Internet Marketing and Reinventing the Wheel

Well, I was actually planning on doing a thorough keyword research post (or at least how I approach it, which is different than most of other blogs suggest) but am pressed for time this week as I am planning on heading to Kansas City to see my University of Memphis Tigers play. Because of this, other than general housekeeping, this post is a short look into creating internet marketing products for non-internet marketing niches…enjoy….

Let’s be real here. If you are into internet marketing and are creating your own products, then chances are you have created some kind of product that you are selling to other people in the internet marketing niche. Great. And chances are you probably don’t have any idea of what you are talking about and your product is nothing more than a rehash of other make money products out there…..

…no biggie….I really don’t blame you for doing this…really….

To be perfectly honest, I did the exact same thing (using personas) and made a little money on the side… Not a lot, mind you….not enough to merit the time I spent putting into the project but enough to make me feel that I was going somewhere….

This said, I want to tell you that there are easier ways to doing this and ways that are much, much more profitable than trying to peddle your wares to other internet marketers, who have probably seen it all and will be somewhat jaded….

..And this is where this post begins….

How to Profit Big Time by NOT Marketing to Internet Marketers

My wife loves art. She does. She spends a good portion of my internet income on little art trinkets, handmade jewelry and framed pictures whenever she gets the chance. Our walls are covered with artwork from unknown artists from around the world. We actually have hand painted furniture in our living room. Our baby girl has a mobile made up of stars that sound like wind chime. You get the picture….

She gets most of this art from a website called Etsy.com. You may have heard of it. It is nothing more than a marketplace for all things art. Artists from around the world come here and sell their stuff and people like my wife buy their stuff….

Anyway, a while back, I was in her account, and searching etsy for something cool for her birthday (which is next month). It is here where I ran into something that I think all of us could learn from….

The image to the right is the product I am talking about. So what is it? Can you guess?

That’s right……

It is nothing more than a beginner’s guide into how to make money if you are an artist using Etsy. And really, when you break it all down, it is no different than writing a book on how to make money online that is geared for newbie marketers.

Here is a little taste into what this book is about…

-Perfecting Your Shop Name
-Research, Research, Research
-Setting Up Shop?
-How to write attractive descriptions and optimize tags.
-Getting in the Zone
-Phenomenal Photography
-A Fine Tooth Comb
-Advertising 101
-How to Snag a Treasury and WHY it really is a TREASURE!
-NetWorlding for Success
-Shipping & Handling
- The Books
-The Directory  links to online resources that will help you drive traffic to your Etsy shop for FREE, or in some cases, a small fee!

So what kind of profit could YOU have made had you thought of this first?….Let’s do the math…

$9.00 per book x 551 transactions (positive feedback) = $4,959

Can you say cha-ching? And what makes this so great is that even the beginner marketer could have built a rehashed book that was geared to a completely different niche…not the typical internet marketing niche.

On a side note, I bought the book just to see what was in it. The author did not maximize his profits (maybe he is a newbie himself). I can think of a couple ways straight out of the gate that I could snare the art entrepeneur into a monthly subscription fee (or use someone else’s system for a monthly affiliate commision).

My point here is that if you are brand new to internet marketing, then you can attack a different niche in which real business owners are looking for ways to improve their visibility on the web and make money selling their products. In this case, it was targeted at artists.

But the reality is that you can target nearly any niche in which entrepeneurs are searching for ways to improve their visibility and make more money doing what they are doing right now…. 

Right off the top of my head, I could think of 5 markets that I could enter and profit from immediately just by creating a simple 30 page pdf or video showing the niche how to market themselves….and yes, it would be nothing more than a rehash of the junk us internet marketers have seen over…and over…and over….

So, the next time you think about putting out Google Annihilation part 99, you should look at the marketing materials already out there and reformatting them to fit a niche that isn’t really about….internet marketing…

And that is all I have to say about that….Go Tigers!!