There are a number of common mistakes among internet marketers – newbies and more “experienced” marketers alike – that can easily lay your best efforts to waste. It’s a shame, really, because there are many people out there have good ideas and have lots of potential – but they bury themselves doing stupid things along with the things they do right.
Here are a few things you may want to avoid at all possible costs:
1. Not learning the basics before you start:
Think logically: If you want to do anything for the first time (building your own house, replacing a car engine, fixing your iPad…), you will need at least some basic knowledge to do it. If not, you risk losing a substantial amount of money. yes, you can “learn as you do it”, but that can be both exensive and time consuming.
The same goes for business (yes, both internet and physical businesses) – that’s why most businesses fail. Most people getting into business know about the products or services they want to offer, but they have no idea about business. Your internet business has its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Be aware of them, and master the basic skills before you start.
Unless, of course, you would like to become “just another statistic” among the 90% of people who fail to make any money online, and eventually walk away.
2. Failing to plan:
There is an old saying: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Fair enough, your plan will evolve as you continue to learn more, and as the internet evolves around you – but you need to have a basic idea of what you want to do, and how you will be going about it. Most internet marketers who fail, do so because they were doing things haphazardly, and/or failed to stick to the/a plan.
Be warned: The internet is FULL of distractions, and if you don’t stick to what you planned, you’ll find yourself spending substantial amounts of time on all sorts of things that don’t bring you any closer to making money online.
3. A lack of focus:
Many internet marketers, especially newcomers (and many who failed initially), try to do a number of things at the same time. They may be trying to build businesses in more than one niche, thinking that they have a better probability of success – since they didn’t put all their eggs into one basket…
Not quite.
You see, when you try to do three things at once, not only will it take you three times as long (and three times as much effort) before you see any results (or lack thereof), but because your focus is divided, you may also fail to spot mistakes – or opportunities for improvement – in whatever you are working on.
Fact: The more you have going on in your mind at any given time, the higher the probability that you may overlook something.
4. Having unrealistic expectations:
When you are just starting out as an internet marketer, you have to start from scratch among a gazillion other websites, and other people screaming for the attention of your potential customer or client. Yes, there was a time when making money online was as simple as slapping up an ugly website with a few well-placed keywords (among 100 words on the home page…:), submitting it to the search engines, and waiting for the money to roll in.
Unfortunately, those days have been gone for more than a decade.
Since then, the proverbial bar has been raising all the time. It’s not only a matter of the internet being overcrowded, either. As internet users became more “web savvy”, their expectations increased. The more that people learn how to use the internet to find the information they want, the pickier they become.
As such, unless you have plenty of money to throw at it, prepare yourself for a process that is likely to take some time. Think of it as planting a tree: It will take some time before it starts to bear fruit, but once it does, it will do so in abundance – for as long as you take care of it.
In conclusion:
Have you ever read the book “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell? In the book, he explains how big changes are the result of seemingly insignificant things that compound and eventually add up to bring about profound outcomes.
Just keep at it. Over time you will see your social following growing bit by bit, and you’ll see your blog’s traffic increasing bit by bit. At the start it might seem as if nothing is happening – but that’s simply because you’re too far away from the tipping point.
If you keep working, and you do it right, success is virtually inevitable:
Learn.
Plan.
Focus.
Keep working.