If you spend any time browsing Internet marketing forums online you will see a disturbing pattern of people who call themselves Internet marketers. What they really do is give those of us who do the work of Internet marketing a bad name. I have come up with three things people do that will absolutely ruin their ability to make any money online.
All you do is try to sell me crap.
If all you do online is try to peddle products and offers, you might get some traffic and you may even make a sale or two but you will never succeed as an Internet marketer. You see the Internet as a big shopping mall. I see it as a virtual community.
You would never do business with a real estate agent who was constantly asking you to sell your house even when you weren’t in the market. On the other hand if you knew a real estate agent who was a friend of yours, client, or trusted resource you would probably give your business to them. The most successful off-line business people make themselves available as speakers, as charity event coordinators etc.
You think it’s all about Google.
There is nothing worse than an Internet marketer who is just waiting for the next Google update. You might as well be playing the lottery. You can do all the hard work of search engine optimization and Link building, but if your content sucks you have a very slim chance of ranking well.
One of the best lessons I learned in Internet marketing was to give up on Google and pretend they don’t exist. The funny thing is the more I do this the more they noticed me. Google doesn’t want you to try and game their system, they want you to provide value to the Internet community on the whole. Trust me they will reward you for it.
You think communication can be automated.
You’ve set up your auto responder, your drip feed, and probably some sales pitches to automatically be delivered to people who opt in to your list over a period of time. This is a very poor way to communicate with your list. There is nothing worse than getting an e-mail from someone where the message is clearly out of date. The only reason I get the letter is because it’s part of a chain of letters that will be sent to me automatically until I unsubscribe.
If you are building an e-mail list you really need to consider how you will stay current. As a for instance I don’t use drip feeds or auto responders at all. That’s not to say I don’t do any e-mail marketing, I am building a list all the time. The difference is that I mail my list something that is current in the form of a newsletter which gets broadcast to everyone. If I sent a really good e-mail today and you join my list tomorrow, you will simply miss out on that e-mail.
