.

Why do I say, ‘specially-selected’? Because you cannot use just any affiliate program.

Your affiliate program must meet the following criteria before you should promote a product:

1) The product must be exceptional and be backed up with remarkable customer service.

2) The product sales page must do a phenomenal job of transferring 1) to your subscribers.

3) The affiliate program must be honest, and pay exactly when it says it will. Affiliate income must be consistent to you.

4) The affiliate product must mesh well with your own product, whether your own product is already created or just in the works.

Once you have selected an affiliate product with which to maximize your affiliate revenue, recommend the sales page or product to your subscribers. Do not sell them. Recommend them.

By the way, do you want to add a coaching program to your business? If so, download my brand new free training here: coaching program training

Sean Mize is the author of Anyone Can Coach, the definitive guide to starting your own coaching program fast.