Posing a Monday Question, Sandy asks:

“Like you, I’m a writer by training and since become a SAHM (stay at home mum), I’ve mastered the basics of blogging and writing articles and am starting to get into simple product creation.

Some of this other stuff like SEO is beyond me. I bought a couple of dummies books and know some basic HTML and can do a simple page. But the PHP and MySQL programming stuff is way beyond me. Help! I am feeling overwhelmed and although I’m doing ok now, I can’t help feeling that I won’t be able to master it all.

Please advise what I can do about this.”

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My Answer:

It’s great that you’ve taken the step of taking the plunge into Internet Marketing.

Like you, I’ve pretty inept when it comes to programming stuff too. Aside from being able to generate content (blogging, articles, forums and information products) and network and generate traffic, I don’t wander into programming too much.

Here’s what I’ve learned from some of the experienced guys I talk to:

Internet Marketing is counter intuitive to what you learn in school:

In school, you need to master math and science and the liberal arts, on top of that you have foreign languages and maybe have to pick up a musical instrument or art too.

So what happens is that you become a jack-of-all-trades and just about average or maybe above-average or below-average in each area.

In the world of business, it’s completely different. You need to focus on your strengths. Most marketers will have just one strength. If you’re lucky, you might be strong in two areas. I haven’t met a marketer who’s great at:

• SEO
• Traffic Generation
• Testing and tracking
• PPC
• Social traffic generation
• Product Creation
• Email marketing
• Blogging
• eBay auctions
• Product launches
• Affiliate Marketing
• Affiliate Management
• Podcasting/Vlogging
• Press Releases
• Media Buys
• Programming/application development
• Web/graphics design
• Forum management

Instead, what you should do is focus on your strengths.

If I need help in an area where I lack expertise, I’ll use the following criteria:

If it’s a minor project, I’d outsource the project to a freelancer or team through my network of contacts. If you don’t know enough people, you can ask a friend for a recommendation or look for someone on the forums. As a last resort, I’d go to sites like elance or rentacoder as you’d have to spend some time filtering the talent.

If it’s a major project, I’d be more inclined to get a personal referral to someone experienced. Alternatively I’d look for a partner, especially if it’s likely to turn into a longterm business.

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Regardless of your area of expertise, I’m sure that you’d be able to generate a comfortable $3,000 to $5,000 a month from your efforts and if you budget it correctly, you should be able to pay for improvements to your products and services or blog/forum/website (which would pay for themselves within days or a few months).

The major motivation killer for Internet Marketers is the feeling that they’re overwhelmed by the feeling that they need to “know everything”.

Just focus on one thing and all the pieces will fall into place.

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