Top 10 Online Business Gurus (Some You May Not Have Heard Of)
As a seasoned but self-taught online entrepreneur and entrepreneur, after learning to type in school and not much else, I turned to books and mentors when I finally decided that I had had enough of being poor and not succeeding!
Having read hundreds of books and websites, and subscribed to more newsletters, there are some people who, over the past 10 to 12 years, have consistently added value.
Sometimes it was just a word, phrase, question or comment that made the difference, but what a difference that was. Every step forward was a true step forward, and we all know that the journey to success is a series of steps, each building on the one before.
I wanted to share with you the top 10 digital marketing “gurus” that have inspired me in my online business journey so far and I have tried to tell you about them in chronological order: how I found them (or in the case of Guy Levine,! how they found me!)
1. Robert G Allen – I realized the potential to earn money online around 1998/1999, about five years after I bought my first domain name. I had long been aware of the potential to market any real-world business online, but I was totally ignorant of selling information products, making money from affiliate marketing, and building a mailing list to make offers. I, like many wool-dyed entrepreneurs before me, was so obsessed with building a real-world business, that the potential just passed me by! Luckily, I was going to meet Guy Levine and Chris Barrow pretty soon and I accidentally did some things right … meanwhile my sister’s husband gave her Robert Allen’s “Multiple Streams of Internet Income” for Christmas, which I stole, devoured, and which led me to read other great Robert G Allen books like “No Money Down For The 90’s” now updated for the 2000s, the brilliant revolutionary “One Minute Millionaire” and also other great internet books like …
2. Joe Vitale – Perhaps best known for his excellent personal development books and for appearing in the movie The Secret, Joe Vitale is also a very experienced internet marketer – he’s been around and making money online from the mid to late 90s (which in the history of the Internet is very important). experienced indeed). Email marketing is one of the easiest ways to start making money online, and in fact, it’s still the way I make most of my money, whether it’s promoting my own products or services on my list. mail or recommending articles carefully selected by friends and colleagues. Email marketing (simplified) involves driving traffic to a page where someone gives you their name and email in exchange for a gift of some kind, thereby building your mailing list. Then you need to keep in touch with people so they get used to listening to you and build a good relationship with your subscribers. Joe explains how to do this very well in his book “The E-Code” in a couple of chapters and if you want to start somewhere simple, I recommend that you read it. Then check out Martin Avis from Kickstart Monthly as he is a master at using a simple text newsletter to make money online!
3. Jaclyn Easton – His book “Striking It Rich.com” which I read around the same time. I had been trying to get an internet business off the ground, based on matching artists without a contract in the music industry (where my husband and I had worked) with managers who were looking for artists to read. Jaclyn’s book was about 23 little-known websites making over $ 1 million per year, and essentially many of the business models were membership sites. This inspired me so much that I ended up presenting my business plan the SAME SECOND the dot-com bubble burst, at the posh Atlantic Bar & Grill in London, to a group of venture capitalists, during a fire alarm. Which fire alarm bell started and stopped randomly, so it was alternately screaming into space or totally inaudible!
4. Thomas Leonard – founder of the Coaching and Coach U movement, which was my online university, and then Coachville. Thomas wrote the first coaching book “The Portable Coach”, which I still highly recommend and used email, mailing lists, research and development groups, autoresponders and everything else we use today. I have been using the ShoppingCart you recommended, since 1999, to host my dual-choice email list, manage my product inventory, automatically track prospects and customers, deliver digital information products, offer coupons on time and% off. discount, split test headlines and pricing via AdTrackers … Thomas was very inspiring and ahead of his time, yet he died very unexpectedly and tragically, having overcome many of his personal demons, in 2003.
5. Guy Levine – Going to my first coaching convention, in Las Vegas, to see Thomas in live action, brought me to meet Chris Barrow (my new business coach) and Guy Levine, his friend and internet marketing consultant. Guy blew me away, he was only 19 years old, but one of the brightest people I have ever met. He knew a lot more about internet marketing than I did and shared his ideas and techniques very generously. Guy built a successful Manchester-based SEO / AdWords / PR company, had two babies with his wife Martine, and bought two helicopters that he flies to concerts himself. He’s also a great speaker! If it wasn’t so much fun, you would have to hate it!
6. Brett McFall – after meeting Guy, Steve Watson, Paul & Philly Fuggle and I were invited to join and support him as he spoke at the first World Internet Summit to be held in the UK, at Wembley. The co-host there was Alan Forrest Smith who, while not one of my digital marketing gurus on this list, has also been incredibly influential in my life. I resolved, while in the audience at that first event, to speak on stage next year. And I did, thanks to Alan, in fact, I happened to speak twice for them, the only British woman ever asked to do so. I became very good friends with Brett McFall, one of the co-founders of WIS, as he is now universally known, and he is a very inspiring guy. He is a very kind and genuine man who has helped me a lot by speaking and promoting my business from the particular stage. He came to Brighton just before one of our Money Gym events that he co-hosted and while we were shooting video there we captured a very funny video of him raining and also slightly overshadowed by a seagull that never stops doing. I laugh and remember a great day out.
7. Frank Kern – I was listening to one of Brett’s audio interviews around the same time and I was particularly impressed with a couple of guys who had a simple but dynamite system called “The UnderAchiever Method.” Those guys turned out to be Frank Kern and Ed Dale and they had come up with a fancy little system that involved driving traffic to a page asking a question, “What do you want to know about … X? Where X? Is you? chosen niche. Answers were compiled and compiled so you could see what most people wanted to know and what were the most popular 1-, 2-, and 3-word phrases they used. Then, he went and created the product (usually a book email, maybe written by a ghostwriter, covering the most popular questions) and then you sold it to your new mailing list. Most people gave away the initial product as an incentive to answer the questions and this also brought testimonials, so it was all good. Then the new traffic sold the product along with real testimonials and using the language of the niche. Very clever stuff. I think they sold their little editorial empire of informational product pages. niche ion to a UK publisher for a large sum of money, in the end.
That was the first time I really realized the value of a specialized, niche-market, and responsive buyer mailing list. Both Frank and Ed have become incredibly successful in their separate businesses – in Franks’s case not without a few hiccups! He is heavily involved in many large instant messaging product launches. Frank’s online style is laconic, casual, and very, very persuasive. Now Frank has a bit of a stick for being maybe too persuasive, but I love his style and seeing his concert recordings live is hilarious, so rock ‘n’ roll, I really want to see him live one day. Ed Dale founded the successful “30 Day Challenge” that guides new Internet marketers through a free program (Ed makes money from the affiliate products he recommends in that free program).
8. Rich Schefren – Around 2006, a new internet marketing guru burst onto the scene, except he was a real life business guru who was moving into the internet marketing world, having sold his last business. Having coached many of the big names like Jim Edwards, Mike Filsaime and many others, he then released his groundbreaking report “The Internet Marketing Manifesto” quickly followed by the “Lost Chapter” and “Final Chapter” reports. Rich blew me away because he taught a ton of solid business techniques that I have NEVER encountered before, in an easy to understand and digest way, capturing the attention and admiration of the ADD-struggling internet marketing community at the same time. I continued to join their “Business Growth System” and “Guided Earnings System” mentor programs, which are fantastic by the way, and my business started to grow rapidly as a result. Do yourself a favor and download the reports, it’s not just about instant messaging, it’s about entrepreneurship, you won’t regret it.
9. Gary Vaynerchuk – well, what about Gary? I love it blooming. I first heard it in an audio interview Rich Schefren did for his student mentors and Gary was starting to move up to World Wine Domination. Hey, that’s a great catchphrase! You can find Gary on WineLibrary.tv and on YouTube and Ustream; is the MASTER of online videos. Enthusiastic, passionate, outspoken, unconventional, Gary believes in HARD WORK, that you can just “smash” it. In the title of his first book, if you care about what you do, you care about your readers, listeners, subscribers, and customers, and if you show that you care at all times. According to Gary, smaller companies have NEVER had a better chance of dominating the competition.
10. Yaro Starak – I don’t remember where I first met Yaro and his Entrepreneurs Journey blog, but I knew instantly that he was the real deal. Subsequently, I went back and read almost every post on his blog from day one because I was fascinated by how he went from being a kid selling thesis editing services to students to becoming one of the most respected bloggers in the world. He has an interesting experience and talks very openly about that and his various challenges, both work and personal, and I love that about him. It’s not just about how to get traffic, but how to be a better entrepreneur. Yaro has a ton of great free reports, one called the Blog Profits Blueprint and is also very solid on membership sites, both reports that you really should read if you want to learn more about blogging for your business. He also recommends great people, like Gideon Shalwick, who has the kindest and most personable video presence I’ve come across in a while. I highly recommend both Yaro and Gideon.
There they are: the top 10 internet and business marketing gurus of the last 12 years or so. For me anyway. I hope you enjoyed the article and read some of the reports and books and then PUT THEM INTO ACTION!