Internet Marketing – Lessons Learned: What I Wish I’d Known When I Started

Internet Marketing is a fascinating ‘occupation’ but like any career, job, it’s not without its drawbacks.

For 2 out of the last 3 years, we’ve been on holiday / vacation with 400+ other Internet Marketing colleagues, friends, acquaintances and joint venture partners. Spending a week in the winter cruising around the Caribbean tends to let down guards, enhance existing relationships, let you make new friendships and get to know not only Internet Marketing peeps, but also their families, making it a well-rounded relationship. (It can seem a little disconnected if relationships are mostly virtual. That’s one reason why we go to a lot of conferences, seminars and workshops, not only in Internet Marketing, but also in our other niches of Property or Real Estate and Personal Development.)

One of our fellow Internet Marketing cruiser group has just quit his J.O.B. in London and gone full-time into Internet Marketing. He asked the question, what do yo wish you had known when you went full-time into Internet Marketing? What life lessons have you learned?

The key findings for me with respect to a full-time living from Internet Marketing were:

Get a great mentor early on, not years down the road

(Many thanks in my case to Tracy Repchuk (below), Rich Schefren & Mike Filsaime in Internet Marketing, plus Jonathan Jay and Peter Thomson plus Rich Schefren again, in business and marketing in general)

As with mentoring, read about how others have achieved success, however they define that.
I’m a lead author and co-editor of the Amazon best-selling business and personal coaching book ‘Ultimate Life Lessons’, www.UltimateLifelessons.com, together with my wife Eve Grace-Kelly and our friend and former mentor, Tracy Repchuk. Jonathan Jay kindly wrote the foreword for us. 6 of TV’s Secret Millionaires, from the programme of the same name, are featured in there too!
Treat IM initially as a job: don’t go off in a haphazard fashion on different directions.
(Gotta watch those Internet Marketing folks: they’re pretty good at getting us to go after the next shiny object 😉 )

So, treat a project professionally as a ‘corporate’ project. Set goals, tasks and deadlines.
Despite being a former Project Manager, with blue-chip clients such as

WH Smith

UK Central Government (the Cabinet Office)

the NHS

J Sainsbury’s Head Office

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs

National Power

the European Commission in Brussels (project managing the creation of the Single European Market)

NatWest Bank

Deutsche Bank

Robert Fleming

Digital and ICL

I didn’t treat my Internet Marketing projects as ‘proper projects’ as much as I should have in the early days. I’m much more rigorous now. (Our project management book can be found here.)

Focus & don’t procrastinate.
(Our Focus book is available here.
Our book on Overcoming Procrastination will be available here July 2012.)

Use tried & tested time management techniques.

Ensure you keep fit & healthy! You’ll be more productive & won’t damage your health.
Keep a good (for you) work-life balance. This way, you lessen your chances of burn-out.
(See our blog here for more tips on this.)

Outsource early on. (We left this quite a way down the line.
Now, we wouldn’t be without our VA (Virtual Assistant) & web development & SEO team!
For free tips on what to outsource and how to outsource, see our reports here.)
Work out what success actually means to you! Don’t go chasing someone else’s idea of success. Create your own vision of success. For our fantastic value online coaching programme, Ultimate Personal Success, please visit here.

I hope that’s useful and lets you learn from my early mistakes in going full-time into Internet Marketing.

Best wishes,

Vinden Grace

November 1, 2011December 31, 2011

Outsourcing and the golden rules to follow for best results

Why use Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is one of the best ways to free up your most important asset: your time. And to improve your financial bottom-line. Hiring others to handle everyday or even specialized functions (especially non-revenue earning) within your overall Internet marketing plan can be a shortcut to superb financial success.

How best to make outsourcing work

In order for outsourcing to work, however, it must be done the right way. That involves a lot of different considerations. You need to know how to hire and who to hire for outsourcing. You need to develop the right organization skills and learn to be a Project Manager. You also need to approach your contract workers with the right attitude. Outsourcing is vital but not a quick fix. Start with a small project and measure the outsourcing company’s success. The saving of time and low-cost associated can be a great benefit of outsourcing.

What not to do re: outsourcing

Too many Internet marketers deal with contractors as if they’re robots. They make unreasonable demands both in terms of work-load and timescales. They communicate with the outsourced workers in a superior tone. They don’t handle disagreements or questions with civility. It’s sometimes as if outsourcing turns otherwise nice Internet marketers into slave-driving monsters. That often results in disagreements, missed timescales, low productivity and even shoddy products. Not great for your reputation!

Source for outsourcing

We can provide you with great outsourcing resources from a large, tried and tested company that we have happily used many times over a number of years. Contact us for more information about the best route for outsourcing.

The best way to make outsourcing work for you

That’s not the best way to make outsourcing work for you. You should approach those with whom you’re working with respect, politeness, understanding and decency. That’s the best way to forge valuable, lasting relationships with your outsourcing company and to encourage the best possible work from contractors. Additonally, be sure that you’ve clearly specified your requirements and documented the agreed project scope and timescales of the work. Pay close attention to these guidelines and you’ll certainly benefit from outsourcing.

March 1, 2011December 31, 2011

Can You Live Without Search Engine Traffic?

Do you need Search Engine Traffic?

Search engine traffic is the so-called holy grail of Internet marketing. It’s targeted. It converts. It’s free (at least in the sense that you aren’t forking out cash for every click). The downside? It often requires what feels like a massive effort to rank effectively in competitive niches, such as real estate, Internet marketing, stock-market-related offerings, etc. It also requires quite a bit of patience.

Maybe you aren’t interested in doing the work necessary to appeal to Google and other search engines? Perhaps you want instant results instead of spending the time building a good SEO infrastructure.

Can you skip search engine traffic altogether?

Absolutely. It is possible to live without search engine traffic. There are a variety of different ways to drive traffic that are wholly independent of organic search engine rankings. You can rely on a variety of advertising methods, including pay-per-click (PPC) options. You can use social media tools and other “web 2.0” methods to bypass search engine ranking concerns.

The Search Engine Traffic Challenge

Here’s the challenge though: Unless you’re willing to pay for traffic, it’s going to be hard to get traffic from non-search engine sources. The only way to generate a truly significant and consistent flow of visitors will involve advertising—and that’s going to cost you, potentially quite a lot.

That’s why so many people eventually come back to hunting for the holy grail of high rankings on the search engines. The up-front effort and time investments don’t seem all that onerous when you compare them to the often substantial costs of generating traffic without the search engines.

We recently managed to get one of our own products (a mindset coaching eBook for traders on the stock market/FX/options, etc.) onto page 1 of Google out of almost 69 million search results! And it only took our team 8 days! If you want search engine ranking results like this, and great search engine traffic just get in touch. Let us help you with your rankings and search engine traffic.

November 21, 2010December 13, 2011

CRUISING WITH TOP MARKETERS IN 2011

CARIBBEAN CRUISE IN 2011 WITH MIKE FILSAIME, TRACY REPCHUK & OTHER TOP INTERNET MARKETERS & ENTREPRENEURS

We’re heading off mid-December to Florida to chill out for a few weeks until we head off for our 2nd Caribbean Cruise with over 400 top Internet marketers. People fly in from all around the world: Eve and me from UK & Belgium; folks from Canada; from Australia, New Zealand; the Far East; and all over the States. They go time after time to network with like-minded people, learn other marketing techniques that are currently working, see what the latest trends are, get to know potential Joint Venture (JV) partners. Eve and I formed a JV with one of our former mentors, Tracy Repchuk, on the first evening of 2010′s Caribbean cruise! We’re editing and co-authoring a multi-author book of life lessons (“Ultimate Life Lessons”) from experts in their fields. A number of other excellent folks on the cruise also feature in our co-authored book: Emma Tiebens, Dr Jane Lewis, et al.

Later during 2010, we formed 2 other JVs with lovely, dynamic people we met on the cruise: Kelly Morissey and Susanne Jorgensen, both highly rated in their respective fields of Divorce Coaching and Dating Coaching. We’re also delighted to have them as co-authors of our book.
Great sunshine in Florida, especially in beautiful Naples, which we loved so much when we spent Christmas and New Year here last year that we bought a property here to winter here.

Roll on the cruise on the 6th of January!

Marketers’ Caribbean Cruise Janaury 2010

Organisers plus me: Donna Fox, Lou Edwards, Vinden Grace, Mike Filsaime, Tom Beal