Internet Marketing is a huge subject. In fact it’s TWO huge subjects:
1. Marketing
2. Internet
It’s all about using the INTERNET and all of its technologies to MARKET your products or services. Many people starting out focus on learning how to create websites, blogs and You Tube videos which is fine, but then they spend little effort in learning marketing.
This approach is backwards. The only way to make money is by selling stuff and to do this you need to understand marketing. Once you have learnt marketing then learn how to use the internet as your marketing medium.
Marketing is easy and you could learn all about it within a day (though it could take quite a while to master).
So to become an expert marketer you need to identify a “hungry crowd” with a burning desire. Then empathise with the crowd that you understand how they feel because you were once like them until you found this solution.
On the internet you would rely on your sales letter to make that connection with your audience. This is what makes the sales letter the most important part of the marketing system and is why the best sales letter writers (direct response copywriters) can charge £5,000+ to write a sales letter for a client.
This is the number one rule in marketing. Someone seeing your sales page is unlikely to buy right there and then so if you can capture their contact details you have an opportunity to keep in touch with them.
You can then send messages to reinforce the benefits of your product and therefore make a sale, or keep them advised of further related products in the future. Be considerate of how you treat your list of subscribers. If all you are going to do is send them sales messages then it is very easy for them to hit the unsubscribe link.
Instead put some time and energy into providing your subscribers with lots of free and valuable content and they will stay subscribed and will take more of an interest when you do make an offer.
People are naturally cautious when it comes to putting their faith into strangers. For example would you trust any old builder to come around and make modifications to your house or would you prefer someone who was recommended to you or ideally someone you had used before?
If you are asking someone to send you money online for a product they aren’t too sure of then you are expecting a “leap of faith” from them and it becomes increasingly difficult as the product price increases.
For this reason when dealing with a new prospect your first offer shouldn’t be expensive but it should be worth much more than you are charging for it. This way the low price makes it more likely a new prospect will consider your offer and the quality of your product will make for a very happy customer.
A happy customer is more likely to purchase from you again and much more likely to purchase a higher value product.
So like a funnel, lots of people are going in at the top (front-end) and making a low value purchase and through your marketing process some people are taking you up on the higher value products (back-end) as they progress through your sales funnel.
===> Some customers are worth a great deal of money to you if they purchase your higher value offers. For instance 
they start off with the low cost purchase of let’s say £27, then another purchase at £97 then another purchase of your best product at £397. The total value of that customer is £27+£97+£397=£521. So that’s nearly TWENTY TIMES MORE than the original £27 sale. <===
This being the case, it’s okay to only make a very small profit (or a small loss), on the front end offer because the real value is in the back-end.
“This is why so many Internet Marketing beginners fail”. It’s because they don’t understand marketing and don’t have a funnel system in place. Therefore when they don’t make any money (or very little money) they give up before they have even really got started.
So if you want to succeed online, first make sure you understand marketing, then learn how to use the internet to apply the marketing.
I shall go into this more in part II.
Aside #1. You do not have to offer increasingly expensive items to your customers. A steady offering of low to mid-priced items is just as good, such as a continuity program. E.g. a monthly membership site.
Aside #2. As a customer progresses through your funnel don’t expect that they will buy every item. Some people may not be interested in the opening offer but may be at a point where they want to go straight for your high-ticket item.
