Your Chief Enemy as an Internet Marketer that Will Defeat You Every Time

I was once smart.

Now I just look at a glowing screen all day long and tap rectangular squares with my fingers.

Anyway, I am a meteorologist by schooling. Which seems like an easy major. But it is not.

You have to take courses like:

- atmospheric dynamics
- atmospheric thermodynamics
- physical meteorology (not exercising in front of a blue screen, but the physics of meteorology)
- advanced physics
- differential equations

These subjects are left-brained, critical-thinking centric, difficult to master subjects.

Imagine if I walked into my differential equations class the first day and said:

"How do I make 6 figures with this?"

The teacher would look at me like I was nuts. Rightfully so. Because it took years for her to master the topic to where she could actually teach it to students new to the concept, and in so doing, to earn a healthy salary from her skills and expertise.

Me walking into a atmospheric dynamics, diffy Q's or advanced physics class and asking "how I can make $100,000 from this" from Day 1 is similar to how most internet marketers approach this skill, this discipline, this art that takes years to learn, to apply and to practice to get really, really good at, so you can actually make a full time living from IM.

The Enemy? An *Unwillingness* to Learn, Apply and Practice

Thank the gods, the blogging or internet marketing or affiliate marketing learning curve is much shorter than the differential equations learning curve. But to begin a venture solely to make money from it and to expect to make money from it without learning skills, applying knowledge and practicing like hell is as assinine, ludicrous and completely delusional as me walking into atmospheric thermodynamics on Day 1, with no prior knowledge of the subject, and asking how to make 6 figures with that skill.

Internet marketing is a skill. It is not a way to make money online.

The *skill* you develop at IM helps you make money online. IM itself is useless, inanimate, a lifeless concept. You make IM come to life by studying concepts, by learning, by practicing what you learned, by putting it into action.

Your:

- skills in internet marketing, honed over years
- generosity
- friend network, earned by promoting, endorsing and selling your fellow IMers as much as you sell yourself (this helps you embrace the fear of loss, masked in the commonly held but illusory idea of "competition")
- valuable, problem solving content
- dogged, pitbull-like, savage tenacity

are a few core qualities that help you make money.

Why then do people enter IM with the lottery, delusional mindset?

Because they suffer from an abundance of fear. They fear poverty, they fear being a loser, they fear being a failure, they fear greedily that their rich neighbor will make more money than them, even though they already have a lotta dough, they fear starving, or not having a roof over their heads...but fear is at the core of this insane tendency to want to earn boatloads of money without actually learning a skill, practicing, studying and rendering useful, heartfelt service.

I know. I suffered from most of those fears personally, and until I felt those fears and let them go - during unpleasant sessions - I saw IM as a way to MMO and ignored learning valuable, useful skills, for years, leading to struggles, failures and intense depression.

Your skills, and your problem solving content, and your solutions providing products and services, and your generosity, and persistence, these are the money makers.

Just because it is incredibly easy to whip out a credit card to buy a domain and hosting, or to join some online venture, does not mean it will be easy to learn the IM skills that will help you build a full time venture.

Keep that in mind if you are having a terrible time in IM now, and feel lost, hopeless, and ready to quit.

Learn. Practice. Help. Earn.

The skills that you spend months and years developing, through practice, are the difference maker. Be open to learning, be willing to practice, be patient and persistent, and follow a few helpful mentors who have succeeded online and you will position yourself to render useful service, to profit and to become a full time, pro internet marketer.