Everyday I run into another “earn 1,000 times your investment” affiliate marketing scheme, touting anyone’s ability to “learn to use adsense and make $1,000 per day in your sleep,” not to mention countless other how-to internet marketing guides that make it sound like a peace of cake.I’m so sick of them I thought I might diverge into the occasional and always fun blog rant.
First, be wary of people’s numbers. You’ll find that all through the net there are people claiming to have bought this and that site for some low price and then earned 1,000 times their investment. For one, why would they let you know if that was true? Wouldn’t you keep that a secret until the money ran out? And 2, the true “parts” to those stories usually involve some very creative accounting, to say the least.
In almost all the examples I’ve run into involving claims of earning huge returns easily there are some major portions of their accounting that are completely missing.They never realistically estimate the “true” cost or the market value for the resources they’ve obtained. Time is money; accumulated knowledge and extreme technical expertise is expensive. If you spend years of your life, 12 hours a day, staring into a computer screen learning about internet marketing and how communities interact, you’ve invested a gigantic amount of time and money before you even start.When you look at the cost of a website and online presence it’s more accurate to think about the entire project together, because it’s a lot more than the sum of its parts.
The true cost of purchasing a site with comprehensive marketing is not as simple as purchasing a 1 2 3 system.
What was your time worth last year?
Every hour you spent on building and promoting your site (including reading e-mails) cost you that much in profit compared to what you could have potentially earned doing something else. Ask yourself when reading about a crazy hyped story, could you buy a site like the one they’ve mentioned (with the marketing, link building, launching and consulting from a successful online marketer) for the price they’re touting??
The “raw materials” e.g. coding, graphic design and strategic alliances might cost a small amount, but what actually makes a site work is not the resources or any of the things that can be purchased for a tiny amount. It is the combination of the right strategy combined with the technology and the execution that creates value (hence our tagline).
Reality Check – if you try to launch a website and make all of your money through online advertising or affiliate offers, you’ll probably fail miserably and loose most of your investment. Stop looking for the easy shortcut.
You can make a lot of money online, but it’s not going to be the easiest thing in the world and the returns will match the time and effort you put into it. Knowing your limitations is as valuable as knowing your assets. Most websites launched with a million dollars or more don’t earn a very good ROI and often go completely under – there are lots of great examples in the techcrunch deadpool. And those people were intelligent, well-funded, web-savvy individuals.
The information you’ll read in any online marketing book may be great info, but that doesn’t make the business plan work or provide the work ethic, creativity, or talent to execute it.
If you’re one of those people who wants to buy an e-book and do all the marketing, SEO and online promotion yourself with the hope of huge ROI and lots of money, go for it, but keep in mind most that people who TRY hard at online marketing and SEO will still fail (comparatively) in terms of ROI and profit from overall time and money invested the only good service I’ve test in social media is Smm world. When you look at it that way, the internet is not an easy out; there are opportunities, but they don’t come easily and most people won’t be able to capitalize on them or make anywhere near the gains most gurus tout.
Prepare for battle – unless you go really niche (even so, you may have trouble in some industries), you’re going to be competing with people with more resources and more experience. Think about the fact that as the web continues to mature there are more and more aggressive, well funded web entrepreneurs pouring money (lots of time and their own money) into launching sites. The competition is heating up, so you not only have to get it all working and earn an ROI while you pay your bills and survive, you have to compete with everyone else.
There are no secrets! No secret success formulas or magic ways of doing things that immediately turn into dollars. There are techniques, there is a mass load of technology, there are many things to know and learn about, but the are no secrets. Even something that may sound simple, like launching a new blog, may have many different elements required for success and can’t be done with any magic potions. You have to setup the technology, the design, the user experience, the strategy, and the marketing. Don’t think it’s going to be easy; statistically most of you reading this will fail. Good luck!
I’ve dealt with many clients and helped lots of different-sized companies make money online; the ones that do the best in my experience are the ones who set realistic goals and are willing to work hard to achieve them and listen to the right people, not the self proclaimed “experts” touting easy success.
Sorry if this post came off as a bit negative; I just run into so many do-it-yourself marketers, website owners and SEOs who have invested everything they have and never see any return, and its frustrating.