Yes, Cash System X from Jonny Andrews went live a couple of days ago to a blizzard of affiliate mail-outs and a storm of fake reviews jostling for domination on Google.

I bought into Cash System X (CSX) during its pre-launch period so I’d had a good chance to use the system before it was released to the wider public. Though, to be honest, this pre-launch was marketed almost as heavily as the official opening so there will have been a good few people using the product in advance.

Anyway, I use it and like it – not for its components as such but more because it gives a very definite blueprint of how to set up a start to finish online business selling your own products without any of those irritating gaps found in competing systems.

On that basis I decided I’d use CSX for a first attempt at marketing a major launch. Good plan but it turned out to be a non-starter because I didn’t have a list and this was an early requirement for joining the affiliate program.

That’s the first lesson right there, get a list if you want to swim with the big fish. Otherwise they just aren’t interested.

Nevertheless I decided I’d go through all the typical steps for a product launch just to get some training in and gather a bit of experience. No harm in trying and doing is the best way to learn. And I learned a few key lessons.

Most importantly, when you are a one man band and you can’t call a corporate budget into play (which is what I’m used to in my profession) you soon find you carry about as much weight with Google as a polystyrene doughnut.

I spent a couple of days creating a genuine review (unlike most of the other garbage pushed out by the quick buck merchants) and I did this well in advance because I’d anticipated a delay in getting indexed and also wanted to build a few backlinks to the new site to get off to a decent start.

But I had no idea how long it actually takes Google to index a new site these days. Despite the fact I pumped a few links at the site on a daily basis and waited, and waited, and waited, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later Google that finally found me.

I had expected to rank well because I’d followed all the standard moves so I was surprised to find my listing buried on page 10 when I made it into the Google index. Google dance, I assumed. But things didn’t improve after a few days which prompted me to start digging around for the possible reasons for such a lowly ranking.

This lead me to a couple of sites that talked about penalties that can be applied to very new sites to keep them low in the rankings whilst Google gets a feel for the value of the content. Okay, that was fine with me. I was sure I had pretty good content so I waited a bit longer to see what would happen.

A few days passed and bang, straight to position #1 with most of the rest of the top page filled with articles I’d posted linking back to the main site. Great and pretty much what I’d expected given the competition was almost non-existent at this stage.

That gave me lesson number 2, don’t bother trying to figure out how Google sees a new site in the early days. It’ll end up driving you mad unless you sit back and wait until everything has settled in, a period that can be 1 or 4 weeks if you are lucky and up to 3 months if you aren’t (according to some). Other commentators dispute the existence of this penalty and Google isn’t confirming or denying anything.

Okay, so now I had my ranking. What next? I wasn’t going to be earning any commission from this so was there anything else I could take away other than the educational experience?

Well I was disqualified from promoting the product because I didn’t have a list. So getting a list would seem to be a priority. And this is where a few issues that affect me personally started cropping up.

I’ve signed up to so many lists now and seen many claims for the value I’ll obtain in return for my email address. Free videos, killer information, insider tips, all that kind of stuff. And usually it turns out to be an almost content free pitch for a paid product that “genuinely” contains the information I was promised when I signed up.

I suppose this is marketing and I’m not surprised by the tactics employed to build lists, it really doesn’t bother me that much at all. That’s because I can simply un-subscribe if I don’t think the value is there and, indeed, I’ve un-subscribed from most of the lists I’ve joined – usually minutes after opting-in and being disappointed with the reward.

The trouble is, I don’t want people to be on my list for five minutes. I want them on it for five months or five years or preferably even longer. What’s the point otherwise? Now I knew people weren’t going to opt-in to my list because I had provided a free review. That was out in the open so there was no incentive to do anything other than read it and move on.

On the other hand, because I wasn’t going to be earning from this whole deal and I didn’t want to invest too much time and energy (and certainly not spend money that would turn this into a loss making venture) I needed to be smart about framing an offer.

In the end it was a simple solution. I’m a CSX user, my review mentioned sub-standard email and article content delivered as part of the package and I’d already had to fix this content when setting up CSX. So I could simply offer my improved files as an incentive for CSX buyers to join my list. These represent real value in the amount of time they save new users. So it’s a fair swap.

Actually it turned out a lot better than that and I’ve ended up talking directly to a fair few people who read my review and took advantage of the freebies I was offering. I tell you, it was a real pleasure talking to folks like myself who weren’t out to sell me but were in the same boat trying to make a start. Very refreshing and alone worth the effort put into this project.

Lesson three isn’t really a lesson but more of a reinforcer. I never wanted to hard sell and I know that puts me at a disadvantage but I’m going long term and trying to build better relationships even if it’s at a slower pace. That’s the way I like it and that’s what makes me comfortable with the whole arrangement.

Lesson four is all about timing. I now realise I should have initially put up a keyword rich holding page in the days leading up to launch. Putting up the whole review just allowed lazy copy and paste merchants to pitch up and steal my content, sometimes word for word. Imitation is the best form of flattery, so it is said. But not if people are using your own content against you in a rankings war. And not when your two days of effort is their 30 second mouse manoeuvre.

It did have a humorous side though. Because I’d written an honest review half of the material was no use to these content pirates and the poor souls had to actually re-spin or (gasp) write their own content so they could produce hyped-up copy.

I started out chasing four main keywords and I ended up ranked 1, 2, 3 and 58 (who knows what happened there) with the top ranking being my secondary rather than primary keyword. And I was beaten out in the three top cases by people who had at least partially “borrowed” my content and played the timing game better. All’s fair in love and Internet marketing so I’m not going to gripe.

Not too shabby a result then, although I still feel the competition was quite light for this product with most of the selling most likely taking place on the list circuit. But great experience playing the game without the backup of a major SEO firm and I’ll run a much more organised and stronger campaign next time.

So I’m left feeling confident there’s some mileage in this method of marketing. It’s small time compared to the guys with the big lists but there’s still a piece of the pie on offer. If you are interested in giving it a go yourself then check out jvnotifypro.com where you can get a list of upcoming product launches and links to JV offers.

And to recap your check list:

1. Get your domain registered and a holding page up early,
2. Don’t put your main review content up until a couple of days before launch,
3. Only promote products you genuinely can recommend, that way you can give an honest review,
4. Provide real value (rather than a ton of PLR junk) to your subscribers.

Now that the party has ended I need to find a way to put the review page to good use. You can find it at CashSystemXReview.net

The last two I probably dwelt on most.

“It’s too risky, I need a job and income I can rely on”,
“It’s too complicated, I’ll never learn all I need to know to be successful”.

It certainly would be a risk to sever your income by quitting your job to start a brand new, no traffic, no products, no customers online business. I wouldn’t advise anyone go that route.

Like myself, I’m guessing most people juggle a day job with building their business in the early months or even years.

So, even though the time pressures are greater, risk can be mitigated by hanging on to your job until you are earning enough online to quit regular employment.

All obvious enough. But that got me to thinking. There are some people who are contemplating Internet marketing because they don’t have a job, because they were down-sized or credit-crunched or had their job shipped overseas right out from under them.

Thinking about these people made me realise I’m in a lucky position. I have a regular income and I’m motivated to be my own boss. My risk is tiny compared to others. Time to put that objection away because it’s simply not valid in my case.

I just need to ensure I don’t blow a ton of cash on marketing products! I’m getting better at saying no each day.

Yes, Internet marketing is complicated. But a lot of that complexity comes from the initial information overload that I bet every new marketer is subjected to.

Will you go with your own product, be an affiliate, gamble with PPC, go into e-commerce or drop-shipping? CPA, PPV, SEO, SEM, email, telemarketing, seminars, domains, FTP, SSL, PHP, CPanel,.. Holy Mother of… Where do I start?

You need to learn. So you need someone to teach you. Simple.

A tutor you can relate to, somebody who caters to newcomers and a training regime that will lead you from A to Z, step by step, with pretty pictures and tons of examples all without breaking the bank. That’s what I needed, anyway.

For me that was Brian Johnson and his Commission Ritual. I’ll review this later but for now I’ll say, for me, it is the single most important product I’ve used to date.

Brian’s a success now, but I, “kinda, ultimately”, imagine he was a bit like me when he was starting out. Figuring things out, painful step by step. Until he had it cracked. That’s how all beginnings tend to begin – tentatively.

This is how you build real understanding. By doing. You follow the simple steps and forget about the multi-million dollar leaps. One system, executed from start to finish with all other distractions put away.

Yes, it’s complicated at first. But a journey is a series of steps. I actually know what I’m doing right now. I have learned, I am executing and, hopefully, soon I’ll be earning. Maybe not much but the very fact I can earn at all means that, yes, eventually I’ll make it in this complicated business just as many, many others have done before me.

Because I’ll keep learning and I won’t stop.

I’m not worried about the complexities because I know they can all be broken down into simple steps and I know that for anything I want to do online there’s a good, cheap program out there that will teach me how to do it.

My initial worries have been cast away. All of them. I have no excuses for not pushing ahead and creating my own Internet marketing business.

I’ve put a ton of effort into the first site with a view to being able to re-use as many components as possible in future sites thus semi-automating the work flow and making things a lot easier on myself.

Keyword research, supplier research, document outlines, optimised themes, content and putting together a repeatable strategy for a site launch – these are some of the tasks that have been keeping me busy. Whilst I get on with a regular day job.

Just by doing these necessary chores I’ve managed to get myself into a good place somewhere between optimism and the realisation I have a lot of hard, but potentially rewarding, work ahead of me.

Launch is this coming week, and then the learning process really begins.

Stuart’s list of helpful sources has an amazing correlation with the conclusions I have reached (unfortunately the hard way). Honestly, there’s no collusion here at all and I’m not sending you to an affiliate link.

Simply, based on my experience, he’s talking sense. I wish I’d discovered his site 6 months ago.

First up is, “I don’t know what to sell”.

Many marketing experts tell you to choose a niche that you have experience with and are passionate about. Well I’m sorry but that could be just about the worst advice you’ll ever get!

Let me ask you, no matter how much experience you have in a given niche or how passionate you are about it, if there isn’t a steady stream of potential customers ready to buy your product how are you going to be successful?

What you need to do is find out what people are buying online, that’s where the money is and that’s where you need to be if you hope to generate worthwhile income.

So my answer to this question is easy. It doesn’t matter if I don’t know what to sell. It’s what’s selling that matters. The customers decides, not me.

Problem solved. Scratch that doubt from my list.

Now I just need to find out what’s selling. I can do that by looking at sales ranks on Amazon or maybe visiting eBay Pulse or finding out what’s consistently pulling in the top bids on Google AdWords, because if advertisers are spending big money you can be sure they are making money in return.

Of course if you are fortunate enough to find a profitable niche in which you have experience and a genuine interest then you have hit the jackpot. And maybe this is what the gurus are trying to tell you.

But don’t waste time seeking out this perfection. Get some sort of an offer up there as quickly as you can. Start making money, even tiny amounts, straight away. This doesn’t stop you hunting down your perfect niche over time, if it exists at all.

Bad idea.

All that happens is you end up unfocused and distracted and prone to temptation from all the product launches out there that promise to do the work for you that you’ve avoided doing yourself.

So over the last couple of days I have been thinking about a proper Internet Marketing plan of attack. I’ve also been brushing up on the basic lessons I learned months ago when my interest in this industry was first raised.

And you know what, it isn’t hard provided you resolve to be positive, realistic (but not pessimistic) and committed.

Probably by sheer luck the products I have purchased can all be fitted into an overall strategy that I am now happy with and will detail in coming posts. I’m pretty confident I can at least semi-automate my traffic generation effort. Which means I can spend more time on my offers, sales pages and content.

I’ve also chosen my niches, which I have to say I found the hardest task of all. In the end I asked myself a simple question, “If you lost your job today and had zero cash in the bank, which columns would you look at in the jobs section of the newspaper?” Because if you aren’t good enough to do a job yourself then how can you possibly sell your effort to a third party?

Now I have two niches based on my own experience and these will form the centre of my new business. That doesn’t mean I’ll be ignoring affiliate products, but I’ve resolved to only sell what I have purchased and used myself. How could I recommend it otherwise? Right there, that cut about 90% of my information overload problem away!

I’ve worked up my first squeeze page, not finished yet but I found when I got down to it a lot of those courses I sat through started to make a whole lot of sense. Doing it, rather than thinking about it was they key.

I’m ready to go and I’m ready to get very serious about this. Internet Marketing is not my hobby, it’s now my career, my business and by the end of this year it will be my main income. I know just how to go about making this happen because finally, eventually, I decided to sit down and do some serious thinking about where I want to go.

Time spent making a business plan has been worth every minute invested.

Mike Filsaime came to my attention by way of Michael Cheney, another marketer who I leaned on for early advice. Cheney sent me an email a while back describing an offer I “simply couldn’t refuse”, Mike Filsaime’s 7 Figure Secrets seminar (aff. link) in 16 video parts which originally sold for over $1,200.

Here’s the good part, Mike Filsaime was giving these away for nothing! Totally free!

Even I’m not sceptical enough to pass up an offer like that so I followed the link and signed-up. I passed on the various offers presented before getting to the free stuff. True to his word, there they were, 16 free streaming videos available for immediate viewing.

I’ve watched quite a few Internet Marketing videos over the last six months or so. Some have been okay, some have been not-so-okay and some have been a total waste of time. But these videos actually made me get to work and start doing something. Before watching these videos I was finding every excuse under the sun not to make a start. Wrong time of year, too busy at work, need to do more research, I’ll start tomorrow…

Anyway, it turns out I’m a fox – madly rushing from one thing to the next whilst never focusing on anything. What I needed to be was a hedgehog, single minded, dedicated to a single task until the task was complete. Yeah, it’s a bit touchy-feely but behind the terminology these were 16 videos that were talking heaps of sense. I only finished watching them recently and the thing that stuck most was the call to get started, to do something, to make the first move even if your plan isn’t perfect. I went ahead and ordered hard copies on DVD which I’m waiting on to arrive. I want to go back to these videos again and again as I build a business.

As I understand it, Mike has (had?) 10,000 sets to give away. I don’t know if there are any left as the offer was put out before Christmas. Try to grab yourself a set (aff. link) if you can, for free remember! Plus he throws in some bonuses but I haven’t looked at those yet so can’t comment. Really, if you are looking for inspiration or have already started your business and could do with some genuinely useful and free advice, get these videos (aff. link) before they are all gone.

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