Thread: 4 Week Action Plan - Roadmap To Your First Sale

This post is designed for anyone that's brand new to Internet marketing and hasn't yet made their first sale.

By following the simple four week plan outlined below, you should be on track to making your first sale, and subsequent sales, through the Internet.

Remember that Internet marketing is like any other job, and requires a constant investment of time each and every day. Unlike with being an employee, there is no "boss" to make sure you do your work, and that is why self discipline is essential. Stick to this plan every day if you can. Feel free to skip ahead if you're eager!

Internet marketing is a constant process of training. Your training will never finish. You should be attempting to make money whilst learning new methods at the same time, and follow this same strategy throughout your Internet marketing career.

Make sure to ask questions in the forum if there's anything you don't understand along the way.

Week 1

Day 1 - You will most likely be overwhelmed with everything. Don't worry, this is a phase we all started at. During this time it is recommended you just browse around the site, and familiarize yourself with the forum.

Make sure you've read over the Getting Started post fully, to understand how the membership site works. After that, create a post within the Introduction forum introducing yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what your goals are, and how you found the Heron Academy. Check the post throughout the day for any replies.

If there are any useful replies to your post, click on the "Star" at the bottom of the post to give the user some "reputation". You are allowed to give 10 reputation points each month, and it is a good way of showing appreciation towards other users. If you ever ask a question on the forum and someone answers it, make sure to give them some reputation for their efforts.

Days 2 - 7 - With the introductions out of the way, it's time to get down to business, or at least, your initial education.

Begin reading the Journey Into Internet Marketing Tutorial Series throughout the rest of the week. This will give you a thorough foundation in understanding what Internet marketing is, and how to start setting up your own sites to make money (non-premium members may access a free version of this tutorial here).

Week 2

Day 1 - This week, you will be focusing on affiliate marketing. Start by reading over the Affiliate Marketing For Beginners tutorial series.

Day 2 - Conduct some niche research, using the Niche Research tutorial to help you identify a potentially profitable niche you'd like to market. Find a successful ebook on Clickbank (one with a high gravity) that relates to this niche.

After you've identified a potential niche with hungry buyers, and have found a product for it, start implementing the strategies taught in the Promoting Your Product With Free Methods tutorial.

Day 3 - 7 - Continue marketing your niche from Day 2 of this week, using the strategies taught. Check up on the rankings of your websites each day. You most likely won't notice any significant changes until at least a few more weeks from now.

Read the beginner tutorials on Copywriting and Backlink Building. If you don't want to wait around for your SEO rankings to increase and are willing to invest some money, try your hand at some PPC advertising by following the PPC For Beginners tutorial.

Week 3

Days 1 - 3 - This week you should focus on setting up your own e-mailing list. Read the tutorial on E-mail Marketing For Beginners and Merchant Marketing. It's up to you if you want to promote an affiliate product or your own product, however you should have a good quality "give away" product for subscribers that join your list. Remember that you can create this product by re-writing an already existing PLR product.

Spend the first three days of this week writing your autoresponder series and setting up your Squeeze page.

Days 4 - 7 - Identify a realistic term that relates to the niche of your e-mailing list that you believe you could rank under in the SERPs. A term with under 10,000 "exact phrase match" competition will do.

Write articles on all of the major article directories with links pointing back to your squeeze page, using your desired keyword term as the anchor text. Conduct forum backlink building as well with your anchor text located in the signature of your posts. Continue promoting your e-mailing list and building its ranking in the SERPs. As your ranking increases, you should start to receive more subscribers that you can market products to.

Whilst you're at it, have a read over the Social Media For Beginners tutorial to get some more marketing ideas.

Other Tasks:

By now you should have a basic understanding of Internet marketing, and have some experience in promoting a website. Try your hand at answering some basic questions on the forum that newer, less experienced members than you may ask. You may receive some MRP Points from other members by doing this. Helping others is often the best way of training yourself, and gaining confidence in your own abilities.

If you can't find any posts that you can contribute to, why not respond to some Introduction forum threads created by new members? This is a good way to establish yourself in the community as a welcoming figure.


Week 4 & Onward

If you've been working hard each day and implementing the strategies taught, you shouldn't be too far away from ranking on the first page of Google for the keyword terms you're targeting (provided they're not too competitive). If you've been using PPC advertising, you may have already made your first sale by now. If not, keep on promoting your sites until they receive a first page ranking on Google. When they do, monitor how much traffic you're receiving from those terms (using a stats monitoring program such as Awstats or Google analytics). If you're receiving sufficient hits, then your first sale shouldn't be too far away. If you're receiving many hits but aren't making a sale, try optimizing your copy. If you're not receiving any hits, then make sure that the keyword term you're targeting is receiving actual searches. Remember to ask questions in the forum for any help you need.

After you've made your first sale, learn more advanced methods discussed in other tutorials and the forum. Implement the strategies taught. Rinse and repeat, and... hopefully sometime soon, quit your job!

Good luck for now.