I’ve had the chance to talk to a number of new Internet Marketers recently and I’m both inspired by their enthusiasm and alarmed by a major issue that a lot of them are facing.

If left unchecked, it could lead to the situation another of my contacts faced.

They quit their regular job to focus on Internet Marketing. Just working on it for long hours every day, sometimes 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

But yet their results were underwhelming to say the least. And close to a year into Internet Marketing, their savings are severely depleted.

Let’s look at some of the issues that will stall your plans toward achieving that Million Dollar Day (that’s where Internet Marketers strive towards earning $1 million in a single day, a la John “Traffic Secrets” Reese, Jeff “Product Launch Formula” Walker and others.

• Treating Internet Marketing as “Autopilot” or “Passive” Income:

Here’s the best analogy I can think of. When you’re starting a barbeque (using coal or charcoal), you’d typically need to work hard as heck in the beginning stage, to generate a spark, light up some tinder and start heating up the coals until they reach a critical point.

It’s usually takes sometime before the coal hits the critical point where it spontaneously ignites and continues burning on its own.

Having started a barbeque about 2 days ago, the coals took the better part of half an hour to get started. But once we got them alight and burning, they burned through the night.

Likewise in Internet Marketing, I see newbie Internet Marketers spend maybe 10 hours setting up a web page.

The blog or website might generate a couple of sales.

The newbie get totally psyched, they get onto one of the Internet Marketing forums, post a whole bunch of posts about how they made their first $10 or $20. Everyone’s giving them the forum equivalent of ‘high fives’.

They make some proclamation that they’ll quit their day job if this keeps up.

They might even start giving advice.

And on more than a number of occasions, you see a follow up message that goes along the lines of I’m giving up on Internet Marketing because:

• Sales have sputtered because the Internet Marketing product wasn’t really all that good
• Even if it was a good product, everyone had already been selling it and it had reached its “sell by/expiry” date
• All the big Internet Marketing gurus are the only ones that can survive because they’re the ones with 500,000 people on their list.

Honestly, I think these are just excuses.

It’s too easy to take credit when things go right, but as you’ve read from my previous posts, it’s really what you do when the chips are down that you prove your mettle.

My thoughts on these objections:

• The product is not good/not effective: All knowledge is neutral and their value lies in how you apply that knowledge. A $9.97 product like Secret Affiliate Weapon can be as powerful as a $997 product. Here’s the kicker: If you are investing in a $997 product, you are more likely to be more committed to reading it and applying it. With that logic SecretBlogWeapon would be more widely used if it was priced at double of what it costs now.
• Products reaching a sell by/expiry date: Knowledge doesn’t exactly have an expiry date, though there are many unmotivated (lazy if you want to be 100% truthful) people out there who want things to be presented in a step-by-step manner. Ok, that adsense website template is less effective now. But what if you adapted it to a blog? Or a forum? Or a Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla? Would it work? It might, but you will never know unless you test it out.
• Only the gurus with huge lists can make a living from Internet Marketing: Just in case you haven’t figured it out already, the big guys started out as small guys, facing the same issues as everyone else. Where they broke out from the pack was either they never thought of themself as a ‘small guy’, but as gradually evolving into a ‘big guy’. You are the sum of your thoughts and how you think of yourself will determine the results you get.

Some of these findings are related to a product I’m currently working on that is intended to help successful Internet Markters breakthrough to the next level. Or if you are a new Internet Marketer, it will give you a flying headstart in the game.

Stay tuned.

ps: If you have questions related to starting up, or moving to the next level, include them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.