Terry Dean has been in the online marketing industry for almost 4 years, and has been full-time for 3 1/2 years. His first two projects were quite successful. The first one was creating and selling a CD with 2,000 books, reports, and manuals on them with full reprint rights. That CD sold like hotcakes when Dean first released it. His second project was setting up online merchants with merchant accounts. Both of these first projects did a lot to launch Terry Dean into his full-time business on the 'Net.

INTERVIEWER: Now Terry, you're considered to be one of the most knowledgeable online marketing "gurus" on the Internet. How did you come to acquire that esteemed title?

TERRY: I personally don't consider myself a "guru" by any means. What I am is an avid researcher and tester. I still pick up almost every book, manual, video, or audio which pertains to the Internet. Then, I test every hypothesis given by the producers of these products. That is the only real way to find out what will work or won't work for any specific business. You must test it for your field and product.

The things that work I keep and teach. The things that don't get put on the shelf. Something you will notice about teachers is that those who really understand their subject are able to present it in the most basic and understandable terms. Those who are just learning something or trying to figure it out make it very complicated to learn, because they don't fully understand it themselves.

INTERVIEWER: Good point. Now, what has been your fastest and most effective form of advertising that's gotten the BIGGEST results? What are the things that have made you the most well-known in your field?

TERRY: This is actually a difficult question for me. There have been a lot of marketing methods that have worked for me, (even when others claim they don't work), including ezine ads, ezine articles, banner advertising, classified ads, postcard deck ads, etc. The most successful advertising that I enjoy the most is viral marketing, mainly because I am a little lazy at promoting sometimes.

There are months that I don't do a single promotion whatsoever, yet my traffic and sales continue just as if I were promoting heavily. When you create your own virus it works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

INTERVIEWER: For those that aren't sure, what do you mean by creating your own "virus?"

TERRY: A viral strategy is something that automatically spreads and reproduces itself. When you have a virus in your body, it will try to spread itself to other people. When a virus such as the past "Melissa" virus spreads through computers, it does so all by itself.

The idea of creating your own marketing virus is that you create something that will spread by others. For example, if you create a free ebook and give it away from your site, that will help build credibility for you. The "marketing virus" will start when you let other people post that ebook to their websites. And after a while, thousands of websites will have your book on them.

This is a win-win situation. Those websites get extra credibility by providing good content to their audience, and you get linked to more prospects for your products and services. I have had customers tell me straightout that they are buying from me because it seems like every website they visit has my name on it somewhere!

INTERVIEWER: That's a really powerful concept, and I can easily see how it works! Is there any one formula you recommend for coming up with new viral marketing tools to grow your business?

TERRY: This could actually be quite a subject in and of itself. But basically, you need to figure out what other people really want, then give it to them for free with a way for it to expand on it's own.

For example, hotmail.com is the king of viral marketing. They built a small business up from nothing simply by providing free email addresses to the public. Everytime someone sends an email through them, there is a little note attached to the bottom about Hotmail's free service, thereby creating more new signups. That's what I mean by creating something that can expand on its own.

I have used free ebooks and free articles as my primary tools for producing viral traffic. I have also created referral link tools, a polling script, and an ezine ad swap list. (All of these tools are available to webmasters who want to increase the value of their sites, at <http://www.bizpromo.com/tools/>.)

I also co-created the HitTrafficker which grows on it's own, (and now has well into 5 digit membership), at: <http://www.ezfree.net/free/users/main.shtml>.

I'm always thinking of new ways to expand my viral techniques and to get my address listed on more sites. These were only a few of the strategies I have used. There are many more I have to reveal through my upcoming membership site. Check <http://bizpromo.com> to find out more about how you can increase your traffic in 72 hours or less.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks Terry. Now, in terms of building publicity, how do you feel about press release marketing? Is that a rewarding avenue for online entrepreneurs to pursue? Do you have any experience in that area?

TERRY: I have done press releases and have helped others with press releases, but I have never done a single press release for bizpromo.com, which is my main site. I am going to be doing one in September though for bizpromo.

I would submit press releases for radio and TV, and submit articles to magazines. They are looking for content and if you give them good content, you're in. But I have found that the easiest publicity to get is radio interviews. They are very open to interviewing anyone with a website or their own information product. If you are just starting out, send your publicity releases to radio shows for interviews. Even though I like press releases, they have never been my main form of advertising.

INTERVIEWER: Are there any specific radio shows you recommend for small business owners?

TERRY: This really has to do more with the type of product you are selling than anything else. You have to go on the smaller radio shows first to prepare yourself for doing interviews, and also to get the background you need for the bigger shows. Never overlook small publicity opportunities.

Larger radio and TV shows often scan all of the smaller outlets looking for guests. So don't overlook any potential publicity outlet. A lot of new radio shows work hand-in-hand with the Internet, publishing online in Real Audio or another format. These are often the type of shows which are most open to Internet entrepreneurs.

INTERVIEWER: You also said above that submitting articles to magazines is very profitable for online businesses. What is your personal experience in that area?

TERRY: This is actually going to be a little funny. I have never sent an article to a magazine because I just never got around to it. You plan to do something, you plan it some more, but never actually do it. BUT I do have quite a bit of experience in having articles published.

Magazines have visited my site and asked to use my articles. Of course I let them. They end up coming to my site after seeing my articles published all over the Web. I have been published by Netscape, Infoseek, and tons of other large business sites. I have been just surfing around doing my research many times and seen my ugly mug come up on someone else's site because they are featuring my articles with my picture. That's some good exposure.

INTERVIEWER: Definitely. Again, this goes back to the power of viral marketing, and increasing your publicity. I'd imagine that once you've gotten to the point where your work is on several websites, publicity pretty much comes to you.

Now, you have several different products and services, as well as your newsletter, Web Gold. I'm sure our readers are wondering, just how do you decide WHAT product or service to market when you're doing your advertising?

TERRY: NEVER use paid advertising to your main website. Instead, advertise one product at one time. Giving several options just confuses your visitor. The trick to choosing which product to advertise, (if you already have a site with several products on it), is to advertise the product which currently generates the most sales from that site.

And, when submitting articles to ezines and magazines, I would use the article resource box to promote a product related to that article (unless someone was just starting out trying to get their ezine built up, in which case, I would probably advertise the ezine). There is a point, though, where if your articles are getting published in the same places over and over, subscribers (or orders for one product), begin to diminish. Then, you'd need to push another product or ezine.

INTERVIEWER: So, at what point do you feel new ezine publishers should stop focusing article resource boxes on generating subscribers, and start focusing on pushing their products?

TERRY: I would only try to get around 1,000 - 3,000 subscribers before changing my ezine resource box focus. Everyone wants to have a huge ezine, but you shouldn't be focusing on the size of your ezine (unless you want to sell advertising which I wouldn't recommend for 75% of the ezines out there). Your ezine has one purpose. That is to generate and drive more sales to products and services.

What does an ezine do? It helps give you credibility, keeps you in the eyes of your prospects, etc. All of this is for the purpose of producing more sales for your products, or for producing sales for people you joint venture with. So, I am focusing more on the product sales by driving them to a site, selling them, and then giving them the option of also subscribing to my ezine if they aren't ready to buy yet. I have been testing this method and I prefer it to just getting 'freebie' subscribers.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks for the great tips. To our readers, be sure to check out Harmony Major's interview in this free e-book. She goes into detail on using your ezine as a sales tool. Now Terry, none of the promotional strategies you've given us so far really require a lot of money. What has been the key to your success with low-cost advertising?

TERRY: The key is to have a website that both gets people to opt into your list, AND that sells them on ONE product. Then, NEVER pay rate card for advertising. You don't advertise in the Yahoo's of the world. Find the smaller sites who never sell out their advertising space, and offer them much less than what their rates say. All they can say is "no," or not respond at all. What have you got to lose? If you pay what people are asking, you have a lot to lose!

I also love pay-per-click search engines, even though they are very competitive now. Some people come up with 5 or 10 keywords and give up. You have to come up with hundreds of lesser thought of keywords to get lots of traffic.

You also have to know how much you earn per visitor at your site for best use of the pay-per-click engines. If you don't know how much you make, you don't know how much you should bid. You aren't going to get a whole lot of traffic bidding only a penny anymore. You have to know your sales rates and your income per visitor.

INTERVIEWER: So, how do you suggest our readers go about finding out exactly what their "income per visitor" is for both free and paid advertising? And does that still apply for free advertising?

TERRY: In it's most basic form, this would simply mean figuring out how many unique visitors you have, (which should be available from your website host), compared to how much your website makes.

For paid advertising, I want it tracked to the penny. One of the best strategies for me, (since I run my own affiliate programs), is to sign up myself as an affiliate, and run a paid promotion from the affiliate account. Then, I can see the exact hits and sales produced from any single promotion.

When I am running free advertising I am not as strict with myself on the testing results, but that doesn't mean that they aren't as important. I have more money than time now, so time is extremely precious to me, and I want to make sure it is doing me well. So, on time consuming promotions, I will always make sure to track them by sending people to a specific page on my site, or having them email a specific email address that I can track separately.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks, that certainly makes sense. Is there an average daily marketing schedule that you feel online marketers should follow? What do YOU do to promote your website and business on a day-to-day basis?

TERRY: Now you are trying to make me look bad, aren't you?

If you take this month, (September), my total marketing appeared to be one test ad I placed in an ezine. I am currently moving out to the country and working on a new project. So, my promotion time has been almost nil (my orders have stayed very consistent though even with ZERO advertising and marketing).

Now, if you want to know what I do when I launch a product or site, here it is as simple as it may seem (please note, this strategy would begin after I do a few test ads):

1. Ezine Solo Ads and Feature Ads (placed in every ezine that worked last time);

2. Submit articles to all applicable ezines (personalized);

3. Do the Pay-Per-Click Engines with a Minimum of 250 Keywords;

4. Create Article Pages and Submit by Hand to Other Search Engines;

5. Run small banner tests on the banner exchanges (I would never use them to roll out -- just to test, as it is much quicker);

6. Use the WebFerret to search out all links to my competitors and then contact those sites personally on why they should also work with me; and

7. Participate in some of the forums and mailing lists.

TERRY: It all depends on when it is and exactly what you mean by the question. There are times I work only around 5 hours in a week and other times where I work as much as 60 hours. To actually run my business and keep my income at a steady level requires right around 15 to 20 hours a week of actual day to day work -- answering phone calls, emails, dealing with orders, etc.

The rest of the time is open to me to work on new projects in most cases. I often try to spend a minimum of 15 to 30 hours doing creative type of work such as writing my newsletter, writing new ebooks, designing new web sites, doing research, and producing videos.

INTERVIEWER: Only 15-20 hours a week, on average? I'm sure that's an answer many other entrepreneurs can only dream of giving! What you use to automate your business and marketing to free up so much of your time?

TERRY: The biggest key to the automation of my marketing is that I have learned how to "viral market" myself, like I mentioned above. You virtually can't go surfing the web anywhere in the home business or Internet marketing field without finding links to me in one form or another. I could sit down, do zero promotion for months at a time, and still have the exact same level of income coming in, thanks to viral marketing.

The second key is that I have also learned how to spend my time creating the products that people already want to buy. Don't create a product and then try to find a market for it. That is the HARD way of doing things, yet it is how most entrepreneurs go about their online businesses. They take the "easy" way out and just try to do what everybody else is doing. If there is nothing that makes your site unique from the rest of the Web, you are doomed to always trying to find ways to bring in new customers.

Internet marketing is actually very simple. Find out what people want, then create it for them. And finally, find that audience more products. Most people make the mistake of going at it in the opposite direction. They create a product, then try to beg people to show up and buy it. The real key to Internet marketing is to create or find products that people are already hungry for. If you have done that, then all of your marketing methods work 100 times better.

INTERVIEWER: You're right, that DOES make all the difference, doesn't it? Along those lines, can you tell our readers how to go about finding out if there's a market for their product before they begin to create it?

TERRY: The secret to this is to become a lurker and an asker. The best way to first figure out what products you might create is to decide what you would enjoy doing. Come up with some specific markets you might like, (and always put the prospects and your ability to reach them before the product itself).

Make a list of a few things you would love to spend your time studying, writing about, and talking to people about. Then, join forums by going to <http://www.forumone.com> and doing a search for terms that you would use to search for products or sites in this market. Look through the forums, find some where people post at least every day, and bookmark them.

What types of questions keep getting asked? There's a product idea in every one of them. What types of answers are given? You may find future product resources in the answers. Or, if you want to speed up the process, start asking people what types of problems they are having with ______. This will not only give you product ideas, but it can also show you part of the direction and uniqueness to take when creating your product. From the different interests you have, you can now choose the most responsive and active market to start your business in.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE

Terry Dean, a 27 year old Indiana farm boy, reveals his secret formula for generating automatic streams of Internet income for any business in 72 hours or less. Get the free report: <mailto:formula@bizpromo.com> <http://www.bizpromo.com>