Okay.

You are going to stick your toe into the water.  Where do you start?

First, you should get a general idea of what is out there in the internet marketing jungle.

There is an amazing amount of FREE online marketing information on the internet. This is a good place to start.

You should use the free information for two purposes:

1. As a way of grasping the breadth, depth and width of different types of markets on the internet.
2. To learn how different “gurus” teach.  See who speaks in a way that you understand.  See who uses aids (such as whiteboards, powerpoints, flow charts, diagrams, etc.) that are effective for you in learning. Almost everyone uses audios, videos, and PDFs; determine for your learning style who uses them effectively.  Do you want a step by step process map or do you want to learn a general concept and then be able to get under the hood to tinker?

Some of the information you will find is crap, posted in an attempt to separate you from your money.

Some of the free internet marketing information is great though.

It was Eben Pagan who coined the term “moving the free line”.  In general, it means that many of the best teachers of internet marketing give away many of their best ideas.

What these teachers sell, for the most part, is a more in-depth coverage of these ideas, information about related knowledge that is crucial to maximizing your utilization of the free information, and coaching/consulting for growing your business into the revenue monster you want it to be.

Since you can acquire so much information for free, is is really worth the money to pay for the add-on service?

That depends.

Do you want to take a few years learning how to utilize the free information?

Or do you want to be “up and running” in a few weeks or months?

One last thing before I “wrap” for today:  don’t get caught up in trying to constantly look at all of the free online marketing stuff there is out there.  There is simply too much for anyone to read and watch.

After you have a good idea of the lay of the land, pick you niche and dive in.

If there is one common trait I can note in the lives of all successful persons in this world, it is that they are persons of action.  They form a plan, act, learn, and re-act.

So… form a good idea of what is out there, pick a niche, pick someone from whom you think you can learn, invest in their program(s), learn, and act on the learning.

Then wait for results, analyze the results, supplement your learning as necessary, and adjust your attempts.  This works in internet markets just as it works in… well, pretty much all areas of life.  If you want to be a success… take that first step NOW!

Proper use of this feedback loop is what you will use to become successful.

As a place to start learning, I suggest Jeff Johnson’s youtube channel.  He has dozens of great internet marketing videos there.

http://www.youtube.com/jeffjohnsonvideos

To your success!

Tom

Who am I?  and why should you care what I have to write about anything?

Because I am… (select as many as you like):

A.)  more outrageous than Frank

B.) wrestle in a higher weight class than Russell

C.) am more intellectual than Eben

D.) have recently been in the position of a newcomer to internet marketing and better understand the questions a newcomer has than would one of the immortals in the field.

Earlier this year, I finally had all I could stand of working in the corporate world.  I quit when my employer kept reneging on promises made to me while simultaneously demanding more and more of my time.

Over the past few weeks and months, I have spent a great deal of time and money researching the internet marketing game and trying to plot a path through which I could earn a good living while also telling the bad bosses of the evil corporate world that I was their monkey no more.

Now, before I go any further in that vein, I do want to take you further back into “who I am”.

I grew up in an area of what many refer to as “flyover country”… southern Indiana.

I received a scholarship to Indiana University.  I originally planned to study astrophysics.  However, I was talked into thinking that a business degree would be more marketable.  I received my Bachelors in Business Administration degree from I.U. in… let’s just say several years ago.

I always thought having a degree from what is usually considered to be one of the top ten business schools would be an assurance of success in the corporate business world.

How wrong I was.

Who you know…

Who you are related to…

How your looks rate…

How Tall you are…

Whether you play golf…

Sycophantism…

Luck…

All of these mattered more than my “excellent” degree.

Luck matters more than a degree.

The diploma may as well have been used for toilet paper.

All I wanted was to be hired and to advance in my career based on how well I could do the job under consideration.

So now it is a few (ok… many) years later.  I am determined to become an internet entrepreneur (an “interpreneur” as I have coined it elsewhere).

One other note about me:

Despite my early desires to be an astrophysicist, I was also an accomplished poet and guitar player.  I wrote one long 50 page poem called “Convergent Universe” that mirrors the universe in its structure.  In a way it is a non-mathematical statement of the unified field of the universe.  You can find it on one of my other web sites. www.hopeforman.com

Thanks for listening… to your success!

Tom

Fire your ungrateful, penny-pinching, money-grubbing boss…

even if he is actually a pretty decent guy.

Then, you can start your own business and BE the ungrateful, penny-pinching, money-grubbing BOSS!

I am kidding with that one…though there have certainly been many times I have thought to myself…

if I could just get rich and buy this company, I would love to be that guy’s boss for a while.  I would even pay him twice what he was worth so he couldn’t quit and would have to put up with my treatment of him.

Is it me or have bosses become more unbearable over the last ten to fifteen years?  Was there some hidden codicil in NAFTA or GATT that requires that anyone promoted in any company to a position that manages other employees, has to have graduated from the a-hole academy?

In the 20th century, I had bad bosses but I also had great ones.  Somehow the great ones seem not to have been y2k compliant.

As you have probably guessed by now, my experiences with bad bosses over the past decade are one large reason I have determined that I am going to become an interpreneur.  I coined that word as short for “internet entrepreneur”.

But there are many other reasons to become an interpreneur.

I value freedom in all of its forms.  The freedom to set one’s own schedule is certainly among them.

Make no mistake about it, there is a lot of work to be done, especially in the early stages of building your business.  But you have much greater control of when you do it.

Your nose is not introduced to someone else’s grindstone at a time when you would like to meet with the old friend who happens to be passing through your area.

You are able to meet that friend.

You are able to attend your son’s game or your daughter’s recital.

Youare able to attend the local premiere of the new Star Trek movie.

You are able to watch (or attend) the first world series appearance in over one hundred years by your favorite baseball team.

Bad bosses and the freedom to set your own schedule are just two of the many reasons to become an interpreneur.  I will enumerate more reasons in the future entries to this blog.

But next time, I will introduce you to me.  I will begin to tell you a little about my roots, my history, my dreams, my failures, my triumphs and my tragedies.

To your success!

Tom

Are you new to the internet marketing world?

Whether you are new or not, are you PERPLEXED by the complexity of it all?

I KNOW just how you feel. I was there myself. Over time, I found a system for determining how anyone could plot a path through this internet wonderland.

This blog is my gift to those of you who are still lost in the jungle. In this blog, I am going to help you to find your own way. You can’t just buy somebody’s system that worked for them and expect it to be the right system for you. It may be, but the odds of finding the right system for you by chance aren’t good.

You need to use the gray matter.

• You need a guide to help you:
• find the right niche for yourself.
• plot the steps for becoming a successful internet marketer in your chosen niche.
• find the right products that teach you the steps you need to learn in the way that you learn things the best.

Those are my intents with this blog… to help you plot your path… and to take the steps along that path to reach your goal.

Join me on this journey… won’t you?

May each successive tomorrow be your best day yet!

Tom