Hi all, 

 I can’t help but notice that people seem to have stopped visiting each other’s blogs and leaving comments. This student area has nearly become a ghost town. I would hazard a guess that this is a knee jerk reaction to the ‘end’ of the course. I confess I am as guilty as the next, time being at such a premium.

Even though we have known that this day would come I think it has crept up on us.  We have been concentrating on doing our homework, trying to build a list, etc. and time has just got away from us.

 Now everyone seems to be head down and beavering away for their dear life to make sure they have everything under their control before they have to fly the next, so to speak.

 I do hope that the students still see value in having a supportive group around them.  I for one do not want to lose touch with the many people who have helped me along the way.

 With there being such a diverse level of expertise among the students, I know that should anybody have a problem, somebody else has had to face that selfsame problem and overcome it.The way they overcame the problem is surely of great interest to others.

Now more than ever we need each other, so don’t lose touch.

Hi all,

Well tonight was the last of the main webcasts that I and my fellow students had from Alex Jeffrey´s, and what a superb send off he gave us. Tonights call was basically a recap of what we have been taught over the past few months, with a few more gems added for good measure. One of the things that has struck a major chord with me over the period of this course is the amount of effort that Alex has put in, and even though this was the last official webcast he told us that there are going to be a number of special brain storming sessions along with other special guest speakers.

I think any of us as a group of students would be hard pushed to have found such a giving man anywhere else..

Alex pointed out there are going to be students who run with the information that he has given us and there will be others who come along at their own pace, at the moment I feel as though I´m in a backward three legged race blindfolded.

The reason I am feeling that way is because I don´t think my future will be solely based within the IM niche.  My interests take me more towards the video marketing of other niche products, as well as video commercial production.  I have in the pipeline my first product which is a video tutorial series for boat owners wanting to maintain their own boats, as you will realise this is an indication of my meaning when I mentioned not staying solely within the IM marketing niche, although I do have an up and coming product for the IM niche, so watch this space =O).

 I am so very grateful to have been fortunate enough to have been part of this programme as I am sure the rest of the students will agree, Alex has gone completly over and above what would normally be expected of a mentor.  He has armed us with a wealth of information which, if used correctly, will enable us to achieve success.

Another point Alex raised on Tuesday´s call, was the fact that the IM niche is a fantastic proving ground for honing your marketing skills.  If you can make it here you can make it anywhere.  

Looking back over the last three months I am staggered at the all the new information my brain has absorbed, it´s only when you stand back and take stock of your situation that you come to appreciate the fact that we have all come on so far in such a short space of time.  

I want to wish all the other students for very very best of luck in their future endeavours wherever that my be.

This post is in some ways a reply to a fantastic post that was on Gary Simpson´s blog.  His Friend Linda Carroll made an amazing mp3 recording after she had heard that one of our fellow students had decided to leave the coaching course to pursue a different a different path. The one thing above all else that this coaching course with Alex Jeffrey`s has taught me is the ability to focus my attention on the job in hand.

For too long I had wandered from one idea to next, never realizing at the time that I was breaking the cardinal rule of starting an online business, or come to that any form of business, and that was to remain focused.  The rest of this post is basically an overview of what I think are the most important factors of maintaining a strong presence on the web.

YOUR EXPECTATIONS

We are all prone to believe everything we read about huge successes and all the talk of huge amounts of money being made online.  It’s only natural that we should want to do the same.

Unfortunately, we are not all going to have the same level of success in our online businesses.  Some are going to make it big, others are not.

I believe though, that a substantial amount of people will be able to earn themselves a very good income from an online business – but not overnight!

What you need to make it in this area of business is patience and perseverance.  You have to realize that like all businesses it will take time to be established and to show some monetary return.

If you go into it believing all the ‘pie in the sky’ hype then you are due to be very disappointed with your results.

You will have your ups and your downs, but what you have to remember is that you must not let your first, or even your second hurdles put you off.   You must get up and try again.

KEEPING ON TOP OF YOUR SITE

If you have been led to believe that all you need to do is to get your site up and running then you just sit back and watch the money roll in – think again!!

Your commonsense must click in at some point and make you realize that this just isn’t feasible.

You must choose your topic carefully.  I know that mini niches do work, but don’t aim at such a small niche that you won’t get anybody coming looking for what you are offering.  If it is too obscure then you would be just wasting your time.

You can find out just what people are looking for.  Google and the other search engines give you that capability of finding out just what people want to know.

There are some categories which are huge, and you really would struggle to survive if you picked them, but if you pick a topic which doesn’t have too many other people writing about , but you know people are definitely looking for, then you would be going in the right direction.

Change and new interest is where you have to be looking.  If people visit your site and like what they see, enough to make them come back, imagine what they are going to think if there is still the same stuff there.

Nothing new!  What would you do?  You wouldn’t bother coming back, would you?  Neither would I.

Remember, people just adore information, I would hazard a guess that what most people seek from the internet, is information of some sort or another.

If you don’t provide it then someone else will.  You are one of millions of sites, you have to work to make yours constantly change and be able to keep your visitor’s interest.

I wouldn’t go so far as to think that you will come up with something which would make yours No.1 out of all those millions, but that is not strictly necessary to gain visitors, however, it must be fresh and informative.

GIVING GOOD VALUE

What is good value you might ask?  Well, you have to be seen to be considering your customers wants and needs.

If you have a specific topic for your site, be it website or blog, then you have to constantly update it.  This takes work, you need to be constantly researching, doing what I call ‘your homework’.

With so many people using the internet these days they have become so much more discerning.  I know I talked in the beginning about believing all the hype about being able to become dot.com millionaires, but this is different.

Your visitors have been exposed to so much information every time they come onto the net that they have, in a way, become blasé.  They have great expectations about what they are due in the way of information.

So, you must make sure that you don’t give them anything which is untrue or questionable.  They will see right through you and you will lose them.

When you are searching for information yourself in order to post it on your site, try to find reputable sites to garner this information so that you can be sure it’s not pure supposition, but the truth.

Under the banner of value, also comes what you are offering in the nature of giveaways.

Apart from information, the one thing you can be sure will attract your visit is ‘something for nothing’.  Nobody is immune to a freebie, as long as it comes within their area of interest and is complementary to your site topic.

You wouldn’t offer an e-book on wine making if your topic of interest was politics for instance.   Do you see where I am going with this?

ORIGINALITY

There will be many who won’t bother to look beyond what is the hot topic of the moment.  They will simply jump on that particular bandwagon and hope for the best.

This will attract visitors, I have no doubt, but whether they come back again is another story.   Remember that there will be a huge number of other people doing just what you are doing – cashing in on the No.1 topic of the day.  You may just disappear into the crowd, so to speak.

Also, fads are just that – fads.  They come and go almost with the speed of light.  You can never tell just how long people will remain interested in them.  If your site is based around one of these fads then you could have a very short shelf life.

GOOD SOLID INFORMATION

One of the major points you need to take on board is never to try to write about something you do not understand.  This would be fatal because anyone who knows the topic would immediately realize that you didn’t know fully what you were talking about.

Nobody wants to be made to look like a fool, so to avoid this, choose a topic you know something about.  You need to appear knowledgeable.

If you are not as knowledgeable as you would like about your chosen topic then again – ‘do your homework’.  There is all the information you could ever want somewhere on the net.

Basically by running your site devoted to a certain topic, you are saving the reader’s time by doing the research for him.  He could just as easily trawl the net and find the information himself, which you will be serving up, but if he can be saved the trouble and time by finding it all in one place, why would he bother?

So you can see, you must make your information reputable so that you can be sure these visitors will come back to you over and over.  You must have them come back.

You absolutely must work at getting that trust in your information and get people to know you for someone who cares about his topic.

If you just serve up rubbish then you may as well shut up shop, people have too many other sites to choose from than to waste their time visiting yours only to be served up rehashed garbage.

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

Make sure that your hosting service does not carry more than 10 other sites because this can make your service slow, especially at busy times.

These problems are quite common but nonetheless annoying for your readers if they have to wait too long for pages to be loaded.

They may be tempted to leave and go elsewhere – not what you want at all.

Be sure your site is ‘user friendly’, don’t make things too complicated.  It has to be easy to navigate and get around, there are tools to enable you to make sure that this is how it is set up.

Also, you may think that any number of adverts and banners make it look attractive, but it just may end up as confusing to the visitor.  This would be a definite negative effect, one which you would do well to avoid.

Make sure your internet connection does not suffer problems either. You could just be in the middle of making a sale and be interrupted, this would not be good for you or your potential customer.

WEEK END TRAFFIC

The success of your site is totally dependant on the number of people who come to visit and look.  Weekdays are usually not a problem, but when it comes to the week-end, a lot of folk are visiting different sites from during the week, or they are out with the family, taking a day away, going to park etc. etc.  You just don’t get the volume of traffic at the week-ends.

However, there is a hard core of internet nuts who will spend time there whatever the day and if you are able to determine which sites are visited day after day 24/7 you could get those site owners to put one of your articles on their sites with a backlink and this would probably help you to tempt people to visit your site and to get over the week-end slump.

You can view it another way, you could think of something which would entice visitors to come to your site, week-end or not.  If you give them something to look forward to.   Something which you are going to be showing only at the week-end, a product, a freebie, whatever.

I realize it sounds like there are nothing but problems to face when starting an online business.  Naturally there are problems, but there are solutions also.

You can do it, others have so why not you?  As I said before, patience and perseverance are what is needed. If you have a problem, face it, solve it and get back up.

If making videos is your ‘thing’ then you can do no better than to put them on YouTube.  Because YouTube is a Google property and you get the benefit of it being constantly spidered for new content.

You don’t even have to use your own videos, there are literally thousands for you to pick from, to use for yourself.  It is quite permissible to do this, you are not stealing nor is it considered plagiarizing in any way, you simply embed the url into your own site.

There is such an upsurge in the use of social media sites that it is imperative for anyone wanting to make contacts to use these sites.  You can even put in a link for a video on say Twitter, Facebook etc.

Video is definitely the way to go, people just love videos, for fun, for business, whatever, they flock to sites showing videos.  Obviously this means that you have massive exposure if you have videos showing on any of these sites.  It would be sheer lunacy not to take advantage of this as part of your marketing strategy.

Of course, the secret to creating a ‘viewer friendly’ video is to vary the content.  Don’t just sit or stand and talk for the whole length of the video.  People soon get bored with that.  Vary your backgrounds if you can and perhaps put other material in, graphs, instructional sections where you are showing a screen on your computer etc.  Anything which will make a natural break is good.

The theme of the video naturally must be reflected to some extent in the background you choose, what slides you show, graphics etc, must be slanted towards the subject.  If this is not possible then you can set the mood differently with the use of appropriate music, upbeat, soothing etc.  There is no end of effects you can achieve with video.

There are a huge amount of free music, graphics, backgrounds etc.available.  The sky is the limit for you to experiment with, by trying to find the style which would suit your purpose the best.  You may only want to place videos on sites for fun which is alright, but if you want them as part of your marketing strategy you would have to find which styles worked the best for your promotion.

If you are an internet marketer you really should be using video,  that is if you are not already.  It is the way forward and is proving one of the easiest ways to reach your public.  As an internet marketer your main object is to build trust between yourself and your prospective customers.  What could be a better way than for you to be seen and heard?  People will identify more readily to your image than to your written word.

This method of marketing is taking over, so don’t be left behind, get on the video marketing bandwagon now.