Online marketing is not Easy

[Hustle]

really you need to start off small. One of the biggest problems with internet marketing is not knowledge or skill but it is motivation.

I know a hellova lot of guys and gals who stick pictures on thei walls of clickbank earnings and money etc. that puts you into a fantasy world and you end up pondering about what to do...

I could not agree more. I remember back when I first realized that looking for the million dollar idea just kept me in La La land.

When I started getting pumped about fifty dollar ideas, I started seeing the money. Over time it started adding up fast.

If there is one thing that I wish someone had told me in the beginning it would be that I should be getting very excited about my first $30 Clickbank check even if it did take me 182 hours to make.

At that point, at least you're in the fucking game. That's a hell of a lot farther than the day dreamers get.

 

[Ruby]

Sorry to bump this up, but it's the very first post every newbie should read.
Incredibly motivating and down-to-earth at the same time.
I hope that someday I'll be able to help others out, and talk about my five-figure income!

 

[kathysisk]

Finally the truth!

I came to forums looking for new or better ways to improve my chances, luck, whatever you wanna call it, and Finally found the truth. Thnks for the honesty. It is refreshing for a change. And I would kick someone in the balls if I could remember the first person who told me it was easy.

 

[aeiouy]

Really excellent post. I was sharing a similar sentiment with someone else recently. You really need to be prepared to work. You need to be prepared for failure. You actually need to embrace failure. I know when things go wrong for me, that is when I am at my best, and when I make my biggest strides moving forward.

Most people who try to make money with the internet, and online, give up long before it even gets difficult. It can be extremely hard getting started. From the time I actually focused on making money online, it was over a year before I started making a partial living, and 15 months before I really started making a lot of money. My initial focus was on building traditional websites. When I got into affiliate marketing, things popped for me, but all the knowledge I have gained over the years, and especially that knowledge I gained in the previous year has been invaluable in what I am doing now.

I would suggest people worry too much about money. You can get going and learn for virtually nothing. My affiliate marketing money making started with a $20.00 bill. I have never not had a profitable month, and after about 4 weeks I have never had a non-profitable day or even a day close to not being substantially profitable.

People need to focus more on what they are doing, rather then trying to brute force things with money. Because the reality is the online space is one massive money sink looking to suck up every possible dollar. If you are on a limited budget, there is almost NOTHING you need to spend money on besides the essentials. You don't need e-books, pay-for-use tools or the rest. Save that stuff for when you have money. (except the ebooks you will never need those.). There are some excellent online communities where you can get a lot of good information (such as this one.)

The one thing I love about this is the control I have. I work some stupid hours, and spend very little time enjoying myself, but I have the ability to do that much more than I did before, and I have the resources to do pretty much anything I want. I tend to obsess over things, but sometimes I have to force myself not to do spend every waking moment working.

I tell you though, I would much rather be where I am at then behind the desk at some normal job, where I am bored out of my mind 7.5 hours a day waiting to get home.

The funny thing is when I started, I never really expected to be having the kind of success I am having now. And when I was working 16 hours a day 7 days a week for what amounted to pretty much zero money, it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The funny part is, looking back ,never once did I question myself or consider bailing. I knew I had to figure things out and make things click. I think this moment takes different amounts of time. For some people it comes very quickly, and I consider them very lucky. For others it takes a longer period of time. As I said though, most people never even get to the part where things really get difficult.

So put in the time, learn as much as you can, and put in some more time and learn more. Do Do Do. You are never going to learn just by reading. You actually have to apply your knowledge. Fortunately this industry is prime for inexpensive mistakes. You can really do so much with so little it is amazing.

Will everyone who wants to succeed succeed? I think not. I think beyond all the things mentioned here, including luck, ridiculously long hours, fundamental understanding and more, it just won't work out for some people. Maybe it is a skill-set issue, or whatever. The unfortunate reality is not everyone is going to succeed. Heck sometimes I wonder if I will still be succeeding in 6 months time. But I can guarantee you that you will never get there without the effort, without the energy, without the work.

But if you want the feeling of having that money train roll in 24/7 non-stop whether you are asleep or awake then you got to work it. And you better love failure. I fail a lot more than I succeed at doing this. The successes are massive though, so you can afford a ridiculous number of failures. But you have to be willing to let it go and move on to the next failure and the next failure. Because when you find that next success, or in some cases that first success, it will all be worth it.

 

[Sands]

Great post for us noobs.

Any one looking for the “get rich by tonight and work an hour a day” method should try AMWAY instead.

From poking around here it looks like a lot of knowledge ,long hours and a lot of trial and error is required .

It seems doable, to make a decent living doing this, but it’s not “easy”.

 

[Reefer420]

Good post -

I started out about a year ago thinking I could make money w/ domaining-- prior to that I had no knowledge of how to make money online, but I've always wanted to work for myself. That didn't work, and I wasted about 1k on stupid domains I had no idea what to do with, but it started me thinking about other ways to make money online...(wish I had thought of this back in the 90s when I was in HS..).

I then started to get into drop shipping, and after spending many hours building up sites only to have the drop shipping company tank or end up being shady as hell, started looking for other ways to make money online.

Then I came across WF and the way I viewed things changed completely. Adsense? Affiliate? these were new concepts to me and I spent the better part of a month reading every post and asking stupid questions on here before I started to understand what was going on.

I ended up realizing that my marketing degree, which I thought was not going to help me at all - really came in handy with these concepts.

I also realized after a month or so that I needed to stop reading here so much and actually do something. So I started w/ arb, since it was easy. I still make $30-50 a day w/ that, but I also realized something else- that I needed to focus on what my strengths are more, and keep to a minimum the time I spend on everything else.

I am an idea guy, and I am pretty good at design (not the actual graphic design, but I have a good feel of the way things should look) - so I sucked it up and took a small loan (prosper.com is great for this) out to hire a programming team to actually do one of my ideas. I knew I never will be as good of a programmer as many of you on here- and even if I were to spend my limited amount of time learning how to program PHP, ruby,etc it would just limit the amount of time (by years) that I would be spending and developing what my real strengths are.

I now have two sites in the works, on which I spend about 3-4 hours a day on. I would love to spend more, but there aren't more than one or two hours left in my day after I get home from work- and that includes gym and food time... not much wiggle room. I can't do much other than critique the programmers work anyway, which then takes time until they can work on my changes. I can't do anything on these when I'm at my job.

I still spend a little time on my arb and other little sites, which is more fun for me than anything else - and keeps me occupied in any spare time I have.

I also feel that you have to follow what feels 'right' to you. Designing landing pages for multiple ppc aff programs doesn't do it for me... what i enjoy most is taking a large concept from paper, and seeing it unfold as you manage the project. My sites are based around providing free services to users, and putting a social networking spin on them (while promoting aff programs and having targeted adsense places on hotspots within the pages). My business plans are long, they take a while to put together, and longer to develope - but I love the entire process and if I didn't have a full time job would probably never sleep!

What motivates me is my absolute hatred for my full time job - I literally hate waking up in the morning and going to work. I tried starting my own company when I graduated college, and after getting a taste of what it is like to work for yourself instead of being stuck in a cubicle doing menial work all day.. well I just can't imagine myself counting down the hours until the weekend year after year until I retire or am dead, you know?

How nice it would be to not live paycheck to paycheck!

Anyway, I'm certainly no success yet - but I thought it would be good to get what I've been doing out there. It hasn't been easy, its been a learning process - and you can't be afraid of making mistakes or spending money to learn. Hopefully things will start to work out for me - but there is no better motivator that coming into the office each day and knowing how much better I could do if I didn't have to be stuffed into a small cube all day doing menial tasks so that a large company can run.

I have this hanging on my desk at home...it reminds me of my job everytime I look at it... and then I get back to my 'real' work!

Worth

damn I just wrote a shitload...thats what happens when I'm sitting here w/ nothing to do. 5pm cannot come fast enough!