Internet Marketing 4 Noobs

• Do You Know Some Of The SUCCESS Stories Came From People Who Have Already Have Lots Of Business Experience?

“I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE IN INTERNET MARKETING AND 4 MONTHS LATER I’M EARNING THOUSANDS!”

“I ATTENDED THE COURSE AND MY BUSINESS HIT 5 FIGURES AFTER IMPLEMENTING WHAT I LEARNT!”

Does that line sound familiar? If you haven’t, you will become familiar with them in the weeks to come if you have just started out.

There is some degree of truth in these statements, but not entirely. A lot of Internet Marketers use this lack of complete information to sell their stuff.

What a lot of people don’t know, especially those who have NEVER start a business of any sort before, is some of the successful testimonials are made by people who already have much experience in running a business. This explains how they achieved results with seemingly speed and ease

For example, when I attended the World Internet Summit Singapore 2007, one of the live testimonials was given by Tracy Repchuk. Tracy Repchuk came on stage telling her story of how she attended a previous World Internet Summit about 8 months ago, applied what she learnt, eventually authoring a best selling book on Amazon and earned more than $20,000 (If I did not remember wrongly) from numerous Internet Marketing projects/ventures 8 months later.

She stated she has never tried Internet Marketing prior to this. At first look, I was very impressed. She was a very good example of how an ordinary work-at-home-mum (she looked like one…) earned her way to financial freedom through Internet Marketing. If she can do it, so could I.

Then 2 weeks ago, I just happened to Google her name, and I found Wikipedia has an article on her.

Tracy Lynn Repchuk (born 1965) is a Canadian writer and poet.

Repchuk is the president and founder of the Canadian Federation of Poets and Editor of Poetry Canada Magazine.

The owner of four companies, she received a Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year nomination in 1992, and Chamber of Commerce Businesswoman of the Year nomination in 2003, and volunteer award recipient for Ontario in 2001.[citation needed] Winner of the 2007 “Hot New Internet Marketing Success of the Year” from the World Internet Mega Summit (Oscar’s of the Internet[citation needed]), with an all-expense paid trip to Singapore to present in front of 3400 attendees.[citation needed]

OH! So before she started Internet Marketing, she was running FOUR companies and received a Entrepreneur of the Year nomination. Imagine the amount of business acumen she has!

Let’s be honest. Not all of us are talented like Tracy Repchuk. Not all of us can own 4 companies. Not all of us will be able to earn more than $20,000 eight months in Internet Marketing with no prior experience before hand.

And I believe that A LOT of those testimonials are not saying the whole truth. Granted, sometimes we can’t have access all the information we need and people giving their testimonials don’t have the time/space to explain their history and background. Especially since most of us tend to scan through rather than read through information. We just have to be aware of this.

No matter who you are, I believe that you got have to learn vital skills to be successful online, and that takes time. I myself, a nerd who have never made money on my own before, find that there is SO MUCH to learn, so much I don’t know.

For those who are complete newbies, not just in Internet Marketing but in running any sort of business, you may want to be careful about the claims you see in those testimonials.

• Do You Know Most eBooks/Courses Are Teaching You How To Promote, Not Run A Business?

Rich Schefren explained this problem very well in his latest “The Attention Age Doctrine”, an excellent and free eBook. A problem with most promotions in the Internet Marketing industry today is that a lot of Internet Marketing eBooks and Courses are written by promoters teaching how to promote, not businesses owners teaching others how to run a business.

I have to say its actually a good way to start off, since Internet Marketing tactics are much easier to grasp and apply than abstract business strategies. Learn how to promote first is a good way to start, but Internet Marketing newbies must also move on to learning business strategies once they gain a solid foothold.

You may wonder, why should Internet Marketing newbies bother about the strategic level when they have not even achieve small results yet? That brings us to the next point…

• Do You Know That Earning Money Is Not Easy?

This is a no brainer.

But somehow the previous point of promoters teaching others how to promote, not business owners teaching others how to run a business, is beginning or has already warp this old saying.

That’s one result of promoters teaching you how to promote, not running a business. Quite often Internet Marketing newbies get the impression, from all those BIG LOUD SALES LETTERS out there, they can get quick results and start earning money quickly. Why? That’s how a lot of Internet Marketers promote their products…offering quick solutions with fantastic results. The trend caught on and soon almost everyone is doing it, since they do not want to lose out and be perceived as offering something which couldn’t deliver results quickly and easily.

This “How To Earn Money Online” industry have became so fierce the claims most Internet Marketers make about their products, to make their products stand out, have reached exorbitant, deceiving levels.

The truth, the phrase “Hard Work” got lost in the all the marketing out there, buried in all the HYPE most promoters generate when they teach Internet Marketing newbies how to promote, but still treasured by the few genuine business owners teaching others how to run a business. Unfortunately that’s the problem. There are so few of the latter, most Internet Marketing newbies do not come across them when they first start out. I myself included.

To tie this point and the previous together…Internet Marketing newbies may start off with getting their hands dirty with learning and applying Internet Marketing tactics, but they have to realize that if they want to achieve real success they must recognize that they are running a business, not some get-rich-quick schemes-which-never-last. And when we run a business, we have to work hard and smart.

My own experience? More than a year ago when I was still serving my National Service with the Singapore Army (just an office clerk…:p ), I came to understand (but not yet realize it’s significance…as always) that hard and smart work is necessary to bring you anywhere. Michael E. Gerber, Jack Welch, Robert Kiyosaki, Martha Stewart, Adam Khoo have all stated in their books they put in hard work to get to where they and other successful people are today, and to stay successful.

Then I got started on Internet Marketing/Affiliate marketing Dec last year…Internet Marketing seem surreal. There are so many testimonials of people earning thousands within months of starting (refer to the first point). I thought that I could earn at least $4,000 and have my financial worries taken care off while I enjoy my University days. I was wrong, and I only realize it last month after attending World Internet Summit Singapore 2007.

I remember very clearly the day my parents LAUGHED OUT LOUD when I told them “钱很难赚” (Money is hard to earn), after 4 months of online marketing without much success.

Now working harder, smarter and with focus!

• Do You Know You Have To Learn some HTML?

“YOU DON’T NEED TO LEARN HTML…”

ABSOLUTE RUBBISH! I am boldly stating this in bold too. Learning some HTML is necessary if you are into Internet Marketing.

Believing you can do Internet Marketing without learning HTML is like a racing driver trying to race professionally without knowing how to change gears…

It’s a core skill in Internet Marketing, and there’s no excuse not to learn it. I found it quite easy to learn too, Internet Marketing newbies just have to overcome the fear of seeing those dreaded lines of alien code.

I have to state that I’m have been exposed to some computer programming before I started, such as doing up those Excel spreadsheets to automatically calculate the sum of 2 cells together…retrieve this information from that worksheet…those kind of stuff.

To me it’s like playing with Lego bricks. Computer code seems to come in chunks. You just have to find the right pieces and put them together to get something you want. A piece does not fit? Find another one, or look for the solution in Google.

Frankly I still do not like programming myself as I don’t really have a talent for it, and it takes a rather long time for me to do it too.

Even now after 6 months into Internet Marketing, I still cannot build a html website and design it using CSS from scratch. By the way if you don’t know, Cascading Style Sheet is a form of language that tells internet browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer and Firefox), how to display a HTML page.

I still need a template and I modify it till I like it. Modifying something is easier than building it from scratch!

Even so, I personally find that knowing HTML and some CSS skills helped me a lot so far. This great Mandigo Wordpress theme that I am using right now contains my own small modifications to it, to achieve the look I want. HTML is an important skill all Internet Marketers must acquire.

Maybe they should change the statement to…

“YOU DON’T NEED TO LEARN HTML TO START OFF IN INTERNET MARKETING…”

…But You Should And Have To Learn It Along The Way.

That’s better.

• Do You Know You Get MUCH Faster Results When You Network Around?

Again this may sound like a no-brainer…but since I did not know this when I first started, I think there will be Internet Marketing newbies who like me, are also no-brainers.

For those who of us who have already experienced the importance of networking somewhere, sometime in their lives, I hope this serves as a reminder to bring those networking skills and knowledge when you get into Internet Marketing.

My parents have been telling me this since I was young, and I only get to experience it’s significance, again, at World Internet Summit Singapore 2007. My post there summarizes my first real experience of the importance of networking.

I am certainly not experienced enough to talk about the benefits of networking and working in teams, so for more insightful information on the importance of networking, I suggest you take a look at my earlier post on Ladan Lashkari’s (She’s a successful Internet Marketer from Iran) personal experience on networking and John Reese (one of the BIG GUNS in Internet Marketing) discussing about how networking enables you to advance much faster than you can on your own.

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That’s it for this post. If you have read through this post, I hope you have learnt something here or maybe laugh as you recall how you have experienced all this before when you first started out yourself.

Of course this 5 points can’t encompass everything. I have more to talk about, but if I do this post will be so long no one will want to read it. If you have one of those Eureka! moments where you realized something you didn’t know before and would like to share it, please add your comments at your leisure!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 11:36 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.