Copyright 2006 Peter Dobler
Internet marketing is a numbers game, we all know that. Or is it
not? Maybe we are all mistaken and chasing a white elephant.
Internet marketing is a highly competitive market. If you ever
used a pay-per-click search engine you know what I mean.
Internet marketing is a tough market. You deal with all kind of
people. Just skim your inbox. I'm sometimes amazed with the
emails I'm getting. "need money now help make money fast" this
is an evergreen from my collection of email responses to my
newsletter.
Does this sound familiar? Well, I think it's sad and
embarrassing. We are doing everything a so called internet
marketing guru told us to do and the responses are mostly from
confused and poor people who have no clue what we are actually
talking about. Now ask yourself again, is it really a numbers
game or should you completely change directions.
One of the marketing systems I'm part of recently issued a
statement that most of the new subscribers are from non English
speaking countries. Keep in mind that the site is completely in
English are geared towards English speaking audience. Just a few
words of English won't do it either. They are selling the
service with the slogan "find 3 and it's free". This definitely
leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Ok, now what? How can you make a living or even more than living
with an online business? Ask 10 internet marketing gurus and you
get 11 different answers. The only thing I can say is to
approach an online business the same way as you do with a
traditional business. With traditional businesses nobody expects
a profit in the first year of a brand new business. But on the
internet everybody gets frustrated if they don't make money in
the first three days.
If everything would work like all the gurus make us believe
there would be no more employment. The economy as we know it
would seize to exist. Home businesses are by definition meant to
be an income supplement. In some cases they become a full time
income. On very rare occasions a home business can turn into a
money maker. I heard of them, but I never actually met anybody
that made it.
After reading all this you can understand that internet
marketing is not always a pleasure. This is especially true if
you are building a business with internet marketing. So, should
you completely avoid internet marketing and focus on other
business ventures? Well, it depends. If you can't handle the
competition and the negative image of this market segment, don't
do it.
On the other hand, if you are able to manage a small success in
a highly competitive market, keep doing what you're doing.
Chances are that some of your competitors are giving up and you
can fill the void in no time. Make no mistake it's a dog eat dog
environment and never ever expect a helping hand from a fellow
marketer. Unless you made it into the "chosen few league". The
big guns are joining forces all the time to increase their
market shares and profits. Hmm, this sounds like good old
corporate America, doesn't it?
As I said, treat your online business the same way you would
treat a traditional brick and mortar business. Because the same
principals apply to both types of businesses. Anybody who thinks
they could push their business into profitable returns by maxing
out their credit cards are missing the boat big time. Yes I
admit it; in the beginning I spend way too much money on useless
stuff because a guru told me so. Then I turned around and tried
to convince others to spend too much money on useless stuff.
Again a guru told me to do so.
Luckily I was able to break out of this death spiral and forced
myself to analyze the situation. First, do I really want to
continue with this internet thing? Second, do I really want to
spend hours after hours everyday to chase something that might
not exist? Yes I really want this internet thing to work and No
I don't want to chase wild goose. I needed to be smarter with my
business decisions and more creative in my approaches. Ever
since I changed the way I'm doing things my business is doing
better every day. Like the real world businesses, it takes time
to develop.
The bottom line of this little story is; never trust anybody's
advices blindly; don't do exactly what you've told to do without
researching the consequences. Although the consequences are most
likely an empty bank account and maxed out credit cards. It will
devastate your financial future. Remember, be smart, play smart
and play the internet marketing numbers right.
About the author:
Peter Dobler is an active real estate investor and successful
internet business owner. More information on home based internet
businesses at:
http://www.mypluginhomebiz.com
