Out of every 10 new start-ups every year, 5 of them will go belly-up in the first year.

Out of the survivors making it past year 1, another 50% of them will cease operations at the end of year 2.

And so on, until only the top 1% make it at the end of year 5.

[The stats are across all industries and according to the company registrars that help these companies and sole proprietorships incorporate]

I don’t exactly know the stats for individuals coming into internet marketing, but I think it could be something similar.

A case in point, I’ve helped sell coaching programs, where we work 1-on-1 with new internet marketers, or people who say they want to make a living on the internet. These guys shell out close to $10,000 a head to enroll in these programs. They’re all fired up in week 1, just raring to go.

You ask them to research 5 websites, they research 50. But somehow when it comes to implementing the project later in the program, there’s some resistance and inertia to getting started.

Some may blame “affluenza” or middle class syndrome. If there isn’t an inner fire to succeed, it’s going to be difficult for anything to happen.

One saying that I’ve been telling new marketers is “If you do nothing, nothing will happen. If you do something, something (which may not be what you expect) will happen”.

The inner game – inside your head – is ultimately going to affect your outer game (what you do).

And everyone has had some experience with “structured procrastination” – “I don’t know if it’s really me” , “I’m not sure if this is going to be a meaningful project”, “I don’t know how I feel about this” or [insert your favorite excuse/reason here].

So in life, there’re going to be the people who sit and do nothing. Then there are the people who go out and do something. And the third group who sit there and blog about it.

Which group do you want to be in?

I was just looking at the updates for Jeremy Palmer’s BlackInkProject which we discussed in the last Friday Podcast. Out of the 1,000 people who signed up (the program closed within 24 hours), 759 have filled in the survey…In order words, 24.1% or about a quarter of the people haven’t taken action yet.

If you can’t take 5 minutes to fill in a survey, imagine the inertia to get your first campaign going…

Incidentally, Jeremy has opened up a BlackInkProject wait list and there is a possibility he might be opening up more places.

My budyd, Amit Mehta’s also put up a blog about the value of persistence worth checking out.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s that you need to climb over the walls to get to the big rewards. If you can’t even get over the small wall to get to the next level, success is going to be a long time in the making.

Click the “more” tab below to access the notes:

Business Overdelivery and Profit Building

Value: Pay $5, get $5.

A lousy movie, is something you paid $10 for and gave you $9 of entertainment, or cardinal sin is ZERO entertainment = ie waste of time.

Overdelivery is when what you get, vastly exceeds what you paid…

Another real world example. Go for dinner at a nice restaurant, have a nice dinner, waiter gives you a slice of their signature triple fudge cake, or maybe a slice of freshly made key lime pie.

What’s happened here?

You spent $50 on dinner, waiter gave you two slices of cake, which costs $5 each and probably cost $2.50 to make(desserts have at least a 100% margin). What’s he done?

Taken $5 for the 2 slices of cake, and bought your satisfaction and potentially your loyalty.

Customer retention stats: at least 5-10 times more effort to get a new customer, than it takes to retain an existing customer.

Make sense to hold on to all your customers, doesn’t it?

–
World of Internet Marketing:
These days, about 40% of products out there give you value parity.
Pay $50, get $50 value.

Another 50% of products give you value destruction.
Pay $50, get $10 value.

So it doesn’t help to have a spectacular product launch, a number of big ones out there, my inside sources tell me some launches have >50% product refund rate.

So that $1 million product launch has $500k in product refunds. How cool is that?

Not really.

–
Choose to be in the long term business game.

Market your product at $50, be sure to give $100 in value.

Word of mouth marketing goes hand-in-hand with your brand and reputation.

–
Reality check:
the big name JV launch partners and crazy giveaways (buy $500 product, get $10,000 in bonuses), a lot of times result in one time sale.
$10,000 in bonuses fail to deliver. Is it really worth $10,000?
Not many people are capable of giving away $10,000 worth of value.

Wouldn’t you prefer to build lifelong customers?
Someone who would choose to buy your product, buy something with your name on it every time it comes to a buying decision?

Trying to play outside the overdeliverability frame sends a clear signal that you’re only here to earn the quick buck.

Strive instead to build a business empire built on a solid foundation of credibility, reliability and innovation.

A lot of people think “money” is the big thing that will give you freedom in life.

That’s not the case.

Think “social influence”.

The most powerful man in the free world, the President of the United States, makes about $200,000 a year from what I’ve heard…yet he’s able to invade other countries, cut off the oil supply to countries he doesn’t like. I’d say that this social influence is way out of proportion to his salary.

Although guys like Richard Branson, Donald Trump and Warren Buffett are probably making about a thousand times more than George W Bush, their social influence is much less. Their ability to shape reality is much more limited.

Let’s look at another example of “social power”, Steve Jobs isn’t in the same category as some of the tycoons, but his social cachet in dreaming up the iMac and the iPods give him unprecedented social power in shaping popular tastes (About 9 out of every 10 MP3 players sold is now an iPod).

On the Internet Marketing arena, you’ve heard me bandy the terms “social traffic” and “social networking” about. Is it the same as Web 2.0? some have asked.

On the surface of it, it looks similar, the Web 2.0 (or social media guys) use Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist, forums – these are the same tools I use.

Where we differ however, is my focus on the “inner game” of Internet Marketing.

Social power can be simplified in the following manner: You are either an influencer OR a follower.

Influencers tell you to do something, and you’re likely to do it.

Is this the same as power and authority?

Not quite – authority is something that’s given to you because you’re a police officer or a judge or a senator, social power is conferred, it’s informal, and at the same time it can be more powerful than formal power.

Are you lost yet?

A lot of people think they understand social marketing/social power, and they think it has to do with email or site spamming, but it’s actually a whole lot more than that.

I’m planning to get a speaking slot at Affiliate Summit West, where I’ll talk more about the inner game of Internet Marketing.