Something many marketers don’t talk too much about is that running a business requires a type of mental stamina that many do not possess. Your chances of success are based more upon your mental stamina than anything else.
Developing the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed with your business takes time.
Here’s a checklist of skills the average marketer should develop in order to earn a somewhat decent income:
1. Traffic Generation
2. Email Marketing
3. Product Creation
4. Adopting New Marketing Strategies
5. Develop Systems
#1- Traffic Generation
Most marketers struggle with traffic generation, and there are others like me that pick up bits and pieces of knowledge over time and and implement them. This is part of the reason that online business owners struggle for a number of years before they finally “get it”.
#2 Learn Email Marketing
What’s so hard about email marketing? You just send an email and make money, right?
Well, you have to write content for your list (like this post here) and mix the content pieces in with some good offers, too. Email marketing is IMpersonal relationship marketing. It’s the attempt to build a relationship with people with whom you may never speak… (there’s a lesson right there for ya)… If I wrote promotional emails according to what I was really feeling, it would be direct and straight to the point.
Here’s an example of the type of email I wish I could send out:
“Hi firstname, you need to learn list-building to assure yourself of an online income, so get product XYZ, it’s great and will help you… link here” …
That sentence above is a rather impersonal way to treat people with whom you’re trying to build a relationship. Nobody likes to be bossed around all the time, therefore the relationship cultivation is crucial to your email marketing success.
Email marketing and relationship building requires tact, grace, good subject lines, and geting good at these requires time to develop.
Mental stamina and perseverance is what will make your email marketing efforts successful.
#3- GOOD Product Creation:
Anyone can buy Master Resell rights products and put their name on them to sell as their own, but at some point in time you will want to create your own product from scratch.
You can use PLR, Private Label Rights material to create your own product, write it entirely yourself, or even hire an expensive ghostwriter to do it all for you.
It’s easy to get bogged down with product creation, but it’s well worth doing because you will learn how to write by perservering through this process.
If you use PLR to create products, you first need to buy it, then edit it, then make a sales page for it.
Making a sales page requires that you learn the basics of copywriting, and copywriting is a skill that takes years to develop properly. It takes really good copywriters about 3 weeks to make a good sales page.
Internet Marketing
All of the skill development listed above should make you realize why affiliate marketing is so popular… and why so many people get frustrated with internet marketing…
As an affiliate marketer on the inernet, you can skip the grueling processes outlined above and focus merely on getting traffic to your links, but you still need the traffic generation skills for this, too.
Running your own infoproduct empire requires constant business decision-making and skill development.
However, if you have the mental stamina for running your own business, you will get better at everything over time.
#4 Adopt New Marketing Strategies
Adopting new “strategies” could be considered a fancy term for program hopping, or evidence of a lack of focus, but even I adopt new marketing strategies once in a while.
For instance, I teach people how to develop their niche markets outside of the “IM” arena, and most of my income is derived from this. Once in a while I will delve into a niche, set it up, and drive traffic to it just to say that I did it and that the usual methods still work.
Some methods aren’t as effective as they used to be, and some still are, but the only way to know for sure is to try new things. Marketing on the Internet at its base level still works the same no matter what the target audience is, but it’s still nice to get a fresh new outlook on the world outside of Internet Marketing.
As a business owner, you have to adapt to changing trends and stop doing the things that don’t work anymore. As your business develops you will need to try new things to further your expansion. And this requires more trial and error, frustrations, failures etc… Almost all marketers experience these frustrations and temporary pitfalls.
Those with the mental stamina to keep getting back up after getting knocked down are the ones that will keep succeeding and growing their business…
#5 Develop Marketing Systems
When you’ve been running a business for a number of years you develop certain work habits, and eventually those habits turn into a system that works for you.
Work habit system + Sales funnel = Marketing System
Example of a work habit system:
- Check email twice a day
- Generate Traffic to sites for certain period of time each day
- Work on product creation
- Improve sales copy and conversions
- Tweaking your marketing sales funnel
- …and so on
You can’t develop marketing systems overnight… As a matter of fact, if you plan too far ahead, you’ll soon see that your original blueprint is quite different than what you now have. How do you know if your marketing system is working?
Simple.. Go on vacation for a week and if sales are being made then you know your systems are working.
Do I get frustrated sometimes with running my business and systems?
Sure, but not too often…
Example: I ran a survey and asked people what their biggest concerns were with building their online business and many of the answers were, “ I want to know how marketing works, and how to build websites”
So, upon reading those responses, I was happy that I had the answer to their problem. In fact, I know that I had the perfect product that would answer their questions, address their needs, and resolve their problems.
- I did a good thing there.
- I asked them what they needed
- I provided a resource that would resolve that issue for them.
But only a small percentage of those survey-takers took action on the solution offered to them.
This puzzled me for about 20 seconds, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
Here’s why:
You can’t get too emotionally attached to expected results, or you’ll be riding a roller-coaster of emotions with your online business.
You’ll be riding a “high” when you make sales, and despondent when you don’t.
If you run a business like that you’ll be a basket-case in a few months.
How can you remain even-keeled with your business and keep on plugging away at your eventual success?
Yup, you guessed it…. Mental Stamina
Thanks,
Dan
NOTE: This online marketing guide is 82 pages long, has 12 videos, and is pretty much everything I’m willing to reveal to you for 3 cups of Starbucks java
Other articles you might like;
Daniel McGonagle
If you like my Online Marketing and Internet Business Advice, you should get my Free Marketing Tips Newsletter You can also check me out at Easily Answered.com's panel of marketing experts... Have a productive day! :)
Read More Internet Marketing Posts Below or CLICK HERE To Download This FREE 82-page Report On How To Avoid All Of The Most Common Internet Marketing Mistakes
- 5 Must Have Internet Marketing Tools For Your Internet Business
- Learn How To Start An Internet Business – 3 things I wish I knew when I started
- Internet Marketing Help – Help me help you Issue #1
- How to Start an Internet Home Business – 3 Things You Should Know, and How I Would Start Over
- Do You Undervalue What You Know About Internet Marketing?
Download Targeted Subscribers Wordpress Plugin Here
