Well, it has been a little longer than usual since I posted on this blog and for those of you who visit regularly, I apologize for the break.
However, I am happy to say that, although I almost gave up on this project – the fact is I am back and so, I haven’t given up.

So firstly, back to something I wrote in one of the earlier mindset posts:

Never, ever, ever give up! (top 10 qualities of successful entrepreneurs)

Roadblock

There is no such thing as an overnight success!

As I listen to the stories of the successful internet marketers that I admire, I am struck by the similarity in their stories. There is always a big reason why they have pursued the internet marketing dream. Also, they had to experience a lot of failure before they achieved success. For most of them, the road to success was neither short nor easy and there were many obstacles that needed to be manoeuvred past along the way. Most of the successful internet marketers spent at least a couple of years honing their craft.

I have found, this week, that when I became discouraged about my lack of progress both on this blog and on other projects that I have been working on, it is good to stop and listen to the experience of others.

I visit the blogs of James Schramko, Yaro Starak and John Carlton fairly regularly to get an information fix but when I need some encouragement to stick with it and keep going there is nothing better than listening to the story of a successful, internet entrepreneur and how they got started. When you listen to story like this it makes you realize that their success didn’t happen overnight. It did not happen easily and they faced as many obstacles as I am facing right now. The reason that they are able to tell their story and that many people listen to them (and buy their stuff) is because they didn’t give up.

As I learn more about internet marketing and the things that need to be done to bring traffic to a website I have realized that although most of the work is not hard to do – it takes a lot of time and is definitely not that exciting!

One of the many ways to get traffic to your site is to develop backlinks. There are many ways to do this and I will go into this in further detail when I get to the traffic posts. But the fact is, to get traffic to a website you need to complete many small repetitive, time-consuming tasks on a regular, consistent basis. For me, I have two problems with this – one I get bored easily and I don’t like doing repetitive, boring, time-consuming tasks. I decided to pursue internet marketing because I am interested in giving myself more time to do the things I enjoy doing, not to give myself an extra job which is more tedious than the one I already do!

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When you start out on your internet marketing journey there are many mistakes to make and if you find someone whose information you trust then you may be able to learn how to avoid some critical internet marketing newbie mistakes as well. Subscribe to my internet marketing newbie top 10 mistakes to avoid report for some of the most common mistakes to avoid.

Internet Marketing Mistake

If I can offer some advice on making mistakes it is this: make as many mistakes as you can as fast as you can. You will not become a successful internet entrepreneur without making mistakes so make them early when the impact on your bottom line will be less.

This a mistake that I relate from personal experience that did NOT make it onto the report above (maybe I shouldn’t have stopped at 10!)

Backup is Critical!

Imagine that you have been busy working away at your internet marketing business for a few months and have quite a few projects on the go, when one morning you wake up and go to your computer to check your email. You gently nudge the mouse to wake up your computer and nothing happens (a bit like trying to wake up your teenager for school). Another nudge, this time a bit more forcefully and still nothing. You check that the power to the computer is on and try again – still nothing. It’s time to try rebooting – it takes forever and a few worrying messages are displayed then it gets stuck halfway through the reboot.

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One Project at a Time

Many people tell you that to become successful in any field, not just internet marketing you need to remain focused on your goals. You need to concentrate on one project at a time. You need to complete one project before you start on the next, especially when you are an internet marketing newbie. I agree with this but only to a point.

Staying focused on one project at a time in the beginning will ensure that you don’t miss any critical steps in the planning and execution of the project. Each individual step will take much longer to complete the first time that you do it than it will in any subsequent project and the first time you do something will definitely be the worst that you ever do it.

Why is Multi-Tasking Better?

Multi-tasking to me, means having several projects on the go all at once. The key is to have them all at different stages of development.

Why do I think having several things on the go at once is better than concentrating on one thing at a time?

Well, the reality, is that sometimes things take time to be resolved. For example, if you buy a domain name and make a mistake assigning the dns nameservers then it can take up to 24 hrs for the changes to propogate through the web. If you want to start generating traffic on this site then you have to wait the 24hrs or so until it is live on the web before you can implement traffic generating strategies such as submitting RSS feeds, pinging, social bookmarking etc.

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Internet Marketing Business

Is internet marketing a business to you or is it simply a hobby?

Even if you are not making any money at present online, if you are learning about internet marketing so that you can one day be a successful internet entrepreneur then you need to treat internet marketing like a business and that means systemization.

Working on your internet marketing  business in your spare time when you still have all of the other things in your life to worry about (work that pays, family responsibilites etc) can be extremely challenging and at times even frustrating.

Sometimes you just wish you had hours alone to figure out some internet challenge (there always is one isn’t there?) but the reality is that if you are trying to squeeze in a few hours of internet marketing in an already full day this won’t be the case. You will have to do things in bits and pieces whenever you can grab a small chunk of time.

So how do you keep moving forward using only the small amounts of time allotted to you?

I guess one option is no sleep – but this one doesn’t work long term (Luckily I’m a bit of a night owl and can survive on less sleep than most)

Organization is the Key

I suggest that the first thing to do is sit down and really think about how much time you want to spend on your internet marketing business per day or per week. Then work out how much time you can actually find in your day.

For me, I’m aiming for about 20 hours a week. I’m actually hoping that I’ll never really have to work more than 20 hours a week!

Next you need to look at what tasks need to be done to move forward with internet marketing and finally you need to decide what proportion of your allotted time you want to spend on each set of tasks.

Task No.1 – Content Creation

I think that for me, at this point in time, I need to spend about 5 hours a week on content creation. Read more »

Let’s go the good news bad news approach again.

The Good News – Google has ranked my site!

As you might have realized by now, I am documenting my internet marketing  journey in this blog. It’s not even a remotely original idea but at least it will be a record for me and entertaining for my few readers! (I hope)

So I after a few false starts I have decided that the way to learn the basic skills of internet marketing is to start off promoting other people’s products – affiliate marketing.

I have had my affiliate site up for a few weeks now and I have done some things to get links to my site and to drive traffic to my site. I’ve written a few articles and made a few videos, done some social bookmarking and it has definitely paid off.

As of today my site is ranked no.1 in Google for my keyword!

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