Please Help Guys

Hi everyone,

Sorry for such a pathetic title of a thread but am a bit of a loss as to what to do next and I know theres some very savy people on here.

Long story short, I have spent the last 6 months or so putting together an on line course teaching people completely unique information in a niche I am an expert in. I have an ebook that sells for $45 and a membership package that includes the ebook and video examples for $100 (this is in the lower end of the price range for my niche). I am getting good feedback from the few people I have managed to sell it to (through jumping on people on forums that need help.. not really a long term plan).

I turned to an expert for help improving my sales pitch and he was going to help me market my product. But it appears he has run off with my money about $1500! Feel gutted, he really seemed to know what he was talking about. I don't know what's happened, he's just basically disappeared and whenever I ask for him to send anything over to me there is always an excuse. So isn't looking good.

But I can take that on the chin. The thing that is most frustrating is the time I have lost with this guy, and now the fact I feel clueless in terms of what to do next. I'm an expert in the product I created but a newbie in terms of internet marketing. I'm happy to put money into it (never up front again though!!) but just am looking for a bit of guidance. Black hat, White hat I don't care I just hate this feeling of being let down with no backup.

I know nobody can give me a holy grail plan but surely there must be something you feel would be a good place to start and some steps to put into practice. Or some links to strategy threads you think you be a good place to start.
I'm open to any advice and hard work, time, investment is not an issue but am desperate for education!

Thanks for your time.

Check out the marketplace forum here, there are a ton of great folks who can offer services to get you up and running. You already have the product which is the hard part....find someone to make you a quick landing page with sales copy and then run some paid traffic to it. That's the fastest way to get up and running!

How did you pay him? Pay with paypal so you can get your money back if that happens again ..

Thanks SilentBauer. Already I like the sound of that, finding good people is the hard part.

The landing page and copy is fairly straightforward I'm already networking with a few people on this front. Its that second part that concerns me. How do I get targeted traffic that is going to convert? Are there people on here that can do that for me? I'm very wary of paying someone x amount to drive traffic and then they just send a load of worthless leads that are never going to convert. I'm not feeling especially trusting at the moment as i'm sure you can understand from my post.

Thanks Shady it was PayPal i am going to start the process of trying to get the money back. but this has dragged on for months I don't know if I am outside their refund policy range (even though it has been blatant fraud)

Tommyg123 said:

Thanks Shady it was PayPal i am going to start the process of trying to get the money back. but this has dragged on for months I don't know if I am outside their refund policy range (even though it has been blatant fraud)

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delay is 45 days If I remember, outside of that, you dont have much solutions.

Tommyg123 said:

Thanks Shady it was PayPal i am going to start the process of trying to get the money back. but this has dragged on for months I don't know if I am outside their refund policy range (even though it has been blatant fraud)

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If you're a registered UK user of PayPal, you've got 180 days and their buyer protection policy covers services & intangible items.

Tommyg123 said:

How do I get targeted traffic that is going to convert? Are there people on here that can do that for me? I'm very wary of paying someone x amount to drive traffic and then they just send a load of worthless leads that are never going to convert. I'm not feeling especially trusting at the moment as i'm sure you can understand from my post.

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That's the million dollar question! It's a lot of testing and learning. Starting out, Facebook traffic is a good starting point since you can target by interests, similar pages, demographics, etc. It gives you a bit more control over WHO is coming to the page instead of trying to target specific keywords on Google PPC (which you can royally screw up). Check out Jon Loomer's blog for some great starting info on Facebook ads.

Definately setup an affiliate program, other webmasters with visitors who may be interested aren't going to advertise your product for free, but for 50% of the revenue, you'll find a lot more people willing to promote you.

Yeah you can find plenty of people in the marketplace here that can get you set up with everything you need.

Thanks everyone. Also thanks very much to the guy that sent me a PM. My post count isn't high enough to respond yet.

Interesting you mentioned affiliates PR250. It is something I have considered. My skills are in building a product (and hopefully designing an appealing site) but other people have the network of buyers and the skills in attracting them. I would be more than happy to split my sales 50-50 with someone.

How would you propose going about this? I have looked at Clickbank but I get the impression that unless you already have a track record of high conversions already you are just going to get skipped over, there are so many products on there. But how do you get the conversion track record... seems catch 22.

Also I signed up for a product promoted in the marketplace Instavisits which promised me x number of clicks a month. So far I am seeing clicks to my site.. 400 or so. But no sales just one person signed up for the free intro chapters. Hard to tell if the traffic coming in is crappy or my landing page is crappy. Probably both

are you satisfied with your SERP positions? Are you ranking ok for niche specific buyer keywords?

Hi Andreint. The website has only been up for a few weeks. So I haven't really started going for ranking etc yet as I am still trying to learn the strategies. I had actually decided to focus more on paid traffic as I heard this has better conversions that SEO based traffic

If you plan on doing PPC, be sure to have a test budget in the 4 figure range and a tracker as well.

If you want affiliates to promote your product, you've got to establish proof of concept first. Otherwise, no one would put time and effort into something that doesn't convert.

Tommyg123 said:

Hi Andreint. The website has only been up for a few weeks. So I haven't really started going for ranking etc yet as I am still trying to learn the strategies. I had actually decided to focus more on paid traffic as I heard this has better conversions that SEO based traffic

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What @Paper-Boy said.

Organic traffic that comes to your site via (semi)buyer keywords in not worth any less than ppc traffic. Can be even better conversion-wise..
Before you do anything, i'd recommend getting your on-page to the max and make sure that you have everything setup for the future organic traffic. Then while you wait for your website to rank, you can focus on starting and maintaining PPC campaign.

There's a lot of ground to cover, but with big enough budget you should be fine