Marlon Sanders Discusses – Your Value…

Marlon Sanders discusses the value you have to offer others.

I found this useful. I also gained a lot of insight from the new rules of selling from Marlon. You can still get your free access by checking out my last blog post in the blue box on the top left below.

[tag]Marlon Sanders, Value, niche marketing, motivation, [/tag]

How to Choose Your Marketing Model and Avoid Chasing Rabbits, Dead Ends and False Rainbows

The Following Article is from Marlin Sanders and is used with permission. In the article he promotes his recent release the Writer’s Secret. I recommend this to you, if your meet the criteria Marlin explains in the article below.

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If you were to look at the inbox on my email account, you’d see a zillion billion emails from marketers telling you all the things you need to buy to succeed online.

Whew!

You can’t buy all of ’em, read all of ’em or do all of ’em.

What a pickle you have yourself in now!  What do you do?

I just keep teaching and preaching the road less taken.  Here’s how to avoid dead ends and stay on the straight and narrow path to online success by focusing on the ONE thing you must do.

Know what model you’re following

There are different models for making coin online.

1.  The affiliate model

You promote affiliate programs by getting organic search engine ranking or buying pay-per-click or other types of ads.

If you DO use affiliate marketing, make SURE you’re building your own list BEFORE you promote affiliate products. Your list is absolutely key.

— Article marketing is an organic seo (search engine
optimization) play. This is what MOST people do who are on the affiliate model.

Article marketing DOES work. But it’s much better if you drive your clicks to what we call an email capture or name squeeze page. That way you can get people on your email list and follow up.

Just understand that if you’re doing article marketing, it’s a play to get traffic from the search engines and also the article directories you submit to.

The downside of the affiliate model is you’re doing the hard work of getting new customer and putting them into someone else’s funnel. The hardest thing you will EVER do is get a new customer.

So as an affiliate, you typically do the HARD part and often make only a 1-time commission for this while the OTHER person, the merchant, sells product after product to that new customer and pays you nada.

Now, I have an affiliate program. But we pay on many back-end or follow up sales and not just the initial sale.

But would you rather be at the top or the bottom of the food chain? I advocate being at the top where others are YOUR affiliates.

Understand that a lot of people who advocate the affiliate model use that approach as a trojan horse to recruit affiliates for THEIR products.

Nothing wrong with the affiliate model to start with. But become a producer and promoter as soon as you can.

— Buying ads

Anything that focuses on pay-per-click (ppc) or other methods of buy advertising is usually an affiliate model.

2. The Web 2.0

For the most part, all the talk you hear about web 2.0 translates into getting higher rankings in Google or the search engines. So it’s an organic seo play.

Web 2.0 sounds like it’s some new beast. For the most part, it’s a way to get inbound links to your web sites with higher authority and trust. There’s also the possibility of getting traffic from the web 2.0 sites themselves.

You’re still either promoting your own products or someone elses as an affiliate. And if it’s the latter, you’re doing the hard part of getting new customers and putting them into someone else’s funnel who will THEN suck out the lifetime value (that is, a whole bunch of other sales in a compressed time frame) and pay you zilch on those sales.

I try to play fair by paying backend commissions to my affiliates.

3. The CPA model

CPA (cost per action) is an affiliate model where you typically get paid per action like lead generated vs. per sale.

You’re STILL promoting someone else’s product vs. your own.

The challenge with the CPA model is you typically aren’t building a list that has clear cut needs you can sell to over and over.

What you ARE doing is putting people into someone else’s recurring billing system. MOST CPA offers are built on recurring billing. With Visa’s new crackdown, that will likely change.

There’s nothing wrong with this model. But I prefer an evergreen model where I build customer equity. In other words, I build a list of loyal customers with common needs and desires who buy from me over and over again.

4. The organic seo model

This concept dominates a lot of the affiliate models and a lot of online marketing talk.

I actually enjoy learning about this model and have a filipina working on it (I hired her using the gameplan at outsourceplan.com).

Anyway, the downside of this model is it’s SLOW to get those rankings and requires skill and know how. And the big thing is, you’re subject to Google slaps, whims and algo changes.

Google can change HOW it ranks sites and overnight your income can be zapped. OF course, there ARE other search engines and you can lower your risk by spending part of your time focusing on those also.

I think seo has a place if you outsource it properly. But I think it’s risky to build your whole business on it.

One of the problems in learning how to do organic seo is there are so many theories about what works and doesn’t.

The main game here is to get inbound links to your website. But Google changes their mind about what types of links are acceptable and what aren’t.

So you have to always stay on top of the game. And there is a ton of conflicting information. I’ve invested a lot of time and money just boiling the topic down to some evergreen things you can do that aren’t likely to get zapped by Google.

The other problem with this model is that the amount of competition for keywords KEEPS increasing! More and more people keep looking for low competition keywords.

So the competition for low competition keywords keeps increasing and you have to work harder to maintain rankings for those “easy” keywords.

This is OK. It’s all a game. And with proper effort and outsourcing it’s doable. I wouldn’t base my entire business on it because of the risks involved.

The MAIN thing to know here is when you see people tout all these huge numbers from an organic seo model, you can BET there’s a whole lot of something going on in the background. And probably quite a bit more than they let on about.

5. The PPC model

My friends Joel Peterson and Kirt Christensen totally rock at this.

PPC is good if you can watch your numbers very closely.
You’re spending money so you have to really stay on top of it.

The risks are similar to organic seo. Google likes to change the rules as soon as most people figure out WHAT those rules are!

Which isn’t all bad. It weeds out the competition.

You should know that a LOT of the gigantic numbers printed in sales letters for products about ppc are from selling things that are very broad market like ringtones.

If the product being promoted isn’t revealed in the ad, this should be a clue.

You’ll ALSO find out that a lot of the big success stories involve products that are either recurring billing or very large ticket like $3,000. If you can get people on a webinar and sell something for $3,000, by all means DO IT!

I’ve never concentrated on verbal selling enough to do that. I don’t like doing it. It’s not my cup of tea. Just understand that anytime you see really large numbers tossed around, what is actually DONE to make those numbers usually isn’t revealed.

Which is my beef with some of the products sold on the topic.  If you don’t show me HOW to do what YOU do but CLAIM you do, then you didn’t play fair.

Is the method fully disclosed? From what I see, a lot of the ppc stuff never reveals HOW the numbers in the sales letter were actually generated.

PPC is a pretty complex Game.  Still, if you focus on it, you can do well.

I don’t like having my future depend on the whims of Google.  Yuk!
I also don’t like watching numbers that closely.

But if you’re willing to spend 25 g’s in a month to bring in 100 g’s, you CAN do it via ppc.

If you DO PPC, you’ll probably need automation tools like the one Joel Peterson showed on the webinar I did with him the other day.

Very cool tool.  I also like buying banner ads as Joel does because there’s a lot less risk of a Google slap than with search.

I’m EXPLORING doing ppc with this software.  I need to see if I can get a process worked up that my oursourcer can use.  I don’t do this kind of thing myself but don’t mind outsourcing it.

6.  The Writer’s Secret model

The Writer’s Secret is about producing and promoting your OWN products.

And it’s about getting traffic via your OWN affiliate program, which is hands down the best source of traffic in many niches.

Here are a few advantages of the model:

a.  Full disclosure

There isn’t some deep dark secret you have to join a high-end coaching program to discover.

b.  It’s simple, logical and practical

I’m NOT saying anyone can do it.  I AM saying it’s pretty darned logical and practical.  And it’s reasonable to think someone who works at it can do it.

c.  It’s evergreen

Nothing about it that’s going to “stop working” or “get slapped” tomorrow.

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How To Choose Your Model
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1.  Know what you ARE and are NOT good at

If you’re good at spreadsheets and detailed work, ppc is a great choice  for you.

If you’re good at routine, sustained effort over an extended period of time and you’re analytical, organic seo may be your cup of tea.

If you’re good at writing, creating or talking on video or screen capture video, the Writer’s Secret approach may be for you.

2.  Choose a method with full disclosure

Do NOT start using a method where all the secrets aren’t revealed (or available at a cost you can afford) and where you have to spend $250, $500 or $1,000 a month for coaching to get the REAL scoop.

A lot of systems sound good. But the info product on it is really a glorified teaser for the coaching program.  So the method isn’t actionable to you.

You MUST have an actionable, doable method that does NOT have these deep dark secrets you don’t know that are required for success.

3.  Ask yourself if your model matches your abilities

Right now, the idea of video sales pitches is making the rounds.
It’s a great method.

Really works.

BUT — if you can’t talk, don’t like to talk, aren’t verbal or articulate, then save your money.

If you like to write, follow a writer’s path.

If you like to talk, then do video products and teleseminars, webinars or video sales letters to sell your products.

4.  See through the fad pitches

When your inbox gets POUNDED with people endorsing a new product or method, it has LITTLE to do with how great the product or method is and a LOT to do with how skilled the person was in doing reciprocal mailings, networking and pulling off a major launch.

It has VERY little to do with the actual value of the product FOR YOU.

Keep your head screwed on.

5.  Once you know your model, focus on your model.

Cut out the noise.

You can’t know everything nor do everything.

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Marlon Sanders helps people with hopes and dreams figure out how to turn those into reality by selling stuff on the Internet.  http://www.thewritersecret.com

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