The 8-Step Plan to Kickstart Your Online Marketing Success

1. Find a niche.

Many people start out with the idea that they will write a book on their favorite topic, spend months (or years) writing a vast tome, only to find to their horror that nobody else is interested in buying it.

There is plenty of time to follow your individual passions later on when you are already making money, but for now, as a newbie, you need to start out by finding a hungry market and then creating something to sell to them.

Finding profitable niches is very easy if you have the right tools at your disposal. By far the best is Niche Inspector. This software combines a powerful keyword research tool with analysis functions that let you find super profitable niches really quickly and easily. My Niche Inspector Review includes a demo video that I've created to show you how the program works.

2. Buy a domain.

Domains are really cheap. Less than $10 per year. I buy all nearly all my domains from GoDaddy because they offer an easy to use service that is great value for money. I don't buy any of their extra services though, and suggest that you decline all the tempting offers they will make you - you don't need any of them.

I've created a short video to show how I use the keyword and niche research that Niche Inspector helped me do in step 1 to find a great domain name at GoDaddy.

3. Arrange Hosting.

Every website needs to be hosed some place online. You build the site on your computer at home, but in order to let other people see it, you have to transfer your files to an online 'server'. Hosting companies go in and out of fashion, but for my money, the best value around is Hostgator. you can read all about them on my Hostagator Review page.

4. Create or Find Your Product.

I'm going to skip over this stage for now - there are several really good ebooks in the Product Creation section that will explain exactly how you can write a whole ebook from scratch with the minimum of effort.

Alternatively, you can use an ebook that someone else has written and who is happy to sell you the rights to.

There are a few ways you can sell other people's work:

a. As an affiliate. If you join ClickBank or PayDotCom (both free) you will find thousands of ebooks and products on sale in their marketplaces that you can offer for sale on a commission basis. Typically you will receive 50% or more of the sale price.

b. Resale rights. This is where you purchase the rights to sell someone else's ebook or software and keep 100% of the price you charge. The product remains the copyright of the original author, so you normally can't change it in any way, but you do keep all the profits.

c. Private Label ebook. With private label, you buy the rights to do whatever you like with the product. you can change it, rewrite it, add to it, remove parts, redesign it, even put your own name on it as the author. And of course, you can charge whatever you like for it and keep all the profits. My popular ebook 'Unlock the Secrets of Private Label eBooks' describes the almost magical process of making money from other people's work in great detail.

5. Build a website.

There are ways to make money online without a website, but they are beyond the scope of this outline. Most online marketing methods, however, do entail having your own web site.

That is the point that many newbies throw up their hands in despair. Building websites jsut seems to be so hard with all that HTML and CSS code flying around.

There is no need to worry. You don't need to know the first thing about HTML - there are some excellent programs around that will do everything for you.

By far the best option for newbie Internet marketers is a phenomenal program (and I use that word deliberately) called XSitePro.

XSitePro was built by Internet marketers for Internet marketers and it really could make the process any easier. In fact, even though I can happily build websites by hand (HTML and CSS don't frighten me!) this site that you are reading right now was created using XSitePro.

6. Write the copy for your sales page.

Effective marketing relies on sales. No sales, no profits, no point.

And this may sound simplistic, but sales rely on effective selling. And that is where copywriting becomes vitally important.

Every product or book that you put up for sale on a web site will require some kind of sale page that will explain the benefits to the viewer of buying, describe the features of your offering in the most persuasive terms and lead them through your sales story until they have no option but to click on the 'buy' button and send you their money.

The best product will fail if it doesn't have an effective sales page.

The good news is that learning the basics of how to write compelling, selling copy is easy. I can't promise that you'll be a world-class copywriter, but you will be better that 99% of your competition. And you'll get sales.

I recommend several copywriting products, but my number one choice is a hardback book from copywriting legend, Ted Nicholas called 'Turn Words Into Money'.

7. Add Content to Your Site.

A single sales letter site is unlikely to make much of an impact on the search engines. These days, Google and friends prefer to list sites that offer a lot of useful and targeted content.

There are lots of ways that you can create or buy content. Writing you articles is probably the fastest, easiest and cheapest. My $7 ebook 'You CAN Write Articles' explains how anyone can write articles and even includes several templates to make the process as simple as possible.

If you don't want to write your own articles, you can use private label materials (professionally written articles that you have the right to do anything you wnat with). To avoid any possible problems with duplicate content (you having the same article on your site as someone else has on theirs) it is best to rewrite PLR articles to some extent, but that generally quick and easy to do. I get most of my private label articles from the Rolls Royce of PLR membership sites: PLRPro. There is also a free tool that I've written (in the free section of the menu) to help you change up the articles very easily.

8. Promote your site.

He who whispers down a well About the goods he has to sell Will never reap the golden dollars Like the man who stands and hollers.

Promotion is the key to everything. A website that nobody knows exists is like a shop at the wrong end of a narrow lane that leads to nowhere. Nobody is likely to pass by, and fewer people are likely to drop in to buy.

There are many books and course about promoting your websites and getting traffic - from $7 reports right up to $1000+ membership sites.

For newbies I highly recommend two $7 ebooks: The Tireless Traffic Technique by Gordon Bryan and $7 Dollar Selling by William Charlwood. Both offer great advice and a bargain price. William's book is mainly aimed at people selling $7 ebooks but the principles he teaches are applicable to a wider audience.