Is the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try implod­ing? I think it is. But if not, it sure seems like it. In fact, it seems to be a sign of the times.

For exam­ple, we see it with the FTC crack­ing down on mis­lead­ing adver­tis­ers, Visa and Mas­ter­Card clos­ing down mer­chant accounts for forced con­ti­nu­ity billings, and Google per­ma­nently ban­ning adver­tis­ers for rea­sons still unclear but some­how related to the lat­est crackdown.

Harsh? Per­haps. But we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Remem­ber, it was about three years ago — wow, has it been three years already? — when my wife, Sylvie Fortin, put out her scathing report, called “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins.”

It was highly con­tro­ver­sial at the time because peo­ple didn’t expect it. How­ever, since then many mar­keters, blog­gers, jour­nal­ists, dis­grun­tled clients, unpaid affil­i­ates, even social media experts have joined in the cho­rus. Some, qui­etly. Oth­ers, not so quietly.

For instance, copy­writer Ryan Healy ruf­fled a few feath­ers recently by post­ing a scathing report, enti­tled “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing on Life Sup­port,” in which he sin­gled out a few mar­keters for their ques­tion­able, uneth­i­cal, or allegedly ille­gal practices.

One com­menter praised Ryan for his will­ing­ness to name names, and by the same token crit­i­cized my wife for not doing so in her Sins report. In fact, since it was pub­lished, we received a lot of flak for not nam­ing names. I cer­tainly under­stand their cynicism.

So I’m tak­ing this oppor­tu­nity to elab­o­rate on why we chose not to name names.

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One of the things I love about new year’s is read­ing about year-​​end pre­dic­tions. I don’t know why. Per­haps it’s my curi­ous nature.

But I’m fas­ci­nated when I see where some peo­ple think we’re headed. There are some blog­gers whose pre­dic­tions fas­ci­nate me. Two have cap­tured my atten­tion: Read­WriteWeb and the Man­hat­tan Mar­ket­ing Maven.

And yes, even yours truly loves mak­ing them, too.

As with all pre­dic­tions, it’s no dif­fer­ent than flip­ping a coin. The law of aver­ages kicks in. But it’s not a 50–50 ratio. A third will come true, usu­ally dead on the money. Another third won’t at all. And the final third may come true, but not exactly as predicted.

I’m sub­jected to that same law, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Nev­er­the­less, in keep­ing with that sacred tra­di­tion of new-​​year pro­jec­tions, prog­nos­ti­ca­tions, and picayune pon­tif­i­ca­tions, here are two major areas I believe we will see hap­pen­ing in the new year, if not the near future. Are you ready? Here goes…

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I was recently inter­viewed by a print mag­a­zine about how I started my busi­ness. In it, I offered sev­eral tips and ideas on how to carve a niche in the mar­ket­place that I per­son­ally applied.

I real­ized some of these tips were par­tic­u­larly pow­er­ful. So I wanted to reprint some of my answers here for you.

If you know my per­sonal story, you know how niche mar­ket­ing played an impor­tant role in my career.

Long story short, as the child of an alco­holic I feared rejec­tion immensely, which led to a reclu­sive child­hood. We all fear rejec­tion to some degree. But for me, it was debilitating.

I wanted to over­come my fears and decided to dive into the world of sales in order to fight them head-​​on. Years passed and many fail­ures ensued until I finally became the top pro­duc­ing sales­per­son in Canada for a major For­tune 500 company.

How did I accom­plish that?

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Lately, I’m see­ing a lot of posts in pub­lic forums and blogs these days about peo­ple get­ting sick and tired of see­ing “crappy,” “hypey,” used-​​car, Ginsu-​​like, looooong copy.

Some of them come from guru-​​bashing naysay­ers who hate mar­ket­ing, which I always take with a grain of salt.

But some are intel­li­gent, mature, and com­mon­sen­si­cal. They are inter­est­ing because I believe that, while neg­a­tive feed­back does have its place, it’s often misplaced.

Here’s why. They blame long copy when all too often it’s not the copy’s fault. More impor­tantly, it’s not because of the length. Let’s get some­thing clear off the bat: long, Ginsu-​​like copy does work. It has always worked. It will always work. And it’s here to stay.

But (and it’s a big “but”)…

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As part of my coach­ing pro­gram, stu­dents can ask me unlim­ited ques­tions via email. One com­mon ques­tion I seem to get is, “I’m new to copy­writ­ing, where do I start?”

Since my coach­ing stu­dents also get access to any of my dig­i­tal pro­grams, they also get access to my Copy Doc­tor web­site, where I share over 50 hours of saleslet­ter and copy cri­tiques, recorded on video. It’s a great start.

But one stu­dent said some­thing that struck me:

“I learn bet­ter by doing than by watch­ing. Is there any­thing you can recommend?”

Great ques­tion. Some peo­ple are more visual (they learn bet­ter by watch­ing), some are more aural or audi­tory (by hear­ing), oth­ers are more kines­thetic (by doing or feel­ing). And I also thought it would be a great ques­tion to cover on my blog. So, here goes…

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Organic traf­fic is a fan­tas­tic source of vis­i­tors that’s often ignored by many marketers.

Search engines change all the time and many of them now charge for the priv­i­lege of includ­ing your web­site. So, peo­ple often ask me how to gen­er­ate traf­fic, beyond the search engines and with lit­tle to no cost.

Let me be can­did by say­ing that I am not a search engine expert, nor do I play one on TV. But there are two meth­ods that I’ve used con­sis­tently to attract thou­sands of qual­i­fied hits to my web­site at vir­tu­ally no cost and with very lit­tle effort.

Granted, everyone’s dif­fer­ent. And these tech­niques may not be appro­pri­ate for every­one. How­ever, let me share what works for me and what I do, along with a few tips.

My biggest organic traf­fic gen­er­a­tor is con­tent marketing.

Namely, there are two categories:

1. Post­ing con­tent on social net­works, includ­ing blogs, blog com­ments, forums, social net­work­ing sites, dis­cus­sion lists, and of course, my own blog;
2. Con­tribut­ing con­tent, such as writ­ing arti­cles or reports, and sub­mit­ting them to ezines, mag­a­zines, direc­to­ries, and guest con­tri­bu­tions on other people’s blogs.

Now, let’s take a closer look, shall we?

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A stu­dent, who is an upcom­ing copy­writer, recently asked where he could find clients will­ing to pay higher rates for his skills.

Hav­ing built a client base through net­work­ing on Inter­net forums geared towards start-​​up busi­ness own­ers, he now wanted to find oppor­tu­ni­ties that would allow for upward mobil­ity within his craft.

This is a com­mon sce­nario, because local and espe­cially start-​​up busi­nesses are easy to find, and pro­vide plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice your emerg­ing copy­writ­ing skills.

In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, I talked about three tips for aspir­ing copy­writ­ers. I rec­om­mend any new copy­writer to fol­low these three tips to start build­ing a track record and get to a level that makes them appeal­ing to higher-​​paying clients.

But after your copy­writ­ing skills are devel­oped, how­ever, it becomes desir­able if not nec­es­sary to seek out clients — bet­ter, more lucra­tive clients — who are estab­lished enough to pay a fair wage for your skills and, above all, your results.

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