Seven Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes

I have started my spring cleaning.  I don't have a lot of time for it, but a half hour here and there mounts up and I hope that the house will be pristine by the time spring arrives.  At the moment, I'm working on my study.  I've turned out the cupboards and the filing cabinets, and sorted through everything, and several large sacks full of paper have been sent off for recycling.  I've discovered three sets of headphones that I didn't know I had and more ball point pens and blocks of post-it notes than you can shake a stick at.

In amongst all the stuff on my desk were several spiral bound notebooks containing notes that I've taken at various conferences, workshops and online tutorials, and that I'd never got round to typing up.  So I spent a couple of afternoons doing that.  Most of the sets of notes said where they'd come from but there was one with no attribution.  However, it contained some very good advice and so I'm going to share it here and ask the person who originally came up with this list to forgive me for not acknowledging my source.

The list is of seven deadly internet marketing mistakes, and I offer them here with my thoughts on each:

1.  Thinking you’re not good enough. 
It's easy to do.  We come into internet marketing feeling very confident, looking at all the people who have been successful, thinking we know just how to do it and how to make money.  And then we hit obstacles that throw us off course or we just fail to make money.  And we lose confidence.  This is the point at which many people will give up.  But, in the time I've been in internet marketing, I've come to realise that the trick is to keep going.  Very few people make money overnight.  With some it can take two or three years before they have a decent income.  The important thing is not to lose faith in yourself.  Learn from your mistakes and you'll only get better.

2.  Forgetting what marketing is.
The person from whom this list originally came - let's call him X - says it’s not about creating products but, rather, about finding a group of people with a problem and giving them a solution.  It's the old saying about 'build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door".  Concentrating on producing something that interests you but that no one else wants is a sure way to fail.

3.  Being a magpie. 
You don’t need to know everything or do everything says X.  But it's a temptation and it's easy to get distracted.  We need to look at what we're doing and ask is it relevant?  If it isn't, stop doing it!  This isn't to say that we shouldn't try doing new things - because how else would we find out what we're good at - but it's a mistake to try them all out at once. 

4.  Listening to people who know less than you do
A lot of people who go into internet marketing find that their friends and family, not quite understanding what it is that they are doing, can be rather disparaging.  I remember Yanik Silver telling a story about when he was first getting started, selling information products.  His father looked at some of these and asked "And people actually pay you for this bullshit?"  Fortunately, Yanik was confident enough not to be undermined.  But comments such as "Why are you wasting your time on that?" can be very discouraging, especially when you're first starting.  A conscious decision has to be made not to listen to such criticism.

5.  Carving your own path rather than learning from the experts.
I remember Andrew Reynolds saying that, when he decided to become an entrepreneur, he went to a course and then he did exactly what the man at the front of the room had told him to do.  Mostly, this is sound advice.  But I have been to a few seminars where it wasn't the case because the information offered was out of date or was presented in a confused or confusing way.  Online or downloadable courses that offer you lifetime access to updates will get over the first problem.  (I have at various times bought courses from Armand Morin and Ryan Deiss in the knowledge that I'll will be informed of any changes in the system made necessary by the ever-changing nature of the internet.)  It's also important to ensure that the person who is teaching you really is an expert and that the system he is expounding has not only made him money but other people as well.
That said, I believe that there's always room for improvement.  Once you've copied somebody's system and it's worked for you, then you can start experimenting.  You may find that a few minor changes make it work better . . . or you may, indeed, find that the original was best.

6.  Living in a cave. 
 Internet marketing is about interaction with other people.  'X' stressed the importance of going to events and courses and discussing what works (and what doesn't) with other people.  One of the Ryan Deiss courses that I invested in fairly recently (and which I shall write about in due course) has the advantage of an online forum where people who have done the training can discuss how it's going for them and learn from each other.  If you're looking for somewhere to discuss your own marketing strategies and to ask questions, try Warrior Forum.

7.  Chasing the money. 
This clouds your vision, says X, and should not be your primary focus.  Sometimes you need to make less money to help people solve problems.  Admittedly, a lot of people have been successful in internet marketing simply because - thanks to redundancy or other problems - they have know that they had to.  But a lot of internet marketing is about service - offering products that people need and, as Armand Morin always stresses, over-delivering, giving them more value for money than they expected.  In this way, you will build a faithful following who will buy from you over and over again.  But if you concentrate on the money, you may tend to overprice your products which, in the long run, will result in you making less money, not more.

Festive Spirit - a Personal View

Christmas is just two weeks off . . . although the shops have been displaying Christmas goods since September (and, in some cases, August).  Christmas lights have been switched on - and in one English town, at least, there were complaints at the poor quality of the display.  One of our local superstores has already run out of Christmas trees.  People are replenishing their drinks cupboards, parents are spending huge sums on whatever the latest craze is that the kids are demanding, and numerous presents are being bought  that, once Christmas is over, will be consigned to the bottom of a drawer or advertised for sale in the local paper.

Now, I am not a Christian, so I'm not coming at this from a faith-based angle.  But, even so, I find all the commercialism of Christmas rather sad.  Yes, it's great to buy presents for those you love . . . but somehow each year there seems to be a compulsion to spend more and more.  And giving things isn't the only way to show love.

Because, as a non-Christian, I believe that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of someone whose mission was to bring more love into the world.  I'm a great admirer of the Salvation Army whose idea of a good Christmas is to ensure that lonely elderly people and homeless people have a hot Christmas dinner and a happy day, feeling wanted and cared for.

And I'm also a great admirer of the entrepreneur Andrew Reynolds.  Not because he's a self-made multi-millionaire (although that, in itself, is admirable) and not just because of his enthusiasm in encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.  But simply because he is a great philanthropist and works tirelessly for charities including Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Make A Wish Foundation and has helped many people in South Africa to achieve a better standard of life that, without his help, would have been unattainable.

But there is no doubt in my mind that internet marketing can encourage greed . . . think of the marketers who sell worthless packages, or who don't offer a money-back guarantee, and the retail companies and eBay sellers who sell substandard goods.  There are so many people trying to make a living through the internet, there is so much competition, that I feel that it's very easy to lose sight of what it's all about.  Because, as one of my other marketing 'favourites', Armand Morin, always stresses, it's not just about making money, it's about providing value.

And so, when I'm feeling jaded about the internet, it's good to be reminded of how it can bring people together and make life easier.  And when that reminder has a Christmas theme, so much the better.  I first saw this YouTube video last Christmas and loved it then.  Not everyone does, and if you don't like it, then I apologise.  But if you haven't seen it, please have a look at the Digital Story of the Nativity.

Why We Need Multiple Mentors

I have a friend who's an antique dealer.  She buys a lot of her stock at auction, but she also spends time every week going round antique fairs and exploring other people's shops.  And sometimes she finds some amazing bargains.  When she first told me about some of the things she'd bought from other dealers - and about the profits she'd made - I was astonished.  How come, I asked, that the people she'd bought from had priced the items at so much less than they were worth?  Simple, she replied - antiques is an enormous area and nobody can know everything about it.

It's the same, these days, with internet marketing.  Time was that you could buy one person's course on how to make money online and it would be much the same as everybody else's course.  It would teach the fundamentals - how to write a sales page, how to create a product, and how to drive traffic to your website by exchanging links with similar sites.  Then there came a point when not only was it getting much harder to exchange links but the links themselves no longer had the SEO value that they once had.  So along came the courses on article marketing and press releases.  And how to use Google adwords and other pay-per-click advertising.  Then backlinking became the thing to do - until recently when Google started to crack down on what it called 'unnatural linking' (see my post of April 7th).  And, of course, in recent times we've had the development of bookmarking and blogging and social networking - and while there are a lot of gurus out there who know a huge amount about how to make money online, I don't believe that any of them knows it all.  And they freely admit that they don't go to each others' seminars just because they're good friends . . . they go to learn from each other.

Now, if you've been reading my blog, you'll know that I'm an enormous fan of Armand Morin.  His products range from the amazingly comprehensive Internet Marketing Explained down to his free Internet Marketing Newsletter.  And I have learned stuff from him that I've never heard mentioned anywhere else.  But there are gaps - I don't think he yet has a course on how to use Twitter, Pinterest and other forms of social networking.  And it's possible that he may never produce one because it's not an area that he uses very much himself.  However, there are other people who are experts in the field, such as Melanie Duncan, whose 'Power of Pinning' course is based on her own successes using Pinterest, and Mili Ponce who has been called 'the Queen of Twitter'.

But it's not just to fill in the gaps that we need a multiplicity of mentors.  Sometimes they don't get it right.   For example, Armand Morin's FAST (Facebook Ad Secret Training) course works.  I've tried it and I have no doubt whatsoever that he is teaching here the best way to use Facebook advertising.  But recently I heard another guru talking about how to use Facebook ads.  And several of the things that he recommended were things that Armand had said NOT to do (and had explained why).   I'm sure that, if I had followed the suggestions of the second guru, it would not have been disastrous but I'm equally sure that I would not have got the excellent results I achieved from following FAST.  So it's not that they get it wrong, exactly, just that they don't get it right.  And the only way we can know this is by listening to several people on the same subject.

This is where 'bootcamps' can be so valuable.  I remember with great pleasure a couple that I went to that were organised by Andrew Reynolds, where we heard some twenty or so speakers over the course of three days.  And for each person in the audience there were some speakers who were outstanding, and some who were less so.  For me, the stars were Armand Morin and Derek Gehl and Simon Coulson - and I've since learned a great deal from all three of them.  So I remain very grateful to Andrew Reynolds for giving me the opportunity to listen to so many gurus and to be able to pick out those whose teaching spoke to me personally.