Article by Frank Sousa

A few weeks ago I was watching my 7 year old Grandson Joel as he was drawing a picture of a strawberry patch.

As he drew, it began to look more and more like a Christmas wreath than a strawberry patch. I told him that it looked pretty good, but suggested to him that “maybe you could put a few strawberries here, and here and here” as I pointed to the big white area in the middle of his drawing.

He looked at me in all seriousness and said…

“Grandpa, it doesn’t matter what YOU think, it’s what the artist thinks!”

It was funny at the time, but I have been thinking about this quite a bit.

You know what? He is right!

There is a great lesson to be learned here. The lesson applies very well to Internet marketing. Actually it applies well to ANY kind of marketing, it doesn’t necessarily have to be on the internet.

We have a tendancy to come up with an idea that we think is the greatest thing since sliced bread. We’re absolutely convinced that everybody will beat a path to our door to buy our product. We spend lots of money to develop a sales campaign, build a website, buy advertising and so on, and spend a lot of time and effort to draw people to our website, get good search engine positioning, and then more often than not we’re disappointed because very few people buy our products.

Could it be that the marketplace doesn’t care about our opinion?

Does that hurt your ego? It shouldn’t. It should open your eyes to this very simple, but wildly profound truth.

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK, IT’S WHAT THE MARKETPLACE THINKS THAT IS IMPORTANT!

Big companies spend millions of dollars on market research, testing and surveys before they ever spend any money in developing a product or marketing a product. Doesn’t it make sense that before we ever spend a dime on any kind of product development, website development or whatever that we should spend some time first to find out what people are buying, when do they buy, and how do they buy?

By doing proper research in advance, you’ll save yourself a lot of wasted time and effort, and you’ll be rewarded many times over by successful, money making websites. Finding profitable “niches” is not a difficult process, but it can make all the difference in the world as to whether or not your website will be a huge success or a dismal failure.

As you consider what kind of websites you’ll be building, keep in mind the lesson learned from a 7 year old.

There are so many sets of beginner marketing lessons out there that it can be difficult to determine which ones to take seriously and which to ignore. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Here are a few recommendations that will give you a better chance at spotting the bad lessons that you should ignore.

Outrageous promises. The Internet marketing world is, by and large, honest and decent. Most of the people out there are genuinely interested in supplying good, actionable information that can produce real results. There are a few rotten apples in every barrel, however, and you want to avoid them. Often these hucksters will rely on outrageous promises of instant wealth to entice people to buy their bad beginner Internet marketing lessons. These are products to avoid. Although you can experience tremendous success as a beginner, you should be suspicious of anyone who promises you they keys to a multi-million dollar vault for $ 12.95.

Outdated information.

There are tutorials floating around out there that probably made new marketers millions of dollars at one point. The problem today is that they are hopelessly outdated. The web moves fast and the tenets underlying effective marketing change with it. What worked then may be a dead end today. Do not put your faith in older materials.

Huge investments. Look, you are just getting your feet wet. You want to learn some core principles and to find a way to start making money online. You do not need to cash out your 401k and to spend your life savings to make that happen. Start with the basics. Learn the terrain. Start making some money. Scale your investment from there. If beginner Internet marketing lessons cost an arm and a leg, you might want to reconsider before you plunk down your credit card.

These are three things you should look for when trying to separate the high-quality lessons that will put you on the road to success from the disasters that will lead you to little more than disappointment.

If you take the right approach, you can learn the ropes without putting yourself at risk from bad advice.

www.chuckrylant.com I’ve studied Disney for a long time because it’s an excellent case study of ideas you can implement in your own business. Disney stands out, not only among the other amusement parks, but from most companies in general, so it only makes sense to study and learn from their example. Here are three lessons I observed during my recent visit. 1. Details matter Disney pays closer attention to details than any other company I’ve seen. It’s easy to ignore the little details that don’t seem to matter, but they do. When people visit Disneyland, it truly is a different experience. What they call “magic,” is really them paying close attention to every little detail. For example, in our Disney hotel room, almost everything is shaped in the form of Mickey Mouse ears. The bathroom faucet handles, the lamp fixtures, and even the shampoo bottle tops were shaped as their signature mouse ears. There must have been ten sets of mouse ears in our room alone. Even outside of the park, everything is immaculate, including the parking lot, landscaping and paint, and rarely will you ever find any trash in or near the park. Disney makes a point that you do not see anything broken or out of order. Whenever something is being repaired or maintained, they do a very good job of making sure the customer cannot see it. I’ve not seen another company that pays as close attention to the details as Disney does. These details are very important, because they contribute greatly to the …

Article by Steve Weber

I have a good Internet marketing lesson here. About five years ago, I created a small website which had about 20 pages of content. At the time, I did not know much about search engine optimization or SEO we call it. I built a site and waited for the traffic, and nothing happened. Year after year, it only made a few dollars in adsense income a year. But then, approximately 12 months ago, something began happening.

A few search engines began showing the site for some of the key words I optimized for. The reason for this was probably due in part to the age of the domain. The search engines do put some relevance on the ages of a domain; the older the domain is the more respect they give it. Google and Yahoo began showing the site for some key searches and it has began making about $ 5 per day of AdSense income.

I realize that $ 5 per day is not that much, but that equates to approximately $ 150 per month. That more than pays our light bill! The lesson here is that I planted that seed five years ago, and it did not start germinating until about a year ago. That’s a very important lesson. Many marketers who just begin want success very rapidly. They become discouraged, frustrated, and often quit when they fail to see success within a few weeks or a few months. It’s very important to understand that making money online is an ongoing process. It takes a lot of patience and it takes a lot of effort to plant those seeds. Once you understand the process and are comfortable and sure of yourself, it’s simply a matter of applying what you know about search engine optimization to plenty of action.

When you are comfortable with the fact that X amount of work will result in X amount of success, it becomes very easy to apply effort and action to a project and know that it may be a year or so or even longer before you will begin seeing success. Those new marketers who have patience and understand those facts are the ones who will eventually become successful. Those marketers who want a quick and easy income from online marketing are in for a rude awakening. There is no such thing as quick and easy income online. If you want to get into the Internet business, bring with you patience and the understanding that this is a real business and not a quick fix way to add to your bottom line. Treat Internet marketing as a real career and a real business, and you’ll benefit for years to come.

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