Mining for Gold or Selling the Shovels

Note to warriors. This is from a newsletter I sent out to my opt-in list the other day. I got quite a few very positive responses and have been encouraged to share it here as perhaps it will benefit some folks </disclaimer>

There was a blog discussion somewhere to the effect of "consciously" choosing your business path for IM.

That is, there are two distinct paths.

1 - "Mine for Gold" Meaning that we are actively putting up profitable websites aimed at end consumers
2 - "Sell em the Shovels" - Meaning that we are actively selling tools and information to help others 'Mine for Gold'

So an example of Mining for Gold would be putting up a bunch of sites that have unique content and ebay listings and we grab organix search results from google and funnel those searchers to eBay and then eBay pays us a commission

An example of "Selling the Shovels" would be a blog or system in which we teach others how to "Mine for Gold" ie... sharing methods from our (apparent) success.

So consciously choosing one of these paths is very important to our IM career as actually many people make a very critical mistake and get caught in a holding pattern that they can never advance.

What we are talking about here is something called "truthfulness"
Meaning that while truth can be spun, embellished and slightly bended, at the end of the day, what we are telling needs to be "The Truth"

meaning if we decide to go ahead and 'Sell the Shovels' and come up with some sales letter that says "I made $123,345,323 in one hour" well then that isn't the truth. Plain and simple.

If we sell a system and claim that it helped us retire from our day job and we are still punching into the office at 8am, then well that is not "The Truth"

What I am talking about is adding value to peoples experience.

I know it sounds very lucrative to skip the actual "doing" of Internet Marketing and immediately start trying to "Sell the Shovels" - however without personal knowledge and expertise, one cannot with any authority try to help people along their way.

So this is the recommendation.

Unless we are already an expert in our field, for now forget about trying to create and release products aimed at the IM crowd. Ninety Percent of the time these products will not meet our expectations.

Instead take that energy and really focus our efforts on being an expert in on particular niche and method. Not just in theory, but in practice. Do not just study and rehash the methods. But actually put them into practice and make them work.

Find real success. It is out there.

Then once we have uncovered a proven system and have real personal experiences of its success, then we can start to make the transition and spread our system to others. Even if our system only makes us $50 a day. Well that is better than alot of people are doing and there will be value. And just as important "truthfulness"

The end of the story is that until we have some value to share, continue digging in the earth. There is gold in there, but each individual needs to find it in their own way.

That is all for now
-Greg