Internet Marketing 4 Noobs

This blog start out late Dec ‘06.

And upon reflection, it has been a very chaotic place to find my way around. Things happen so fast…new products are being released constantly and I also discover various new traffic generation techniques every month. Information Overload.

Back then, it has been rather difficult for me to settle down and work on a few techniques at one time. All those new information on how to bring traffic to my site or new ways to earn money online are rather intriguing, and always seem more interesting than what I was currently working on at that moment.

I guess I am not alone in being swarmed by information that comes in at a unforgiving pace when I first started out. I have difficulty taking everything in. Often we end up chasing all those information and not really implementing what we learned effectively, and we end up with no results. We shouldn’t even attempt to absorb all those information in the first place. But the problem is, we still do. Why?

From my own experience so far, I think anyone who’s new to Internet Marketing face this problem due to 2 reasons.

• Being exposed to too much information/sales letters/promotions in one go - There’s lots of hype and powerful sales letters written by experts out there in the Internet Marketing/Work at Home industry. It’s very easy for anyone to get excited about new information and forget about what they already know, or that they may already have that new information in their minds.
• Not discipline/focused enough - Exposure to unnecessary/distracting information is inevitable. We all face this wherever we go, not just in Internet Marketing. The problem is that a lot of newbies do not have the focus and patience to really, effectively, take action on the information they already have (I was guilty of this myself ). They keep jumping around once they think the grass is greener and better on the other side. Nothing is better when they haven’t really taste the grass yet.

In view of these 2 reasons, I going to write what I have learned personally over the past 6 months and my personal recommendations on how to prevent or control the 2 problematic reasons I mentioned above. It’s gonna be a long post, but I hope anyone who’s new to Internet Marketing will be able to learn something useful here and better equipped to handle the coming storm of information overload.

What to do if you are a Internet Marketing Noob looking for information

• Avoid learning from forums - I’ve lost count on how many times I got distracted. There may be some GREAT informative posts out there, but be aware that anyone can post at forums, and the quality of information is dubious. Sure, you can check out the background of those who post at forums…but face it, you do not want to check up on everyone. It’s not practical. In addition, new products and Internet Marketing techniques are introduced at a very rapid pace in forums, causing a lot of distraction from what you are already working on. One example is the WarriorForum.com. The discussions there happen at an INSANE pace, with new posts coming in at almost every minute. If you take a look at the main discussion section, you have 6 pages of discussions with new posts which are barely a day old. I personally avoid going there. It’s chaotic!
• Avoid learning from article directories - Same explanation as above. In my humble opinion, article directories are just marketing channels that has been saturated by low-quality content that just tries to lead the reader to the author’s website to try and sell them something. Sure, there are excellent articles in directories, but they come few and far in between. Not worth your time to dig them out.
• Find the top blogs - So far, I found that learning from experts who post information in blogs is the most effective way to learn and most efficient use of your time. Top blogs are ran by top bloggers/experts, and being at the top of their field they will certainly know their stuff. Still, beware of some who rarely post good information and advertise their own affiliate products instead. Give these kind of blogs a skip no matter how big/important you think that blogger is, they are not worth your time. Powerful bloggers do not necessary equal to effective teachers. So how do you know which blog you can learn from?
  • The blog should have posts with length and quality. AND the blogger has consistently posted high quality information. No point if he or she posts one quality article once a month and the rest of the days the posts are just advertising/promotions.
  • Use your heart. Do you feel that the blogger really want to teach you something? Does he or she have that passion written in his or her posts?
  • The comments. Take a quick look at the comments. If there are more than 10 comments consistently for every post the blogger makes, it means that his or her posts are interesting enough to start a discussion, and that the blog has significant amount of visitors. The latter 2 are signs of quality content. Please be aware that some people post comment for the sake of having a link back to their own website, contributing nothing to the discussion. That’s blog comment marketing and another story…
  • How old is that blog? If the blog you are looking at has been around for sometime, maybe a year or so, and there are consistent posts, it may mean that the blogger is serious about staying around providing information for others. If the posts are of high quality and with adequate response to them, I suggest you bookmark it.
• Decide on one or two Internet Marketing Guru’s and stick with them - This is a very important point to take note of in my opinion. Research thoroughly on the Internet Marketing Guru/expert you want to buy from, and look around for reviews on their product. Once you have decided that the product you’re looking at is of quality, purchase it and STICK to it. Here’s a scenario (not exhaustive!) if you don’t exercise self-control and sticking with what you already have.
  • You have decided upon an ebook/package from a guru and purchased it.
  • You went through the ebook and find that it’s not actually that good, or you want more information. Fine, research/look around and grab another ebook.
  • You start to implement those techniques you read in the ebooks you brought.
  • Along the way while implementing those techniques, you come across people talking excitedly about a new product. For e.g. One of the techniques you read in the ebooks you just brought involves you participating in forum discussions and leaving signatures behind which point back to your site. While you are doing that you came across a discussion with comments several pages long, about a guru whom you have never heard of releasing a new product/ebook on Internet Marketing. (That’s why I say avoid going to forums to look for information. Choke myself of all those distractions.)
  • You went through the discussion and decided to check out the website.
  • You went through the sales copy and after being exposed to all the BIG LOUD RED headlines, those BIG LONG profit numbers, those NUMEROUS testimonials, those BIG screenshots of FANTASTIC Clickbank earnings, you decided it’s must be something, and you buy it.
  • You read the ebook and found the techniques described in there to be rather intriguing, and decide to use one of those technique.
  • Unfortunately you spent several weeks using that technique and find that it’s not as effective as it was described. You dump that ebook somewhere in your computer and forget about it.
  • Disappointed/Frustrated/Lost you look around for more information on what went wrong, and you come across yet another technique/ebook that claims to be superior to the one you brought just before.
  • You go to the website/sales copy page to check it out, and you buy it.
  • The Cycle Of Learning Without Yielding Results repeats itself.
  • Whatever happened to the comment, the one with your signature pointing back to your website, you originally wanted to post in the forum to help promote your site?? OH LOL! YOU FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT IT.

Zooming out to the bigger perspective, what you have actually done is demoting yourself from being a proactive person implementing what you have learned effectively to get effective results, into a reactive learner taking in all those information but not putting them into action, getting no results and grumbling about it. In the first 3 steps you are doing great, but once you get exposed to what’s out there, you get yourself lost/distracted. That’s why once you have decided on and brought an ebook or two, stick with them and implement all the techniques described in there. Give your efforts some time. Don’t pluck out the flowers to see how the roots are growing. Only when results start to manifest themselves after perhaps 2 months, should you start to judge the effectiveness of the technique and look around for more/new techniques.

• Control your thoughts and keep the hype out of your mind. I personally feel that, at least in this Internet Marketing industry, a lot of products/information are sold on hype, and but rarely have the substance to live it up. Junk basically. There’s lots of them out there. Every time you land on a sales page, and are at the BUY button after reading through the copy with all the hype built up and swirling in your head, stand back and ask yourself…do you REALLY need the product that is being pitched? Do you really need a repackaged material containing information that you may already have?

After you have spent 3 months learning about all the various internet marketing techniques from the ebooks you have brought or the top blogs you have visited, you can actually turn down almost every new internet marketing ebook that claims to be for newbies. After 3 months of learning, you are no longer a NOOB, but someone who has not taken solid action yet. Of course you should always keep learning, but just slow down and apply what you have learned first.

That’s the end of this post. I hope anyone who has just started their ventures online, or are already doing it but have yet to experience much results, will find this information useful.

It all matters to just one thing; taking what you have already learned, be it just 2 or 3 techniques, and really seriously work on it for a few months. Let the results (which takes some time) tell you what works, not you deciding what works.

In the next post I will be posting the websites and blogs that I visit regularly and learn from. Stay tuned.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Information Overload, Internet Marketing Recommendations, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.