There must be easier ways to make money?
You know what…Internet marketing is hard. Really hard. It’s not something that easily succumbs to a ‘miracle system’. If you try to learn it all at once, your head will explode. I figured out that I’ve spent around 18,000 hours in this profession. I still have huge (make that massive) gaps in my knowledge. If you’re planning to buy a book and learn it in a week, you’re in for a rude awakening.
You see – Internet marketing is the most accessible form of marketing ever. You can reach more people, faster, for less money than in any other type of marketing. But access does not imply expertise. Anyone can launch a web site and try to sell something. That doesn’t mean they’re qualified to do it, any more than my access to a sharp knife means I’m qualified as a medical examiner.
Your web site is a hub, not the universe unto itself. You’ve got a web site? Great! Now you need to attend to all the other stuff. The web site is just a landing place. All the conversations swirling around it in search engines, social media, etc. are where the real marketing happens and if you don’t attend to all of that stuff then it’s simply like renting a shop, filling it with stock and then locking the doors.
And another thing that no one ever tells you – Internet marketing is distracting as hell. Twitter. E-mail. The most recent person saying SEO is dead. A massive amount of interesting facts being thrown at you all day. You could spend all day just reading about the field, and never doing anything. You need focus. Only the most focused succeed. If you let the distractions pull you away, you’ll be lucky to launch a Facebook page.
And finally – You have to produce meaningful content (and more content). I know, you think a YouTube video or two will do the trick. Plus you can do a half decent job of doing it all by yourself. Wrong. If there isn’t a really, really good writer behind your internet marketing campaign, it will be a big, fat fail. Even your YouTube video requires a description and a script. There are times when you just have to pay for good copy.
But I leave you with this thought – if you get it right then not only is it highly lucrative – it’s also really good fun. So push hard, don’t be afraid to hire good help – and let’s read about it in the Richest people columns next year!