How’s Your One-Winged, Two-Wheeled Windshield With Handlebars Doing?

How’s Your One-Winged, Two-Wheeled Windshield With Handlebars Doing?

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com. All Rights Reserved.

Internet marketing mentors are forever running into people asking for help – not newbies per se, but people who’ve been trying Internet marketing for two or three years and just aren’t getting anywhere. Recently I ran into this again when speaking both at Mark Hendricks’ Internet Super Stars Conference (ISSC) in Orlando, Florida and again at Ken McArthur’s JVAlert Live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (JVAL) – and I’m sure I’ll run into a few more when I speak at David Perdew’s Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop (NAMS) this August in Atlanta, Georgia.

The first thing I have to ask is always ‘What have you done so far?’ I enquire about the state of their list-building, their blogging, their traffic-generation strategies and what they’re doing with Social Media and Social Networking sites. Most tell me they’ve done this, that and the other thing and none of it works – then they ask if Internet Marketing REALLY works, or if it’s all a sham, a con game or some sort of ponzi scheme…

A bit more digging shows me the problem is usually the same for most of them – let me give you a look at a comparative situation in the offline world first…

You need to get from Point A to Point B. One person suggests you use a car, another says go by boat, one says use a bicycle and the fourth person says take a plane to get there. So you rush home to your workshop and create a vehicle using the wing from a plane, the rear wheels from the car, attach the windshield from the boat and add the bicycle handlebars. You step back and admire your handiwork – a strange-looking contraption for sure, but you’ve combined the wisdom of your four advisors so you KNOW it has to work, right? You try and try and try and try – but get nowhere. Knowing you put in all this time and effort and did what they told you, the problem can’t be you so your advisors obviously don’t know what they’re talking about… Obviously cars, boats, bicycles and planes are useless as transportation, so you might as well just give up and walk.

Do you see where I’m going here – is the light beginning to dawn? Just as in the silly exaggeration above, these people have been getting advice from all over, reading dozens, sometimes hundreds of marketers’ e-zines, reading blogs like crazy and then taking the parts they like and cobbling together a makeshift system for success. They’ve then spent a year or two trying, trying and trying again to make it work, as if expecting that simply trying it again will produce different results…

Is this reality any less silly than the fictional story above it? No – just a LOT more common. And, unfortunately, a lot more expensive both in time and money invested – and lost. In either scenario, if they’d followed the advice of any ONE of the sources they’d probably have made the journey just fine – but by combining the concepts using just pieces of each they’d destroyed their chances of getting there at all.

Yes, you say, but every system can be improved – that’s why I’m taking just the best parts from each!

Really? How do you know? Unless you already ARE successful online you’re in no position to tell which is the best part of any given system, no matter how smart you are. Even many of us at the top haven’t done enough tracking and testing to be 100% sure of what’s working best – they just know it works, and doing more of it works even better, so they’re happy with it.

Be prudent in your choice of whom to follow – make it sure it’s someone with years in the biz, plenty of experience marketing their own products and as an affiliate, someone who’s been successful online for a long time, but also in the last couple of years as the recession changed the business – just because they made a name for themselves a few years back DOESN’T mean they’re in touch with today’s reality. And avoid the new successes who have no background in the biz – there’s no way for anyone to know yet whether they’re the next Internet marketing genius or yet another flash-in-the-pan.

As a starter, use this qualifying list:

* Have they been in Internet Marketing full time for 5 or more years? Had successful products of their own both then and new recently-released products? This is important because it demonstrates sufficient expertise to be able to write successful how-to guides or develop needed software. Without sufficient current expertise, they shouldn’t be coaching.

* Are they also successful affiliates or super-affiliates that you see on the various leaderboards? This is important because coming out with great products can make you successful online with the right JV partners promoting your stuff, but it doesn’t mean you’re a great marketer – or any kind of marketer – just good at product creation.

* Does their Internet marketing style fit with your own personality? If you’re a Type A personality you’ll never stick with it trying to do laid-back marketing. If you tend to be calm and laid back, you’ll get eaten alive if you try gung-ho marketing styles best left to the sharks. And if the style of marketing doesn’t fit you, doesn’t feel right to you, you’ll never excel using those methods.

* Is it group coaching or 1-to-1 mentoring? If you pick things up fairly quickly and are fairly well familiar with online processes and how things work, group coaching may do the trick and costs less. But if you want help with your specific issues, may need special attention understanding the technical side of the web or are really impatient to get ahead fast, pay the extra and take 1-to-1 mentoring.

Top-notch coaching can be expensive – and 1-to-1 mentoring much more so. But if it saves you those first few years of frustration and fumbling around, or puts you on the right track after you’ve been through that, or helps take your 4-figure business to 5, 6 or 7 figures much more quickly, what’s your return on investment? Assuming you’re acting with financial prudence, not using the rent money or going deep in debt to cover the costs, there’s very little you can invest in that will help you as much as good coaching and mentoring – in Internet marketing, affiliate marketing or many other areas of business (and life itself). Just make sure you’ve made the right decision in choosing your Internet marketing mentor and follow that ONE person’s advice until you’ve reached a comfortable level of success!

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Marketing mentor, coach and speaker Doug Champigny has been teaching companies new marketing strategies since the 1970’s, having owned and operated his own retail advertising agency before transferring to marketing online full-time since 1996. A recognized expert in article marketing strategies and the use of creative writing in Internet marketing website promotion, Doug Champigny is the creator of the PowerStart Marketing coaching program at http://www.PowerStart2010.com and the Affiliate Marketing PowerStart coaching program at http://www.affiliate-marketing-powerstart.info and is occasionally available for private 1-on-1 consultations and mentoring as well. Doug is a regular speaker at many conventions and live marketing events around North America – watch for him speaking live onstage in your area soon!

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