This isn’t the first post I’ve made on this subject and likely won’t be the last either.

UPDATE: I posted about a week ago that I’m working on a guide on Internet marketing, it’s still being worked on. A couple of projects have come up in the interim that have taken a fair amount of time (though they’ve been very rewarding). So my own project is moving along at a slower pace. It’ll come out soon.

But back to getting started.

Reality #1: There’s lots of money to be made on the Internet. Because when you say “Internet marketing” there’re so many ways to skin a cat, from investing in domains (domaining), marketing on classified sites like CraigsList, Kijiji, Gumtree, etc, to what I typically cover on this blog: affiliate marketing and product creation. The Internet is more a platform or a marketplace than one specific method. There’s no one “best” way to make money on the Internet.

Reality #2: Internet marketing is easy…if you’re prepared to fail a lot. I’ve had some gnarly internships where I worked with non-profits as well as marketing agencies and the work was pretty mind-numbing and would leave me physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the day. In contrast, I think Internet marketing is way easier (try flipping burgers for a day to experience the contrast), but it has a high failure rate. The best marketers probably succeed 50% of the time with their projects, you just don’t hear about the failures very often, unless you’re into consulting, accounting or have these guys in your mastermind. But the cost of failure is small (if you’re managing your risk sensibly). Just pick yourself up and get going again. My smallest loss has probably been a couple of hours for a failed project. My biggest loss has probably been about $10,000. Then again, I’ve made many times that with the successful projects.

Reality #3: Focus. This is an easy one to understand, but harder to implement. Just imagine going out on a warm summer’s day, the warm sunlight on your skin. Now imagine if all that sunlight was focused into a single pencil-wide beam of light. That laser could burn skin and bone and probably cut through industrial steel. That’s the power of focus. Most newbie marketers will try 5 to 10 projects and attempt to find 1 or 2 which work then focus on them. I think it’s ok if you’re testing various options for a couple of weeks (no more than a month). But if you’re still “testing” stuff 6 months down the road, then you’re looking at a heap of trouble later on.  While it may seen unrealistic that you might create the next fark.com or digg or icanhazcheezburger, still being focused will have a better return on your time than trying out too many things. Being focused also means picking yourself up and keeping at it, even when you fail. Stop only when you hit a brick wall which you can’t bust through.

Reality #4: Books, courses, tools are a crutch. Unless you have the luxury of working for someone who’s been in the game for a long time and is willing to show you what they do or better you tell you step-by-step what to do, you probably need to invest some time figuring stuff out. I was just telling someone today that I probably bought about $1,000 worth of “stuff” – software, books, courses in my first month getting started in 2006. I still have my old copy of Adobe Photoshop sitting on my shelf in its shrink wrap along with this fancy teleconference equipment I bought off eBay. It’s probably better to understand how stuff works and if possible do it by hand before investing too much in courses and automation software, which blocks you from the real goal of building a business, marketing and selling products and services.

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Making Money Online Action plan

So if you sent me an email asking about how to get started with Internet Marketing/Affiliate Marketing and I’ve sent you to read this blog post, here’s my advice:

1) Get started within 30minute of reading this post. Yes, you can go have your dinner, send the kids to school, pay some bills, but get started immediately. The biggest procrastination is before a project gets started. If you overcome this obstacle, you’re doing better than the other 90% of marketers who are hoping/dreaming for a big stack of money to fall into their laps.

2) Find a successful business model/strategy to make money. I check into a paid forum, PPV Playbook, run by David Ford, every couple of days. In it you will find other guys who were just like you, wanting to get started and are making $100/day, $300/day or $1,000/day profit about 6 months to a year from when they first got started. Take note, that some of them have spent as much as $1,000 or $5,000 to get to where they are. And if you’re asking if it’s worth spending $5,000 or even $10,000 to get to the point of making a measly $100/day profit, I’d say heck yeah. At $3,000/month, you’d cover back your $10,000 investment in a little over 3 months. More importantly, you will have the skills to grow your business from $3,000 to $5,000 then $10,000, then $1,000/day. But only if you’re willing to put in the effort to improve yourself and grow your business.

Even if you read about all these “business in a box” packages out there which claim that all you do is stick a web page on the Internet and start making money, the reality is that they don’t work unless you know how to generate traffic and have these Internet visitors convert into customers. It’s better to build a foundation in the necessary skills, and from there you can choose to either promote someone else’s products (ie: affiliate marketing or CPA marketing) or develop your own offer/product.

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“What do you suggest I do next?”

This is a simple strategy, but it will only work if you follow through with it.

1. Sign up with PPV Playbook. It’s a paid subscription, it’s not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for.
2. Find 1 or 2 methods that are outlined in there, there’s several sections dedicated to getting started, together with tutorials, walkthrough videos, case studies (actual campaigns) posted by site owner David Ford and the other members.
3. Followthrough is critical to your success. The tendency is to try something for a week, then decide it might not work or to try something else. Stop yourself. Remember that earlier point about spending $5,000 to start earning $100 or even $300/day? This is where focus comes in. If you’re trying 1 or 2 methods, posting questions you might have in the forum, then implementing those tips in your campaign, your chances of succeeding are significiantly higher compared to the average Joe. There’s a little bit of pain for long-term gain.
4. When do you stop? As long as your income keeps growing and you’re enjoying the process, just keep going. At the appropriate time, you should consider hiring outsourcers or employees, or developing software that will simplify the process of running your business.

Here’s the links for:

• PPV Playbook (be sure to use the PPV Playbook discount code)