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Categories - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications
Services
Articles: Online
Business - Core Skills You Must Have
By Stuart
Tan
It kinda bugs me that there are people who are
constantly writing about the things that do well in Internet
Marketing. I think that’s real silly. People want the real stuff.
They want to know the exciting stuff, but they want the truth too.
Why have internet marketers hidden from you, the costs of getting to
where they have gotten? Because it is the one thing that separates
the real players and the suckers. If you do not know how much time
and effort they spent, don’t think that internet marketing is a walk
in the park.
My business partner was so excited after a
conference, he started up a mini-site that was selling a set of
products we already had in existence. It was a great plan, except
that for the kind of product we put up, he sold the package at a
drop dead price of $97. Now, I operate from Singapore, and we know
that most of the people who would buy this product would come from
the other side of the world. Without verifying the shipping charges,
he happily took orders from the internet. The first one had him
jumping up and down… only to realize that the cost of shipping took
about 90% of that $97. We couldn’t cover the production costs.
Straight away, it was a loss.
But everyone talks about
shipping their products as if it were a simple thing. Most people
have forgotten completely about the people living on this side of
the world and what it takes to sell something. This means that there
are a few things that most beginners in internet marketing need to
be careful about and learn.
#1 – Learn Copywriting. -
Copywriting is the most important skill ever to be taught to
marketers and business people alike. If you don’t have the ability
to write your own sales letters, it will be easy for people to tell
you to outsource the writing. My advice: DON’T. You are letting them
develop the skill that you should be building up. No one ever gets
to be an expert copywriter overnight. Learn it, and learn it well.
#2 –
Understand Business Models - There are about 7 or 8 different
business models on the internet. Because I need to make sure that
people really understand about business per se, I’ve put it in the
form of a freely downloadable format at
http://www.stuarttan.com/affiliate/bizmodel.pdf Go grab it - no holds barred.
#3 –
Drive traffic - I’ve included a list for those of you newbies out
there, the multiple ways to drive traffic over the internet. There
are over 100 ways you can use to drive traffic and I would highly
recommend you hop over to learn about these. I directly credit
people like John Reese, Jeff Johnson and Yanik Silver for their
invaluable knowledge that I have gotten from them. If you don’t know
about them, please begin today! They are great people and I highly
recommend that you visit them at www.trafficsecrets.com,
www.searchenginevoodoo.com and www.surefiremarketing.com
respectively. Download my traffic generation chart on
www.stuarttan.com/affiliate/Traffic Boosters.pdf
#4 – Learn
New Internet Technology Fast - You need to be learning really fast.
I’ve discovered that there are a large number of new internet
technologies that keep coming up and they can be very powerful,
provided you know how to use them. If you don’t know how to use
them, it will most definitely be to your disadvantage. For instance,
most people still don’t know how to use RSS and Blogs. In addition,
some people are clueless about XML feeds and how that helps to
create massive content sites and increase search engine rankings.
You need to learn fast. The only way for you to master your learning
is to read about them. I highly recommend that you visit
www.stuarttan.com/learning/ for more information that I can’t deal
with here.
I am going to give you something good, though. If
the entire internet marketing world is doing it, DON’T. If you just
follow, you will not be at the breakthrough point of technology
usage. Start innovating and think creatively to solve a problem.
Sometimes, even the simplest things can bring about massive profits
online!
#5 – Keep Relationships Going - Keeping
relationships going on the internet is a difficult thing. But it is
essential. You need to be able to do autoresponse messages,
personalized. However, most people miss the point. Automatic isn’t
going to build relationships. You need to keep them warm. Call them.
Give them ideas. Give them free stuff (learnt this from Yanik). More
importantly, ask Jeff Johnson’s single most asked question – ‘Can I
help you?’.
I’m all for making money – but if it is at the
expense of friendships and relationships, I think it is going to be
really stupid to continue making money. Give yourself a chance to
put back, in your heart, what many poor, scammy internet marketers
have taken away – quality and the desire to help
people.
Stuart Tan is a
motivational and transformational speaker who has focused primarily
on the development of personal excellence. As a Licensed NLP
Trainer, he was certified by Dr. Richard Bandler in 1997. Stuart
also was trained by Robert Dilts and is a Certified NLP Training
Consultant. He now runs leading seminars in Malaysia and Singapore.
He can be found at www.stuarttan.com
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