3 Paths to Internet Wealth by Robert B. Ingalls - HTML preview

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Introduction

A very warm welcome to the world of Internet marketing! My

name is Robert Benjamin Ingalls and thank you for purchasing

this book. I am sure that this would be a valuable resource for

you to start with if you seriously want to make a decent stream

of income on the Internet.

Let me do a quick introduction about myself. I am an author,

investor, entrepreneur and internet marketer, currently living in

Singapore. I graduated from the National University of Singapore

years ago, majoring in Finance and Marketing. I went on to take

my Master Degree in Aarhus School of Business in Denmark.

For years, I have fell deeply in love with the idea of “multiple

streams of income” since I read the book with the same title by

Robert G. Allen – the international bestselling author. From

there, I have been picking up various techniques and strategies

to build up my income empire. Currently, some of my income

streams include:

 Rent from properties in Singapore and Hong Kong

 Returns from Stock Investment

 Profits from FOREX trading

 Dividends from 2 local companies

 Royalties from my books

 Earnings from Internet marketing

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Robert B. Ingalls

I started Internet marketing 5 years ago and over time I have

accumulated many valuable lessons to pass on to you right here

in this book.

I hope this book would be a useful guideline for you to start your

own online business empire, which is going to work for you in

the years to come.

In this book, I will cover the 3 paths that brought me to the

Internet goldmine. These three separate paths differ in nature,

but eventually overlap, meaning that your efforts may fragment

during the beginning stage, but along the way activities will be

integrated and you will gain more with less effort! I will

elaborate more when you read on…

Without further ado, let me walk you through the 3 paths of

Internet wealth. Sit back and enjoy the journey to wealth, on

which you yourself will soon be travelling!

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Three Paths to Internet Wealth

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Three Paths to Internet Wealth

Why Internet Business?

If the Internet had been widely accessible during the time I

graduated from the university, I would have selected it as a

starting point.

The very first question you may ask is why the Internet? Well, let

me explain to you why this is the most profitable and hassle-free

business in this date and age. First, let me show you several facts

and figures to elaborate on the great earning potential of

Internet business.

Let’s look at the advantages of Internet business.

Potential Growth in Volume

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Looking at the trend line in the graph above, you will see that

there is a boom in the number of internet users over the last ten

years. Why? Because the Internet has been growing so rapidly

that it becomes a primary tool for people to look for information!

Simple as it might appear!

Some categories of information, such as overweight, male

impotence, debt, getting rich, MLM etc., are considered to be so

sensitive that people would not discuss with their folks offline.

They’d rather go online and search because they know the

virtual world will protect their identity and save them from

shame. In other words, the Internet is the place for people to

look for solutions to their problems. If you know how to target

certain groups of people who are willing to spend on those

solutions, you’ve made it!

As can be seen from the graph, there was only 27.1% of the

world’s population are connected in 2009. So, where is the other

70%? Are they going to be connected soon? Are they going to

surf the webs and look for solutions to their problems? If you

vote for a yes, you know exactly where the future Internet

business comes in!

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Potential Growth in Value

I want to emphasize that more and more people are spending

their money on the Internet. Nielsen reveals that 875 million

consumers shop online in 2008 and the trend is increasing

rapidly.

Now, with the popularity of Internet-connected mobile devices,

people can spend money with just a click of a button. According

to a study by the University of Oxford, there are more mobile

subscribers than toothbrushes. So you can imagine how huge the

market is and why you should tap onto this business as soon as

possible, before another millions of people come in and make it

more difficult to monetize.

Flexibility

The Internet business gives you the flexibility in working. You

can choose to work anytime of the day, any day of the year,

anywhere you prefer, as long as you have a computer and

Internet connection. Your online store is your own 24-hour

salesman that continuously works for you even when you sleep.

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Robert B. Ingalls

Scalability

The Internet business is the global business. You can sell to

customers in Brazil, South Africa and India etc. without seeing

them physically or setting up physical offices in those countries.

It gives you a greater base of customer compared to a local

business.

Small Start-up Cost

Let’s do some cost analysis to compare an online business start-

up and a traditional brick-and-mortal business start-up.

The table below shows that Internet business is so affordable

that even an average person can get started easily. If you want to

start-up offline, it would cost you at least 1,000 times more.

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More and more people are planning to go online now. So, you’d

better start soon so that you can still gain the early-mover

advantage in the industry.

Cost of Starting A Business

Traditional business

Internet business

Setup cost

$300,000 Website setup

$200

Rental fee

$15,000 Hosting

$7

Inventory cost

$30,000 Software

$20

Labour cost

$20,000 Autorespond service

$19

Utilities & others

$10,000 PLR products

$27

TOTAL $375,000

TOTAL

$273

If you want to minimize your start-up cost from the table above,

you can! Let me give you a couple of examples:

If you are able to design a website yourself, or outsource it to a

cheap

but

quality

service

provider

on

Elance

(http://www.elance.com/)

or

Fiverr

(http://www.fiverr.com/), you will cut your cost down even further. In fact, my very first website was built from a private

label right (PLR) template that I purchased for less than $10, and

it is now still up and running. Take a look at it:

http://datingneveroutofdate.info/

You don’t need to invest in an autorespond service at the

beginning stage. You can start small, and get it during the latter

stage of your business as it grows bigger.

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Robert B. Ingalls

You don’t need to buy PLR products if you can create an

information product on your own.

You don’t need a domain name or web hosting if you choose to

build your website on a free platform such as Blogger or

WordPress.

Small Maintenance Cost

Every month, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of

dollars to maintain your business, just like this:

Monthly Cost of Running A Business

Traditional business

Internet business

Rental fee

$15,000 Hosting

$7

Inventory cost

$30,000 App & software

$15

Labour cost

$20,000 Autorespond service

$19

Utilities & other costs

$10,000 Website maintenance

$50

Maintenance

$2,000 Adwords campaigns

$100

Marketing & advertising

$20,000

TOTAL $97,000

TOTAL

$191

You can cut cost for your Internet business if your budget is

tight. For example, no hosting, no autoresponder, no Google

Adwords campaigns etc.

---o0o---

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Does it sound good to you? If yes, let’s go straight into the

“income paths” right now. Just follow me; I am walking you

through the three profit centres that guarantee to generate

high returns on investments (by investment, I mean either

money or time, or both).

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Three Paths to Internet Wealth

Income Path #1: Affiliate Marketing

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing At A Glance

Affiliate marketing is simply selling and promoting other

people’s products and services in returns to sales commission.

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This business model has become popular over the past few years

and it has created additional sources of income for hundreds of

thousands of people around the world.

Affiliate marketing creates a win-win-win situation, in which:

 The customers win because they have their problems

solved

 The merchants (or vendors) win because they make

money from the sales

 The affiliates win because they make money from the

commissions, and don’t have to own a product

Affiliate Marketing: A Closer Look

Let’s look at one scenario to see the power of affiliate marketing.

If a vendor sells a product at $47 and he can make 100 sales per

month from his own marketing effort, his total revenue is $47 x

100 = $4,700.

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If he can get 10 other affiliates (or joint venture partners) to

promote his product and pays 75% commission for each sale

made, and each affiliate can make 50 sales per month, what is

the vendor’s revenue?

In this case, the vendor will be able to make 50 x 10 = 500 sales

per month and generate a revenue of $47 x 500 = $23,500.

He pays out 75% commission: 75% x $23,500 = $17,625

At the end of the day, the amount of money he put in his bank

account is $23,500 – $17,625 = $5,875.

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Robert B. Ingalls

Wow, this is $1,175 more than his initial marketing effort

without the help of the affiliates. And guess what, in this case he

earn the money without any sales effort from his own end!

There you see the win-win-win situation!

Is that the best scenario? No, because somebody can still gain a

bigger slice in this case. Let’s take a quick look:

What if the vendor only gives out 60% of the revenue as

commission, or just 50%, or even 35%? Sure he will make even

more than $5,875 (if he has the same number of joint venture

partners).

What if he has 30 affiliates to promote his products instead of

10? I don’t see how he can earn less than $5,875.

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If the merchant has backend upsales for his product, the

affiliates will earn commissions from the upsales as well.

If the merchant offers a product or service with recurring

payment, the affiliates will receive commissions on the recurring

income too, as long as their customers don’t cancel the

subscription.

That is why affiliate marketing has become so popular!

Affiliate Marketing Models

Basically, there are four common models of affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Sale (PPS): You earn commission for a product

purchased or service rendered.

Cost Per Action (CPA): You earn commission when somebody

completes certain action (such as filling in a form, completing a

survey etc.).

Cost Per Click (CPC): You earn commission when somebody click

on an ad.

Pay Per Install (PPI): You earn commission when somebody

install a software or application on their computer.

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Robert B. Ingalls

The Myths of Affiliate Marketing

You may ask: “If everybody is doing affiliate marketing, how can

I profit from it?”

Simple! The online marketplace is just a simulation of its offline

counterpart, in which there are demands and supplies for

products or services in thousands of different niches.

Different people will look for different things to buy. For

instance, rich people are looking for high-end luxury sport cars.

Many youngsters spend money buying condoms and sex toys.

Overweight individuals are looking for weight loss solutions.

Low income workers seek the chances to earn extra income from

home. Retired people consume travel services. You name it!

So, you don’t need to worry about doing something that

everybody is doing, and getting nothing out of it. Chances are

that, you will be able to find profitable niches with moderate

competition to start making money. The only issue is whether

you are decisive enough to take the early-mover advantage.

You may also wonder whether affiliate marketing is a form of

multi-level marketing (MLM)? The answer is NO!!!

In affiliate marketing, you are a salesperson, promoting products

or services to those who need them and earn commission from

the sales you make.

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Unlike most MLM programs, you don’t have to buy any product

before being accepted into an affiliate program, although it is

best that you should try the product first in order to understand

it better and promote it more effectively.

In affiliate marketing, you are not recruiting downlines, and your

customers don’t have to recruit their own downlines either. You

may retain a customer in your list and re-sell to them in the

future. This is absolutely not the same as the MLM model.

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Robert B. Ingalls

The Affiliate Marketer Roadmap

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Three Paths to Internet Wealth

Step #1: Market Research

If you want to sell something, you need to make sure that

somebody out there is willing to buy it. This is called “finding the

hungry crowds” who will spend their money on the products you

are promoting.

The fastest way to make money is to understand the problems

that many people are seeking solutions to. Only in these cases

are people willing to take out their credit card and make a

purchase.

Below are some examples of common problems people always

try to solve:

 Weight loss

 Real estate

 Dog training

 Make money online

 Dating solutions

 Men impotence

 Investment solutions

 etc.

There are several ways of doing market research:

 You can go to Google Hot Trend to find out what are the

things people are crazy about during a certain period of

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Robert B. Ingalls

time, and what are they willing to spend money on.

(http://www.google.com/trends/)

 You can go to eHow.com to find out the problems that a

majority of people are seeking solutions to.

 You can visit 43Things.com to find out what many

people want to do.

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/) is another place because it lets you know what products are selling well.

Simply visit the website, go to Features & Services,

Amazon Exclusive, Amazon Bestseller to acquire the

updated buying trend and behaviour.

Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com/) is the largest online marketplace for digital products. I’ll explain more

on how it works in the upcoming appendix in this section.

 Alternatively, you can find tons and tons of information

on relevant blogs and forums.

Step #2: Decide A Niche

Once you have done your market research, you can choose a

niche to go into. My advice is that you choose only ONE solid

niche first and work on it for until you make some money out of

it. Don’t try multi-niches when you just get started because it

won’t give you any solid result.

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Personally, I am currently working on only four niches, and

these have been my decent streams of income months after

months.

You can do some research and consider these following niches:

 Dog training

 Golf techniques

 Dating solutions

 FOREX investment trainings and software

 Gardening

 Body building

 You name it!

Step #3: Find A Product To Promote

There are many places out there where you can find a product to

promote. Most of them are free and easy to use.

Commission Junction

One of the biggest affiliate marketplaces is Commission

Junction (http://www.cj.com/), which is also the pioneer network in the affiliate marketing landscape. Here, you can find

any high quality products to promote, ranging from physical to

digital, paying good commission.

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Their affiliate programs also provide you with useful tools and

supports so that you won’t get lost during your partnership with

them.

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