You know, most of the time we tend to think that the only people worth interviewing are people who have accomplished great things. I think the interviews I’ve given have proven that not everyone has to be great to be fascinating, or to be able to learn something from.
I was on Twitter one night & saw Mirko’s post saying he could give some advice on internet marketing. I threw out a question, he answered, and it was a good answer. We talked, and he gave me some more answers; all good stuff. I asked him to take the standard interview questions, assuming he was someone who’d made a lot of money, and instead he revealed that he’s in the process of studying before figuring out where he wants to go. But his advice was still good. Thus, this interview:
1. How long did it take you to make your first $10,000 via internet marketing?
Come back in 3-6 months time and I’ll be able to tell you 🙂 I have spent the last 6 months crawling the internet marketing scene to learn, learn, learn. I’ve spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to dig deep into the abundance of possibilities to make money online and I’ve only just begun to implement what I have learned. I took the time to weed out the crap of which there is a lot of to be discovered and I am now confident to have found a system to deliver high valuable service and products without tricking people into buying stuff they don´t need.
2. When you first began, what kind of mistakes did you make that impeded you?
The biggest mistake by far was that it took me 6 months to get myself a mentor to guide me with a proven system. But then you know, it also took time to find the right mentor for me, as what I have written to question #1 applies to this one here as well. There is an abundance of people offering advice and it takes time to check them out before you commit yourself to one person, doesn’t it?
Another mistake I’d like to mention is that due to the fact that I was shining my flashlight into every single corner of this online marketing world I lost my focus and was spinning around in circles trying to absorb all the information available. I subscribed to dozens upon dozens of email lists from marketers and I found myself bombarded with emails every day. More than a single person can read or least of all follow up any of the gazillions of links. So for me it was time to reduce the noise in my email inbox, unsubscribe from the majority and stick only to the very best I had discovered.
3. For someone brand new who has a product to sell, whether it’s their own or not, what are the first three steps they need to do to drive traffic to their product, or is that the most important thing to begin with in the first place?
Talking about traffic, the life-blood of any website offering something to sell, this involves many aspects and I don’t have a short answer to this very good and important question. There is basically three types of traffic: Paid traffic (such as Google Adwords and other forms of advertising on other websites), Free traffic (such as traffic from the search engines, social media sites you engage on, like Facebook e.g, social bookmarking and more) and there is Borrowed traffic (traffic from joint venture partners who have a list of email subscribers to whom they can offer your product).
If you have a product (doesn’t matter whether it is your own or an affiliate product) you first will have to do some deep keyword research using the Google keyword tool or any of the good keyword tool software products to find out if you have a demand for your product in the market. If your search tells you there is a substantial amount of people looking for your kind of product, move on to find a good keyword related name for your blog or website that is still available and register a .com, .org or .net domain. Set up the blog/website and start adding valuable content to your blog. Then use any of the three types of traffic.
4. What’s your general opinion on trying to make money selling affiliate products through companies like Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc?
This is a good way to start making money online as you do not have to handle the product creation part, not the billing part, not the service part nor anything else like that. You don’t even need a website as you can direct the traffic directly to the affiliate offer (e.g. an ad linking to the offer).
But it is a competitive market and you certainly have to learn the basics before you go out and try and make a buck with affiliate marketing.
5. Do you believe an autoresponder is important even for those who don’t have much traffic at the beginning?
Yes, you should start as soon as possible. Your growing list can and will be a vital part of your websites traffic if you manage to build a good relationship with your list. Imagine sending out an email, asking your list to read your latest blog post, asking them questions and so on. If you’ve built up an relationship with your list, people will hop over to your blog. They will leave comments and this will attract other people and Google as well.
6. Do you believe that most people have the opportunity to make good money via their blogs, or do you believe it’s best to have a website, then possibly direct traffic through a blog to the websites?
The blogs (WordPress) are so good and basically easy to handle nowadays that I believe they will replace the majority of websites some time in the near future. Blogs are an excellent CMS (content management system) and I believe you can use a blog for everything you need online. I especially love the fact that you hardly need any knowledge of any computer language to set them up and maintain them.
7. What do you think of programs like Jeff Paul’s Internet Millions that bring a lot of people into internet marketing, promising millions, that don’t really know what the internet is to begin with?
Too much hype for me. I never bought nor liked any of those products.
8. Do you believe the market is getting too crowded, or is there room for everyone to make money online?
There is plenty of room for years upon years to come. In fact there will always be enough room. Mind you; there is a saying, that 95-97 % of the attempts to make a living online do fail. This might sound scary at first but it leaves us with 3-5 % who are obviously succeeding with their efforts.
And this is why I focus on finding out what makes those who do succeed different from the majority and follow their footsteps.
9. Take a moment for yourself; what are you working on now, or what would you like to promote?
Right now I am a proud student of Alex Jeffreys and I am so thankful that with the help of Alex and a great community of like-minded students I have regained my focus. I have my first product – a Alex Jeffreys course on you guessed it, internet marketing – up and running on my blog Easy Cash Webinar. Next and parallel to the ongoing coaching of Alex Jeffreys, I am working on my first own product to be released to the market – for free – within the next 28 days. So make sure to stop by on my blog Mirko Gosch. My blog is there to make a difference and it is a B.S. free area I’d like to invite you to. I am interacting and exchanging a lot with my fellow coaching students at the moment and there will be joint ventures coming up soon I expect.
10. Any final words of encouragement you’d like to give to my visitors?
Go and get yourself a mentor and prepare yourself for success by following a proven system. Make a plan and work on that plan daily. Be consistent and get your stuff out there. It can be done, you can do it but you have to DO it. Take action. If you ever need a helping hand, pop over to my blog. I am German but I will not shoot 🙂
I thank Mirko for sharing that information with us. And lest you think this is just some young guy who hasn’t done anything with his life yet, Mirko’s 41 years old and a lawyer who’s looking at a career change so he can do more things with his life and with his family. So, this is a driven guy who I hope makes it rich so I can play off his fame and tell the world I interviewed him first! 🙂
