“Things that don’t work” part II: “Lack of Focus”

Among the many reasons that it took me so long to get going in a positive direction in internet marketing was that I was trying too many things at the same time. My email inbox was already a veritable flood-plain of business opportunity notices, marketing programs, get-rich-quick scams, and outright spam. Well, being a sucker for good advertising copy – I checked out a lot of programs and actually signed up for several of them.

One day I was chatting with a fellow marketer in one of the Yahoo Messenger “Small Business” rooms and we had a nice long chat about what we were into as far as our internet marketing activities. We decided to do a little “internet marketing quid pro quo” … I joined one of his free programs – he joined one of mine. We both thought it would be an easy way to get a signup and show some progress in our efforts.

As I was signing up for this colleague’s program – I was informed that the username was already taken. Dang! I was a bit put off, because I have a fairly unique username that I was using for that particular program. Then it dawned on me that the person who took that name….was me. It must have been some weeks/months earlier that I had already signed up for this program.

That was my “Uh-oh moment”. An “Uh-oh moment” is somewhat like the “Ah-Ha moment” that gets bandied about in our circles – but it is more of a negative. It is not the “Ah-Ha, this is how it works” realization - rather it is the “Uh-oh, that is not how it works” reality. I realized then that my focus was non-existent and I was over my head in too many programs.

I realized that my internet marketing prowess was lacking. It helped at the time that I was in weekly contact with a good networker who had been mentoring me, because I remembered his coaching of “consistent and focused effort”, (which he was focusing on me consistently). I felt at that time that my internet marketing skills were akin to someone constantly adjusting the rabbit ears on his/her TV antenna. (you will only relate to that if you are over 40 – and if you relate to it – how much aluminum foil did you use to “improve” your reception?) I was basically trying anything and everything. Call it the “sawed-off shotgun” approach.

At the height of my “lack of focus” issues, I had signed up for no less that 24 marketing programs. The categories of these programs included: a) traffic generators b) self-proclaimed training programs c) advertising programs and d) auto-responders. Most were free to join – but had the obligatory “Silver”, “Gold” and “Platinum” levels also.

With 24 different programs active – how can anyone new to the industry capitalize on anything? It is obvious to me now that I did not know what I was doing. In my haste to “make x-thousand in my first x-days” (fill in the wild claim…you have heard them all I am sure) I realized I was doing it backwards. I can’t name any successful company/corporation today that broke ground w/ a wide variety of goods and services – only hoping to hone in on one that worked. Instead, the successful companies, corporations, small businesses and home business entrepreneurs have basically followed the model of focusing their efforts on targeted markets – then as success comes, expanding to include new products and services.

Friends, you have to find your focus on how you can attract others to your program. Otherwise you will find that your lack of focus is just another item on the list of “things that don’t work”

Things That Don't Work: Part 1: Online Surveys

“Things that don’t work” part 1: Online Surveys

Online surveys sound good at first. The ads that you see for surveys can actually sound enticing: “Make $500 a week or more from home!” Well I will not say that it is impossible – but I will admit that I am just not willing to do it.
I joined 6-7 survey sites last year and had little success. Granted, I did not invest a lot of time in them. But one site that I did pay particular attention to was a disaster. I took some 31 surveys from this site and was disqualified 26 times. The worst part is that I had to answer 5-10 questions before they DQ’d me. And it was usually the same 5-10 questions every time. You would think that since they took the time and effort to set up web pages that took all my personal info in registering for the site – that they could have also asked these same 5-10 qualifying questions and stored the data in a profile. No, you had to go through the same interrogation for each survey and invest 5-10 minutes in simply qualifying!

After a couple weeks I decided to donate the $2.70 that I had “earned” from the site – and move on to something else.
To take a further examination into online surveys, let us consider this scenario. Say a survey site is offering $5 per survey taken (very liberal figure) and that you can crank out 4 in one hour. That would mean that you would need to use 25 hours each week to earn the $500. That is $20/hour – not bad money at all.

If a person has 3-4 hours a day that they are willing to spend answering survey questions – then yes, a nice bit of supplemental income will be theirs every month. If this is you – and its what you like – and you see a nice supplemental check every month – then God bless you.

For me however, it is only an hourly wage – and I already have one of those based on my salary. The time that is needed to actually see an income from taking surveys is fixed. There is no residual. No spillover. It is finite. It is done. It flies in the face of the basic concept of network marketing, internet marketing, social networking and all else.

Picture 2 people w/ a real desire to begin making money from home and/or starting a home-based business. Both people have an extra 3 hours a day during the week and 5 hours on the weekend to spend for the specific purpose of earning extra income. They will each have 20 hours a week to spend on their efforts. Fred spends his 20 hours diligently answering surveys. Sally spends her time learning about internet marketing, social networking, internet advertising, etc. After a week – Fred will probably have more money in his/her PayPal account than Sally does, because he is actually getting paid for the work he does – while Sally is studying, practicing and experimenting. The same will be true after week 2 and week 3 and maybe even weeks 4 and 5. After a while though, if Sally has found a niche and is expending consistent and focused efforts on growing her list of contacts, permission lists and her web presence – then her Paypal account is going to fly right on past Fred’s. It may take weeks – it may take months – but at some point the foundation that she has laid for her future home business will result in ongoing residual income. Fred’s surveys will never see this.

If you are one who is happy with the extra income you gain from taking online surveys – I am happy for you and don’t want to discourage you, or rain on your parade, etc. But I do have to tell you that if you could take that 2, 3 or 4 hours a day and use it to promote yourself, your product, your business or opportunity, and do so in a consistent and targeted manner – then you will be light years ahead of where you will be by your hourly job of answering online surveys.

My internet marketing mentor, Larry Brauner, says it best:

"Survey sites, get paid to read e-mails, and get paid to do whatever else sites appeal to people with lots of time and no money. The best way to make money is to refer people to products and services that they really need and are fairly priced. That's a win win."

Coming up… “Things that don’t work” part II: “Lack of Focus”

Things That Don't Work

I have been involved (at some level) in internet marketing for over a year now and I think that I can promote myself as an expert in one of its aspects – that being “what doesn’t work”. In fact – I think I am an expert now in the field of “what doesn’t work”.

With the knowledge that I have gained over the past year and the expenses that I have incurred – I have created a nice list of things that don’t work.

I have found that there are actually two benefits from “things that don’t work”. (I love taking negative experiences or events and turning them into positive outcomes, forecasts, and even realities – why else would I write a blog about things that don’t work?)

The first benefit is taxes. Its tax-season for many (I filed in early Feb because I knew my daughters were helping me get a nice chunk of change back from the gov). Uncle Sam through his relationship w/ the IRS has some specific guidelines as to benefitting from “what doesn’t work”. They don’t like the home-business owners who have a list of things that they spent money on that did not work. For the 2007 tax year I was able to write off a nice bit of change for the things that did not work. I would suggest a book titled “Lowering Your Taxes – Big Time” by Botkin for some good information on what you can do about writing off your home business expenses. Be warned this benefit has an expiration date. If you write off a couple grand this year and show little if any income….it may not work next year. The pencil-wielding accountants at the IRS will call your HomeBiz a “Hobby” and disallow your write-offs.

The second benefit that you can realize from “things that don’t work” is the experience you gain. (The school of hard knocks has more successful graduates than all Ivy League schools combined.) There are hundreds of great quotes about famous people who failed time and again – yet learned from their mistakes and their fruitless attempts – only to rise to later successes. I hope this is you. For that matter I hope it is me too.

Ah … a third benefit just came to me. I will tell you about it w/ tongue firmly planted in cheek. In the case that you got into the internet marketing arena to help get your family out of a financial crisis – then turn the positive into a negative. Expand the “3-ft rule” that they teach in MLMs. Here is how:

When the mortgage company calls and wants to know when you can make the house payment – go ahead and get things settled – then promote your business to the associate who called you. Everyone is a prospect, right? They called you and took you away from your home life – turn it into your favor. Call it Debt-management meets Social Networking.

Tongue in cheek aside, I would love to hear an experience from someone about this. I am sure that its been done. And I would also think that the person who can do this – will not be in financial crisis for an extended time.

So there you have it, friends. I intend to share some of those “things that don’t work” experiences in this blog thread over the next few weeks. I hope that you enjoy it and I hope that I can follow it up with some ideas along the lines of “things that work wonders” – because that is what I believe will happen for me.