Advice on Websites and Marketing

“In the last two months, I have found a product and created a website (paydownthatmortgage.com). I am selling a course that teaches you how to pay off a 30-year mortgage in less than 10 years. In addition, there is an opportunity for people who buy the course to become affiliates and sell it (like I’m doing).

“Here is the problem: I feel I am marketing to two different types of people with the same product. A person would buy the course for a personal finance reason (to learn how to pay down his mortgage). But there is also a business opportunity reason to buy it – because you can’t become an affiliate unless you buy it first. I think I need two different websites catering to two different types of buyers: the personal finance guy and the business opportunity guy. I don’t think I should push both aspects of the sale in one website. If I mention the affiliate program to a personal finance buyer, they may think it is some sort of multilevel marketing scam and be scared away.

“What do you think? Do I need two different websites? And should I have two different approaches to marketing, or can my website be set up in a way that caters to both types of buyers at the same time? I have purposely played down the affiliate sign-up in my current website.”

Dave Ferry
Key West, FL

Dear Dave,

Your instinct is good. Generally speaking, your marketing will be stronger if you sell one product at a time.

These are, as you say, two different markets. And each requires its own unique approach.

One thing, though. It’s unlikely you will do much business by setting up a couple of websites. The challenge in marketing is always this: How can I acquire a customer cost-effectively?

A website is cheap to operate, even cheap to establish if you use the right programs and do most of the work yourself. But it won’t give you much in the way of sales unless you are driving a hell of a lot of traffic to it. Internet marketing gurus who focus on search engine optimization sometimes forget to tell you that SEO marketing is often inefficient — especially if you don’t have a developed backend product line – and therefore inappropriate for start-up ventures.

If any of this is confusing to you, you need to deepen your knowledge of Internet marketing before you invest any time and money in your idea. You can do so with ETR’s Internet Money Club. This year’s Club is full, but you can get on the hotlist for next year.

You might also be interested in the following articles we’ve published in ETR on the subject of getting more traffic to your site:

• “The SONAR Content Distribution Method of Getting More Traffic and More Sales” by Wendy Montes de Oca 
• “3 Places You Should Use Keywords but Probably Don’t” by Alexis Siemon 
• “11 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website” by Craig Ballantyne 
• “How to Find Customers in a Web 2.0 World” by Wendy Montes de Oca 
• “The Social Media Connection: How to Get Search Engines to Love Your Site” by Alexis Siemon

One final thing: Your product should be good and unique. If it is merely a report that explains the benefit of paying down a mortgage faster by, say, making 26 payments a year… then it is not, in my opinion, a strong enough product to rest your hopes on.

Good luck!

– Michael Masterson

[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.] [Ed. Note: Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]