There is one fatal mistake that internet marketing newbies make, that is, trying to make money online.

I’m not trying to be a wet blanket here. I simply want to highlight to you the way Nature works.

Let me share with you a little story:

Recently I was trying to teach my nephew swimming because he told me that he was very interested in learning it.

For those of you who have learnt swimming, you know that before you can swim, you have to learn many things like how to kick your legs, how to blow bubbles in the water etc.

When I taught my nephew how to kick his legs, he tried it for a while and then ask, “I know how to kick now, but why I still can’t swim.” Throughout the session, while learning how to swim, he kept asking me why he still can’t swim.

My nephew is 7 years old. His reaction towards learning how to swim reminds me of many internet marketing newbies.

Many newbies are eager to learn how to make money online. Whenever they learn something, they want to see the money immediately.

The attachment to making money online is often the seed of failure.

Learning to make money online is similar to learning anything else. One should first master the basics.

When the basics are mastered, making money online is just a natural outcome.

This is how the Nature works. If you can recall how you successfully learned a skill, any skill, you’ll agree with what I say.

So what are the basics in internet marketing?

Too many.

Common basics include:

- search engine optimization;
- how to write ads;
- website creation and many more.

You don’t have to learn everything. But you must understand that the more basics you learn, the more money you can make online.

When I first started, I knew nothing about html, SEO or sales letter writing. Like many newbies, I was reading gurus’ newsletters, buying ebooks and courses. Nothing worked for me until I stopped thinking about making money and started learning like a student.

Remember the time when you were schooling? Having to ’swallow’ those lengthy and boring words and make sense out of them? And trying to understand those technical jargons that look alien to you?

That’s what I mean by learning like a student.

If you are simply reading a “how to make money” ebook as if you are reading a novel, you are not really learning like a student. You are merely entertaining yourself.

I know. It’s hard to be convinced that you will make money online if you simply focus on mastering the basics of internet marketing. Just like my nephew who can’t see how learning to kick can eventually make him swim.

But that’s how Nature works.

When the basics are mastered, making money online is just a natural outcome.

This is not the first time I get members asking me how to write text ads. There is a simple formula that I use to write text ad or almost any other types of ads. Today, I’ll share this formula with you.

My Simple Formula To Write Text Ad

Writing text ad is an art. Different marketers have different style of writing.

For me, I follow a simple formula. My formula is:

A-E-A

A - Attention
E - Expectation
A - Action

Most text ads are made up of a headline (or title) and a text body.

The objective of the headline is to grab Attention.

The objective of the text body is to build Expectation and call to Action.

For example, I may write an ad like this:

I Made $6K in my First Month
Learn Exactly How I Did It.
Free Download.

Can you see how I use the A-E-A formula in this example?

How To Write Attention Grabbing Headline Or Title?

There are many ways to write a headline or title that grabs attention.

For example, you can ask a question that invokes curiosity. You can also tell a story like I did in the example above.

One simple way is to use some power words that can capture people’s attention.

Some of these power words include: How To, Secrets, Free, Download, Exposed, Save, Amazing, Time-Sensitive, Proven, Step-By-Step, Shocking Truth, Cheap, Urgent.

Why Build Expectation?

Once you grab the prospects’ attention, you need to tell your prospects what they can expect from you after clicking your ad.

This is the hardest part and if it’s done right, 90% of the battle is won.

To build an expectation is to create a desire. As you know, once a person has a strong desire for something, he can do anything to satisfy that desire.

In this case, once you successfully build an expectation, your prospects will be motivated to click on your text ad to get what they’re expecting.

Again, there are some power words you can use to build expectation. These words include: Learn, Discover, Find Out, Increase, Reduce, Eliminate, Save, Loss, Gain, Heal, Change, Transform.

Call To Action - The Final Push

Many marketers put too much emphasis in the call to action. My view is, the most important element is Expectation building. Once the expectation is built, call to action is simply a final push.

Call to action is for the subconscious. What I mean is subconsciously, our hand react to some words.

For example: Click Here, Download Here, Instant Access, Start Here, Get It Now, Buy Now, Watch It Here, and … (i.e. ending your ad with …)

Anyone Can Write A Text Ad Like A Guru

No one is born an ad writing guru. Every ad writing guru I know has a habit of keeping a library of ads that they think is good.

Whenever you come across a good ad, keep it and refer to your collection whenever you need to write an ad. It’s just a matter of time before you become another expert in writing text ad.

In my last blog post, I said that blog plays a different role in advertising. As a follow up, let’s discuss the purpose of blogging and the role it plays in advertising.

My discussion is purely from marketing point of view. If you are blogging for fun or to pass time, that’s another purpose but it’s not our focus here.

So, why blog?

1. To Use It As A Bait

Blog is a good bait to attract traffic to your website.

First, if your blog is search engine optimized (I discussed this last week), it is a good bait to hook search engine traffic.

Second, if you provide useful information on your blog, it is a good bait to hook more traffic through networking and referrals from other bloggers.

Last but not least, it is a good bait to hook your existing traffic, who will revisit your website again and again.

2. To Differentiate Yourself From Others

With so many websites and competition on the net, it’s really not easy to make yourself stand out from the rest.

But with a good blog, you stand a much better chance.

Through blogging, you can connect with your audiance, let them know you better and thus foster better relationship with them.

People like to do business with people they trust. You know this, don’t you?

3. To Stimulate Your Creative Juice

Someone just posted a comment on this blog saying that he run out of things to write for his blog and ask how about me.

I don’t have such a problem because when I read the comments you guys and gals have posted, I will have new ideas for my next post.

The comments in my blog can also help me to generate ideas for my future projects.

The Purpose Of A Blog In Advertising

I said in my last post that it’s not a good idea to advertise your blog directly because the traffic is not likely to stick long. If you were to advertise, advertise to build a list.

But you can use a blog to increase the conversion rate of your ad, by using your blog as a tool to build your prospects’ trust and confidence in you.

If you have a decent blog, with some good posts and comments from the readers, you can direct the traffic from your squeeze page to your blog.

In the past, I thought this will reduce the conversion rate, since you send traffic away from the squeeze page. But my recent test shows that doing so can actually increase the conversion rate because people know that you are real and you really provide values.

Just a quick technical note. Make sure that you open the link to your blog in a new window, so that your prospects do not navigate away from the squeeze page.

Nowadays it seems that everyone is having a blog, but many have no idea how to drive traffic to blog. I hope today’s discussion can shed some light to bloggers who are struggling to drive traffic to their blogs.

From time to time, I get people asking me if they should advertise their blog to get traffic. My advice is always ‘No’. If you have a new blog, remember, advertising it is not the way to get traffic. There are some exceptional cases of course. But in most cases, advertising is not a good traffic source for blogs. (Blog plays a different role in advertising. I may discuss this next time.)

Have you heard of gurus saying that blogging is a way to get traffic?

Yet bloggers are scratching their heads wondering how to drive traffic to blog.

Shouldn’t blogging generate traffic? If so, why do you need to drive traffic to your blog? Shouldn’t you just keep blogging and your blog should generate traffic on its own?

Well, you know things are not that simple.

A new blog is capable of generating traffic on its own ONLY IF it’s optimized for search engine. Else, you’ll have to think of ways to drive traffic to the blog and that can be tedious and even frustrating to some.

In my opinion, if you were to start a blog, it must be optimized for search engine. That’s the laziest way to drive traffic to your blog.

How do you build a search engine optimized blog?

There are just two things you need to do.

1) Write search engine optimized posts

Most bloggers simply blog whatever they like to say. You can do that if you are Paris Hilton. If not, you’re not likely to attract people to read what you’re writing.

A ‘purpose-driven’ blogger will do careful keyword research and optimize his article for search engines before posting it to his blog. Almost every blog post is his arrow that aims to shoot down the top position in the search results.

2) Build backlinks

The objective of a blogger should be to turn his blog into an authority site.

My definition of an authority site is one with a high PageRank. To get a high PageRank, you have to get many backlinks to your blog.

The game of search engine optimization is unfair. Authority sites receive more attention and better rankings from the search engines. You can write very good content but if your blog has no backlink, you’re not likely to get much attention.

Link building is boring and tedious. And you won’t see the return immediately. But it is necessary.

Did I say ‘necessary’?

Besides the normal ways of getting backlinks, such as submitting articles, press release, forum marketing etc, there is an innovative way that you should explore if you are serious.

It’s to create a free online application that people are interested to link to. If you don’t know how to create one, you can always get a freelancer to do it. But you need to come out with the idea.

For example, in the blog industry, many bloggers create free Wordpress plugins. Useful plugins get lots of recommendations from other bloggers and thus backlinks.

Final comments

Building a blog that can drive traffic on autopilot takes time and effort. In the meantime, you should look for other ways to drive traffic to your blog. The way I recommend is to build a list. You can easily build a list through advertising and offering something for free. Then you can send this list to read your blog.

This is the beginning stage, when you have to actively drive traffic to your blog. If you keep following the two steps above, your blog will eventually get traffic from the search engine automatically. This is when your blog can become your faithful and passive traffic generator. This process can take 3 to 6 months, depending on how hard you work.