Knowing Your Limitations, and Learning to Work with That

Perhaps this post will contain some advice that will be of use to others, especially new and aspiring Internet marketers.

Many moons ago, I started what we'll call a membership site. Actually, it was more like a mini-AOL. I think it was back when 28.8 modems were just starting to come out, and many people were still limited to 14.4 modems or 19.2 max. Something like that.

Anyway, there was a free level of service and a higher premium level of service for a fee. Most people were at the free level. So, I realized that I needed something to supplement the little income there was from that, I decided to sell a physical product as well.

Which was a good thing, since the membership site went disastrously awry, but that's a whole other story.

Eventually, the physical product site went to the web, and did fairly well. I offered a variety of products and, on same product pages, I had pretty good conversion rates. My highest may have been 18%. Maybe I hit into the 20's; I don't remember for sure. The average was maybe 8-12%.

In the past couple of years, sales have really taken a downturn. This is due to several factors. Some are circumstances beyond my control, but one factor is that I haven't been putting my 100% into its website.

And that's because I've been more or less lured into Internet marketing. It's not the lure of perceived easy money (okay, some of it is), but putting together and shipping a physical product is a lot of work for relatively little money per sale. So, you're sitting there making the product, assembling it and packaging and shipping it, and all that time you're thinking if I could spend this time marketing a digital product, how much better could I do? If I can get as high as a 18% conversion rate on this product, one where there is a ton of competition, why can't I do the same with a digital product?

Maybe that's dangerous thinking.

And, another thing is that I see people making money now doing things I was trying to do years and years ago. Back then, it wasn't easy convincing people they even needed a website.

Anyway, getting to the knowing your limitations bit...

I had some early success (and failure!) with PPC advertising through AdWords. In fact, I think that's the only method by which I've ever sold any ClickBank products as an affiliate. I haven't been able to sell any ClickBank products through any website links as far as I know. (I have had some success with other affiliate programs, but not with ones that have had high enough commissions to make it worthwhile with the volume of traffic I'd get.)

And, that's kind of frustrating because basically I went from someone who could get 18% conversion rates to getting el zilcho.

That leads to my first limitation, which is getting traffic to a site. I mean, if I pay for traffic, I can get it there, but that's not always profitable.

People recommend article marketing, and that leads to my second limitation, which is not being able to produce copious amounts of articles on a single subject. You see, I know that some people are passionate about things. Maybe they love cars. Maybe they love Star Trek. Maybe they love gardening. And so on.

I'm not one of those people. I have a variety of interests. I like birds. I like gardening. I like cats. I like my chihuahua. I like science fiction. I like cooking. I like history. And so on. I just can't focus in on one subject and stay on it.

Last fall, I thought I could put together some articles and sell them as PLR in a WSO. I found a niche I thought would be popular. I researched keywords. I think I may have found some ClickBank products to promote with them. I worked out 10 articles to write. I wrote one, and then I was completely bored and couldn't figure out what to write for the body of the other 9. Yes, I had the keywords but still...

But the key is that you cannot let your limitations hold you back. I figured that, since I had problems driving traffic to a site, the solution for me would be to create my own product and have affiliates drive the traffic.

As for that second limitation, well, I'm not entirely sure about that yet, but I'll figure it out.

On to limitation number three, and that is organization. And, by that, I am referring to the organization of the content of the eBook. I usually start out with a sensible outline, but then I remember things I missed, and then it's like where do I put this or where do I put that, and then things end up where maybe they shouldn't. And you get into whether it makes more sense to put this here or there. And you just get confused and set it aside for a while, which is, of course, a bad plan.

That, however is an easy one to fix. Just find someone good at organization, and pay them to organize your outline and content in a sensible manner. Problem solved.

My fourth limitation is overkill mode, though I'm not entirely sure that's a limitation so much as a delaying factor. For example, about a month ago (December 20th, judging by the date on one of my files), I grabbed an old book (public domain) off my shelf and thought, hey, I can quickly and easily make an eBook out of this.

So, I started to work on it and, since then, I have gone into overkill mode, buying additional books to flesh out the content that I felt was lacking, and doing research into a particular portion that really needs more detail (and for which I've been having problems locating all the info I need), and figuring out the extra bonus to go along with it and really getting into perhaps excruciating detail on some parts. I don't know that this is really a limitation; I just need to work faster! (And find that info that I haven't been able to find.)

The original book I started with is pretty good, and, as a reader, I'm happy with that original book. Still, I'm of the mind that I'd really like to over-deliver on something rather than just give them the bare essentials. And, honestly, the biggest hold-up on this one has not been all the "overkill" I've been adding to it, but rather trying to find the missing info, which has turned out to be more difficult than I expected.

At any rate, long story short, the lesson is that you can't just learn Internet marketing overnight. Some people may find success in a short amount of time, but those people aren't the most common. It takes time not only to learn the ins and outs but to find your own weaknesses and limitations as well, and then find ways to work around them. If you're serious, you just can't give up when you run into obstacles. You've got to find ways to go over, under or around them, push them out of the way, or just blow them up. Whatever it takes.