Member Articles

What is the best path to web entrepreneurship?

Well, this might not be the answer you want to hear, but there is no one best path to web entrepreneurship, in my opinion. Here’s why:

Different niches require different marketing strategies. Your strengths as a marketer will determine your quickest path to success. All paths can fail -- and all paths can succeed -- it really depends on you.

That said, let me tell you about a friend of mine. He had just signed up for a $1,500 internet marketing seminar taught by someone who I knew to be highly UNqualified to teach the course. The course covered basics such as how to get a website set up, build an email list, start a blog, write an eProduct, and build joint ventures (all in two days!). My friend realized this wasn’t the right course for him and asked me for advice on who could teach him everything he needed to know about internet marketing.

My first piece of advice to him was that he didn’t need to drop $1,500 on an introductory course when much of that information is available freely online. My second piece of advice was that he doesn’t need to know EVERYTHING about internet marketing to make money online. Sure, the more you know, the better your chances, but you have to start somewhere first.

Here’s what I told my friend: No matter what you end up doing (blogging, email marketing, affiliate marketing, or promoting your own products), you will need to know something about affiliate marketing to make money with any of them. So, start there.

I told him he would learn more in Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook for less than $50 than he would ever learn in a crappy internet marketing course taught by someone who had a page rank of “0″ and a non-existent Alexa rank. Most of the material in this book was also covered at Elite Retreat, giving a little more social proof to the fact that that even the most successful affiliate marketers use this same industry knowledge to make millions.

That doesn’t mean that you should only do affiliate marketing. It does mean that the more you know about affiliate marketing, the more successful you will be in any area of internet marketing.

Learning Affiliate Marketing will require that you master: Selling through web copy and targeting visitors accurately; driving traffic via Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click search marketing (PPC), and through other means (Social Media, etc.); analyzing your web stats to understand your site visitors needs more accurately; how to choose the best affiliate offers that your site visitors will be most likely to buy/use and have the highest Return on Investment (ROI).