Introduction
Looking to get into internet marketing in a big way?
Want to start making money from home so that you can pack in the day job?
Then it pays to invest a little into a great home office that will enhance your productivity, provides you with all the tools you need, and also encourage you to enjoy spending more time writing, filming, posting, and researching.
Let’s take a look at what you need…
Your Computer
Of course, an internet marketer needs a great computer.
While you’re probably not going to need anything insanely powerful, what will help us to have a computer that you actually enjoy working on and that you look forward to using?
To that end, getting something a bit newer with a nice 4K resolution can make a big difference to your workflow.
In terms of specs, you’ll want at least a newer i5 processor (2GHz+), 4-8GB of RAM for multitasking, a fair amount of storage space, an SSD for quick booting, and perhaps a basic graphics card for futureproofing.
If you plan on editing video, then you can upgrade that graphics card to a ‘must have’.
It’s also worth getting something with a touchscreen.
In terms of form factor, you have two options: going with something portable and mobile like a Surface Pro or a Surface Book or getting a home desktop with a big screen.
A portable machine will allow you to work on the move and in cafes, whereas a desktop will give you more computing power for your money.
It’s also worth noting that getting more screen real-estate, such as an ultra-wide monitor, has been shown to increase productivity by up to 30%.
The Keyboard
Along with the monitor, a great keyboard can also make all the difference to your productivity.
As a marketer, you will be typing a lot and so it pays to have a keyboard that will make the experience pleasant.
When it comes to typing, the best keyboards are generally agreed to be the ones with mechanical switches.
The best mechanical switches are the Cherry MX switches and the ‘MX blues’ are considered to be the quintessential typing experience.
Of course, this comes down to personal preference though, so it’s worth typing on a few before you invest any serious cash into one!
Other Accessories
There are a few other accessories that can help you to be more productive too.
For one, it is a good idea to get a smartwatch that will show you new messages.
This can prevent you from reaching for your phone every time you hear a buzz and means you won’t be so distracted by spam.
Another useful utility is a voice assistant like Alexa.
I find it very useful to be able to check facts without having to look them up from my computer.
Of course, a comfortable chair will make a big difference too and is very important for your general health and well-being.
The Biggest Mistake You Can Make in Your Internet Marketing
There are countless websites, blogs, and brands doing the rounds on the web but only a select few that ever really make a big splash and fulfill their potential.
Why is this?
Simply put, it’s because a lot of brands are really somewhat dry and wet.
How many times have you seen articles on ‘How to Lose Weight’ or ‘How to Make Money Online that don’t have anything exciting or new to say?
The question these marketers should ask themselves is why anyone would be interested in subscribing to that kind of content!
The posts that do well on social media meanwhile, are the ones that are highly unique, that are very niche, or that are even quite controversial.
The posts that try to please everyone will end up not making much of an impact on anyone.
While those that have something very clear to say to a very specific type of person will do well.
And there’s a very good reason for that…
The Psychology of Sharing
A post will do well on social media when it gets shared.
If you can create an article or a blog post that gets shared by all your followers and all their followers, then you will have a chance of going viral – which essentially means breaking one million readers and potentially exploding as a result.
So why do we share?
Here, it’s useful to remember what social media actually is on a fundamental level.
Social media is a communication tool and that means that people use it either to express themselves or to communicate something with someone else.
This is true of sharing too. People tend to share content for one of two reasons:
A) It says something about them. They like it so that other people will see it on their wall and know what’s on their minds.
B) It says something about a friend. They share it with a friend to show they’re thinking of them, or perhaps as a joke.
An Example
So, let’s take an example.
If you write a post on ‘How Working from Home Turns Your Brain to Mush’, then this will instantly appeal to people who work from home and who want to learn more about what impact that might be having on them.
If they agree with your post, if they find it interesting, or if they find it funny, then they may go on to share it on their wall.
In doing so, they are reminding their friends that they work from home and maybe trying to help them understand a bit more about who they are.
Meanwhile, though, your post might also get shared by people who have friends that work from home.
These people will share your content because they’ll want to demonstrate that they understand their friends’ plights, as a way of poking fun, or just as a way to show that they’re thinking of them.
But this only works because your content appeals to a specific type of person.
Don’t be afraid to narrow down and potentially exclude others as a result.
That’s how you become a brand with something useful to say.
Why Your Internet Marketing Hinges on Having a Solid Brand
When it comes to internet marketing, a great number of people end up missing the forest for the trees.
We’re repeatedly told how effective it is to run email marketing campaigns, to flood the net with content, and to use PPC but what we’re not told nearly so often is just how important it is to have a strong brand and a real purpose for existing.
You’re not stupid.
You know the difference between a spam site and a site that offers real value.
And you also know that the sites that offer real value are the ones that do the best on Google.
Big sites like The Verge, IGN, Mashable, Buzzfeed, Forbes, The New York Times… aren’t spammed sites that flood the web with content and keywords.
These are big brands that provide real value and that have real authority.
If you want to get to that point, then you need to create a brand of your own that is similarly high quality and that can gain the trust of your audience and of Google.
Where Do Brands Start?
This begins by understanding where a brand begins.
A brand is not a logo and a brand is not a website.
Your brand is your ‘mission statement’ and your ‘value proposition’.
A brand is a commitment to a certain standard and a reason for existing.
Your brand needs to be unique and it needs to be exciting and cohesive.
If you get this right, then it will make all the difference when it comes to your marketing.
Think about something like The Art of Manliness.
This is a website with a very clear reason to exist that is communicated very loudly and effectively throughout the entire site.
It’s not just there to make money, it’s there to preach a message and to help modern men to feel more manly and to become more capable.
This then informs every smaller decision across the site.
Everything from the logo to the content is selling the same dream and this has a very profound effect on visitors.
Know Your Audience
What effect is that?
Simple: it immediately communicates to the visitor whether they want to be there or not.
If you search for ‘How to Raise Testosterone, ‘How to be More Alert’ or ‘How to Smoke a Pipe’ and you find The Art of Manliness, then you instantly know what the site is about and what kind of content you can expect from it.
That single difference then means that you will be considerably more likely to sign up if it’s something that you’re interested in.
What’s more, is that you’ll know there aren’t that many sites exactly like this one out there.
It’s a rare and interesting topic and for the right visitor, it will have an instant appeal.
The power of a strong brand goes well beyond that though.
It will help you to be more recognizable across different social media platforms, it will make your visitors more loyal (they’ll feel like they’re joining a movement) and it will mean that potential partners take your brand more seriously.
THIS should be your priority as an internet marketer.
How to Create Physical Products to Sell As An Internet Marketer
A lot of internet marketers are lazy.
There, I said it!
That is to say that they decide they want to make money online but partly the reason for this is that they want a job where they don’t have to leave the house, don’t have to interact with people, and don’t need to invest any time or money into what they’re going to create.
That’s not an ideal motivation as you might imagine!
But it explains why 90% of internet marketers that refer to themselves as such, will focus purely on making products that are digital in nature – like eBooks and courses.
They rarely make the effort to sell anything physical because they don’t know how, they don’t want to invest in materials, and they don’t want to deal with delivery!
But I’m here to tell you that you should change this habit and start selling physically.
Why?
Because it will open you up to a much larger audience.
The fact of the matter is that digital products will only ever have a limited appeal.
Realistically, can you imagine your grandma buying an eBook?
Most online sales are still physical products.
Physical products tend to come from real, reliable businesses, and they also allow you to create things that are much more required by your audience and that have clear and obvious value.
And it’s not as hard as you think…
Options for Selling Physical
If you want to sell physical products, then you can always sell something as an affiliate.
This means that you’ll be selling products that someone else made – such as Amazon – and keeping a percentage of the profit.
Better yet, if you want to put your own brand on those products and pretend that you were selling them directly, then you can look for drop shipping opportunities.
Sites like Alibaba will let you find drop shippers and in short, these are affiliates that don’t include their branding anywhere and that permit you to claim you manufactured the products yourself!
Another option is wholesale reselling.
Just buy products in bulk, then sell them at a profit online. You can even do this through eBay!
Or how about selling your own products that you made using skills like painting, sculpting or woodwork?
Better yet though is to genuinely create something yourself from scratch.
And even that isn’t as hard as you may think…
How to Create Original Products
First, you need to know how to create 3D CAD files (computer-aided design).
These are files that are used in CGI but can also be used to design products.
Use a tool like Blender and you can do this entirely for free!
Ideally, you should also create a prototype.
You can turn a CAD file into a prototype by looking for a 3D printing company like Shape way.
Send them your STL format file and it will be printed in 3D!
You can also try creating a prototype of your own.
Using this, you can raise funds on Kickstarter and discuss with a manufacturer the option of making more.
Or you can go straight to the manufacturer and discuss prices you can afford without financial backing.
You’ll also need a BOM (Bill of Materials – a list of all materials you’ll need) and ‘Functional Specifications (a document explaining what your product should do, how much it needs to cost, etc.).
Outsourcing for Internet Marketers
As an internet marketer, you will wear many hats.
The more skills you can develop, the more well-rounded you will be and the more impressive your campaigns will become.
This is the crux behind our message.
While you can become an internet marketer with nothing more than a little writing know-how and basic knowledge of the web, the reality is that it is far better to know all the other skills like design, web development, videography, etc.
If you can do all of that, then you can build a website that is going to be much more stunning and your entire brand will be cohesive, impressive, and effective at communicating a specific message.
Not only that, but you’ll be able to outsource many of these skills too!
But what if you don’t have those skills?
The answer for many internet marketers is to make do without a logo – or to make one themselves in MSPaint (urgh!).
Likewise, it is to not bother with a video presence.
And the result of this is that you end up with a weak brand that looks unprofessional.
There is a better way.
How to Outsource
The answer of course is to outsource.
Now, this is going to cost you money, but the truth is that it will be a fantastic investment and one of the best you can make.
If you want your business to be taken seriously, then you need a high-quality logo.
And the best way to get one of those is to either design it yourself if you have the skill or to outsource it to someone else.
Likewise, if you want to start adding great content to your site, then you need someone who knows how to write and is free to do it regularly.
Often, outsourcing actually results in higher quality work that is provided on a more consistent basis.
Remember: this is their job so they are usually going to be pretty good at it!
To get started with outsourcing, you can take to a number of sites.
One option is to look for professionals on webmaster/marketing forums.
These include the likes of Warrior Forum, Digital Point Forum, or Black Hat World.
Any of these will provide you with a place to advertise and/or find pros.
You can also try freelancing sites, where prices tend to be higher, but work is often more consistent.
Good examples include Fiverr or Freelancer.com.
Fiverr is also a surprisingly fantastic tool for finding professionals and these days you can get real professionals rather than always paying just five dollars.
You can also find sites for more specific skill sets.
99Designs is a great place to find designers for logos etc. for instance, while Constant Content is brilliant for writers.
The last take-home is this: you do get what you pay for.
Pay $1 per 100 words for writing and it will be stolen, it will be pidgin English, or it will be rushed and filled with typos.
If you want others to value your brand, you need to first value it yourself!
SEO for Internet Marketers
Okay, so that’s a bit of a bombastic clickbaity title.
I apologize.
But I do genuinely believe that you can learn the basics of SEO and master them in a single post.
So, let’s dive right in.
SEO Then and Now
SEO is Search Engine Optimization – optimizing a website or page for Google, such that it appears at the top of the search engines for a particular keyword or key phrase.
This involves building links and it involves writing content on your site.
Writing content is important because the content is what Google’s ‘spiders’ will look for when they crawl the web.
They will look for keywords and other notable signals and they will add your site to an index.
Then, when someone searches for a particular thing, Google refers to its index and then pulls up the most relevant sites.
Links pointing at your site are important because they a) help spiders to find your content and b) act as testimonials from Google’s perspective.
Once upon a time, good SEO meant using as many keywords per article as possible and building lots of links, regardless of quality.
As you can imagine though, these weren’t behaviors that Google was keen to encourage.
Remember: Google is there to serve the users and not the writers.
Its objective is to ensure as many people as possible are able to find the useful, interesting, or entertaining content they’re looking for.
Why?
Because that way they’ll be likely to come back and that means people keep using Google!
So, if you want to climb Google, then you need to align your goals with Google’s.
If you are creating great content, then Google wants to help people find your site.
Conversely, if you try and trick Google by writing low-quality, generic content and spamming links, then you’re going to end up getting penalized.
Even if Google doesn’t spot the difference right away, each improvement to the algorithm will bring you one step closer to having your position adjusted accordingly.
How to Do it Right
So, with that in mind, how do you do it right?
The first thing to ensure you do is that you write content that is for the reader and not for Google.
That means it should be well written, it should have something new to say and it should be presented in an attractive manner.
At the same time, you also need to ensure that you do this in a way that Google can recognize though.
And so that means trying to make your content a little longer (1,800 words) and it means using a keyword with very low density (about 0.5-1%) and including synonyms and related terms naturally where possible.
In terms of links, the key is to look for authorities and sites that Google already trusts.
These include sites like the BBC, Forbes, anything with a .edu or .gov domain.
Your objective is to get links from them and if not them, then from other sites that do have links from them.
It’s like a game of degrees of separation!
Video Editing for Internet Marketers
There are a great many skills that can come in highly useful for any internet marketer.
Among these, is the ability to make videos.
Videos have the distinct advantage of being highly persuasive and capable of winning over an audience and encouraging them to buy a product, subscribe to a mailing list or hire your services.
That’s partly because they allow you to convey your emotion more and to back this up with gesticulations and with music.
At the same time though, video is also important because it is highly engaging and grabs attention right away.
Video with high production values will make your business seem capable, reliable, and professional and there are more advantages on top of all this.
Creating great video comes down partly to your ability to film.
But the real magic happens in editing.
Read on to learn how you can create masterful videos that persuade, impress and enrapture.
The Art of Editing
The key to great editing is that if you’re doing it right, no one should notice you.
That means that your key objective is to remain hidden and not call attention to yourself with jarring jump cuts.
A jump cut, by the way, is any edit between two shots of the same subject with the same angle.
These cuts are awkward because if they cut out sometime, then the subject will have moved, and it will be apparent that something unnatural has happened.
There are situations where jump cuts can help to increase the pace of a video, or where they can get a laugh, but they should be considered an exception and not the rule.
Telling a Story
So, how do you make sure your edits are ‘invisible’ the rest of the time?
One strategy is to follow the old maxim that you should always ‘cut on action’.
That means that you wait until someone moves in a precise way in your shot and then you cut on that precise moment.
So that means someone might reach forward to grab their tea and you are going to cut as they begin leaning in and switch to a shot of them picking up the tea, now already in the right position.
This works because your audience will be watching the action such that they won’t really notice the cut itself.
Another strategy is to somehow link your cuts.
This means that you look for something thematic that can tie your shots together with.
For instance, you might have a karate master go to split a piece of wood in half with their hand and then cut to someone cutting carrots in the kitchen.
This is a good way to maintain a narrative threat through your edits and thereby avoid jarring the viewer.
Also useful is the ‘L-Cut’.
Here, the video will be cut before or after the audio.
For instance, someone might gaze into the distance, the sound of typing might be heard and then the next shot might be that person at their desk.
L-Cuts smooth transitions and add more story.
And really that is your objective here: tell a story and your edits will always seem smooth and natural!
What is the ‘Full Stack’ Internet Marketer?
In the world of programming, there is no such thing as the ‘full-stack developer’.
A full-stack developer is a highly sought-after creature and an elusive one for sure.
This is a person who is able to handle every aspect of coding, which is to say that they are capable of creating a program’s back end and front end and everything in between.
For the uninitiated, the front end means the interface and the layout, whereas the backend is the part where the administrators log in, where they can upload and edit posts, and where they can look at things like user permissions, statistics, etc.
So, the full-stack developer is able to handle the front end and the back end, the databases, and everything else.
And as you might imagine, this is someone who is highly in demand because they’re capable of carrying an entire project all by themselves to an incredibly high standard.
A similar concept is the ‘triple threat’ in Hollywood.
In tinsel town, a triple threat is someone who is able to sing, dance, and act.
This makes them highly employable and means they’re likely to be cast in roles that no one else would quite be suitable for.
So, what is the equivalent in the world of internet marketing?
The ‘full stack’ internet marketer is likewise someone who has amassed a great number of different skills and this is something that can make you completely indispensable to any company and able to build entire businesses and brands from scratch.
Let’s take a look at some of the skills that the full-stack marketer should look into developing…
Skills That Will Set You Apart on the Web
SEO and Marketing
Of course, the full-stack marketer needs to know marketing inside out.
That means you should have a full understanding of how SEO works, but you should also be able to build and run a successful social media campaign and you should know how to write the kind of content that is successful for content marketing.
Email marketing, autoresponders, writing press releases…
These are all things you should be highly adept in and really this is going to be your ‘bread and butter’ as it were.
Design
If you want to take your skills to the next level, then it is always worth learning design.
That means you should be able to create logos and icons, as well as building websites from scratch in WordPress.
You need to learn how to use the tools and how to develop your eye.
Photography
Photography is another useful skill for the web, whether you will be taking photos of products, for an Instagram campaign, for articles on a blog, or to sell!
Video
Learn to film and edit videos and you can take your brand to YouTube, you can create video openers and you can promote your business in a way that seems highly polished and professional.
Programming
To be a full-stack developer, you should also be a full-stack programmer – or at least know the basics!