Sunday, September 28, 2008

Internet Marketing Its As Easy As Pie

When I started marketing on the Internet I found, like so many before me, that there were so many strategies that I got a bad case of overload.

There are dozens of strategies - email marketing, article marketing, reviews, forums, Adwords, Adsense, traffic exchanges, finding and reading new products, website testing . . . and on and on.

My head is spinning!

I had to simplify. So I started to look for main types, or categories, of activities.

Basically I had to:

1. Find and research new products to add to my affiliate website.

2. Make changes to my Web site itself

3. Do promotional stuff to get and keep getting traffic.

I discovered I could easily describe the three basic activities using the nice acrostic P-I-E. Promote, Improve, And Expand.

I would simply cycle through the three activity categories like a wheel moving forward on the ground. Within each category I could vary the actual activity from one cycle to the next. I can't spend time every day on my Web business, so I simply perform one task at a time, and I make sure it is in the category of the next letter.

P-I-E-P-I-E-P-I-E . . .

I'll describe them in detail, but unfortunately they make more logical sense if I start at the end and work backwards E-I-P

EXPAND

These are behind-the-scenes activities - stuff not visible to my audience. Finding a new affiliate product to promote, signing up for an affiliate program or network, or reading a course to review, might be some of the activities.

These activities are those that will EXPAND my reach. They are additions to my current offerings. As an affiliate marketer, the more products I can represent the greater my reach (It's just important that I keep them within my niche). In an email campaign I need to offer new products I find. On my Website I need to review new materials, to keep the site growing.

So expanding means finding new products or reading them to review them

IMPROVE

By Improve I mean actually changing or adding to the Web site itself. I'm adding a new page, I'm changing a page to test an offer. In my mind, improve refers to visible stuff on my website itself. It is something that changes the public appearance.

The main difference between Expanding and Improving is simply visibility. Expanding is invisible to my public. Improving is highly visible. It is changing my storefront.

PROMOTE

Promotion includes activities that are visible but not on my Web site. Posting or changing an ad on Google, writing and publishing an article on an article database. Posting in a forum. Producing a video on Youtube. Spending time in a traffic exchange.

You could see the three categories like this:

Expand - Invisible to public, adding products and services.

Improve - Visible changes to my own site.

Promote - Visible work somewhere other than my site.

When I have time to work on my business I just pick an activity from the next category in the cycle, and keep churning through them.

Here's my mental conversation with myself today:

"Let's see, today I'm on "Promote" so I'm going to write an article. Um...How about an article about my PIE method. I'll post it on ezinearticles.com. The next promotion cycle I think I'll do a newsletter posting to my email list. That's a promotion activity."

"Tomorrow it's on to Improve. I think I'll put up a review of the ebook I just finished reading on my Web site."

"For the next day it's on to Extend. Last cycle I signed up for a new source of CPA offers. I think I'll look through the offerings and pick out some I can use for some Adwords campaigns. I'll send for them and take notes to prepare for posting them at another Improve cycle."

That's it. That's the method I use to stay on track. Often as I think of things to do I put them in my notebook (you do keep a notebook of ideas, activities, etc don't you? A log, of your business, so to speak.) under the appropriate categories. I have a page for each category in the back. I can choose from the appropriate list as each new cycle rolls around.

Author : Roger Zimmerman