Internet marketing takes a lot of work. I am not going to lie. Anyone that tells you otherwise has already made it past the startup phase and has reached guru status. In the end, only you can decide which route you want to take on the web and asking yourself a few simple questions may be more important than finding “the next big trend.”
Ask yourself if you like what you are doing? Because if you don’t, then you are going the wrong direction. Despite the fact the internet has been around for a while, there are still no set rules. Sometimes you have to raise the bar, innovate and hope for results, take a leap and watch what happens. This is not a place for followers. There are only two ways to win this game. Do something no one else has done or do what everyone else is doing but do it better. Of course you can follow blueprints, but you must find your own way to stand out. The question is are you up to the challenge.
Ask yourself which is more important to you, time or money? I remember when I worked for hourly wages and hoped for overtime and for holidays when the real pay would kick in. It was not until I moved to salary that I realized that I was wrong. When you work for someone else, time always has a set value. If you work in fast food this may be $7 an hour. If you are paid to consult, this may be over a $1000 an hour. But what it comes down to is there is always a cap on the amount of money you can make in a week and then you have to get some sleep and maybe grab a few meals or possibly squeeze a few hours of life in.
Not so in internet marketing. There is no limit. Some days you may make a dollar an hour and on others you can clear five hundred in a day. You yourself set the limit whether you know it or not.
Lets say it takes you 80 total hours to create an ebook that you will sell for $20. On the sale of that first book you make $.25 an hour. But as time goes on you automate and when you have sold the 400th ebook, you have made $100 an hour because you no longer spend much time on that ebook. Time becomes the commodity then. If you create a good product, the sales take care of themselves. It’s the time you need more of, to create your next product, promote your next site, or get a life.
Take a look at your online activities. What are you doing that just wastes your most precious resource, time. With me, it was subscribing to too many newsletters and actually looking through spam. I eventually unsubscribed to newsletters that were nothing but weekly ads and got a spam filter. It beats manually deleting more than 300 emails a day. You could also organize your files. Get a personal database like MyBase, Treepad, or Maple so you can stop wasting time searching for files or bookmarks. Anytime you find yourself doing repetitive tasks, think “This is what they made software for.” Find that software and use it and if you can’t find it, maybe you have found a niche that you can profit from.
The last question you need to ask yourself daily is: “Why did I get into this?” It really doesn’t matter what your answer is. The important thing is to always keep this answer clear in your mind. For me, it is freedom. At night, I go to sleep in the future. I am in Hawaii or Greece or wherever I choose to be that night. And the next day I will wake up and choose to work or not to work. But when I work, I will be the boss. I think the same way throughout the day, because when you project yourself into the future it will eventually be now. Whatever your dream is, live there and make it real.
If you constantly question your online marketing, there is nothing to prevent your profits from increasing every month. You are the only one who can do it. It is rare to have someone volunteer constructive criticism, so be prepared and do it yourself.
Stephan Miller
http://www.stephanmiller.com
