Sen Ze’s Business In Your Pajamas! Blog

Want to discover some of the most amazing advances in AUTOMATED Internet Marketing Systems since automated Internet Marketing Systems were created by smart Internet Entrepreneurs?

Then make your way to Corus Hotel (Kuala Lumpur) this Saturday June 12th 2010. I’ll be presenting some of the best Automated Internet Marketing Systems ever created up till now, starting at 2.30pm, for about 2 1/2 hours.

You’ll discover what the 1st Generation Automated Internet Marketing System is, followed by the 2nd Generation, followed by the 3rd Generation and finally the 4th Generation Automated Internet Marketing Systems.

Along the way, you’ll discover some powerful business concepts never before seen anywhere else that made it FINALLY possible for you to have real, human EXPERTS doing your Internet Marketing FOR YOU, at a FRACTION of the cost of hiring them elsewhere. In fact, you don’t even hire them at all!

For example, watch how you can get a full-blown Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service to get your webpages ranked in the Top 10 of Google.com by paying less than 5% of the thousands of dollars per month some SEO companies charge you for the same service. You do NOTHING other than provide the keywords and URLs you want to rank for those keywords – and your URLs will rise up in Google‘s rankings in just a few weeks, completely on auto-pilot!

There are many other “Teams” like the above for the other aspects of your Internet Business – and you’ll discover what else they can do FOR YOU and your Internet Business.

Not only that – some of these Teams don’t require you to pay them at all, because they’re doing YOUR TASKS to make money from somewhere/someone else!

It’s crazy and doesn’t make sense to you right now – but it’s absolutely true!

So yes, you can FINALLY have TEAMS OF PEOPLE and ADVANCED Internet Marketing Systems working for your Internet Business 24/7, with overheads totaling only a few hundred dollars a month, and sometimes less than a hundred dollars a month – without the commitments and restrictions as an employer (as provided by the law) – as you are not one!

In addition, these teams of people work within a structured system so that they produce work CONSISTENTLY and CONTINUOUSLY – 2 of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing that most Internet Entrepreneurs are weak in.

They can do this because of certain concepts and tools they’ve created that enable them to leverage their time and efforts EXPONENTIALLY. When they can do this, you get their best efforts CONTINUOUSLY, at costs so low you’ll think you’re in heaven!

I REPEAT (because it’s important that you get it):
4G Automated Internet Marketing Systems make it possible to produce many more successful Internet Entrepreneurs who can’t, or don’t want, or don’t have the skills, to get certain aspects of Internet Marketing done on their own, on a CONSISTENT basis, because they can now finally afford to use those systems that used to be only available to the big boys in Internet Marketing.

It’s a REAL BREAKTHROUGH in Internet Entrepreneurship and you’re among the first to hear about it!

Click on the graphic below and follow the instructions to register for it:

Seats are very limited and are reserved on a first-come-first-serve basis, so click on the banner above right NOW.

See you then!

Cheers
Sen Ze

Many people find Internet Businesses to be a very attractive way to get away from the rat race.

This is because an Internet Business promises the things that we all want:

1. Leverage
There are close to 2 billion Internet users now with many millions more joining every single month. If we’re doing business on the Internet, the entire world is truly our oyster. We can reach out to many more people we never could otherwise.

2. Freedom
Anybody can now use the Internet to start their own business and make money doing so, in the comfort of their homes. We answer to nobody but ourselves and all we need is a computer, an Internet connection and the desire to do so.

Of course, we’ll also need some know how, which we can acquire along the way.

3. Cost-Effectiveness
It’s cheap. A domain name costs only $10/year, and hosting can be lower than $5/month. There aren’t many businesses we can start and maintain with that sort of investment. It’s truly easy to say goodbye to our bosses, although we want to be making our money first before doing so.

4. It’s A Part Of Life
That’s because the Internet links us to the latest information, and we all need to be updated all the time. It’s also a huge libary of knowledge and the vast majority of the information we want can be found for free. It’s also an entertainment outlet with millions of channels in the form of videos, created and uploaded for all to see by fellow Internet users. As such millions and millions of people use it every single day.

The Reality:
1. Many of us in fact have become successful Internet Entrepreneurs, in one way or another.
I have documented those ways in my classic Mini-Encyclopedia of Low-Cost, High-Profit Internet Business Models:

2. Many of us also failed to succeed as Internet Entrepreneurs
This can be due a number of factors. One of the main factors is the lack of knowledge or guidance. The other is the lack of proper IMPLEMENTATION of the things required to succeed.

In fact, I would rank the lack of implementation or improper implementation of best Internet Marketing practices as the main cause for failure, over and above a lack of knowledge since all the knowledge or guidance in the world is useless without the correct actions being taken.

The Success Factors For Freedom With An Internet Business
Note that we don’t just want to have a successful Internet Business – but one that gives us TOTAL FREEDOM from having to run, manage and maintain on our own.

Otherwise it’s no different from having a JOB – and that’s the very thing we’re trying to get away from.

There are many successful Internet Entrepreneurs who are tied to their Internet Business 24/7. They can’t take a vacation or even go to the movies during their waking hours for fear of missing a sale.

Or they’re overwhelmed with the multitude of roles they have to play that they get nothing done properly.

This isn’t how an Internet Business should be.

At the very least, not for me.

We should get leverage not only in how many people we can reach, but also in NOT having to do everything that is related to our Internet Business, on our own – and still make a handsome profit in the process.

With FREEDOM as the goal, let me now show you the essential elements of an Internet Business so that you know what’s involved to make money online, with the lowest amount of our money and with the least investment of our time.

To do this, I have to bring you back in time and see what are some of the most essential tools that we HAD to use to create a succesful Internet Business.

Then I’ll show you whether anything has changed along the way and if so, what we can do to adapt to the new Internet Business landscape – AND still maintain our freedom with our Internet Business working for us 24/7, instead of the other way around.

Let’s begin.

1st Generation Internet Marketing System
These are the components required:

Website + E-Mail

A website is basically our “permanent” online presence. We got a domain name and hosting account and we then uploaded whatever design and layout we wanted for our website on that domain’s host.

If we were selling products as a Merchant, we could also integrate an online payment system with our website so that we could accept payments directly from our customers via their credit cards, at the point when they decided to buy it after looking at our products.

If we were Affiliates for Merchants, we could set up a website providing useful information on topics related to the products sold by the Merchants, before recommending that they checked out the Merchants’ websites through our Affiliate Links or banners.

This would be our basic setup. We could get by with nothing else if we had lots of marketing money to spend on TV ads, newspaper ads and other places, to publicize our domain far and wide.

But we thought of using the Internet to market our websites too, since it was already being used by millions of people around the world.

The 2 Pillars
We knew Internet users then mainly used the Internet to check out:

1. Websites

2. E-mails

And because of that:

1. On Websites:
* Search Directories (like Yahoo.com, which started off as a Search Directory and later morphed into a Search Engine) and Search Engines (like AltaVista.com) were created to make the process of searching for information found on webpages much easier and quicker;

* Web Page Creators/Editors became an essential piece of software for Internet Entrepreneurs to create their own websites from scratch without needing to know HTML;

* Specialized FTP software to upload webpages to our host server became an essential tool for making our webpages seen on our domain;

* Web design and maintenance services were much sought after since most people didn’t have design skills even if they were willing and able to create the webpages themselves;

* Domain Names became hot assets to own since each one was unique and nobody else could register the same name once it was already registered by someone else

* The web hosting industry exploded and generated billions in recurring revenue.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization
Since search engines got millions of visitors per day looking for all sorts of information found on webpages throughout the world, and the engines didn’t want to create their own content but rather used software to find, index and show our webpages (without paying us a single cent to do this) to display to their visitors, who could see the results for free – we could tap into the Search Directories/Search Engines’ own traffic to get free prospects to our webpages.

And so SEO (Search Engine Optimization) became a popular topic ever since with the entire focus being on getting top rankings for our webpages for searches on keywords we wanted to target. The higher our webpages appeared on Search Engines’ results, the more free traffic we could get since Search Engine users checked out their search results starting from the top listing and moving down.

SEO companies started forming to offer SEO services to website owners who didn’t have the time or knowledge or desire to do SEO activities and tasks on their own.

Banner Ads
We could buy space on other webmasters’ websites too. We could put a banner that linked back to our webpages, and tap into the existing traffic those other websites were getting.

This marketing method required us to invest some money and while some of us did it, there were more of us who didn’t, preferring to rely on free Search Engine traffic and other free marketing methods instead.

2. On E-Mail:
Webmail services like Hotmail.com and Rocketmail.com were created to make the checking of e-mail possible through the same browser used for surfing websites instead of a separate e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook running on our computers.

This sort of simplified things for the Internet user and made things even easier for them to use, which in turn helped even more users to go online.

Mailing List Software
With e-mail being the first thing users checked when they were connected to the Internet, and being free to use, it became obvious to Internet Entrepreneurs that they needed to get their message into their visitors’ e-mail inboxes somehow.

We started asking for our website visitors to join our mailing list so that we could e-mail them offers to buy stuff, again and again. But of course, unless we were a big retailer of a range of products, nobody on our list would enjoy receiving offers from us in their e-mail boxes all the time.

And so we promised a free Special Report and tips on doing something better in our e-mail communication with them, so that they would continue to receive our e-mails. And we then interperse those e-mails with offers for our products from time to time.

This worked very well. Every time a promotional e-mail was sent out, there were bound to be sales made.

E-Mail Broadcast And Sequential Autoresponder Systems
Because of the need to constantly use e-mail, mailing list software became more and more sophisticated.

Rather than e-mailing our Prospects manually, we could use a special mailing list software called a Sequential Autoresponder System to AUTOMATICALLY e-mail our Prospects for us, with a series of pre-written e-mail messages uploaded to the Autoresponder System in advance.

So someone who just joined our mailing list would automatically receive an e-mail from our Sequential Autoresponder System, thanking him for being on our list and telling him what e-mails he could expect from us in the future.

We could also automatically send out a tip for helping him do something better (related to our topic) exactly 2 days later, and another tip on something else could be set to go out to him automatically exactly 5 days after this second automated e-mail had been sent to him.

We could also greet them by their first name in our e-mails (if we had their first name information in our database through their filling up the name field on our optin form), or have them remove themselves from our mailing lists via a single click on an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our e-mails (which saved us from having to manually remove them).

We could also broadcast e-mail messages at any time to the same list, even as they were going to receive those pre-written e-mail messages from us as scheduled in the Sequential Autoresponder System. This would be useful where we had some new offer to make to our list or we wanted them to have information we didn’t have earlier.

Thus all Sequential Autoresponder Systems will usually come with a standalone Broadcast function as well – giving us the ability to both send out pre-written e-mails to everyone who joined our mailing list, and newly written e-mails on an ad hoc basis.

If we were Affiliates, we spent the time looking for new Merchants to represent so that we could refer the same Prospects we had on our lists to many Merchants selling complementary products – thus increasing our commission earnings even more.

The Affiliate Program

Then Amazon.com came onto the scene and brought with it the concept of the Affiliate Program.

Amazon wanted Internet users to be rewarded for referring customers to its online book store. So they programmed an Affiliate Program software that could create unique Affiliate Links for each Affiliate they had in their program.

Anybody could join Amazon.com as its Affiliate for free. And all the Affiliate had to do was to put up banners that linked to their unique Affiliate Links which in turn would redirect the visitor to Amazon’s bookstore, bringing information about the unique Affiliate Link with it. Thus Amazon would know who referred the customer and reward the right Affiliate accordingly. The reward would be a percentage of the selling price.

This masterstroke of an idea resulted in Amazon.com getting millions of Affiliates all working for it for free, until a sale occurred. By then the money was already in Amazon’s bank account and Amazon could pay its Affiliates their commissions from money it had already collected – thus making this arrangement an entirely risk-free one for Amazon itself.

Amazon’s Affiliates in turn set up their own webpages and relied on Search Engine traffic and other marketing methods to draw in the Prospects. With millions of Affiliates all over the world promoting Amazon’s products, Amazon ended up having a huge referral army it didn’t need to pay to maintain.

Smart Internet Entrepreneurs then started copying Amazon’s Affiliate Program system. Affiliate Program software then became all the rage among Merchants for the benefits it would bring them.

The Affiliate Program software became another important component for a Merchant selling products online and soon many of us had either installed a similar off-the-shelf system on our domain, or used a 3rd party Affiliate Program software provider where we run the Affiliate Program off their server.

To make things easier for Affiliates to market for us, we could create ready banner ads for them and as well as ready promotional e-mail messages that they could load up into their own Sequential Autoresponder System or simply to broadcast to their lists.

To get Affiliates to join us, we could also get our website visitors to sign up as our Affiliates right on our website itself. We would also register our Affiliate Program with all the Affiliate Program Directories we could find.

To serve our Affiliates with a minimum of effort, we would have an Affiliate login on a restricted area of our website where our Affiliates could go to get their marketing materials and check their statistics and sales.

The Affiliate Program could also be automated as we could use a Sequential Autoresponder System to train our Affiliates on what steps to take to properly market for us, including how to copy and paste the banners we had prepared for them to show up on their webpages, and how to link from those banners to our websites using their own unique Affiliate Link our Affiliate Program software had automatically generated for them.

This was in addition to putting up the steps within the Affiliate login area which could be seen all the time by Affiliates who were looking for some guidance.

From time to time, we could run contests for the best Affiliate to win something valuable, to create a spike in sales when we needed extra cash to come into our business quickly. We would broadcast an e-mail to our Affiliates (they would sign up to a separate mailing list for Affiliates) to let them know about the contest – and serious Affiliates would then do whatever they needed to do to get the sales for us.

So the 1st Generation Internet Marketing System for the Merchant looks like the following:

Website + E-Mail + Affiliate Program

With a website that didn’t require any updating, Search Engine traffic, banner traffic, an automatic e-mail system, an Affiliate Program and automated Affiliate recruiting and training systems in place, we had everything we needed to make lots of money with online – practically on auto-pilot.

And many of us did.

All we needed to do as Merchants was to focus on our product range, offers, Affiliate and Customer support.

All Affiliates needed to do was to look for more Merchants to represent. (Note they wouldn’t install an Affiliate Program on their domain as Affiliates wouldn’t be selling anything themselves.)

For years, life was good.

Until something else came along that sort of messed up the good life that we had.

Which led to something that I called the 2nd Generation Internet Marketing System.

More on that in my next post!

Cheers
Sen Ze
P.S. Click below to book a seat to my FREE talk on Automated Internet Marketing Systems. I’ll be revealing the 4th Generation Internet Marketing System and what its components are. You really don’t want to miss out on this, because nobody else talks about them the way I do!

I’ve recovered fully from a smashing 3-day Digital Heaven Boot Camp (No.2) held last weekend. And what an event it was!

Instead of telling you what happened, I’ll let you in on some of the things I covered right on the first day. The following is how I started off (although not in that many words, as there are tons of other things to reveal). If you’re a participant, here’s the expanded version. If you’re not a participant, read the following very carefully if you’re planning to be an Internet Entrepreneur:

1. You must believe that it’s possible to make money online
You must believe it’s possible to make lots of money using the Internet. This is where it all starts.

If you believe this, you’re well on your way. If you don’t believe this, it doesn’t matter what else I say. You mind will simply shut the words out.

2. You must believe that YOU can do it too
Making money via the Internet is difficult only when you don’t know what to do. People with less education and intelligence than you have done it, because they simply follow the proven methods of those who have done it. So can you, if you’re willing to do the same thing.

The mind wants to prove itself right, so if you think YOU can’t make money online, it simply shuts out all the possibilities. Ideas that have made OTHER people millions of dollars, are dismissed by you in the blink of an eye, because you believe that YOU can’t do it.

In other words, it’s EASIER to say “I can’t do it” because after that is said, you don’t have to do anything, to prove yourself right.

Doing nothing is super easy. Just keep on doing what you’ve been doing all along, with nothing new added to the mix, and you’ve done nothing extra. Nothing new happens, of course – but if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. There’s nothing easier to achieve, than nothingness itself.

It’s harder to say “I CAN”, because you have to set into motion the things that will prove it can be done. This takes some effort. So, compared to doing nothing – “I CAN” doesn’t stand a chance.

The resistance to taking action is so great that most people can’t overcome it, except when they’re fighting to live. For example, if you don’t do the work, you don’t earn a salary at the end of the month. If you don’t earn a salary, you’ll starve to death. With death being something you don’t want to experience right now – you’ll work to avoid it. Unless, of course, you have a better alternative to working that is easier to do, that also achieves the same objective of not starving to death. Until you happened to know what it is, you’ll continue to work the way you’ve always worked.

Unfortunately, you can be so used to working to “earn a living” that you don’t even want to get out of your comfort zone to explore other stuff. Doing what you’re doing works in feeding you so that you don’t starve to death, and you’re already an expert in what you’re currently doing – so why bother?

You’ll want to be bothered because usually what you’re currently doing isn’t bringing in the returns that you deserve. What if you could double or triple your bank account without having to do more work than you’re currently doing in terms of time or effort? Would it be something you’ll at least consider doing?

If you think, “I CAN make money online”, your mind will set out to see WHICH METHOD it can use to fulfill that objective. If it doesn’t know of a method yet, it will start to seek out some, to start off.

Once again, the mind wants to prove itself right – and so it explores all the possibilities, and it then commands the body to take the action for things to happen.

Because the rewards for believing that you CAN do it is so much greater than if you believe you CAN’T, believe that you CAN – and then do WHATEVER is necessary to achieve what you believe you can do.

3. You must believe that there’s ALWAYS a way to achieve your objectives
You can’t know everything, so there’s always some things you don’t know about YET that can help you achieve your objectives. Can’t get to the top of the Search Engines’ listings for the keyword of your choice? Well, who says that’s the only way to market your Internet Business? There are many more methods that are used by Internet Entrepreneurs that you would never think of doing because you never knew they existed.

Know that certain methods of marketing on the Internet are popular, but it doesn’t mean they’re the most effective. Most people focus on them because they don’t know better, or chose to shut themselves off from the rest, because they fell in love with what they’re seeing in front of them.

Well and good – but that’s being very short-sighted. And in the case of top search engines listings, you’re depending on Google to list you at the top for you to earn your money.

Think about the following very carefully:

Google, or any other Search Engine, for that matter, doesn’t owe you a living. They couldn’t care less if you’re listed at the top in their search results, or not at all. They set their rules, most of which are top secret stuff (or else you can manipulate them at will) and they will change their rules to suit THEIR OWN good.

Not yours.

And you want to build your Internet Business around Search Engines alone? Can you see how dangerous and/or futile this approach can be, where you’re relying on somebody else to make your money for you where there’s no motivation for them to do so, other than your content – which they can obtain from your other competitors’ web pages that number in the millions?

It’s a completely different thing if you’re able to optimize for the Search Engines AS you’re doing your other marketing activities. This way you’re killing 2 (or more) birds with a single stone. You’ll benefit even if the Search Engines don’t list you at all, and if they do within their top 10 results, you’ll benefit even more.

4. You must believe that there’s always ANOTHER WAY to achieve your objectives
There is always more than 1 way to achieve the same thing – you just haven’t found it yet. Believing this means that you will never give up when you’re stuck, or stick to just one way of doing things when there ARE other ways available for you to achieve the same objectives.

I’ll say it again:

There is always ANOTHER way to achieve the same thing. If you’ve done math in school before, you’ll know this to be true. Some ways are shorter, some are longer, some are easier, some are harder, some cost less, some cost more. Regardless, you’ll be able to find more than one way to do what you want to do.

Knowing this makes you expand your scope and gives you more options. This can be useful when you’re stuck or are sick of what you’ve always been doing.

5. You must THINK and ACT like a Merchant
This means you must take on all the characteristics of someone who is rewarded for giving value to others. You’re selling something that your Customers want to have, so you must act as that vendor.

This is different from being an Affiliate where all you do is to refer Prospects to the Merchant’s web site for the selling and delivery to take place. You do all you can to get that traffic there, and thereafter it’s the Merchant’s responsibility to close the sale and follow-up with them.

A Merchant thinks and acts differently from an Affiliate. A Merchant always thinks of creating another product or keeping his Customers happy with his products. He always thinks of giving the best value he can give, so that not only are his Customers happy with his products, his Affiliates are happy to be referring Prospects to him too.

6. You must take your Internet Business SERIOUSLY
One of my Boot Camp participants said this:

If you treat your Internet Business as a hobby, it’ll pay you like a hobby. If you take it seriously, it’ll pay you seriously.

He should know. He went from being a serious stock trader to being a serious Internet Entrepreneur, and he tells me it’s much better being an Internet Entrepreneur following the model he has chosen than to be a stock trader due to the almost non-existence of stress in his Internet Business compared to trading in stocks. He mentioned that he couldn’t even go to the bathroom when he was trading stocks just in case the prices changed as he had to have his eyes fixed to his computer screen all the time. His Internet Business liberated him and he’s so much happier as a result.

He likes keeping a low profile and simply concentrates on running his Internet Businesses and creating new ones. He has been an Internet Entrepreneur since 2003 and he’s simply loving every moment.

Note that an Internet Business is after all a business. Just because you use a medium for entertainment that the Internet is frequently used for (e-mail, checking out reviews, e-zines, movie clips) to make your money doesn’t mean that you should treat it any less seriously. Make a commitment to put in WHATEVER time and effort and money as are required for you to make your Internet Business succeed – and you can’t help but succeed eventually.

7. You must always deliver the BEST VALUE you can to your Prospects and Customers
This is the starting point. If you’re not going to provide them with the best value you can come up with, it’s better not to start. I’ve bought some really awful products online before and I wonder exactly what made the Merchant sell them in the first place.

Always check to see if you’re proud to be selling the product you’re selling. Does it add value to your Customers? Does it work? If you were your own Customer, would you be happy with your own product? If you’re not, don’t sell it!

8. You must run your Internet Business with INTEGRITY
You must be HONEST and SINCERE when delivering that value to your Prospects and Customers. Contrary to what you may think, most Customers are honest. The majority of them are not out to cheat you, but to get value from you that they’re willing to pay for. They will appreciate you for giving them the value that they want to get – and if your offers are right, they will reward you handsomely in return.

However, the starting point isn’t whether your Customers are honest or not. It is YOU, and you must be honest and act with integrity. Always give what you say you will give, or do what you say you will do. It’s okay to over-deliver, but it’s not okay to under-deliver. If your mindset is such, you’re on the right track, no matter what some of your Customers do that are not to your liking. You can take measures to counter the undesired actions, but you can’t properly run a business without being an honest Merchant to begin with.

9. Your list of Prospects and Customers are your GOLDMINE
Treat them with the utmost care and respect, and you will be in business for a long time to come. Communicate frequently with them to make them keep you at the top of their minds at all times.

Sure, some Customers are from hell, and suck up a lot of your time and energy without appreciating anything you’ve done for them in return. So “fire” them as politely as you can, and focus all your energies on your other Customers, some of whom will be your best Customers who will continue to buy from you again and again.

10. Aim for NEVER-ENDING improvement
Your Internet Business can always be improved to make you more profits, do less work and reach out to more people. There will always be progress in technology, and there will always be smart people who add value to Entrepreneurs’ lives by creating new products and services that make them achieve more with less.

If you’re always on the lookout for these products and services that will help you do better, you will eventually achieve your goal to do better. This includes increasing your conversion rates for your Squeeze Pages and Sales Letters, your marketing reach, your Customer support level, your outsourcing level – in fact, anything and everything that has something to do with your Internet Business in some way.

When you look out for them, you WILL find them. Never be happy with your current level of success, and you’ll be rewarded with even MORE success, because your mind wants to be proven right.

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/internet-business/the-internet-entrepreneurs-creed.htm

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