Ebooks Won't Give you the SECRET - Keep your wallet in your pocket

[James Richardson]

Thank you for making such a great forum

Linda is exactly right about newbies starting with a Internet Marketing sell approach. Today, your words of wisdom caused me to do the inevitable and focus most on my niche blog.

I am a huge hyprocrite to tell another person how great a program is, if it does not line my wallet. I do see a need for learning Internet Marketing strategies to help me promote my other niche.

I came to the Internet looking for hope a month ago. I made only a few hundred promoting Internet Marketing programs, so far. My biggest problem has been my self discipline. Somedays I am like a chicken with his head cut off.

I am not technically savvy, so I stay away from programming, and hosting. I believe that time management and your schedule is what starts the ball rolling. I found myself so mesmorized by squeeze pages and sales pages in the beginning.

I see that hard work, and consistency will slowly produce results. I don't have the money to experiment with PPC, so SEO and video marketing are what I am focusing on. I am thankful that there are forums like this to help out newbies like myself.

 

[William Aicken]

What all of you people are saying is just so relevent.

How I approach I.M. is as follows (after getting over the initial hurdles):

1. Choose only, say one or two mentors - don't try to follow too many so called experts.

2. Choose one type of business model and one project and implement that particular project to a level of completion where you are getting results, including a decent level of optimization, testing and measuring. Do this before jumping into the next project. This will allow for proper learing and experience.

3. Before commencing a days' work (or evening work as it would apply to so many of us), really plan what you want to achieve for your session. I've taken the advice of Brendan Nichols who talks about the NEXUS POINT. This is the activity which brings in the sale, or in the case of IM the activity which brings traffic to your site.

4. Above all, consistent application of knowledge (a little every day). After a year or so you will know so much, and be so much clearer, and achieve so much more.

Best of luck (ie effort)...

William

 

[Jack Wevers]

Wow that's quite interesting. I have to agree with Jon that experience is very important but what is wrong with reading E-books?

The people that wrote them want to share their experience and I believe that there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[durrenmatt]

lol yea...i have had many clients which wanted me to promote their ebooks...so i've read quite a few and i can say i totally agree with the statement "Ebooks Won't Give you the SECRET - Keep your wallet in your pocket "

 

[victorm]

nice argument, you just gave me this idea - I could rehash your posts and views and write a report (sic!) to distribute freely on the internet, with a bunch of carefully sprinkled affiliate links to "serious services" I trust. would it make a few sales? you bet!

this is how rehashing works - there is a chain of dilution when it comes to useful information. I like the bh methods though, that sell in "limited" numbers to avoid saturation, another sweet marketing ploy for noobs.

 

[lora.john]

I totally agree with you linda, I am a big victim of all these ebooks secrets, they are all useless, I have spent over 1000$ on these, I was trying to learn and I found out it is not a source of knowlege.

 

[inneredges]

I personally bought about 2000 ebooks recently from everywhere on the web. I havent read more then 10 cuz theres just to damn many.

I agree with Linda, very good advice. I am having some issues finding my niche. . . so if anybodies got some good advice about that I'll take it, lol.

 

[Slygun]

I am learning this the hard way and you are so rite Linda Bequet. I would like to say that there are some good courses out there but they are like finding a needle in a haystack! I just purchased a course from clickbank called “Copy The Blueprint". It was the worst scam course on affiliate marketing you could ever imagine. Some kid acting like he was some Millionaire.
Warning: Do not buy that course!

I have been trying all kinds of things and making a little progress day by day. And with these eBooks and stuff I learned that none of them can teach you what you need to learn by experience. They cannot give you the whole picture for your own personal path.

What I do now is that I read them or watch them (but only the ones that I think are targeted at what I am trying to occomplish). I do not expect the whole picture to be revealed. I take in the few and far between tiny Jewels and gem’s that are sometimes hidden in them and use common sense and try to apply them.

It’s like some kind of huge jigsaw puzzle that you have to put each piece into the hole to get the right fit. The process of taking a piece of the puzzle and trying to put it in the puzzle is like the act of doing (getting experience) and when it fits it’s like this huge light comes on in your head.

But the puzzle sometimes changes and is a different picture (scene) for everyone; some pieces may fit for some but not for others. I try to use each piece to see if it fits for my own personal stratagy. Some pieces work for you and some don’t but may for others.

I have the outline of this affiliate marketing puzzle completed. Now it is time for me to fill the center and each day, little by little, the pieces are starting to fit. And dam it! I am determined to figure it out! Someday I will be successful. And so will anyone that sticks to solving it. And this site helps to make those goals be reached.

We dont need to spend tons of money on those ebooks and courses. The answers are here. You just have to find them and apply them to your own personal puzzle.

So thanks Linda Bequet,

Sometimes a good dose of reality needs to be shown to make your goals be realized.
It's like a good kick in the pants when your daydreaming that makes you wake up and start doing what you need to do each and every day.

 

[inneredges]

Very good way to look at things. Theres alot of ebooks that just keep telling you what they are going to show you and they never actually show you what they are going to show you.

However I have found the missing pieces, I think, lol and I am going to try them out. They are good products that I am actually very proud of buying. I will post them here eventually but not right now. I want to make sure they are solid.

 

[Todd26]

I take this advice to heart. I am looking into the niche of debt management and debt counselling. I know this is a huge area that has a ton of uptake right now. Your thoughts on this niche for a NOOB?

 

[boardwalk]

Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. There are good elements in
many of these materials. There's also a lot of hype, but there are also many
members of this forum who use hype or promote hyped up materials as well.
Start banning books ... it goes against values and liberties most of us hold
dear. Maybe next it will be your website that gets blacklisted next?!

Hard work alone does not guarantee success, if it did there would be many
more successful people in this world. It has to be coupled with knowledge
and an ability to impliment that knowledge. These ebooks are part of the
equation, even if out dated ... institutional memory is important because
most things in life are cyclical.

Thank you for this, I couldn't agree more. I started out buying all the internet "secrets". It's hard to know what to do as a newbie, and with all the hype and bull, I ended up with a lot of junk on my hard drive that I could never understand and just not focused on the task at hand: to make sales. Period. Can't say enough about that common sense.

 

[scrollandgun]

The key is just to stick to one method or strategy and leverage the heck out of it. ITs easy to get pulled in 25 different directions in the beginning. If you can find someone who has been in the affiliate marketing game for a while successfully, and work for them for free.

 

[3pancakes]

That is a wonderful suggestion.

 

[debbiesp]

I have certainly been there and done that!

During my first years as an affiliate I spent far more than I ever earned.

I agree with the above suggestion, offer your services to a more experienced marketer, or begin your online career provided other services, such as article writing, backlink building, blog commenting etc.

I think you will find you get far more experience from getting out there and doing simple tasks than by reading a dozen expensive ebooks, and at least you will be earning something rather than spending.

 

[3pancakes]

Very good point Debbie. I didn't even make one penny in my first year as an affiliate and I would be embarrassed to say how much money I spend. I was a sucker, P.T Barnum would have loved me, lol.

 

[Todd26]

Debbie raises some question's for me. How do you find affiliates looking to pay you to comment on blogs? What is backlink Building?

 

[melovemoney]

Linda, you couldn't be any more right. This was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I made when I first started out. Not only would I waste my money on every new e-book, but more importantly I would waste my time.

I would waste my time reading it, then I would waste my time trying to do what the e-book taught me for a couple weeks. I would then move to the next one and try the same thing.

This is such good advice for all of you new internet marketers out there, FOLLOW IT!

 

[johnsamuels]

It is important not to jump from thing to thing without sticking it out, but there are some ebooks worth the money. Not many, but some.

A lot of us would never have even known the first thing about affiliate marketing or SEO if we had not read an ebook.

 

[reapr]

The OP nailed it. Quit Your Day Job was an excellent book and one of a few(and I have hundreds) that I remember or refer back to. I actually bought it when it first came out and found it helped me quite a bit.

I think the money people spend on ebooks is much better spent on tools for promotion and site design. I have been doing this for about 11 years. Once I got over the next new ebook is my magic bullet syndrome is when I was able to make the transition.

Forums and the tool between your ears are the best ways to fiqure out your path to success.

 

[JumpNJack]

Wow!

I really don't mean to come off as "Mr. Contrary" but I must respectfully disagree.

The only way you get experience is by trying lots of things. And, yes, much of the stuff you can try does come from ebooks, seminars, DVDs, etc.

I would concede that it helps to have someone working directly with you who knows the ropes. But you certainly can't discount the valuable information that is contained in ebooks.

Even if it is just a fraction of the millions of ebooks online.

Nowadays, many smart marketers are using ebooks as a calling card -- giving them away FREE for visiting their site (to generate traffic). I believe that this is a very good move.

There are a LOT of good ebooks in circulation online. My goodness don't throw away the baby with the bath water.

Knowledge can come from many places.

But I will agree that "applied knowledge" is what pays the big dividends.


Hey that's my take anyway.


Thanks for listening.


Jack