Would You Ever Consider Doing an Armed Robbery with your Ski Mask on Backwards?

One of the biggest things I've seen is people mismanaging expectations. They get fooled into these "no effort required" systems and when they realize it is going to be more work than they originally thought, they end up giving up.

I've said it before and I'll say it again-- starting and managing a business (online or off) is a marathon, not a sprint. Understand that success takes time and don't give up before you even get going.

-Ben

Ski mask are so 5 years ago. I wear a cowboy hat and a bandana when doing armed robbery now...

Bill, haven't you been reading the threads about education? There's no way you could have learned anything useful from the doddering, underpaid drones teaching college classes. You can learn anything you need to know from skimming articles on EZA.

Besides, there's only one way to reach customers, and its name is Google...

That buying a $7 course on 'offline marketing' makes you vastly superior to those idiots that run successful brick and mortar businesses when it comes to generating leads or advertising in general.

~Bill

Hello,
my local bank was paid a visit by Darth Vader.
Darth Vader Robs Bank (Photos, Oh Yes, Photos): Gothamist
This happened last year and they are still jumpy.

That you can do everything yourself.

* That's its all about back-linking. (It's not). lol

* That article marketing is mostly about using article directories (nope, not even close!).

* That customer service should be an after thought (if at all).

* That Seth Godin should get a wig (nah).

* That spinning articles doesn't work (it does, you just have to know what you're doing).

* That paying for advertising is too risky.

* That building a list is too much work.

* That Bryan Kumar is really Allen Says and vice versa (remember that old rumor?).

* That markets are "saturated" (remember, you only have to beat one of your competitor's in one area, not all of them....).

* That you can't make big money just selling e-books (oh you can, just sell more than one of them).

* That selling physical products is lame (quite the opposite, they can significantly add to your bottom line).

* That there really is push button software that will instantly grow your bank account.

* That building your own blog network takes a lot of time and money (not even, especially if you're focused)

I could go on and on, but I think y'all catch my drift.......

R
o
D

That it's wrong to sell anyone anything

That there is only one right way to do something.

That information should be free.

That you have to have a "business" to be successful.

That the only honest, legitimate, reason for charging offline businesses is if you increase their bottom line.

That the wild wild west of internet marketing is over.

That marketing isn't a numbers game.

That marketing is only a numbers game.

That "it's" a scam because "I" failed to make money with "it".

That there is not a magic button that will make you money whenever you push it.

That make money and get rich quick mean the same thing.

Off the top of my head.

George Wright

they think any old product will cut it

Wow, Rod and George took all the good ones. The list is saturated now.

A big one is that people think they have to learn everything ahead of time, which results in them never getting started. They'll never have perfect knowledge, the time will never be just right, there will always be loose ends . . . but if you take action you just might make money anyway, and you'll learn faster.

Another biggie is equating failure with a personal character flaw. Failure is just feedback, learn from it and move on more intelligently.

Last one for now, people look for all the answers in ebooks, courses, forums, etc., when some of the answers can only be found on the inside.

that like your roommate stealing your weed plant then reporting it to the cops.

thats a metaphor for when people buy a perfectly legitimate business model try it out for 1 week then call the product creator a scammer cause it didn't make them 25,098,028.12

That the Internet and Internet sales begins and ends with the Warrior Forum.

That something has to be new in order to be good. (The Bible, Think & Grow Rich, Scientific Advertising, etc. proves this theory wrong.)

That you have to have the new must have thing - you won't succeed online without this - it's a REQUIREMENT. (In reality what did people do before Facebook, Craigslist, E-Commerce automation, Wordpress, backlinking services, plugins, or even autoresponders were available? All of those are fairly recent inventions but money has been made for a long time online.)

That just because a sales letter gets your drool glands going means you have to buy it. (When you see one of those sales letters, go back and read the sales letters for the last 10 things you bought and see if you're doing those drool promoting things yet or you just sluffed over that part. If the answer is sluffed off, the same will probably happen this time too.)

That the work at your kitchen table attitude is what really brings in the bacon. Some of the gurus promoting that kind of thing have staff, work extremely hard, and even go into the office. It's a business not a lifestyle. Run the business right and you get the lifestyle.

That someone fairly new has nothing whatsoever to offer.

That someone who writes a mean sales letter is rich and knows what they are doing and can help us.

Mark

I don't know if it's about misconceptions or just pre laziness and or greed.

Some of the most popular stuff is about howto buck the system... short cuts.

The 4 aspects you mentioned are pretty much it. In fact, they are the main secrets.

I just think there are too many who either (a) don't want to learn them or (b) don't want to invest the time doing it.

Hence the massive demand for short cuts.

Hope this makes sense.

That they get sucked into the idea that it is so easy and with one simple product, they will be making tons of money over night with no work.

Although, with all the headlines that make all these grand promises, I can see how newbies can get confused and then think it is just them until they find this forum and get the real stuff.

That internet marketing doesn't exist, that it's exactly the same as offline marketing, just online.

While they have some similarities, they ARE sufficiently different to be classified separately. Perhaps this misconception doesn't have as much of a negative impact on newer people, but it's good to understand that internet marketing is it's own thing.

All the best,
Michael

Hmm, I've actually never considered "doing an armed robbery". What are you planning Bill?

Remember what happened to the Point Break bank robbers, they had to deal with Gary Busey!

Oh yeah...

Internet marketing is too hard, so why start?

Internet marketing is too easy, so why learn?

All the best,
Michael

Awesome post!

I think the biggest misconception with Internet Marketing is that some people think there is a set process:

1. Do this.

2. Do this.

3. Do this.

4. Make money.

5. Go back to 1 and start again.

To my knowledge there is NO one system that is 100% reliable forever.

Marketing and the different practices are always changing.

One of the biggest assets I believe that you can have in marketing is a thick skin, a strong chin and the ability to adapt.

Strange, I wrote that and must be why I like boxing so much - you need pretty much the same things for that too.

Chris