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10 Rules for an Internet Marketer

Written by: Scott Hendison

Article Overview: These are important things to remember if you're an entrepreneur, an internet marketer, working on your own website or on the sites of clients.

10 Rules for an Internet Marketer

1. Pay less attention to visitor counts, and more attention to conversions.It’s much easier to double your conversions than to double your traffic. Take better advantage of the traffic you already have, instead of chasing after traffic that you don’t, and and you’ll make your clients much happier.

2. Spend less time in forums, reading peoples advice whom you don’t know.
Forums are one of the biggest time wasters on the Internet, and although many are filled with valuable information & advice, they are also frequently the source of misinformation and rumors.

Unless you’re actually researching an issue for a solution, try not to get sucked into the pointless theoretical conversations, and wandering around these communities filled with anonymous users.

Instead, save yourself valuable time, and try asking specific questions in one of the communities or web pages where experts are hanging out, offering to answer specific questions with their reputations on the line.

3. Spend more time reading the blogs and articles written by industry leaders.
Unlike many forums, when a search engine expert posts something on their own personal or company blog, they have a reputation to protect, so you can bet it’s usually going to be accurate.

If it’s not true, the rest of the internet marketing community will be all over them with comments, pointing out any factual errors, and keeping them accountable for what they say.

4. Pay less attention to search engine ranking reports.
It doesn’t matter where you rank for any given phrase, because ranking itself makes you no money. The actions taken by a visitor after they reach your website that’s far more important, and analyzing visitor behavior is a much more valuable service you can provide than ranking phrases for your clients egos.

The hard part is of course getting clients to understand this, but once you’re making them more profitable, they’ll quickly get the picture.

5. Develop more niche affiliate relationships for products or lead generation.
It’s highly likely that the most profitable website in the world has not even gone online yet, and every day new opportunities, new inventions, and new ideas pop into people’s heads all over the world.

By developing more “affiliate” relationships as opposed to flat rate services, you will have more incentive to do a good job, add quality content, and develop the valuable links. You both will be much happier in the long run, making everyone more money.

6. Stop worrying about keyword density & the search engines.
Running your text through a keyword density analyzer and agonizing over small changes that will get you to that “magic percentage” is a complete waste of time, especially since the magic percentage changes every week.

By providing valuable information, tips, knowledge and content to your readers, or to your client’s readers, is going to provide a greater long-term benefit, as the search engines get smarter at determining the subject of a page.

7. Unsubscribe to most of the “Guru” newsletters.
The proliferation of “get rich quick” schemes seems to be accelerating rather than declining. More and more self-proclaimed “experts” continue to develop and share their email lists, to which they market “the next big idea” in the form of downloadable products, e-books, linking schemes and membership sites you can join.

The VAST majority of these products and schemes are just recycled ideas anyway, and you can get back a significant portion of your time by simply unsubscribing. Trust me, if it’s something “really good”, you’re going to hear about it anyway.

8. Develop more video content, and do it properly.
It’s all about content, no matter what industry you’re in or what you’re trying to accomplish. You know you’re already behind the pack when it comes to producing and distributing video content, but nobody is likely that far out in front of you.

Video is undoubtedly here to stay, and by completing all of the the meta-info, and by supplementing your video pages with surrounding text, you’re going to better capture the attention of your audience, attract more inbound links, and basically, do much better than the next guy.

The day may not be far off when videos can stand on their own and actually be indexed by the search engines for content, but for now that’s just wishful thinking, so don’t be lazy.

9. Participate more often in the Sphinn.com community.
Whether you’re trying to increase your own visibility, or you’re trying to stay up to date on the latest information available about the search marketing industry, you’ll find no hotter community than Sphinn. Everybody who’s anybody has an account on Sphinn, and nothing goes on in this industry that escapes attention there.

Read, vote, submit, and comment (when appropriate) as often as you can, setting aside at least a little bit of time each day.

10. Attend at least one major industry event annually, such as Pubcon, SMX or SES
You’ll never have a better opportunity to mingle with the experts and pick up inside bits of information weeks before the rest of your competition does.

Barely half of the value even comes during the sessions, with incredible information and relationships to be acquired at lunch time, in the halls after sessions, or over cocktails in the bar. You’ll simply never get the really best stuff by only reading all of the great live bloggers who were there.

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Article Tags: affiliate relationships, anonymous users, conversations, conversions, egos, factual errors, industry leaders, information advice, line 3, marketing community, misinformation, niche, phrases, reputation, reputations, search engine expert, time wasters, valuable service, visitor behavior, web pages



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Hi from Adelaide Australia - Hi guys and gals my name is Dave Gilbert and i am a Sr Partner at Velocity Marketer a joint US and Australian company that runs Kooiii.com. I have been a Marketer, Web entrepreneur/developer and search technologist for the last 15 years specializing in SEO,SEM,SMO .
New Member: Kavin Paulson - Hello to everyone, I'm Kavin Paulson, an Internet Marketer by profession, working with Ipraxa Web Development Company, a CA based firm. I am here for exchange of ideas, information and knowledge. I would like to share my knowledge and ideas with others and learn from others too.
A new member checking in - Hello everyone, My name is Mal and I am delighted to be here at your forum. I live with my family in the County of Northumberland in the North East corner of England and am an enthusiastic Internet Marketer. I feel very much at home already as I recognise several friendly faces from my other activities in this exciting business. I look forward to my visits here and sharing experiences with you all. best wishes, Mal Tindle
Re: I thought social sites were a waste of time. How wrong I was - Social Media has only really been understood this last year or two. Before that I didn’t really understand or like Facebook for example because of the problems separating Family and Friends from Business. Twitter seemed a total waste of my time and a lot of people seemed to spend all their time building up their followers to brag about how many they have got. Now I understand the basics a bit more I can appreciate the value particularly of Twitter in building up relationships with others in your niche with a view to doing business later. If people follow me and are active in the general Internet world or marketing in particularly then I follow back immediately otherwise I don’t see the point. You could argue I suppose that someone who breeds dogs and enjoys painting for example might suddenly become an Internet Marketer and I am missing out on not following them but I tend to stick within my niche. regards, Mal.
Re: Welcome to Entrepreneur University! - Andy C. responding to your question. I;ve been with Ilearningglobal for a few months. I went down to their corporate office to check it out, and at their Launch Conference in March. Amazing company, first class executives running the company, and the Faculty are the best of the best in the world. I personally met Brian Tracy, Dan Clark, Bill Bartman etc. Simply great individuals. As Brian Tracy says, "Learn from the experts, you'll never live long enough to learn it all yourself" If you join as a Preferred Customer for $79.95, the Marketer who's website you signed up through, will earn a commission. If all you want is the Basic Membership, it's $79.95. In order to earn commissions you need to be a Marketer. It is a one time $20.00 to be a Marketer. For the $20 you receive: 1) Your own personal replicated website for marketing ILearningglobal. ( as people join, they are linked to you) 2) Provided with your own back office website to manage your business ( tracks your commissions, shows your customers & marketers etc. in your group) 3) Access to tools and training by ILearninglobal All for just $20. Every month thereafter, just your Membership of $79.95 qualifies you for commissions as people join. Where can you operate a global business, with a huge potential for so little. Andy C.


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