My big problem with Iming

It is certainly possible to make one huge business but how many people do you know that have built something like Google, Facebook or Twitter?

My personal feeling is that if you have 10-100 little pies with your grubby mitts in them then you have a chance rather than going up against one of the big boys, and there are millions of niches out there...all crying out for someone to show them the way

yeah that's a good way of thinking about it...I guess it is another business modul. It's just a bit too "dynamic" for my liking.

BTW I am not talking about building a Twitter, google etc..although that would have been nice. I am talking about one (small ) business that say makes $150,000 versues 50 smaller ones that make the same.

Hey SloanJim...

Great post I think that having yourself spread around is a bit risky, especially in the early days of anyones im career...

I had this problem, I got caught up in all the hype of the latest and greatest im product... I started off about 2 years ago with ebay... then wanted to have a more automated business then I went into PPC affiliate marketingt, then I wanted to create my own products which is where I am now...

But I was trying to learn all of it at once... Until one day, I spoke to someone here at the forum and they just told me to learn one technique at a time and once I learn the technique I then could outsource the work and then work on another technique and do the same....

I have found this soooo much easier... but it took me about 12 months of frustration and plenty of $$$ down the drain to work this out...

You know what I don't even know if I answered you question...haha

I will tell you, I tend to go on... So i better stop here...

Umm... I hope this helps.
Tas

Yes, many people jump from one idea to the next constantly and that can be a huge drain on your resources...I am trying to build lots of little sites to bring in a small income regularly and that works for me.

I can do so many different niches and I don't think I will lose focus in a while...

Thanks for the advice Sparhawke. I know I've been madly darting from one idea to the next, and it is a drain on time, resources and energy. I need to focus on just one thing, get that right, then focus on the next thing, and so on.

There is just so much to learn, and I feel like I'm in the pre-school child care center.

Lin

ok that's great but I wonder how long it will last for? I guess I am trying to say every business on the net seems to have a much shorter shelf life than offline businesses. Your edge can be eaten away from every corner of the planet.

Build one, get it earning, and then move on. When that plate starts slowing down, move back and get it spinning properly again. sometimes plates fall and break, just sell them and get a new plate spinning!

I feel the same, I currently make my money from a large collection of sites but the majority of the money I make from them goes into a big project I'm curently working on.

I suppose they are kind of a means to an end, I will most likely sell them if my upcoming project takes off as planned.

Cheers,
Danny.

I think you are portraying two extremes, the two ends of a sliding scale of possibilities in IM:

On the one end you have: Building one big business and concentrating on just that.
Pro: Keeps you focused, you can pour all your effort into that one business, build your brand etc.
Con: If that one thing doesn't work out, goes out of style, is replaced by something bigger and better or anything else goes wrong, you might lose everything in a very short time (all eggs in one basket).

On the other end, you have affiliates chasing the hottest trends, pimping products in pre-launch in order to get as many people as possible to sign up through their afflink for a limited offer (see Magic Bullet and others), pumping money into PPC for a CPA offer that might disappear any time, doing loads of promotions all at once.
Pro: If any one revenue stream gets cut off, you have all the others to fall back on. Since you're constantly building and innovating, you automatically adapt to new situations and are not overwhelmed and defeated by them (something that happens to big businesses quite often).
Con: Not easy to focus, no rest, questionable sustainability.


But keep in mind that there are many shades of gray between these two extremes.
Let's say you are building one major website, with the personal branding and all that, but you also have some mini-sites in several, small niches. You spend most of your time working on your main project and some of the time tweaking your niche-sites and building new ones.
From time to time, a CPA offer comes along, that fits one of your niche-sites perfectly and you build a small landing page there and drive some paid traffic.
For your main project, you make a product (ebook, video-course, software, whatever) and sell that. Affiliates also sell that product for you.
Throught collaboration, JV's and such, you maybe come across an opportunity to do a project with another marketer in a niche tangetial to yours and you co-create another product.

What I'm trying to say with this is that it's possible to grow a real business more or less organically, without having all your eggs in one basket and without having to chase trends and spin plates all the time.

I agree with ShaneRQR.

Whether you begin as an affiliate marketer or with any of a number of other focuses, you can work at mastering that skill while learning about and branching out into other areas. The truth is that it's not wise to 'put all your eggs in one basket' but in the beginning most of us only have one basket with a limited number of eggs. However, none of the techniques we use exist in a vacuum and so as we learn about one we also learn about others - we just have to maintain a focus on our primary concerns.

As we progress in our IM career we are likely to find ways to minimize the work needed to maintain our current focus (many of us outsource or find other ways to autopilot the workload) and therefore, we can add new methods to our arsenal because we have time to learn and focus on those. Eventually any one of us could be involved in several different aspects of Internet Marketing and doing well with each of them.

Yes, most IMers spread themselves to thin and pay
for it with stress, low time productivity, low efficiency
and nearly no money in pocket.

That's why you need to build your business in a systemized manner,
so that you can plug in any kind of promotion any time.

That's why they say "the money is in the list", because if you
have a mailing list, you don't have to jump through hoops
to promote the next hot product.

All you have to do is to send a couple of emails and walla-you're done!

Igor