OneStopNovice

When your starting to enter into the Internet marketing world and you consider social media as a source for leads or promotion there is no better place to start than with twitter.  These are a few simple tips to consider when starting out using twitter for your social media advertising:

1. Only look for folks who are interested in your niche. This seems like a simple tip but you would be surprised how many folks just starting out in internet marketing want “the numbers” instead of the targeted numbers. The latter being much more valuable.
2. Try and post at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Especially on Tuesdays and Wedenesdays. They appear to be the best days for reading tweets. I’m not sure why Tuesday and Wednesdays are better but I see better results on those days with my tweets.
3. Don’t just tweet about your day, look for interesting topics that are related to your niche and share them with your followers. http://stufftotweet.com is perfect for this sort of thing. This site is loaded with interesting topics that people are talking about right now. If there is a topic there that is relevant to your niche, help your followers out and let them know about it.
4. Use tools to leverage your time. I’ve only been at this for a little while now but I find that their are great tools out there to help manage your tweets better. Now I’m not saying to go out and buy the next great auto list building spammer, but website such as tweetlater (now socialoomph.com) and refollow.com have saved me a lot of time. One of the better tools I’ve found out there from a software perspective is hummingbird. Hummingbird will help you get the most out of your time on twitter and make managing your lists so much easier.
5. Tweek your background just a little bit. The few minutes it takes to upload a nice friendly smiling picture of yourself will really help. I’m surprised by how many folks still have the original default tweeter icon still on their twitter page. You may want to check out some of the free twitter background generating sites as well such as twitterbackgrounds.com If you get annoyed with the little slogan of the company that generated the free background, its usually easy enough to brush that out with your favorite paint program such as Photoshop.

This is one of the easiest and cheapest ways for the Internet marketing novice to get some traffic.  You don’t even need a video camera,  just some software that records your screen.  I personally have found that Camtasia is the best, but other may have their own preference.  If you decide to leverage video marketing, consider these tips when making your video:

1. Be honest. This goes without saying but you tend to see a lot of the opposite in the internet marketing game.  Don’t be “that guy” and be honest and up front with the information in your video.
2. Talk to folks like you would want to be spoken to. People really relate better if you just talk like a real person and not a salesman.  You will be much more successful if you go this route.
3. If you can prove your making money online, it helps tremendously.   Shoot a video of you logging into your Paypal account and show the funds being received from your online business.  If your just starting out and not making money online yet ask your mentor to do so.  Show that someone on your team or someone connected to you in your program is making real money with your business.  Just make sure you don’t bill it as you in the video, remember…be honest.  Here is an example of what I’m talking about:http://onestopnovice.com/make-money
4. Offer an incentive.  This can something as simple as the have to have ebook or access to a training site; however, if you can afford it, you might try more money based incentives like, putting x number of members underneath them or just outright buying their first month in.  The money you spend up front doing that will pay off in the end if you can afford it.
5. Don’t over hype your video. There is nothing worse than the red corvettes or huge yachts sailing on an ocean of money in a video.  These types of video’s are almost all hype and people are smart enough to recognize that.

In a word, NO! However, there are a few things you can do to help make traffic exchanges more worth your time.

• Use them in conjunction with another tool. Typically this goes along with a video sharing site like youtube or metacafe. You can boost your views to your videos and leap frog over your video competition by sending traffic exchange traffic to your video.
• Don’t try and sell your product. Everyone there is already in a business and actively promoting it which is most likely what their doing in the traffic exchange to begin with. Instead of trying to sell them another business opportunity, why not try and sell them something everyone in this business needs…more leads.  If you can help them obtain this goal, you might see success with traffic exchanges.
• Choose the traffic exchanges that force you to watch for at least 20 or 30 seconds. This at least give you a brief window to make your pitch, whatever it may be. Those sites that have 5 or 10 seconds between each new page surf significantly lower your chances of being able to accomplish anything with that traffic.   Some of the better sites that I have used and liked in the past are EasyHits4U, Clixsense, HitBoosterPro and TrafficG.
• Traffic exchange tip. These seems like a simple tip but when your just starting out you may not know this one. If you use Firefox (and if you are marketing on the Internet you really should be) then log into 5 or 6 different traffic exchanges at once all on different tabs. Then while your surfing and waiting for the 20 or 30 second time threshold to pass before you can surf again, you can move to the other tabs and surf. This will allow you to get 5 or 6 times more traffic rather than just using a single site and waiting for the surf next page time to elapse. Simple tip but if your going to use traffic exchanges in your Internet marketing, then you really should be doing this.

I opened up this website to help focus in and help the true Internet marketing novice.   I put myself in this category at one time as well and have learned some tough lessons along the way that I hoping I can help you avoid.  As a guy who graduated with a computer degree and worked for a major software company for over 10 years I thought I would just jump right into this Internet marketing game and start making money right away right?  Boy was I wrong!  Internet marketing is in itself an completely new beast than anything that I had ever experienced in well versed computer career.  There is nothing quite like it and you really need to get in and get your hands dirty to truly start to understand it.  But here are a few important guidelines you might consider before jumping into this great game we call Internet marketing.

1. Do your research.  The Internet is jam packed full of information.  If you’re considering an opportunity, find out as much about the company as you can.  Look for small business forums where real people are talking about their experiences with the company (good and bad) and make sure you don’t put too much weight in affiliate sites.  Their opinion will obviously be biased
2. How does your online affiliate marketing business stack up against every one else’s. Here is a nice little site I like to check out when I’m considering a new business opportunity.  It’s called IM Report Card and can be found here http://www.imreportcard.com.
3. Take your time. This goes hand in hand with doing your research.  There is no reason to see an offer one time and buy right away.  A lot of the affiliate sites that you might stumble upon gear their websites to invoke the “must buy now” emotion in all of us.  Know that going into your research of an opportunity and you’ll be less likely to impulse buy your way into a mistake or a business opportunity that just wasn’t a good fit for you
4. Know your budget and stick to it.  We are all here to make money, not lose it right?  Have a solid budget going into your research and stick to it.  Many affiliate companies will have add on packages or tools that they will offer you to help market your business.  Avoid going out of your budget to purchase these types of tools or upgrades.  You just started the business and chances are you are going to need some time to get acquainted with the company’s product and community before looking to already upgrade or grab that cool tool that helps promote your business.
5. Go in it with the right frame of mind. I’ve met a lot of good folks that quite when they don’t see immediate success. Know that you can make money on the Internet, but there is no “make money” button to push and it will take time to understand Internet marketing’s brutal learning curve.  Which brings me to my next point…
6. Be willing to work. This goes along with the right frame of mind.  If you get into an opportunity that is a good fit for you and your budget then tell yourself you will put in the necessary time and effort to make it successful.  If you go into an opportunity with that mind set you will shorten your learning curve and you may just have fun learning how to do this thing we call Internet marketing.
7. Find a mentor. Typically a good place to start is a sponsor of whatever your business you’re getting into but not always.  A mentor can be as simple as someone who’s opinion you respect from speaking to them on a small business forum or via social media.  Have that go to person you can reach out to when you absolutely have to have that invaluable information or experience with a particular tool or product.
8. Be teachable. This goes along with the mentor/student relationship.  If you have found someone who is taking the time to try and teach you a thing or two about making money on the Internet, stop and listen and apply what you’re hearing.  Don’t get caught up in the “well I’ve always done it this way so…” or “I heard that that technique was not worth the trouble from…”  Maybe your mentor has a different angle or a different way of doing something that is more successful than how you’ve done it in the past.
9. Try and learn something new every day – treat it like a business. This is what I did when I first started out.  Among all the information overwhelm that there exists in the Internet marketing game, I told myself that if I could just learn one new thing today, then I can go to bed feeling like I’ve moved forward with my Internet business goals.  This helps you get through the three steps forward, two steps back roller coaster that is Internet marketing.
10. Don’t quit. This is by far the most important of all steps.  My mentor once told me that no one ever fails at Internet marketing, they simply quit before they become successful.  If you really want to do this, if you really want to quit your job and have that work from home dream, then never quit on that goal.  It may take some time but if you don’t quit, eventually you have to get better…by default.