Internet Marketing – Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin
Mar 29th, 2010
Do you go to sleep at night and dream of a better life. A life where you do not report to a boss, where you set your own hours and where the money keeps piling in. Have you turned to internet marketing as a means to gradually carve an empire for yourself, so you can find success in a venture other than your 9 – 5 job? Do you wake up in the morning and do your research, read the next sales email in your inbox, realise that the “universe” has just delivered you your guaranteed success opportunity, so you buy the eBook and start yet another online project, despite all the others you can’t find time to complete.
I hear you. At the start of 2010 I had so many projects and purchased domains. Most of these I had put on the back-burner due to lack of time and the next idea. Yet still I was reading those horrible sales emails, looking for the next best strategy. I actually had a handful of websites back then that already were making good money, yet instead of focusing my efforts improving them, I was throwing time and money at Indian article writers, getting them to prepare content for my next AdSense website, my next CPA site or whatever the latest idea I had that was buzzing in my head. I wasn’t even looking at the content they were writing, I didn’t have time. I was simply putting their content into another template, marking it up with advertising code and launching another website. This would be followed by a half baked SEO campaign to see if it attracted traffic and made money. It was ridiculous. I had also literally paid thousands of dollars in 2009 for training courses, none of which were completed.
I woke up in 2010 and realised a number of things. These were (in order of importance)
- I had no pride in what I was doing (I had not even read half the stuff I was launching)
- I was not enjoying what I was doing (The hunt for cash and possible lifestyle in the future was coming at the cost of my happiness today)
- I had too many projects going on so I was doing justice to none of my excellent ideas (and I do have excellent ideas)
- Internet marketing was making me spend less time with my family, when I started in the industry to win more time
- I had hours and hours of training programs to go through, all sitting idle on my hard drive. I may as well have thrown the money down the drain
So I made some New Years Resolutions.
- I decided to not make any information product purchases in 2010
- I decided to dramatically rationalise the number of projects I was working on and complete those before I started any new ones
- I decided to start doing the things I love and make sure I do them well, to bring pride back into my work
Three months into the year, I can now report on these efforts and explain to you the lessons I have learned.
I love to write. This is the thing I do that brings me peace of mind and leaves me full of energy at the end of the day. I believe writing is my “art”. Writing also works really well with internet marketing, as one thing all great websites have in common is excellent content. So the biggest change I have made recently is to move all the time I was spending organising and compiling other peoples work (work that I was not even reading) back into writing. To do this…
I now have only three blogs, to put this in perspective, I have retired four others that I was getting other people to populate with content. I was spending all kinds of time administering these other blogs – dealing with spam comments, approving articles, running SEO initiatives, you name it. The worse thing with these blogs though is that they were just cash grabs. I had no care for the topics, no passion for the content. They are now gone.
Having cut them loose and freed up that time, I can now write my own content on topics I love and am passionate about. The three blogs I still own are this one, my Gold Coast Surf Travel blog and a blog I am using to track my progress as I try to achieve a long term goal of mine, which is competing in the Coolangatta Gold Ironman Race. Each post I make to any of these blogs I can spend time on, ensuring it is of the highest quality. I want to be proud of every single entry, so if anyone asks me about them, I can beam with pride that someone has appreciated my art. I know there are plenty of posts in these blogs already that I rushed, so I am also going back and cleaning them up, ensuring the rushed articles of past will be of the highest quality tomorrow.
I am now only pursuing three business models and all of them are related both to writing and to each other.
The first one is the Ocean Feather Internet Marketing business. This business combines affiliate marketing for passive income, with consulting to SMBs. The affiliate marketing side of it includes creating websites selling other people’s affiliate products as well as writing eBooks to sell on ClickBank.
- With my eBooks, I have decided only to write one at a time. This includes launch and SEO. Only when I believe the whole project is complete will I move on to the next eBook. Any stellar ideas which come in the meantime must be noted in a spreadsheet, but not touched till the current eBook is complete.
- With my affiliate websites, I have chosen three that were already making money and have decided to complete these before starting any others. I have over a dozen other affiliate websites in various stages of incompleteness which I will let fall by the wayside. If the domains come up for renewal prior to completing these three, I will not even renew them. Some I know I will never start again. The three left standing are Dating Down Under, Baby High Chairs and One Cup Coffee Makers. I will not start another affiliate website until each of these is as complete and automated as I can get them.
The second business I will continue is my online surfboard hire business. This is a local business I set up a while ago which is 90% run online. I have some advertising in the hotels etc but other than that, the online model lets me keep the overheads of this business to an absolute minimum. I always have ideas of how I can expand this business though and how I can use the really solid web presence I have already built, to promote other products earning more residual income. All this takes is my time meeting and talking to local business owners who may be interested in JVs and then writing about it… adding quality content to my website.
I have made a list of all these ideas and I am going to knock them on the head one by one. The online surf shop I added earlier this year is a great example of how I started on these ideas, some parts of it are already making money and there is plenty more where that came from.
My final business fits in with with the Gold Coast Surfboards website. In this website and its marketing, I am doing a lot of travel writing. As an extension to this I am going to try and became a freelance travel writer, selling articles to magazines and newspapers. This is the only information product I have allowed myself to purchase this year, it is not even an internet marketing one. I am going to put myself through the course and having had my first article published I will go professional. This means:
- Register a business name
- Build a website
- Get some business cards
- Look for assignments where I can take my family traveling
Its funny. Last year I felt like I was sprinting. Sprinting towards a goal that I could not see was getting closer, so I ran harder and more frenetically. I was running this way, running that way, still never getting closer. Now I don’t feel like I am running anymore. I feel like I am adding value. I feel like I am creating excellence. I feel like I am calmly approaching my goals. When I write and produce something worthwhile, I feel fresh and energetic. I feel enthusiastic and ready to do it again. When I check the financial side of the equation, I am starting to see the impact my new approach is having.
So the big lesson I have learned for 2010 in my business is to not take on too much. To finish this project before I start the next. I am sure these principles can be used in any small business. Lets face it, time is the one thing we always run out of, isn’t it!