5 Must-haves for Making it in Internet Marketing
>> Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Successful online businesses don’t come easy or we’d all have one—right? It is a hard game, and there are plenty of people who never make it, but the ones who do make it have a pretty good life indeed. And if you’re the type who was inspired by the Four Hour Workweek and loved Tim Ferris’s idea of tramping around the globe and leveraging currency differences in some of the best place son Earth, it doesn’t take all that much money for a good internet marketing business to set you free.
So what does it take to create a successful online business then?
1. Ridiculous Work Ethic
Cast your assumptions aside – internet marketing success takes A LOT of hard, hard work – at least in the beginning. Most big-timers have put in massive amounts of time and energy to get their businesses where they are today. Sure, now they may be coasting now – although many learn to love the grind and just keep creating – but most have paid their dues.
Be prepared to put in 120% effort, as they say, and work while your friends and family are sleeping. Keep your eye on your dream, and push on.
2. Money to Invest
While it is possible to start successful online businesses from scratch, in most cases, it will take some money to get going along the way. Now, most costs, like web hosting, a domain name, and a quality autoresponder program, are quite cheap, but there are other costs you may not be taking into account until you get your feet wet.
I’d say a major one is skills. Learning things like graphics design, web design, and marketing itself – these things cost time and money. You can hire a quality freelancer to do some of them, and I recommend that with the most important ones, but if you want quality, be prepared to pay.
Another thing that costs is knowledge. You can find anything you want for free – or come up with them through your own through processes – but unless you want to grind away for years at this craft, it’s better to find someone highly successful to emulate, in which case you’ll likely need to pay for their knowledge.
Finally, if you don’t want to do all this while working a full-time job, you’d better have some money saved up – to last a good chunk of time. I highly recommend freelancing as a way to fund your internet marketing journey.
3. The Ability to Learn
Do you have the ability to learn new skills and the energy to keep after them until you have achieved mastery? In many cases, that’s what it takes, and while everyone says they can learn and love to do it, true learning is rare in our culture. Just look how often the people around you have made actual changes in their life if you don’t believe me.
4. Unrealistic Goals
Like any successful entrepreneur, you need to be somewhat of a dreamer. And the ability to stand behind those big dreams when no one else has faith in you is even more important in this business because all your friends and family will be there telling you it’s a sham.
5. Guidance
Finally, nothing is so valuable as solid guidance in the internet marketing world. It is hard to find someone you can put your faith in, but if you don’t find someone then you will find yourself running down one path after another, never staying on one long enough to get results.
I highly encourage you to find one person who you respect and trust that is doing very well for themselves, and follow them. Once you’ve mastered what they are teaching and begun making money, then you can begin to study someone else and keep building on your knowledge-base to emulate the successful online businesses that are already out there.
