Beginner: Learn Fundamentals or buy a 'system'?

I'm in favor of understanding fundamentals.

Then you're in a better position to evaluate systems based on those applied fundamentals.

But it's not in a single book, product or even college degree. In fact, it's a life-long journey.

Become a student of business in general. Start one. Fail. Start another one. Succeed.

Oh, and if you've got business fundamentals down cold hard, you can CREATE the systems until your heart's content.

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me how stupid I am though.

My advise to newbies would be to look at the people behind the product. People like Paul Myers, a moderator on this forum btw, Paul, Willie Crawford, Dr. Mani and many others who have been in IM for years are the people you want to hook into.

Learn from those who are successful at what you want to do out here in cyberspace.

Am I missing something Martin?

By the looks of your website, it appears youre already quite experienced :confused:

It depends.

The fundamentals are good- but what fundamentals are you talking about?

The fundamentals of PPC? of SEO? Domain flipping? Affiliate marketing? Facebook? Article marketing?

There are a LOT of fundamentals you can learn.

I've learned that- if you learn too many fundamentals, you get pulled in too many directions.

For example there are guys making 6-7 figures who don't have a clue about SEO. Those were not fundamentals they needed to succeed.

I'll lay out the big problem.

Only 5% of the people selling stuff about internet marketing know what they are talking about. But that isn't the big problem.


It's that of those 5% - - 1% know how to TEACH. And since you are there student, can you see the importance of them knowing that?

For this reason, I really struggle to recommend anything but the online affiliate income course from Simpleology.com. It lays it all out. I was so shocked when I found it. But hey.

I'm not trying to knock other people's courses. I haven't read the entirety of the internet - never will. But in my experience, this has been the only true diamond. Actually lets take just that for a second.

When you first find a diamond, it looks like a piece of carbon. It's black and stained. But once it gets polished - you have something of incredible beauty - something worth paying for and that people WILL pay their hard-earned money for.

Simpleology OAI is that polished stone. The others may have the core information right - but has it been polished yet? Is it understandable? Can you set it in motion with a limited amount of distilling it? I'll let you be the judge.

https://products.simpleology.com/oaispecial/
( This is not an affiliate link )

This is an up-front learning experience. Everything else I've tried was an easter egg hunt. Not my favorite method of learning. The eggs are buried in ambiguous writing and unclear processes.

I think learning through experience is your best bet rather than relying on push button solutions. For example, if you want to use article marketing as a way to generate traffic then spend two or three hours learning the 'basics' of article marketing. Then turn around spend the next 12 to 13 hours actually implementing article marketing. As you gain experience you will discover what works and does not. You will end up with you own systems and a valuable skill that you can monetize actively or passively.

There is no magic button that will make you money for doing nothing. And who would give away something that would make money? Learn the fundamentals and go from there. I've bought soooooo many stupid programs claiming to make me thousands,,, and guess what? ,,,,,,,,,,, nothing happened

Is money your only hope? buy a system and earn. But, you face to a risk what? A slight changing of associated tool can break the whole system. Go with fundamentals.

IM is like Legos.

You get your Legos, and they come with an instruction book.

If you follow the instructions, you get a cool little model that looks great.

Then you take it apart and build something else, but what you build yourself looks a bit crap.

It takes time, practice, and guidance before you can build stuff that looks and works like the stuff in the instruction books.

But any idiot can buy the kit and follow the instructions.

When you don't need the instructions anymore, it's easy to say "these instructions are worthless," but you have to consider the newbie who's sitting there with a pile of blocks and everything he builds is a bit crap.

One of the biggest problems with being a newbie is all the options. The concept of find a hot niche, set up a site drive traffic then adjust, is itself very simple. But when the actual implementation comes it's another story. It all gets complex and you need someone to hold you by the hand and show you how to do each part. The alternative is to just use seasoned outsourcers to do the parts you don't get yet.

If you buy a system, then once it is stop working, you stop earning. But if you know the fundamentals, you can ride the waves and adapt.

Some systems are good for a quick buck but if you want to earn constantly then knowing the fundamentals of business will stand you in a good stead.

I've taken something from everything I've ever bought. It wasn't always what it said I'd get on the box, but hey you live and learn. I'd definitely suggest learning the basics of website creation, seo and the likes so you can understand what it takes to get traffic, customers etc and realise how hard it can be to do those things properly to get results.
Put in the time and effort and you will get the rewards

Rather than endless generalizing, here are some good courses by expert marketers well known to many on the WF and internet, so hope this helps:
They all present massive value if you use them

Rank and Pillage by Brian and Aidan
Rapid Profit Formula by Matt Carter
Unstoppable Affiliate byv Andrew Hanseb
Internet Marketing Uncut by Tristan Bull and Mirko
Newbie Crusher by Robert Plank and Lance T.

and, last but not least< Mark Joyner's Simplogy

As Dante Romero well puts it in above post #7 --

"When you first find a diamond, it looks like a piece of carbon. It's black and stained. But once it gets polished - you have something of incredible beauty - something worth paying for and that people WILL pay their hard-earned money for.

Simpleology OAI is that polished stone. The others may have the core information right - but has it been polished yet? Is it understandable? Can you set it in motion with a limited amount of distilling it? I'll let you be the judge.

https://products.simpleology.com/oaispecial/
( This is not an affiliate link )

This is an up-front learning experience. Everything else I've tried was an easter egg hunt. Not my favorite method of learning. The eggs are buried in ambiguous writing and unclear processes"

So here are some excellent choices to check out.
Hope this helps you.

From a fellow seeker.

I say that you buy a product that looks promising and has a lot of good reviews, for me it was the 100k Adsense Blueprint. It really didn't help THAT much but it gave me an outline of a system that might work out for me. It takes a lot of trial and error until you can find your own system that will make you money.

I've been at this for 4 months and in the past ~7 days I've been making about $1/day off of adsense. And that was from using the ebook as base for all basic knowledge combined with everything that I've learned for the forums.

Remember ebooks will get outdated and their methods might not be as effective as they were previously, but this forum gives you up-to-the-date information from the latest Panda update to the newest backlinking methods.

Good luck!
-Mark

Product launches selling a "pig in a poke," a.k.a. "newbie fodder," are best sellers because the make money online market is constantly growing. Although Clickbank's refund policy lets you purchase such offers risk-free, you waste a resource more valuable than money: time.

For that, you should probably stick to the heavy-hitters in the industry. Mark Joyner, John Reese, and Frank Kern come to mind. The three core skills of Internet marketing boil down to traffic, list building, and copywriting. Pick one and master it.

As a beginner I can contribute to this thread with my personal experience. I set out to research my options but that just lead to indecision. I can't go back to school because I can't afford any more student loans so I was searching for something else. I've always wanted to learn how people make money on the web so I started there.

After 4 months of research I knew I had to do something or doom myself to daydreams and wishes and we all know "if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." I finally picked something that sounded like a business instead of a "flash in the pan" and went with someone that seems to have some integrity - Tiffany Dow. I purchased her product because I know nothing about setting up websites or anything like that. Although I had some trouble with some of the information - it was worth the money I spent because I wouldn't have been able to figure it out on my own. As a note - she personally answered my questions and didn't talk down to me - that's the sign of a true professional and I'm glad I chose to purchase her product.

I'm working steadily at learning - taking free info and courses and picking and choosing the stuff I want to keep for future reference and I'm smart enough to know I'm not going to make money overnight - but I'm still tempted with some products and have made a few purchases that I'm thinking were a mistake.

I have a budget, and until I start making some money- I'm going to keep to it and I'm not giving up. In 3 weeks I've learned more than I ever did with 4 months of research and just to let you know - if falling on your face and getting back up were an Olympic sport - I'd have the gold.

Knowing the fundamentals takes time and if you can kill yourself and your dreams with enough time. At my current employment I stepped down because I got tired of the crap and got tired of fixing people's mistakes - the company believed it was better for me to just fix it rather than teach the agents the right way to do it so they wouldn't do it again. I am a firm believer that if you learn to do something - rather than just listen or read about it - it will make you better at what you do. I will be following that philosophy as I continue to work on my business. [but any helpful advise is always welcome]
~B~

I think for those of us who buy some of these systems and put them to use, we definitely see that a lot of these courses do share the same fundementals. But we notice that a lot of time we must sometimes fine tune them like a radio station to get the work for us.

But sometimes 93% of the material we will probably already know or its equivelant version. But. It is that extra 7%, that sometimes we might say, "hmm, I don't think I've quite thought of that before. And that little 7% can give our business a huge boost; sometimes taking us to another level.

Buy something really good. Follow the system. Make the money. That's pretty much how it works.

I would vote for learning the fundamentals because every 'system' is really built upon others works which mean that it's really rare for it to work for you - you need to build you own that way you understand what you're doing and not just blindly following a blueprint that could be outdated.

I would say to start at the very, very fundamentals - learn web design.

I say this because you'll understand how to setup a site with great navigation, SEO and content from the ground up. Don't focus too much on the end results at this time; just get the fundamentals down so you know websites from the inside out - then move onto bigger projects.

The systems out there fall into two categories a) stuff written by people who are now professional IM tutors, and they make their money tutoring, and a lot of their info is years out of date, and they don't realise it because implementing what they teach isn't their main source of income and b) people who have actually made money from their systems, but as soon as they publish, the herd stampedes into it, abuses it, and as a result it gets on Google's radar and they nullify the system.

Given that, it's actually better to learn fundamentals instead of pinning your hopes on a system which is likely to be out of date or become obsolete soon after it is implemented.

For a book on fundamentals, I recommend Aaron Wall's "Seo book" - google it

That book was an epiphany for me, and once I understood the fundamentals, I was able to build my own system and ride out the various changes in Google's algorithms

I think if you understand the fundamentals then nothing stops you down the road from implementing nearly any "system". You will also be that much more ready to implement or even create and sell a "system" of your own.

Learn the basics first, everything builds off that.

Well, for me buy the 'system' and try to learn the fundamentals if you can so you can use your resources efficiently.

As a qualified beginner with a capital B let me say i have bought a couple of things - i have learnt from all - even if i was unable to implement them - i learnt at least what they did that created a buying trigger in me - or tickled it anyway.

Then my aim (god willing) is to take action and find people to outsource to that are honest - to fill the gaps.

As a film maker - i am brilliant at giving direction to the actor - but i suck totally at what lense to use - what shutter speed - even how to frame the scene on occasion - i choose people who compliment my skills - They know they will get a killer performance with me directing - i choose people who will make that performance stand out on screen.

I see this as the same.

But until i buy a few programmes i wont KNOW what i dont know therefor wont know what i need or who i need to build my team.

Learn the fundamentals on how to sell. We are Internet Marketers. Never forget that.

Our job is to persuade and help our customers. If we know how to write effective covers and headlines then everything else would be a system to build off of.

Learn to be a better copywriter