Although I’m relatively new to the whole Internet Marketing game, newbies come along everyday who are at square one or close to it. Here are a few tips I would think are the golden first bits of info to latch onto when getting started in IM.

1) Start TODAY. Don’t put this off any longer. Find something to try and get at it. Don’t worry about getting it perfect …just get it started.

2) Beware of information overload. There a ton of posts on the forums….try to avoid getting stuck reading post after post when you should be “working”

3) Don’t spend any more money than you have to. There are many free ways to do things that cost money. When you first start, you have more time than money so use it to your advantage. Rather than pay someone $37 to do a header graphic for you, spend a couple hours making one yourself. It might suck compared to the others out there but you’ll have learned something and at least be a step closer to getting your site live.

4) Take everything you read/hear with a grain of salt. Anyone can say they make $97,658,420 per month in IM but the proof is in the pudding. Put their methods to work and see if they make YOU money.

5) Keep an open mind and open eyes/ears. Marketing is all around us online and off and you can steal….I mean borrow ideas from MANY places. Big earners don’t throw money at marketing systems that don’t work.

6) Seek out a mentor or mentors. There are lots of helpful folks on the forums. Find the ones that you like and find helpful and keep in touch with them.

7) Never give up….ever…..EVER. Quitting is the only way to really lose at anything. As long as you’re still trying, you’re still in the game.

That’s a pretty quick and dirty first few but it’s a good start and it’s also advice that if you follow, you can save yourself some grief in the coming months.

Leave a comment and if it isn’t spam, I’ll approve it. Leave spam and I’ll send the boys to put a hurt on you!

See that kiddies? I’m not totally full of shit! Paid Jason Moffatt some props, respected his time and BLAMMO. He posts on my blog. I knew he was a good dude and not avoiding me on purpose and being a dink

He was even nice enough to remind me that I need a new banner…..woops.

That coupled with an unexpected sale today and some donations to my 180km bike tour for MS in July and it’s a pretty friggin’ good day I tell ya.

Everyone go buy yourself something nice and pretend it’s from me. Think nothing of it, I’m just that generous.

Thanks Moffatt, you’re one of the good ones and your show is fun too (when the clothes stay on!)

Mike

So I have narrowed the list of IM guru’s that I observe and learn from down to a few people for the simple reason that if they don’t provide content or at least entertain you then why bother?

I am trying my damnedest to learn all I can about internet marketing as fast as I can and I can be naive at times. I forget where I discovered Jason “Profit” Moffatt but I found him to be a lot like me in some ways so I got on his list and started to keep an eye out for him. He seemed like a pretty cool guy so I dropped him a line (Facebook I think) I never heard back so I asked him if he got it, he actually replied and said no so I sent it again and I never heard from him again.

He’s got a post on his blog on the 24th that basically says that he’s got a huge list and he handles his own emails so he doesn’t have time for the time wasting “woe is me, please help me” kind of emails. When I first read it, it kind of stung cause although I’m sure I didn’t send him a bleeding heart email, I’m sure I did ask for advice. The point is, he likely gets asked for advice A LOT and why should he bother helping people out when he had to figure it out on his own (or so I assume).

On a cooler point, I was watching Jasons ustream broadcast last night and he actually mentioned one of my websites (www.cruisevacationparadise.com) on his show! I thought that was pretty cool. He didn’t give the URL but he did say that he checked it out which means he must have read my email.

I mention all of this for 2 reasons:
1 - Someone asked on the Warrior Forum how they can find a mentor
2 - People THROW themselves at Jason on the ustream chat sometimes and it’s a bit gross

On the “find a mentor” front, I have been VERY lucky in that I have a few mentors that I check in with regularly to ask questions and get info from. I don’t pay them and I never asked them to be mentors I just did what we’re trying to do in IM anyway which is to build relationships. I’ve become pretty good friends with a couple of them and it’s relieving to get their help.

Will any of us be able to get mentoring from Moffatt, Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson of any one else on their level? Maybe, but I doubt it.

if you want to try, maybe take a different approach. Instead of emailing and saying “my life’s a mess, I have no job…wife is going to kick me out, dog hates me and I need $150,000 by 8 o’clock tonight, please help”, you’re going to have to take a more subtle approach. Get on their lists, watch their posts, learn from what they do, watch their silly ustream shows and make useful comments.

That brings me to the other point which is the way peeps throw themselves at J-Mo on his Ustream. I was watching it thinking “man, if I could spend one hour with this dude, I would be all set…he’s got the answers” but I didn’t want to come off as a dork or be too pushy. J-Mo’s laid back and rocks the surfer thang so I doubt he could handle “uptight”. I figured it was a bit of a lesson in persuasion. How do I get this guys attention and get some damn info out of him that will help me grow my business?

From what I saw, I think the things to do (in Jasons case anyway) are: register on Ustream with your real name, watch his show, post frequently enough to have him notice you but not too frequent to be annoying like the a-holes he had to ban, ask intelligent questions.

There you have it. Your first free mentoring session. Let’s face it kiddies, Jason started from nothing just liek the rest of us and he’s just a person. I’m sure he’d love to help us all out and have a big Xbox/surfing/Goji juice party but he’s just one dude trying to make it as well.

I hope everyone gets some help and I also hope you all go help someone else. You probably know more than you think….go log into a forum now, find a post that you can actually help someone with and help them out.

I also hope that surfing super slacker sees this post and replies….but I doubt it. He’s helped me out and doesn’t even know it! Thanks Uncle MoFo

Peace,
Mike

Ok, so I’m a little behind with keeping up with these posts. Is anyone even reading them?

Anyway, I’ll give you a few days worth of Russell’s desktop mentoring to catch us up a bit.

Day 7 – Call (800) 272-6871 xt. 123 for your free coaching call.

Day 8 – Getting your site online
- Domain name is $8-10/year
- Get one that’s easy to remember
- Get a .com (no .net etc.)
- No hyphens

Day 9 – Setting up your website
There are 3 types of websites:
- Squeezepage
- Salesletter
- Blog

Homework – Go get a minisite designed

There you have it. Pretty basic stuff I guess but at least he’s taking us step by step. I do still feel that he has omitted a couple very serious steps. Namely they are selecting a niche and researching the niche for market interest.

I know he had the Ask campaign deal, but if you picked a dud the first time, really you would be stuck at that phase re-doing your Ask campaign over and over until you found a niche with some serious interest.

Be back tomorrow-ish with days 10-12.

If you’ve ordered Russell Brunson’s Dot Com Secrets Wealth Building Portfolio, drop me a line to let me know how you’re getting on with it. If I don’t get any feedback about this sucker soon, I’m just going to dump the updates and forge on myself.

Thanks
Mike

While I was out on my roadbike today, although it’s a no-no, I had my iPod on and was listening to Russell Brunson’s newest product called Affiliate Evolution.

Some people just hate these Internet Marketing Gurus. I find it hard to hate anyone, but some do annoy me. That said, I do find the Gurus very interesting. I mean, sure it could all be smoke and mirrors and they could be full of shit about the amounts of money that they make, but some of them seem to have a VERY good story if that’s the case and they really are broke.

While Russell and Stu McLaren were talking away, I was thinking about what I’ve learned in my short Internet Marketing career and what differs from us unknowns in the trenches and the Guru’s. We unknowns are writing ebooks, doing graphics, affiliate marketing, writing articles, flipping websites, writing scripts, doing SEO for other marketers etc. and is that what the Guru’s are doing?

If we want to make the kind of money that the Guru’s profess to be making, shouldn’t we be taking a look at what is is they are doing and see if we can’t model it? They say success leaves traces right?

Mike

I was out on my roadbike today (yes a PEDAL bike, they do still make those) and I was kicking ass just pushing along fighting the wind and wishing I was home. My legs ached and my lungs worked hard and I looked at the road ahead and even though I was tired, I HAD to press on because I was 30 kilometers from home, had no cell phone, and no other way home.

After my ride, I was out grocery shopping with my wife and daughter and we bumped into a friend who has 2 small kids. Her husband fell from the rafters of a barn a few months ago, suffered massive trauma and died a few days later. She possesses a strength that I have a hard time grasping.

While these situations are drastically different, having them both happen in one day led me to realize something about life and the reasons people fail at things. The reason is that we allow ourselves to have options with failure being one of them.

Think about it:
- Dieters give up on eating healthy and getting fit because they have the option to eat crappy foods and be lazy.
- Smokers fail to quit because they give themselves the option to just go buy more smokes when they can’t hack it anymore.
- The unhappy 9-5 worker keeps slugging away at their dead end job that they hate because they are afraid to reach out and take a chance on a new venture and they have that cushy comfortable spot to fall back into.

The list could go on and on.

I am a part-time musician and I once read an interviewer with a guy called Mike Portnoy from the progressive rock band Dream Theater. The interviewer asked Mike what he would have done had music not panned out for him. What was his back up plan?

Mike told the interviewer that he never had a back-up plan as they are just an excuse to fail and they allow you a way out. He decided he wanted to be a professional musician and from that point on he refused to let anything stop him. Mike has gone on to win more drumming awards than any other rock drummer.

So I ask you? What will you let stand in your way of you reaching your goals and dreams? Never quit, remove it as an option and I think you’ll be surprised at what you’re able to achieve.

Mike

On day six Russell covered something that I can’t wait to get into which is outsourcing. Outsourcing is when you take a task that you either do not have the time to do or simply don’t have the skills to pull off on your own and you pay someone else to do it.

Russell’s favorite places to outsource to are: Scriptlance.com, guru.com, rentacoder.com, and elance.com

When Russell got started, he hired a dude named Cyprian from Romania to create his first product called zipbrander. On these outsourcing sites you list the project that you want to be completed and workers will bid on it. In Russell’s case, it got did all the way down to $20. Russell paid Cyprian a $100 bonus since everything went so well and Russell still sells zipBrander to this day for $67. You can check it out here

The Day 6 project is to outsource something on Scriptlance.com

I have lots of ideas and not much time so this is one exercise I might just do!

I’ll do my best to keep up with the updates from now on, so stay tuned!

Mike

Ok, let me stray from the course a bit again. My little sister and I used to be video game junkies. We’d sit for hours playing super Mario Brothers which might explain the grades we received in school.

While our grades may not have come far as we progress through school, but video games sure have! My little sister has four little kiddies of her own now and she decided to buy them an X-box 360 for Christmas this year.

So she calls me up and says I that I just have to come over and play rock band with her and the kids since I am, after all a rock star in my own right! The first thing I noticed was that playing guitar on rock band was way harder than playing guitar in real life. Needless to say I sucked at it and my nephews kicked my butt. After the kids took off upstairs, my sister pulled out another game that we just had to play called Saint’s Row.

Man oh man was a blown away at this game! It’s basically a gang war style first-person game where you have to run around the city stealing cars, pimpin’ Ho’s, shooting people, doing drugs, getting drunk, and building street cred.

For us adults it was a smashup goodtime, but I just can’t see kids under 16 playing this game. Maybe I’m just an old fart but the scene at the start where the gang conflict goes down and everyone gets killed seem a good time to send the kiddies upstairs to brush their teeth.

Once the heads were on the pillows though, it was time to take the trash off the streets! Thank God I’m not a video game junkie anymore but that was so much fun I see how people get addicted to it.

She says next week we’re going to try Grand Theft Auto IV…lookout thugs, here I come!

Mike

On day five Russell covered something that really interests me… product packaging. that might sound extremely boring to you, but I find it fascinating how people’s minds work. You can offer something to someone and have them be totally uninterested in it, and then you can present them the exact same thing packaged in a different manner and they will eat it up!

In the day five video, Russell shows a couple of books and then shows the exact same books recorded on CD. If you know Russell’s background, this may not seem like a big deal as he is a self-professed marketing material junkie, but I can attest to it first hand that different packaging sells.

I recently picked up an e-book called The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It was handy to read the book at work on my lunch, but then I got busy and didn’t have time to read so I got the audio version. When I was at home, I didn’t want to sit around and listen to the audio file so went out and bought the actual printed book version. No wonder Ferriss only works for hours a week…people like me are paying his bills!

So the point of Russell’s lesson for the day was that you can release a book (or an e-book), you can record an audio file of yourself reading the book, you can make a video about the book, or you could even hold a seminar teaching the book’s contents.

Speaking of books, I know of some great books and cruising. You work hard and you deserve a vacation… the best value for your money when vacationing is cruising. Don’t be a chump and pay too much for your cruise…go buy my books and save money, time and aggravation on your cruise vacation

Mike

The lesson for Day 4 was to collect questions and write an outline on what your business will teach people. Russell claims that our ask campaign should have collected about a hundred questions so far.

I think there’s one major flaw in this so far… what if someone has no niche chosen nor do they have any idea what niche to choose?

I haven’t been participating myself at this point, as I’ve been doing a little research into keyword research and niche selection.

Before we continue on to day five and six, let’s go back and recap the days we’ve covered so far:
Day 1 - watch welcome video, download desktop mentor, join 90 day challenge, study content.
Day 2 - monetize your ideas
Day 3 - 3 rules: always ask first, create an outline, what’s your big idea?
Day 4 - collect questions and write an outline

Well, there it is so far. Stay tuned for day five and we’ll see where that takes us!

Mike