But Figuring Out This Marketing Thing
I will never forget the day when it finally hit me. I had a problem.
You see, I believe in education. I really do. Not necessarily traditional education, but I believe in learning from others who know more than me about specific topics.
I made good grades in college. I wasn’t stupid. Surely, I could figure out this marketing online thing.
I started to notice that there were some really good courses out there. They were kind of expensive but I thought, “Aha. Yes. This is the way to do it. Learn from someone who is already successful. Don’t try to figure it out by myself.”
(Which I did try to figure it out by myself for a few years and that certainly didn’t work.)
So, it started out innocent enough. I purchased a not-so-cheap marketing course. It was about building a business with sales funnels. This made sense to me.
Why Everyone Needs A Sales Funnel
I became convinced that everyone needed a sales funnel. And I am still convinced of that.
But here’s where things got screwed up. But then I got to the part where they told me to do live videos and live webinars. Terror came over me. Being on camera gave me cold sweats! Being the center of attention was my worst nightmare. And I was petrified of going LIVE.
So, I bought another course. This one was about selling high ticket items on the back end of a sales funnel. Again, this made sense to me. And it still makes sense to me. I didn’t need to get on video. Nobody ever needed to see me.
And it paid really high commissions. But here’s the problem. We had to role play at the end and I felt very intimidated by some people. That was not the tactic that was taught to us, but it scared me regardless.
“I can’t be that person,” I thought. I don’t intimidate very well. 
So next, I found a course about coaching. “Yes, I could do that,” I thought. I didn’t have to be so assertive. I could actually help people.
But then I got to the end and I thought, “What if I can’t do this? What if I take a lot of money from people but I cannot help them solve their problems?”
So, I found a course on starting an ad agency. “I can do this,” I thought. It made sense to me. It still makes sense to me.
But then I got to the end and I thought, “What if I can’t get them leads? What if my ad account gets shut down?” (Because this seemed to be happening to a LOT of people.)
Being Told To Go Live Again
Again, the cold feet got me. And besides, I wasn’t really passionate about it.
And finally, I bought a course on how to create courses. “I can do this,” I thought.
But then they told me to change out my personal cover photo with one that had a link to my business and do live videos again.
“Oh no. Not again. I can’t do that,” I thought.
More could be said about it, but I think you probably get my point. There was too much worry going on inside of me about what people would think. Being very introverted, I was protective over my privacy, and just plain scared.
I guess you can probably see by now, as I can, that the problem was mostly me and my lack of confidence.
And every time I thought I had it figured out, I would realize that there was another piece of the puzzle that I needed to learn. And that would lead me to yet another course.
More Pieces To The Puzzle
I was a 55-year-old female realtor who got paid on commissions that got to my bank account some of the time. And then there were those other times when the paycheck never made it for reasons that were completely out of my control.
I could go back to working in a building for someone else all day every day again. I did that for 35 years. But, I hated the thought of it.
What was I going to do when I hit retirement age? What if I don’t stay healthy enough to keep working? My short term health insurance had been canceled on me 3 times with no warning.
Would I ever feel safe and secure again?
The only thing I knew for sure was that I was NOT going to give up. AND – I needed to stop spending money on courses and start advertising and getting back a return on my investments.
But this led to so many other questions. How? What was the best path to take?
The Two Important Ingredients of a Legitimate Home Business
After years and years and YEARS of researching ways to earn a real living online, I have come to a startling realization. And that realization is this: There are really only two things you need to succeed with an online business.
- A profitable sales funnel
- A profitable ad campaign
That’s IT. Period!
Sounds simple, right? Right! (The most important word here is “profitable.”)
The truth is, each of those two phrases could be the equivalent of a college degree when you truly understand the depth of what I just said. But still, everything you learn about marketing online does fall under one of those two umbrellas.
How To Recognize A “Real” Business
Or let me rephrase that – all of the LEGITIMATE articles and videos you see about having a REAL business online fall under one of those two main categories.
I’m not talking about all of those mundane “jobs” that pay pennies for data entry, filling out surveys, and all of those other “trade your time for money” time-killers out there.
I’m talking about REAL businesses.
So, let’s explore what this really means. Let’s break it down even further.
But before we begin, just know that we are going to go deep into the problems involved, but if you stay to the end, I am going to share with you the solution because I finally found it. So don’t lose hope, ok??!!
Hang in there!
Selling Someone Else’s Products
Before you have a successful sales funnel, you need something to sell, right?
This leaves you with exactly two options: You can sell your own products (or services) or you can sell someone else’s (which is known as affiliate marketing.)
(Or network marketing, but that’s another story for another day.)
So – if you are selling someone else’s products – you are getting paid a commission to “recommend” the products of other people.
The benefits of affiliate marketing are many – you don’t have to create your own products or sales funnels; you simply recommend products to others and get paid.
But what if I told you that most affiliate programs are only paying you on the first couple of levels, while the product owners are bringing in the big bucks on the back end?
Why You Need To Keep The Affiliate Leads
So what does this mean? This means that YOU are providing them with FREE leads.
You are getting THEM leads with free or paid traffic (more on this below) and sending those leads straight into THEIR businesses.
Then they reward you with small or mid-range commissions and now they have customers that they can sell to over again and make even higher commissions or reoccurring income that you don’t even know about.
In other words, they now have customers for life that they can advertise to over and over again for free, and you have a few bucks in your pocket that (if you are lucky) covered your ad expenses.
(But most likely not.)
They, on the other hand, grow their large databases of customers that they did not have to pay for at all.
Why? Because you paid for them!
Creating Your Own Products
So then that leaves you with a second option – creating your own products. And believe me, I bought all of the courses and got all the t-shirts.
So where did that leave me? It left me spending weeks and weeks and weeks and months and months and months creating my own products.
But I eventually realized that this left me with a couple of major problems that still needed to be solved. 
- I still needed to create a profitable sales funnel
- I still needed to have a profitable ad campaign.
So where did this lead me? To more courses and software, of course.
I hope and pray that I caught you before you fell hard down this long and winding rabbit hole of spending tons of money on training before ever making back a dime.
The Never-Ending Spending Problem
I call this the “never-ending spending” problem.
I don’t know about you, but for me, I was trying to figure all of this out while working a full-time job and spending whatever spare minutes I could with family.
To say that it was difficult and scary would be an understatement. Not to mention, expensive.
Yet, I persisted until I found the solution because I wanted more than anything to work for myself and have the freedom to live life on my terms!
But it needed to fit me and my introverted personality.
Would you like to know what I figured out without having to spend thousands of dollars to learn it the hard way as I did? Hang on. We’re getting to that.
What Is a Profitable Sales Funnel?
Let’s assume that you do have high-converting, quality products to sell and now it is time to put together a profitable sales funnel. What is that exactly?
Well, I’m glad you asked. A successful sales funnel consists of a few important components:
- A Landing Page – that captures a person’s email address in exchange for a free gift. (By the way, you have to create the free gift.)
- A Thank You Page or Bridge Page – that gives people a little bit more information and/or their free gift.
- A Low Ticket Item – this is called an “impulse” buy. It doesn’t cost a lot of money so people don’t need to think much about it. They can just buy it because they don’t have much to lose.
- Upsell Page One – this is selling them something that costs a little bit more money in exchange for something of higher value.
- Upsell Page Two – this is selling them something that costs even more money in exchange for even more value.
- Downsell Page – this is selling them something that costs a little bit less money to help them overcome sticker shock. (Usually some kind of bargain or good deal.)
- Email List – in the meantime, you will need to have a series of emails going out to these people, following up on them, providing them with more free value and other offers.
- Passive Income System (also known as a Continuity Program) – a monthly program where you can make residual income month after month, and in exchange they get something of value month after month.
- High Ticket Programs – programs, systems or events of extremely high value that cost thousands of dollars (where the business owner makes thousands of dollars.) These normally involve personal coaching and/or live events, as well as high ticket closers whose job is to sell these programs over the phone.
Tracking Every Step Of The Process
- You need to understand how to track each and every step of this process to find out what is working and what needs improving. In other words – you need to understand analytics, mathematics and data interpretation.
- Oh – and last but not least – you need to have good SALES COPY skills in order to make this system profitable. (The ability to sell in print and through video.)
Now, I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted just thinking about all of that. And that is assuming that you already have quality products to sell. Remember the products that took months and months to create?
And let me remind you one more time that I am going to show you a solution to all of this, so don’t bail out on me, okay? There IS hope!
But let’s just assume that we now have ALL of this in place – the high-quality products for each level of this process and each step of the profitable sales funnel.
Now we need to get customers, right? Of course!
This is where the profitable ad campaign comes into play. Also known as “website traffic.”
What Is a Profitable Ad Campaign?
Before you can even begin to find the right customers, you need to know exactly who your customers are – and how to find them.
In other words – who is it that has a problem that your products can solve?
Once you figure that out, there are two paths to getting those people to your initial landing page (where you give them a free gift in exchange for their email.)
And those two paths are this:
- You can pay for customers
- You can spend a lot of time creating content to get customers for “free.”
That is if you think giving up all of your time is “free.” But just know that this can be extremely effective IF done correctly. It just takes time.
Let’s Talk About “Free” Traffic
Most people will tell you to create a blog and sign up for every social media account on the planet. And although this can be an effective free strategy, it can also be confusing and overwhelming.
Thankfully, there is a little known way to find all of the people who are actively searching for what you have to offer, for free, that you can build up over time for less than an hour a day.
What I like about this technique is that you can remain under the radar and none of your friends and family ever need to know what you are doing.
In the past, I was told to change out my cover photo on my personal “friends and family page” and place my business link there, and do live videos in front of everyone I know! (As I have already mentioned because it still traumatizes me to think about it!)
The Marketing Challenges For Introverts
I don’t know about you, but this was literally impossible for me because I had business associates, bosses, clients, exes, relatives and the rest of the world on my profile page. People that I was not yet ready to share my business adventures with. At least not until I was actually succeeding!
Not to mention, this was TERRIFYING for a socially anxious introvert like me!!
And I am NOT very good at shouting out my personal business from the rooftops.
But with the little known free method I recently learned about, you can stay as private and as introverted as you like, and still generate high quality leads that will reap effective results. (People who are actually looking for what you have to offer.)
Let’s Talk About Paid Traffic
And sending paid traffic to the sales funnel can be even MORE effective IF it is done correctly and IF the sales funnel is profitable. (Which, by the way, takes a lot of testing and tweaking of EACH step to make this happen.)
After you have tracked your results, of course.
I hope you can see by now why people continuously get caught up in the never-ending spending problem. Not necessarily because advertisers are taking advantage of them, but instead, because, in order to turn all of this into a well-oiled and profitable machine, you need to know a LOT of stuff.
You need training, right? You need to make sure that if you do pay for advertising, you are going to do it correctly and not make any mistakes!
The Importance Of Paid Advertising Compliance
If you are going to do paid advertising, you need to understand how to be ethical, honest, and above all COMPLIANT (understand the rules of the game.)
(For example, see the disclaimers in the footer below.)
And of course, your paid ad campaigns need to be profitable!!!
How would you like training that will teach you the right ways to create profitable ad campaigns on the largest networks on the internet?
Because if you are putting $1.00 in and getting $2.00 back out, is paying to advertise worth it? You bet it is!!
Get Off of the Never-Ending Spending Cycle!
I have spent years doing the research so you don’t have to. I have put together several FREE “Beginner to Expert” internet marketing courses for you.
Click below to get out of the “never-ending spending” cycle NOW.
Once you have the right system in place, the only thing you should be spending money on is PROFITABLE advertising ($1.00 in to get $2.00 or more back out.)
It took me a very long time to realize that this was where I needed to be. If you stop to think about it, this is where we ALL need to be! Don’t you think?
Does that make sense? Would you like to learn more?
(One last footnote: In our community, we will be investigating new, alternative ways to advertise.)
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