The other day I was thinking about an issue that was bothering me a bit.

I deal with a lot of beginner marketers and am always trying to find newer and better strategies to help them get started faster.

However, there is one thing that most beginners don’t have access to that the “big name” guys do - leveraging popularity.

Think about it - all a well-known, well-respected marketer needs to do in order to launch a successful website is to call up his previous joint-venture partners and ask them to help in promoting a new site.

While it may not always be that easy, it certainly is easier.

If a beginner sends an email to a well-known marketer asking for a promotion, that email will usually get deleted (and for good reasons too - no relationship was built beforehand, and the marketer is probably getting several JV requests per day).

Even after a lot of hard work in building recognition, it is only going to get harder and harder to leverage the power of your popularity with other Internet marketers. One can only promote so many times in a week (and in a month), so the power of JV promotions is limited.

This leads to one very important question:

Can an Internet marketer actually build a business without being “popular?”

To clarify this question, can you start an Internet business from scratch (in any potentially profitable market) without any relationships with other marketers, and still be able to have success?

Furthermore, can you continue to build a business without even becoming popular whatsoever?

The answer to this question is critical to your success. If it is no, then the Internet businesses as we see them now are one big incestuous scam that should be avoided like all other scams.

However, if there is a way to build a million dollar business without becoming popular (amongst other Internet marketers), then we may just have a winner.

Luckily the answer is yes, and I am going to give you a few examples of marketers to prove it.

In order for anybody to make this list they must have made a good amount of money before becoming well-known. This proves that it is possible to make a solid income without being a “big name guru.” They must also make their money outside of the Internet marketing niche.

Also, I want to go over a few of the ways that these people did make a lot of money online so that you can start to see patterns in how this business really should be run.

My first example is of John Reese (author of Traffic Secrets).

John focused on the idea of “Virtual Real Estate” where you create several websites that are all inter-connected, making money from product sales, Google Adsense, and affiliate marketing.

These sites were not in the Internet marketing industry. For example, one site was in the bridal shower niche, while another was in the health and fitness niche.

I do not have exact figures for John, but I know that he was making millions of dollars online long before he came out with his Traffic Secrets course.

I have personally purchased his course and found that he is using techniques that most marketers scoff at (you’ll find that this is typical - the real techniques that work are often overlooked by the general Internet marketing community).

While I can’t divulge everything he taught (as per his terms of service), here are some of the ways he would get millions of visitors to his websites and make a ton of money from them:

* banner advertising
* PPC advertising
* affiliate marketing
* search engine optimization
* viral marketing

Sound familiar? That’s because it works!

Here is the lesson I learned most from John: TEST AND TRACK EVERYTHING!

All of these traffic techniques are useless unless you know how well they are working. Once you know how well your product converts, it is very easy to determine which traffic methods will work for you.

If you don’t track everything you do, then most of your efforts will be wasted.

John is only one example of those people who “make it work” outside of the Internet marketing niche, which gives us proof that this business really is a business.

In future posts I will go over other marketers who have done the same, and give lessons based on what they have done.

Until then…

Matthew Glanfield