Avoid spending too much money in educating yourself, for an online marketing business.
This is not a pitch it is the opening line to my blog series on what to watch for when you’re investing time and money doing your due diligence for online marketing.
To continue where I last left off, after joining Partner with Anthony and started this very reasonable course (about starting an online business), slowly but surely things started to come together for me.
In Anthony’s course, he releases segments of it every 24 hours. A great idea. He states that he did this so that everyone takes their time to absorb the material and keep up with the lessons. Also, he breaks down the courses units into ten to thirty-minute presentations so that you don’t lose him and get bored. It worked for me.
Getting started
After about five or six lessons he reaches a point where to go further you need to join ClickFunnels, join Redirect (Anthony’s Personal Software), and an app like Getresponse, Aweber, or something similar.
Of course, there is encouragement from him to join through his affiliates, so that he gets a commission on your subscription. I felt that I had a bit of an advantage because I had already completed the One Funnel Away Challenge with ClickFunnels.
I already had a subscription to ClickFunnels and because I needed the information, I joined Redirect and Getresponse. I am glad that I did. I expected that in the next few lessons, I would get what I needed from Anthony Morrison to put everything into one picture that I could relate to, and then I could move forward with my new Online Business.
In the thick of things…
In this next segment of Partner with Anthony, he gets into the meat and potatoes of what the software does, and how they work together. He builds excitement enough so that you want to get through the next few lessons. He encourages you by helping you put together the apps and see firsthand how they work.
I was now through it, and I understand how it works and what to do with the apps. Something was missing. I have nothing to put through them at this point. So Anthony solves the problem by wanting to sell you the solution to the problem by offering you email traffic and showing you how to advertise and attract clients to your ads. These courses cost extra and you can decide to purchase from him, or not. You could get the courses from him, or you could go out and learn what to do with the knowledge you just gained from his lessons.
I went through his catalog of courses and decided there were a few things that I could get involved with. I thought they were reasonably priced. The total investment at this point was:
1. $7.00 per month for PWA course (Partner with Anthony)
2. $0.00 per month through PWA for ClickFunnels(because I already joined previously)
3. $9.95 per month for a newsletter from Anthony, or his staff, that would tell me what strategies they were working on so as to keep abreast of the online marketing world.
4. $19.95 per month for Redirect a software that Anthony owns and is useful for redirecting customers to various funnels etc.
5. $19.95 for Getresponse Email Marketing software, so I can send out emails and start growing my email lists.
So in reality I was at approximately $50.00 per month with PWA and a further $97.00 per month with ClickFunnels. Total just under $150.00 per month.
The picture is starting to unfold
Now getting near the end of the PWA course you can actually earn commissions from PWA by promoting these Courses. Even the ones you have not purchased. In my opinion, he really does give you your money’s worth, at least for what I was paying him.
He is always offering done-for-you funnels and email scripts, to help you get on your way. He even gives you a course that you could put up on Udimi, but rules have changed (of course they have, no pun intended) and it did not work out so well for a number of PWA students. They got banned from Udimi.
Luckily I was not that far into the part where he showed us how to put the course up and was excluded from being banned. I am sure there was a work-around once it was determined that most students just copied and shared his online course.
Opening the wallet
Well, I was anxious to take the plunge and get a campaign out using PWA and ClickFunnels and get my first commission posted. I started to look into Facebook advertising and Google advertising, and other platforms and put this system to work.
I advertised on Facebook and managed to get my first ad out there without being declined. I felt good and set my budget at $100.00 per day. Pretty high for a beginner (I had no experience). I waited for responses.
I waited a whole week. $500.00 worth of responses, but to no avail. I did not get one sale or subscription. I used all his promo stuff and funnels too. I now had to stop and rethink this again as I did not have money to throw away on mistakes. I decided that I would split test the ad and try again. Another $500.00 mistake. No responses, no subscriptions. This now was starting to hurt. I had to revisit the information I was getting and see if maybe I erred in execution.
Revisiting the courses
Nothing stood out that I could pick out right away. So I decided to try solo ads. I went to Udimi and decided to try $50.00 worth. No sales but I did start to build a list of subscribers. Okay, I tried again with $100.00 worth and again, no sales but I got more subscribers.
I was feeling a little bit more comfortable even though I was spending money, but at least I was getting subscribers. Not great, I would rather have sales, but at least I was getting something. I tried two more times at $200.00 each time, but the same result, no sales but more subscribers. I concluded that I was buying my email list a bit at a time. Where was this going to lead me and when would sales kick in?
In my next blog post, I will cover what bigger mistakes I made and what lessons I learned from them….as batman would say “stay tuned next week”.