Forget The Hype!

So you`re new to the internet, and want to learn everything you can about internet marketing. Or at least the essential basics, and you want a place to go to find the answers to all of your questions?

I hate to tell you this, and I`m really sorry, but as far as I know, there IS no one-stop source to learning the essential marketing skills, apart from school maybe, but I will TRY to answer some questions you may have from my own experience:

Let`s see, I started out with absolutely NO computer knowledge at all. Went to chatrooms, talked with people, got me some contacts, then one day I got a junkmail full of hype (that I believed...hehehe) and promptly started joining affiliate programs. I joined this one, that one and the other one, all full of promises that I`d be mega-rich within a few months. Being a newbie, I swallowed it all. Hook, line and sinker. None of it ever panned out right though.

I lost some money, not huge amounts, but more than I`d care to remember, so I started with the free stuff. I didn`t have any knowledge on building downlines and stuff, so that didn`t work neither. Then I started helping people I referred to various things, and things looked slightly better. It was all free stuff that didn`t make me any real money, but it gave me traffic to other free sites I was promoting, I got downlines, and I got contacts, so I knew it was working.

After that, I kinda concentrated on helping everybody I came across, to the point where that was ALL I was doing, and funnily enough, I loved it. Still didn`t make me money, but it made me feel great.

That`s how my ezine came about. I wanted to help people as much as possible, teach them to steer clear of hype, stick dilligently to one thing, and build a good downline in it, whilst showing them how to help each other. You`ll find that any articles I`ve written to date(05/15/03) cover these things.

I will say that there are a couple of "skills" needed for anybody wanting to be an online marketer.

Firstly, you need a touch of "blindness" so you don`t even LOOK at all the hype, because if it LOOKS too good to be true, then it more than likely is.

You need deep concentration, and dedication, to help you stick with one thing, and you need to be able to work really hard at getting that one thing to work.

You also need a lock and key on your wallet. It`s real easy to buy into this that and the other program, and before you know it, you`ve used a LOT more money than you can afford to lose. There`s always a risk that any money you use, could be lost forever, so always keep that in mind.

As for computer jargon, I`ve been online for 4 years, and I`m STILL learning. Actually, I`m only just now starting to learn HTML so that I can publish my ezine without having to rely way too much on my programmer, who by the way, is the greatest teacher on earth. There`s a page here full of "jargon" and links to more info, I find it pretty useful: http://www.imagescape.com/helpweb/history/define.html

When it comes to suggesting a starting point, that`s a real hard one. I think I`d say chatrooms personally. Without my programmer, and my other friends that I`ve met in chatrooms, I wouldn`t be where I am today. So I`d say THE most important thing when it comes to marketing is your contacts. Get as many contacts as you can, and learn from their mistakes.

Also, subscribe to a few ezines that really cover the "newbie" things. Read everything you can that`s relative to what you want to do. You`ll suffer from information overload, there`s no doubt about that, but some of the stuff WILL stick in your head, and you can start learning from there.

If you find the ezine isn`t giving you the information you need, un-subscribe and move on to the next one. There`s hundreds of thousands of them out there to choose from, just don`t subscribe to too many at once, or you`ll be so inundated with mail that you`ll end up not reading any of them at all.

In closing: Read, read, read, and read some more. Take all promises of "instant wealth" with a pound of salt. (A pinch isn`t enough). Question everything that seems to "over-promise". Learn as much as you can before starting out, be prepared, and remember: There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers ;-)

Make Smarter Decisions When you Start your Own Web Site Business

Tens of thousands of people all around the word will continue to make the same mistake when starting an Internet business. These mistakes include:

1) Paying too much in development costs and fancy designs (wasting cost)

2) Focusing on the unimportant areas of site developments (wasting time)

3) Choosing an inadequate hosting plan (wasting cost and time)

Most first-time clients consulted by us don’t do their homework and make the same mistake by getting confused with what they ‘want’ and what their web site ‘should’ really have. Literally, we see tens of thousands of hours and dollars wasted every week because people believe that what they ‘know’ is enough. But when you look at the big picture, we can’t really blame them because even some of the so called ‘Internet gurus’ of today are still making the same mistake despite failing miserably project after project. The difference is, these ‘Internet gurus’ can afford to loose their money, but we know for a fact that most people don’t have this leisure.

The Internet is a place where you can succeed if you are smart about what you do. Most importantly, you need to be smart with your planning, testing and risk-taking. Also, you need to avoid getting carried away with unnecessary business development activity. This you can learn through your own mistakes or other people’s mistakes. My best advice is to learn what others have done wrong which is a much more efficient process of learning.

Hopefully, this wake up call will hit those seriously considering a career on the Internet. There is no point making mistakes that can be avoidable. Find a low cost method to test your market before you spend on unnecessary site developments. Expand your knowledge on search engines, and Internet advertising and various topics on growing a business online. And lastly, choose a hosting or technology provider who is a professional and knows exactly what they are doing. There is no point for you to pay for an amateur or to do-it-yourself without any proper direction.

To sum up, do your homework before you start your own web site [http://www.myownprofitsite.com] business and you will succeed. If you discount this, before you know it, you’ll be out of pocket, out of time and eventually out of business.

“Believe in the unthinkable to live the achievable.” - Matthew Ng