Your biggest 'making money online' stumbling block & the cure?

Amen to that Cerberus. I still have to watch myself on that one.

To help me focus I use checklists. I have one for each website and an overall yearly, monthly, daily plan.
That made a big difference.

Your nurse analogy is perfect. I think alot of people online forget to look at their own interests/hobbies/job experience and feel they have to 'make money' in the IM field.

I made my first money in the 'saving money on groceries' market. My husband claims I can 'squeeze 13 cents out of a dime'.

I wonder if you have created anything in the health field? Lots of possibilities there.

If you and I had a $1 for everyone who 'planned' to put up a blog or website, write a ebook or whatever, and never got around to it, we could both retire easily.

Hey Jared, nice to see you again! I saw some people were worried
about your disappearance in another thread. Hope all is well. Love
your blog entries, they are a must read for all the newbies here.

TomG.

Yes. You read enough and you start seeing the same 'tips'.
I think it's important to choose a model that fits your personality. A variation of the 'adapt, adjust, and overcome' saying from the Marines!

I am glad I stumbled upon this thread because I was in the same situation with information overload about internet marketing. I bought the profitlance course, a few ebooks, a web copywriting book and tried to absorb all the information at once. My first mistake was trying to jump into it TOO EARLY.. I had only skimmed through the profitlance course and thought my technical background would help leverage my little understanding of internet marketing. I couldn't be more wrong my first campaign was a complete failure. I went back to learning, read through a few e-books, a web copywriting book, bum marketing e-book, read through tons of warriorforum threads, and like peter gibson stated above you start to see crossover in concepts over and over. This is the part where you have to take a step back and make your taskplan. It isn't easy to just make a taskplan from scratch so what I did was take Bryan Zimmerman's Newbie Workbook which provided a very solid base to start my process. I then added and removed the parts that I thought would be the best streamlined taskplan. This is an organic process, meaning if something works.. leave it. If it doesn't work, take it out or replace it etc.

The Newbie Workbook can be found here. The thread is titled (sorry I don't have enough posts to provide a link): $$ NEWBIES - MAKE $3300.00 A MONTH THE EASY WAY WITH DAY BY DAY INSTRUCTIONS-VIDEO PROOF OF INCOME$$

From then on, I decided to go through each step process in making a profitable niche and decide what tools would help me with this? For example: Keyword research, there lots of software out there.. I settled on Market Samurai. Social Bookmarking tools such as socialbot, rss tools rssbot. Getting good backlinks... angela's backlinks and so forth. These are bigger investments and I was fortunate to have the money to support these. If I didn't I would have definitely invested the other way.. which is time.

Felt like I went a bit off track lol.. hope this helps

That one plagued me for a long time . I later found out the syndrome is called "paralysis by analysis". I still catch myself doing it from time to time, but not as much. By the way, things got a lot better for me when I figured this out.

Pat

Thanks. If you want your ownline efforts to make you money you surely have to treat it like a business.

You have take a break every once in awhile! (laughter)
On a regular work day I set a timer before I start each task that way if I get distracted it 'wakes me up' so to speak and I refocus. But today I'm taking it easier.

Dan, outsourcing is probably the decision that has made the biggest improvement for me in productivity and profit.

I really like your idea of outsourcing certain projects differently. I've been thinking about hiring a local VA for certain jobs and have outsourced online for some time. Just haven't pulled the trigger on the local hiring yet.

While I totally agree withthe first one, I do not agree with the second. People DO share and/or sell great ideas.

This has been a key difference between my more profitbale undertakings, vs those that failed.

great points. My first real success was in a niche I had expertise in, but I had no passion for at all. Combine this with using a pen name, and it freed me from my perfectionist ways since my ego was not involved Yes - I am living proof that a half hearted effort can make money if you follow a good business model and plan.

Yes Mike. The first time I heard about lists I went 'no', then slowly I realized 'yes'. Now I try to create at least a customer's list and usually a 'prospect' list although I slack off on that one too often.

You're welcome. Remember, people do make money online. See Matthew Maiden's post. But it does take effort and time.

That's the list I use in my local workshops, except I add delivery method to the list.

Good point. One person's idea of easy is another person's 'what are you talking about?" It gets easier, but some sales letters make it sound like you have to do nothing at all.
Wrong.

It took the longest time for me to realize that anything that needed done could be outsourced, and a lot of it could be automated. Some things are best done manually but can be outsourced if you don't want to do it.

On thing you can't outsource is your decision making. But if you are willing to decide what you want done and are willing to manage the project; you can outsource just about, if not, everything else.

I've just recently started looking into backlinking. Like anything else I'll pick it up in time.

Sounds a lot like the 'find a market, then decide on the product' line of thought.
And the copy mantra of speaking to your potential customer's wants and needs and not using "I'.

The buyer wants his problems solved, his wants fulfilled.

As much as anyone is in business to take care of their family or live their life as they wished; the potential buyer is there for himself.

That is the biggest stumbling block I see with people starting out.

I did it too. Kept buying. Kept getting more overloaded.

The problem is not the junk. It can be top-of-line quality stuff from the top marketers but when you are just starting out you not only get overwhelmed with all of it but at that stage how do you know the "good stuff" when you see it?

The key is to say to yourself that you are only going to learn one thing at a time. But learn that one thing before you move on.

There are so many ways, or "models" of making money you choose the one that you feel more comfortable with and then start there.

A hundred people can tell you that doing "ABC" is the "easiest, fastest, quickest way"...but if you are just not comfortable with that particular way of doing it, then don't do it right now.

Don't get hung up with trying to start at the "perfect" starting point.

Pick something that you have a pretty good idea that you can accomplish and do that to get the ball rolling. Build some momentum.

Go to Blogger and start a blog on anything and get a feel for that. If your skills are past that then find something else like learning about List Building.

I discovered something a long time ago that I try to live by and it keeps me moving along

"a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing".