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!

Secondly, because I wear a lot of different hats (wife, mother and worker) and my paid work does not have regular hours, I have found that the only time I have to pursue my internet marketing business is late at night when I have already done a full day’s work and I’m not very efficient or effective at this time of day. I end up getting distracted by blogs and forums very easily, or playing solitaire on the computer! (I’m sure that I am not alone in this confession).

I have learnt an important thing about myself – I enjoy the challenge of learning a new strategy or technique and implementing it one or two times, but once I can do something adequately – I am ready to move onto the next thing! Unfortunately, this won’t work in the world of internet marketing!

Luckily, while I do devour a fair amount of internet marketing information, there are other people whose stuff I listen to as well and they help immensely when my mindset becomes slightly negative as it did last week! The fact that I am back in a positive frame of mind with a new plan of attack is wholly due to the fact that I have some awesome mentors whose blogs I follow.

John Carlton is having a huge launch of his Simple Writing System which is a copywriting training course for internet marketers – I am a huge John Carlton fan. Anyway I received an email from John Carlton which explained that as part of his launch he had a heap of free stuff that he was giving away at his blog and probably because I lost my focus last week, I downloaded some of his stuff.

It was a whole lot of interviews with some of the leaders in internet marketing and I decided to listen to Yaro Starak first because I am familiar with his stuff – he is an extremely successful Aussie (like me) blogger. Yaro and John did a great audio interview on blogging – this lead me back to Yaro’s blog again and I found a post about outsourcing. I have to say that I have been exploring the notion of outsourcing for a couple of weeks so naturally I listened to  Yaro interview John Jonas.

It’s really interesting how sometimes, when you lose your way and think that you are just goofing off and wasting time, something is leading you to exactly where you need to go. For me, that was John Jonas. He has a free 90 min audio that you can access from here . In this audio he explains exactly how he outsources to the Philippines and the level to which he outsources – he tells a couple of stories that illustrate the level of trust that he has in his “guys” – AMAZING!

For the last couple of days I have been struggling with the decision should I invest in John Jonas’ membership program and take my internet marketing business to next next level or not?

The truth is staring me in the face – I need to get the stuff done and I don’t want to do it, I only want to spend time doing the things that I like, not the things that I hate so I guess that I’m off to hire a virtual assistant because I’M NOT GIVING UP!!!!!

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Internet Marketing Newbie Update

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.

Ok, now one of two things will happen: either you relax and say to yourself I’m so glad that my computer backup is done automatically at 2am every morning OR a few expletives emerge from your mouth as you realize exactly just how busy you have been on your computer lately. There are the emails from your joint venture partners detailing your project together – all gone. In fact, you are not sure you even remember their exact email address. All of your contacts are gone in your Skype account and you ask yourself, what about all my login data for the many internet sites you need as business tools…

Sometimes the best way to learn is from other people’s mistakes so make sure you are obsessive about backing up your computer. You may not think that there is much of value on there but don’t wait till your computer crashes to find out how wrong you are. Some people even make more than one backup and carry a backup disc with them whenever they leave their house for an extended period of time. Maybe this is paranoid but I personally don’t think so.

Which is the Best Backup Software?

After this drastic unfortunate event happened to me I began to research the best ways to backup my computer. There are web based systems where you upload your data to a server but this takes a while and uses up a fair amount of bandwidth as well.
There are also free software applications that you can find to do the trick but after this devestating event I was leaving nothing to chance and I opted for a paid software solution. Goodsync is the software that I have chosen to use because it is by the same company that produced roboform which is another piece of software that I couldn’t live without ( I will discuss this more in another post). Goodsync is easy to use and you can set it up to run automatically. I currently backup to two separate portable hard drives. I guess I am a bit paranoid now but I don’t go so far as taking one with me every time I leave the house – maybe I should…

Make sure you check out goodsync – they even give you a free trial of the software!

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Internet Marketing Newbie Advice – Avoid this Mistake!

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.

If you didn’t have something else to work on, then any time that you might have been able to use to build your business in that 24 hour period has been lost.

There are plenty of other examples where things on the internet are not instantaneous. Emailing support for help, waiting for approval from a potential affiliate program and of course waiting to see if a PPC campaign will work or not.

If you don’t have anything else to work on your time will be wasted doing unproductive things like over-checking analytics and Google AdWords accounts.

I do think that you should be focused on the task that you are doing whilst you are doing it – so don’t try and talk on the phone, chat on Skype and write an auto responder series all at the same time. This is NOT an efficient use of time. Doing so many things at once will mean that nothing gets done well or effectively.

But have only one project to focus on at a time is not the best way to achieve your goals powerfully.

The question to then ask is, how do I have several projects on the go and know exactly where I am for each one?

Systemization

Yes, it’s back to the excel spreadsheets, I love my excel spreadsheets. Each and every project on the internet has a series of steps that need to be completed.

For example: setting up a website involves the same set of steps every time, market research, domain name purchase, website setup …

I use a website template for every project and check off each stage as I complete it. That way it is easy to stop in the middle of a project  if you run out of time (when you are trying to squeeze in internet marketing in your spare time this happens a lot) or when you hit a roadblock that is going to take time to resolve.

I also use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of the methods that I have used for traffic generation for a site. For example,  if I write an article, I document when I submit it to the article directory and when it is accepted I copy the URL of the article into the spreadsheet, then it is easy to find when I want to ping or bookmark it. I also keep a record of what I have done to each and every peice of content so that I don’t repeat the same thing to the same piece of content. Conversly, if I write an article or submit a video and don’t bookmark it as well then I haven’t optimized that piece of content for it’s traffic generating potential.
My advice is have a system that you follow for each project and keep track of everything that you do for that project. You might find that excel spreadsheets don’t work for you – I don’t care what method you use, just have some kind of checklist. It helps you keep track of where you are up to and you can easily pick up where you left off without spending too much time finding your place.

Extra Ideas

Have you ever been in the flow? You certainly know when your are there. It is easy to write and ideas come flooding into your brain. You can’t act on them all at once but you certainly don’t want to lose the inspirations.

Yep, you need a system to keep your ideas organised and in one place so that you can find them when is it time to act on them. I find that the little black book or notebook is a good place to keep ideas for the future (I bet you thought I was going to say a spreadsheet again)

Although if I am going to be completely honest I tend to write them on scraps of paper – yes I do have a messy desk but at least my computer files are organized!

There is always room for improvement with any system or organization!

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Internet Marketing Advice – Focus or Multi-tasking?

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.

Content creation includes:

• writing blog posts
• writing articles
• making videos, audios
• free reports

Task No. 2 – Website Creation

This also gets 5 hours per week

Website creation involves

• finding new niche markets and affiliate programs
• keyword research
• setting up websites
• setting up autoresponders

Task No.3 – Traffic Generation

Once the websites are up the job is just beginning- traffic is the key to sales. No traffic, no sales. No sales, no income

I think that I need about 5 hours a week for traffic generating strategies to the websites that I create.

Task No. 4 – Ongoing Education

I certainly don’t know all that I need to know as yet about internet marketing so education is the answer. About 5 hours per week spent watching webinars, dvd’s and reading books and ebooks should help my business.

There’s my 20 hours filled. You will see that NOT included in this schedule is time for checking emails and any of the other tasks that can fill an hour, yet be completely unproductive. You can also waste a bit of time checking up on Google analytics and where your sites are ranked on Google. Even when you think you are doing productive work like researching potential markets or finding blogs or forums to comment on, it’s extremely easy to get distracted.

I set a timer for an hour and I try to keep on task for that entire hour. Some people find it easier to concentrate in shorter bursts of time. Studies show that  your productivity and efficiency increases with regular breaks. It’s easy to fritter away the hours searching around in forums and blogs especially, but if you use a system of accountability you will find it easier to keep on task. There are even software applications available that track your computer usage.

Tracking

I use an excel spreadsheet  to track the hours that I spend each week on my business and monitor my productivity.

Here is sample of what my excel spreadsheet looks like:

You can design your spreadsheet in any way you choose and if you find a really good way let me know – I’m always willing to improve my systems.

I find that if I break my time down each week into the categories above, then I don’t neglect any important area of my business development.

There are definitely other ways to organize yourself. If you have a regular block of time each and every day then you might want to break it down even further and say I will do one hour of content creation and one hour of traffic generation on one day and the other tasks on other days.

I prefer to work in bursts. If I am in a writing flow then I will keep going with content creation till I am disturbed (for example like right now, when the kids are about to walk in the door from school). Things like traffic generation strategies don’t need as much concentration so those tasks can be done late at night when I am too tired to write!

Organizing yourself and having systems will enable you to use your time more efficiently and build your internet business faster.

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Internet Marketing Tip – Systemization

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!

Hold no, it’s not quite time to celebrate yet, I am still not an internet millionaire.

The reason why…

The Bad News – The Classic Internet Marketing Mistake

The answer to this question lies in my research.

I have just spent an intensive weekend learning a technique for getting targeted websites up rapidly (I managed 5 new websites this weekend in different niches) What I also learnt was that the most important thing to do when you want to sell products online is…

find a market first and then find the product!

This is absolutely critical and so many people make this mistake, they find the product or worse still spend days, weeks, months creating their product only to find that no-one wants it.

I have based my affiliate website on flawed research. The keyword that I chose to base my website on doesn’t  have a lot of daily traffic. So naturally even if my site is ranked no.1 in Google the hoards of traffic will not come if no-one is looking for that keyword.

All is not lost, I just have to broaden my search terms with my articles and videos etc to drive traffic to the site and I can easily make another website based on better keyword research. At least I know that what I’m learning and implenting about SEO works now I need to combine good research with SEO and traffic getting strategies. Once I have people looking at my site then I can look at conversion rates! There’s a lot more to learn but the key is perseverance.

Keyword research is big area to cover and there are many different tools one can use to make things easier. Look for more on keyword research in the next couple of weeks. Doing your research properly first will same you time and frustration.

Stay tuned for more updates – I feel that I am very close to getting out of stage 1 and hitting stage 2 of the plan.

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Internet Marketing Advice – Research is Critical!