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One of my Internet mentor Derek Gehl taught me the 4 steps to build a million dollar internet business.
Just in case you are wondering who is Derek Gehl, I suggest that you go and google for more information about him.
In short, he is an serial internet entrepreneur and coach who has coached thousands of individuals and businesses to build successful internet businesses.
He was also the ex-CEO of Internet Marketing Center (IMC), a leading Internet Marketing company in the world, before he sold off the business.
Before the Internet legend Corey Rudl passed away, Derek was also a close working partner with Corey.
Enough for our history lesson now… let me go straight to the 4 steps.
And here they are:
A 4 step formula to create a mega-successful Internet business
#1 Find a hot niche market and a good product to sell to this market
#2 Build a powerful Sales web site to sell to your targeted market
#3 Drive targeted traffic to your sales web site
#4 Sell to your customers over and over again
Simple as it sounds, but please do not doubt this formula that have produced countless of internet success stories over the years.
Although Internet technologies changes every day, the core basics of building a successful internet business remain unchanged.
I have been a long time customer and student of the Internet Marketing Center since the era of Corey Rudl before he died in 2005 as a result of a car accident.
I never had the chance to meet Corey while he was still alive but life seems to have it that some day I will be able to meet someone that was close to him.
This someone happened to be Derek Gehl, whom I had the privilege and pleasure to meet in May 2011 when he was in Singapore to conduct a 2 Day bootcamp known as the Internet Success Asia, organised by Wealth Mentors in Singapore.
For me personally, I had bought numerous IMC products in the past and they had given me lifetime money-making skills on the Internet which I had put to good use since 2003. With this same set of skills, I was able to stay at home for 6 solid years quietly making a full-time income from the comfort of my home, wearing only my pyjamas.
Never did I expect that one day, I will be working closely with the ex-CEO of IMC, Mr Derek Gehl to impart his 4 steps formula to his students in Asia.
Before I end this post, I want to let you know that Derek will be in Singapore this week and he will be conducting 2 internet seminars on 22 and 24 March at Amara Hotel Singapore. If you like to meet him in person to learn more about his formula for building successful online businesses, I highly recommend that you register for a free seminar seat at InternetSuccessAsia.com.
And remember to say ‘Hi’ to me when you are there!
Deciding on which autoresponder software to use?
Want to know what is the best autoresponder system?
In my humble opinion, there isn’t a best system that you can use. It all depends on your specific needs and requirements, and of course your budget to invest in one.
There are so many options in the market for you to choose from if you are looking for a good autoresponder email system. So the best way I would say is to find one that meets your specific requirements the most, and of course one that you can afford to fit into your budget.
I have used quite a number of email autoresponder systems in my 12 years of online entrepreneurship and these are the 3 that I feel confident recommending to my clients, students and friends.
www.aweber.com (Aweber is used by many top internet marketers. Click the link to get your $1 trial for the first month)
www.1shoppingcart.com (you can also run your own affiliate program with 1shoppingcart if you are on the correct plan)
These 3 are professional companies that can help you with your email tasks, but they are more than just email systems. For example, 1shoppingcart has shopping cart functions (useful if you run an ecommerce site) and affiliate management features (if you want to run your own affiliate programs). Tip: Choose the plan that most fits your needs.
All 3 of them are very popular in the market and are used by many top companies and internet entrepreneurs all over the world.
They come with good technical support and whenever I have any problems in the past, I will write to them for help and they always respond to my requests.
I could go on and on about these 3 companies and their systems but this is not the scope of this post.
If you remember what I wrote earlier in this post, you should look for an autoresponder system that can fit your needs and budget for your business or project. So, to continue your search for your preferred one, I highly recommend that you check out the official sites of these 3 companies and do a requirements analysis to see which one suits you the best.
PS: I do not recommend buying an autoresponder script and install it on your server because it is a very big headache to self-manage your own autoresponder system. Making sure that your server or system do not get blacklisted for email spamming is not something you want to get involved with. Leave it to the professionals to do it by investing in a 3rd party company that specialise in this.
To start a real internet business, you need some basic tools.
In this post, let me share with you what I am using now. Hope this will help you out when you are new to creating your first internet business as most newbies tend to get confused on what tools you need to use.
1. GoDaddy.com to register my domain name (US$8 to US$12 per year per domain, depending on promotions)
2. Bluehost to host my web pages and emails (US$83.40 to US$107.40 depending on 1 or 2 years plan that you sign up )
3. Market Samurai to perform my niche market research and check out the competition (US$97 one time payment with lifetime updates)
4. Getresponse for my email marketing needs (US$19 per month for email autoresponders, collecting email opt in leads etc)
5. WordPress to create my new web sites (WordPress is free open source software, and I recommened Bluehost as it supports 1-click installation of WordPress, which is very handy for newbies who do not want to mess with FTP, configuring WordPress setup options)
All in all, over your first year period building your first internet business, you will spend about US$400-US$500 to invest on these essential tools and services. It works out to about US$40 a month to maintain your internet business but the profit potential is limitless.
Very often, I will see newbies trying to save on this or save on that cost because they think that it is expensive. My question to them usually is this: If you are unable to make back at least your investment of US$500 a year on your internet business, then you might as well don’t do this because you are indirectly (often unknowingly) telling me that you cannot earn back $500 after spending a whole year working on it.
I was once a newbie, so I think like a newbie too when it comes to not spending money. But when I finally see the importance of investing in these tools and I invested in them, my internet income increases by at least 1000% (yes, 10 folds). Since then, I never look back because to build a real profitable online business, you need real tools. Think about this, if you are a F1 championship driver and you are not given a F1 car to show your driving prowess, you are as good as nothing.
Hope this post helps. If you like it, help me to give it some social buzz.
My students always asked me how and where I register all my domain names.
So, here are my answers:
If you are registering a top level domain name like .com, .net or .org etc, you can go to any domain registrars that can help you to register your desired domain names (if they are not already taken up by someone).
Any one can register a domain name and there is no special requirements to do so. But it will really be helpful if you have a debit or credit card that you can use to pay for your domain name when you are registering one online.
These are some of the domain registrars that I have been using over the past 12 years:
www.godaddy.com
www.namesecure.com
www.hostway.com
www.dotster.com
A domain name can cost anywhere between USD$8 to USD$15 per domain per year, although sometimes you can find cheaper or more expensive options. On average, US$10 to US$15 per domain per year are normal rates.
Take note that some companies offer more than just domain registration services, for examples, many of them also do hosting services. However, this does not mean that you must necessarily buy your hosting services from the same company that you register your domain names. For me personally, I keep my domain name and hosting services separated by having one to register my domain names, and another different company to host my web pages and emails.
If you are registering for a localised domain name, for example .com.sg, the story will be slightly different. In the case of a Singapore-based domain where I am located, if you are trying to register yourdomain.com.sg, you will need to have a company or business registration number that you can provide to your domain registrar to prove that you have a legal business/company running in Singapore before you can register a .com.sg.
When I register a .com.sg domain, I choose to go with webvisions.com.
Since after reading the best selling book “4 hour work week” by Timothy Ferris, I have managed to free up even more of my time. (To the extent of not knowing what to do at times when I have all the time in the world at my finger tips).
At T. Harv Eker’s events lately, he talked about getting clients to pay for results when they do business with you, if you are in a business. We need to create more value for our clients if we want to earn more money (or be rich if I want to use his own words). The more value or results you can produce for your clients, the richer you can be.
In view of what I have learned from these 2 great guys, I have decided to do something that I have never done before for any of my clients, other than my own Internet projects:
List building services… yes, you read it correctly, list building. And I am referring to targeted email list building, not some spammy safe-list (don’t you already know that they do not work), not the buying of some supposedly email databases (they are mostly illegally harvested email addresses that some companies tried to sell you and lied to you that they are obtained from some satellites, ya right!!)
To cut the whole story short: I can build a list of prospects for you online. Those that are giving you their email addresses to request for more information from you, and I am talking about targeted email prospects.
However, I can only take on one project at one time, for those who can afford it. And also, I can’t take on every project too because depending on what market you are in, some of them can be highly competitive and extremely time-consuming (so I cannot possibly take them on).
If you have a marketing budget of about USD$5000 to $10,000, we can discuss about it.
So, how do I build your list for you?
When it comes to online marketing, there are countless ways to market yourself, either to sell something or build a list. I am familiar with some of these (this is not an exhaustive list):
video marketing, forum marketing, blog marketing, social networking marketing, social bookmarking marketing, articles marketing etc
If you are interested, drop me an email at contact @ donaldlim.com
Google Trends is currently available in Singapore. According to CNET, Singapore is the 3rd country outside of the USA, after India, to have it. It allows one to check on the search trend based on location.You can find out more about Google Trends Singapore at http://www.google.com.sg/trends
I have used Google Trends in the past to locate where are most of my searches for my targeted market coming from. This allows me to know where my prospects are located so that I can do geographical based marketing. And it is working well for me!
I know it can help you too!
I have not been updating my blog very frequently the past few months because I have been working on a few other projects that will be responsible for making me more money online.
Writing a blog takes time and it may not be directly involved in producing more online income for me.
Nevertheless, I still want to use my blog to share with all of you whatever I have learned or experienced online whenever I can find time to write a post or two.
If you are eagerly waiting for me to post on my blog, and I have disappointed you, here are my apologies.
In any case, for those of you who have been blogging for quite a while and you think that you are not making any or enough money from your blog, you may want to change to a different online business model. And the best model that I can recommend will be Affiliate Marketing because this is the easiest way to start making your first dollar or hundred online. Many people always ask me how did I make my money online and my answer to them is always “Affiliate Marketing”.
For those who are keen to find out more about Affiliate Marketing, please check out AffiliateMarketingSingapore.com
I have actually done up this web site the past week and outlined a step by step plan for any one of you who are interested in Affiliate Marketing to start making some extra cash online.
I hope you like what I have created for you. Enjoy!
PS: My goal is to create 100 new Affiliate Marketers in Singapore! 
Saw a video that you liked on Youtube.com and you want to download a copy for your own keeping? Check out this web site http://www.keepvid.com that let you do so for free and there is no need to install any special software or plug in on your own computer.
This site also allows you to download videos from many other popular web sites.
This is one of the easiest way to extract videos from other video sharing web sites!
Hope you like it!
Lately, for the last few months, I realised that my monthly AdSense revenue has dropped quite drastically. The drop can be as much as 500% or more for a month for the past 3-4 months. So I decided to check it out and do some analysis across my sites.
BTW, if you only know of Google AdSense as a monetization model, then you should continue to read this post.
Besides using AdSense on my network of sites, I am also monetizing a few of my sites with other traffic monetization models such as Kontera, Bidvertiser, Advertlets etc.
As I looked deeper into my revenue statistics among the few monetization models in place on my network of sites, I realised that many of the clicks are going from my AdSense into the other monetization models, particularly Kontera and Advertlets. One interesting thing to note is that I am having more clickthroughs on these programs than I got from AdSense itself.
For example, I am experiencing at least 200-500% more clickthroughs on Kontera than AdSense on a single day itself (for many days). However, take note that this higher CTR does not necessarily equate to higher revenue from Kontera in comparison to AdSense. The reason being the PPC for Kontera is generally lower than that of AdSense (can be really low for Kontera!). I am sure most of us can understand this since Google AdWords is so competitive these days in terms of keywords’ bid prices. Nevertheless, this is good news for AdSense publishers because they will be getting more $ per click.
If you ask me for justifications as to why this is happening, I only have the possible deductions below:
1. Many people are already used to seeing Google AdSense ads all over the place, and are starting to ignore them. And trust me, some people who are aware of publishers earning revenue from Google whenever they click on the Google ads, will not click on those ads.
2. Because of the different way Kontera is rendering their ads on a web page, many online visitors will be curious to click on those ads and see what comes up for them. Also, when you monetize with Kontera, your ads can be appearing all over the web pages based on advertisers’ keywords and your readers can be seeing Kontera’s ads on any part of a web page (this maximises visibility of the ads although sometimes it can be a little irritating). In comparison to AdSense, your visitors will only see the Google ads on those strategically-placed locations on a web page (which many visitors have learned to visually ‘ignore’).
I do not want to make this post too lengthy. So I will cut my story short and offer you one tip to immediately increase your profits online this month:
If you run a popular forum online, go and apply for Kontera now and monetise your forum(s) with Kontera. Once you are in and properly setup, you will be basically monetizing all your existing and new forum contents immediately, and the best part is: your contents will be created by your users and not you.
Kontera is free and easy to implement too. Just copy and paste a piece of code onto your web pages and you are ready to start another new stream of online revenue. BTW, Google AdSense and Kontera can run concurrently on the same web page without violating the Google T&Cs.
So, good luck and remember to subscribe to my newsletters, or RSS feed, or social bookmark my site if you love to see more updates from me!
Do you want USD$20 worth of PPC advertising credits from Bidvertiser for free? Say ‘YES!’ because there is no sign up fee, no registration fee required! Bidvertiser does not require any initial deposit from you which makes the USD$20 free for real when you sign up!
I have already applied for it quite some time back, made some sales and generated some email opt-ins for one of the products that I am marketing.
For one of my PPC campaigns, I generated 746,527 impressions, with 62 clicks to my site, spending a total of USD$6.95 from my free USD$20 credits, paying $ 0.11 per click. Not too bad for me considering I have not spent a single cent out of my own pocket!
I strongly recommend that you claim your free PPC coupons or credits from Bidvertiser while they are still available! You have absolutely nothing to lose!
If you are convinced, then look for the sign-up link “ADVERTISE HERE!” directly below my Bidvertiser ads under “MY SPONSORS” section. Click on the words and sign up with Bidvertiser to claim your Pay-Per-Click credits!
