“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”