Getting Started

Alex,

The biggest obstacle when I started out was being overwhelmed. What I did to get past this was to take action no matter what.

This is a business and you're the CEO of your own business. In other words, you never let any obstacle get in the way...

When I first got started... one of biggest obstacles was getting out of the mode of finding a get rich quick opportunity. Finally, I settled down and learned everything I needed to know about IM/Affiliate Mktg., and then developed a system.

Take action

I had found people to help push things me along as well as sat down and took a gander at my current mindset.

Don't over analyze things

I stopped thinking and just acted until it was time to think.

Nothing is as complicated as you can make it seem.

Not really sure how I got over this, honestly I still deal with it from time to time.

Don't pretend to know something you don't, it's great to set yourself up as an expert in a certain niche. Just make sure you are the expert you claim to be.

I stopped talking unless I had something I knew or felt pretty good about speaking..

Don't buy a **** load of products. The only thing you should absolutely spend money on is outsourcing tasks, web hosting, auto responder and a domain name.

I stopped buying a lot of things. Put it down to the needed and then gradually bought things to help me learn (After I earned that money from my marketing..)

Hi Alex,

Great question for your first post.

The biggest problem for almost every new marketer is lack of action. It was mine, and still is sometimes today. (I have three projects in process right now, and if I don't start focusing soon, my wife is going to hit me in the back of the head.)

It is easy to get caught up in evaluating, seeking, and playing, instead of putting your head down and working.

Choose a method you want to try, and then just put your head down and start working the plan.

All Night Cafe's comment about list building is CRITICAL. It is the way to have repeat customers, not just one hit wonders.

My preferred method is article marketing. Which is a great way to get started free.

Last bit of advice. Fail often. When you do, you are one step closer to success. (As long as you take the time analyze why you failed, make adjustments, and just keep moving along.)

Hi Alex and welcome

I think the biggest thing when you first start is "information overload" and you really do not know what direction to go. You are reading ebooks and watching as many videos as possible.

Think about what you really want from IM. Is it as a business or just a few extra dollars each month?

If you are going to make it a business, you need to know, exactly what niche you are going into and exactly what you want out of it.

Some people start by selling other peoples products while others prefer to create their own - but this can be a huge task unless you are a specialist in your niche.

Some people prefer affiliate marketing or joining a CPA Network - it is really up to you and as a newbie it is difficult to know exactly what is available.

It was basically fear of failure and the unknown. You do NOT know in advance whether a website you build will generate any income at all, and it can take weeks or even months to find out. It's very easy to get stuck in this waiting phase and do nothing (even after completing your first project), which is of course the wrong thing to do and will not do anything for your IM progress.

yes its best way to marketing your business and any website is article marketing and you will reach your target very soon with increase your SERPs

Hi Alex,
The biggest obstacle I faced when getting started is procrastination. And yes, everybody procrastinate, no doubt abt the more experienced marketers.

So how I overcome procrastination? Focus.

Focus means working to get things done once you got your action plan, action steps drawn out.

It took me 3 years to focus getting my marketing system up and running, start making some decent money online.

There is one person who helped me stop procrastination.

He is my mentor.

To me, my mentor is a life saver.

He makes me believe that everything is possible and he show me the way.

I believe in him and trust him.

I follow the exact steps he taught me and I started making money for the past 4 weeks this month.

The feeling is really great and amazing.

This is what works for me.

Hope it helps,
Winson

All the posts seem to have the same theme so it must say something. There is information overload taking you to the heights of inflated expectations. Once you work through this phase, you start losing money or make little bits here and there. It is the trough of disillusionment. If you get through that you focus, pick a strategy and hit the first pin in the bowling alley. Once you have that mastered you can apply your skills to knock the other pins off, one by one.

Anyway, that's my philosophy and it reflects my journey in IM. Now I'm having great fun and not so worried about making a killing overnight

Not taking action. I would think and think of ways to earn money and how I could implement a certain system but would never get around to it. On the rare occasion that I did take action, I lost interest very quickly. Then I read about someone my age who started a business online and sold it in 5 years for 100k. It was very easy to replicate so I went ahead and did it and have never looked back.

Hi, Alex - I'd add: Procrastination. Putting off what you know needs to be done.

As they say - just do it!

Good luck - Best - James

It was getting over the fact that IM was not easy. it took hours and hours. no real 'short cuts' exist. you can get help that speeds up the process but you have to put in the time...it aint easy

Wow. Thank you for all your responses. I'm kinda used to slower-paced forums where it can take days to get a response.

I suppose I should take the time to say that I'm about to start a blog on this subject exactly, and wanted to see if there were any reasons other than the ones I had in my head (and the half-dozen hand-written scribbles of articles I've done since yesterday on the subject).

I didn't notice at first that I was doing all of this stuff, and maybe a bit more to delay myself from getting started. But, considering that I've spent a good three years procrastinating by buying products/reading every book ever/signing up for as much free information as possible, I must be really good at delaying myself from starting.

It also has been a problem in other areas of my life. I'm fairly certain that only my intimate relationship doesn't suffer from failure to launch. I've spent four years "kinda" practicing kung fu, and the highly related, yet far more obscure qigong. That changed last week because of an article I read. I have yet to miss practicing at least once a day since then, and I highly doubt that I will ever miss practicing at least once a day from now on.

Here are MY personal biggest obstacles that have prevented me in the past from starting:
1. Information overload - Everytime I saw a clever sales page or a new newsletter or an intriguing book, I had to see what it was about
2. Analysis paralysis - In the months between June and August, I had no less than twelve ideas for businesses fully worked out, that I never acted upon because I took weeks to hammer them out and lost steam before I acted.
3. Fear of the unknown -The above two should make it obvious that this is one of my more base fears.
4. Indecision, Procrastination and Laziness - These are easy to overcome, if you realize that all the things I've listed so far are symptoms of one problem.
5. Failure to commit or fear of committing - This is the real problem, in my opinion. Compared to this, one, everything else seems like it's just an empty excuse now.

I now know that I'm going to turn my life around in a relatively short time. I can safely say this because I made one strong Vow last week that has made a huge difference in my practice, and another a few days ago that has made a massive difference in my work ethic for the creation of a business. I've even taken to bringing paper to work so that I can write on my break. I've asked coworkers about headlines to see if they found them compelling. Now, I'm going to get back to writing my base of good-quality articles for my blog start-up later this week.

Believe it or not, for me I think the biggest hurdle was learning
how to build a proper site.

After discovering Weebly, Xsitepro and Wordpress, things
started to look up.

The hardest part was not having any direction. It's all very well knowing all the tools and how they work but if you don't know how to put it all together in an orderly fashion then it will never quite work. Get yourself a good mentor - someone who genuinely cares about helping people.
Almost invariably you will start by setting up your blog (correctly!)
good luck
Allan

Get off of forums... CREATE something that people will pay for... and sell it.

Biggest obstacle for me was trying to get started, but without enough background knowledge.

Next obstacle (probably just as big) as giving up on methods before I'd really spent enough time on them to expect results.

Hi
The biggest obstacle is to convince yourself,that you can make in IM and when stuck with problems to solve it...To set up a plan and keep with that structure,have solve the problems as a beginner for me.

Never Give Up
Gino

The two things that held me back initially were:

1. Thinking I was incapable of setting up my own websites and handling the technical side of things.

2. Complete confusion about what model I wanted to focus on (and in some sense, I am still absolutely guilty of that still!)

The only remedy I found to these two things was trusting my instincts, taking action and learning from my mistakes and adapting to changes. Once I started working, I started getting results (good and bad) and from those results I could learn adapt, change and move forward.

In other words, I hesitated and did far too much "thinking".

When I was looking for information related to IM on the net, I easily become puzzled and confused until I found warrior forum

Then after I have that information and strategy on my mind, the hardest part is to take action.

One of the ways we keep from taking necessary action is by keeping ourselves busy doing other, less important things. This makes it easier to justify to ourselves and others our lack of action, which we claim is do to lack of time. But busy-ness is not the same thing as productivity. What we really need to do is learn to procrastinate skillfully on the less important things while taking action on the most important things.