Let’s take a look at the job requirements of an internet entreprenuer, if you had to go through an interview before you actually started working. Okay, first you would definitely need an MBA.
After all, you are running a business here and you need to know how to do it. But since you working online, you might want to grab a bachelors in computer science. And if you plan to write any ad copy or ebooks, add some English in there also. It would be great to have all this time to learn, but you know what, all that counts is results. And results are up to you yourself to define. Below is the actual outline I use to go from zero knowledge to results as quickly as possible.
You don’t have time for all of this learning, but lets say you have this great idea for a program that you know will sell. The only problem you have is that you don’t know how to program. In fact, you think C++ is orange juice with double the vitamin C. First pick up a book on the subject. Choose an easy language like Visual Basic. Don’t be duped into buying a book by its cover, either. A lot of the books that say, “Perfect for Beginning Programmers” are written by programmers who began years ago and have come to think of English as a foreign language. Make sure you thumb through the book and read a few pages. If you can’t understand what you are reading, you won’t learn.
Next, get the book home and dive right in. Read the book from cover to cover. Don’t stop to do the exercises. You might think that trying each and every exercise will help you learn and you might be right. But believe me, once you write more than two “Hello World” programs, you will promptly find anything much more interesting than reading your book, including such things as taking out the trash or cleaning your house. Just remember, you are not trying to become a programming genius. Your purpose here is to get your great idea to the marketplace before anyone else gets there before you. As an entreprenuer the idea is more important than the skill. If you don’t quite understand a section, don’t spend too much time there. Just get through to the last page, then stop.
Okay, now that you have an idea what the language can do. Map out your program. Write a short little outline in plain English. For example:
1. Take user input in the form of searchwords
2. Create url string to search Ebay’s auctions
3. Download all links to auctions containing those keywords
4. Strip the amount of bids from each auction
5. Reorder auction links by the number of bids
6. Create output page
Next take a step you want to begin working on and go to one of the many free source code sites on the net and download a few sample snippets that come close to what you want this step to do. Take that sample and tear it apart referring back to the book you read. Find out how the programmer gets his source code to do what it does and then start writing your own. Do this with each of the steps you wrote down in your original outline. As you go along, you may have to add or subtact steps form your original outline. Go ahead and do it. Make your program as complete as possible.
Now it is time to put your pieces together and begin testing. This may be actually half of the whole project. I have never had a program run right the first time and it is rare to just have one bug in new software. Run the program to its limits, because believe me, your customers will. Fix everything that comes up and make sure you are thinking like someone who has just tried your program. If it has little quirks that you can work around because you know how you wrote it, you must take these out. And another hint, if you keep running into the same bug over and over and can’t figure out what is wrong, step away from the computer for a day. Do something else unrelated to programming. Then come back to it later. You’ll be amazed when you find the error right away.
Now that your software is done, sell it and then go back to the book and read it slowly this time. Digest everything. If an exercise covers something that you don’t quite understand, do the exercise. But do not feel obligated to do every exercise in the book, just those that will actually help you learn. Now that you are an “experienced” programmer, you will find much more information in the book than you found the first time. Now all you have to do is to come up with your next groundbreaking idea.
Although I covered programming above, this plan can be applied to anything you want to learn fast whether you need to learn Photoshop to create a cover for your new ebook, Acrobat to format your pages, Dreamweaver to create your website, CGI to create your click tracking links, or just internet marketing in general. And this is the basic outline:
1. Read the book fast
2. See how others are doing it.
3. Do it yourself while refering to examples and the book
4. Test or revise your results.
5. Reread the book slowly.
6. Come up with your next idea.
As shoestring marketers, we don’t have time to go to school to learn what we need to know and don’t have the money to pay others to do it for us. Everything we do, we must do ourselves, at least in the beginning. How do I know the plan above will work? It is how I went from the idea for Hotbid to the first sale in six weeks with no previous knowledge of programming.
Stephan Miller
http://www.stephanmiller.com
