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Lesson #28

RUNNING AN EFFICIENT SYSTEM

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
 
If you have read all 27 Internet Income Course lessons prior to this one, you should have a pretty good handle on Internet Marketing by now. If you have been putting the principles discussed in this course into practice, you should also have some good experience by now. In this lesson, we turn our focus on how to be more efficient in doing what you are doing. Now is the time to start thinking of your efforts as a system. It’s time to fine tune that system into an efficient money making machine.

CLOCKS AND SHOES AND BROOMS MAKE MONEY

Many people labor under the misconception that you have to be brilliant--or at least quite smart – to become wealthy. But you do not. The secret to financial success is not necessarily intelligence, but rather efficiency. Many extraordinarily brilliant people have been poor all their lives, while many people with only average intelligence have amassed great fortunes.
 
An example of the former is John Harrison (1693-1776), the clock maker. King Charles II founded the Royal Observatory in 1675 to solve the problem of keeping accurate time and finding longitude at sea. In 1714, the British Government offered £20,000 for a solution which could provide longitude to within half-a-degree (2 minutes of time). John Harrison, a working class carpenter, invented a very accurate clock that could be used at sea (no pendulum involved to be affected by the rocking of the boat) to solve this problem. The British Government, however, found excuse after excuse for not awarding him the prize. He was over 80 years old and near death when he finally received the money. Despite his brilliance, over 80 years of his life were lived in extreme poverty.
 
In contrast, Seth Thomas (1785-1865), a Connecticut manufacturer, who contributed nothing significant to the science of time-keeping, amassed a huge fortune efficiently manufacturing clocks designed by others.
 
Thus, the trick is not to build a better clock, but to sell clocks more efficiently than the next guy. The trick is not to build a better mouse trap, but to sell mouse traps efficiently.
 
Many fortunes have been made selling clocks as well as other ordinary, everyday items, such as shoes and brooms. Everybody wears shoes and every floor needs sweeping, at least occasionally. The more ordinary the item--the more it is used by more people--the more you can sell it.
 
Thus, to be successful in Internet Marketing, you need not create any brilliant new products or strategies; rather you simply need to efficiently employ the proven strategies to promote available products.

WHAT IS EFFICIENCY AND HOW DO YOU GET IT?
 
It is the person who counts his or her pennies who accumulates wealth. Efficiency is, as much as anything else, paying attention. Efficiency is counting and measuring and knowing where your resources are coming from and where they are going.
 
Simply stated, the notion of efficiency has to do with comparing what you put into something with what you get out of it. Generally speaking, what you put into something is time, energy, and money. What you get back is often referred to as “production” or “return.” In Internet Marketing, the ultimate “return” you seek is profit from sales.
 
To create an efficient Internet Marketing System, you seek to increase your profits relative to the time and money that you invest. You do this by paying attention to each facet of your Internet Marketing system.

CREATING A SYSTEM
 
You can’t even begin to think about efficiency until you start thinking of your Internet Marketing efforts as a system. Take a blank piece of paper and draw a box in the middle of it. On the left side, draw arrows pointing into the box. On the right side, draw arrows coming out of the box. Now, think of this box as your Internet Marketing System. The arrows going in represent time, energy, and money. The arrows coming out represent profits (in this case, money from commissions). The value of the profits coming out relative to the time, energy, and money going in gives you the ultimate measure of the efficiency of your system.
 
Do not be distressed, however, if you see that, time and energy aside, you have more money going in than you have coming out right now. This will be the case for many of you and here is why: There are two kinds of time that go into your system. Over one of the arrows going into the box in your drawing, write “My Time.” Over another of the arrows going into the box in your drawing, write “Passage of Time.” Not only do you have to put in your time and effort building a good system, but then you have to wait for the “passage of time” for your efforts to produce results. This “passage of time” is something that has to go into the system before it will work properly. This passage of time is necessary for your Website to be noticed, both by the search engines and others who may link to you, and is necessary for your other promotional efforts to accumulate into a “critical mass.” That is, it takes time to get enough ads and other promotional material “out there” floating around (on Websites and in people’s e-mail inboxes, for example) to begin to take effect.
 
As time passes, however, you hope to see the profits coming out of your system increase relative to the time, energy, and money that you put into the system. To ensure a constantly accelerating increase in return, you should be constantly improving the efficiency of your system.

FINE TUNING YOUR SYSTEM
 
Grab another sheet of paper and draw a bigger box on it. This box, again, represents your Internet Marketing System, only this time we are going to write inside the box. You need to sketch out the components of your Internet Marketing System. While there are many different approaches to Internet Marketing, the most common type of system focuses on a Website--your Website. Draw a rectangle inside your system box to represent your Website.
 
On your Website, you will certainly have some product links. Draw some symbols inside your Website to represent these product links. Then, draw some right-pointing arrows from these links out of your Website and on out of your system to the right. Place a “$” at the point of these arrows. Selling products from your Website links is a successful event. It produces the ultimate return of commissions. This is a good thing. You like these arrows!
 
Not everyone who visits your Website will buy a product, however. The ratio of people who buy a product from your Website to the total number of people who visit your Website is a measure of the efficiency of your Website in selling products. If you have a poor ratio, you will want to improve the effectiveness of your Website to sell products.
 
Let’s back up a step. Draw another symbol in your system box (away from your Website) to represent your search engine ranking. Then draw an arrow from your search engine ranking to your Website. The higher your search engine ranking; the more people who will visit your Website. If you have a low search engine ranking, you will want to work to improve it.
 
Now draw yet another symbol inside your system box to represent one of your ad campaigns. Draw an arrow from this symbol to your Website. Then draw arrows connecting the arrows that represent time and money coming into your system box to this symbol. The amount of money flowing into this ad campaign compared to the number of visitors coming from it to your Website measures the efficiency of this ad campaign.
 
Notice, however, that no matter how efficient your ad campaign may be, if your Website is not efficient at converting these visitors into sales, your overall system is not efficient. Or, consider the reverse. Your Website may be very efficient in converting visitors to sales, but your ad campaign may not be sending enough visitors for the money you invest in it. It is important to analyze the inner workings of your system to know which parts need attention the most.

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR TRAFFIC
 
Numerous studies have shown that it takes several “exposures” before a consumer will buy a product. Your system should be designed to deal with this reality. You are setting yourself up for disappointment if you believe you will sell enough products to first-time visitors to make a profit. This rarely happens. Thankfully, there are ways to overcome this problem.
 
Realizing that most of your first-time visitors will not buy from your site is the first step toward becoming a true Internet Entrepreneur. You have expended resources to get these visitors to your site. Those time, energy, and money arrows pointing into your system go, for the most part, to getting traffic to your site. An efficient system will make the most of this traffic. An efficient system will eliminate waste. It is downright wasteful to let these visitors leave your site--most likely never to return--without getting some sort of hook in them.
 
If these first-time visitors will not buy, perhaps they will join. Your site should have a newsletter signup and your site should be designed to entice your visitors to join your newsletter. The great advantage of having a newsletter is that you can continue to expose a visitor to your products through your newsletter content, which you can send out periodically. This way, you can achieve the number of exposures necessary to maximize sales of your products.
 
Yet another strategy you can employ is to have a “back-end” system. Give your visitors the opportunity to join a program, such as the SFI affiliate program, and you have yet another way to profit from them. Sophisticated multi-tier affiliate programs, such as the SFI Marketing Group opportunity, provide a means for you to profit from a visitor over and over again for years. Not only do you get a commission from what that new affiliate buys, but also from what he or she sells--and from what is bought and sold by the affiliates that he or she brings into your Powerline!
 
You should also consider employing an “exit fee” for your system. Everyone who comes to your site has to leave your site somehow. Even those that do not buy or join anything may not be a total loss. You can become an affiliate of a search engine such as Overture.com and place a search box on your site. For everyone who uses the box to search the Internet, you receive a small commission. Those visitors who do not find what they are looking for on your site will be looking for the nearest search engine to keep on looking. Why not put this right on your site (in the appropriate place, of course, so as not to cause a premature exit of your site) and grab back a little of your investment in this visitor. If this visitor cost you $0.07 to get to your site, by earning back $0.02 cents when they leave, you have reduced the cost of that visitor to only $0.05 cents and thus improved the overall efficiency of your system.

OVERVIEW
 
Your system should focus on having information (and selling specific products related to that information) on the “front-end” with the newsletter and affiliate program options (such as SFI) on the “back-end.” Then you should also have an “exit-fee” strategy. Remember that you attract visitors into your system with information. You also trigger their need for a product or service with information. You take advantage of their continued search for information when exiting your site. For this process to work, your system has to be streamlined with respect to the flow of this information.
 
Single-subject Websites work better than crowded hodge-podges of various banners and links. Thus, if you want to promote more than one thing at each level, you should consider using multiple Websites--or at least multiple entry points (pages) into your Website. You should have one entry point for nutritional products, another for Internet and phone services, and yet another for informational products. Each of these entry points should follow distinct paths designed in light of the information that attracted the visitor in the first place.
 
It is fine to let one Website (or entry point) be the “back-end” for another Website or entry point; but, if you do this, make sure that “flow” is preserved. Do not distract your visitor with a new type of product or service until they have had every opportunity to buy the primary product or services that corresponds to their entry point and the information that attracted them.
 
As with all things, direction and timing are crucial to efficiency. Do not lose sight of the directional flow of your system. Do not lose sight of the timing involved in product exposures.

CONCLUSION
 
To be profitable, you should take a systematic approach to Internet Marketing. Being systematic means counting, measuring, and comparing what goes into your system; how it flows through your system; and the return that flows out of your system. It means, as much as anything, paying close attention to what you are doing and what is happening as a result of your efforts. If you are not getting the results you desire, identify the part of your system that is failing to perform to expectation and then fine tune it. Always be striving to fine tune your entire system to achieve greater efficiency. An efficient system is the key. Brilliance is not required. Luck is not required. Efficiency is required.

WHAT’S COMING NEXT
 
In our next lesson, we will discuss some of the obstacles to success in Internet Marketing and provide insights and tips to overcome them.

by George Little
Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without written permission of the author.

For more information on the Internet Income Course and other works and courses by George Little, see www.profitpropulsion.com.

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