This post contains the information related to the 345 responses to a survey in which internet marketing newbies were asked, “What do you need most to bring your online business to the next level?”
Upon reviewing the majority of the responses, the major barriers and obstacles to your success can be overcome with the proper training and a few tools.
An excellent post in a forum said the difference between a successful person and a failure is the way they looked at problems they were facing:
The failure says to themselves, “It can’t be done!”
The successful person says, “How can we solve this problem?”
In other words, if you don’t at least TRY to solve the problem you’re facing, you’re already defeated.
Successful people will work on trying to find a solution to a problem until they have found one – or they have found a solution that they can live with, even if it’s not perfect.
The barriers and obstacles mentioned by most people fit neatly into about 4 categories.
Here they are in order of the most responses*:
1. They need ‘basic’ technical skills. (41%).
The majority of the responses fell into this category.
Many internet marketers assume that if someone was interested in Internet marketing they would have learned the basics of HTML or FTP, etc. before getting involved.
That does not seem to be the case. Many people would like to make money online but are clueless when it comes to basic technical skills. This is a huge barrier to their success.
Examples people mentioned they needed help mastering:
· How to upload a page to a hosting server by FTP.
· How to change the html ‘code’ in a page template.
· How to include links in their pages.
· How to include a sign-up code link in their pages.
· How to protect and mask ‘affiliate links’.
So we are talking very basic stuff here that I think many Internet marketers assume their customers already know- but don’t.
There are some really excellent tutorials online to help people learn these basic skills… and if you were one of the people that said you needed help in this area please, please look around for qualified training. Most of it is free, some is not.
So the help you need is available. However, some people even lack the skills necessary to find the resources online that will help them master these skills!
Maybe the first thing you need to focus on, and if you’re an experienced Internet marketer, develop this tool) is to find a good ’search tutorial’ to learn how to find information on the web!
If you’re one of the people who need to master these basic “HTML” skills here’s the one resource you need:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp
This is an excellent but basic introduction to HTML. You need to know this stuff if you’re long on time and short on cash.
If you have some money you don’t need to know this stuff just hire someone from one of the following sites to do it for you:
http://www.elance.com
http://www.rentacoder.com
http://www.scriptlance.com
I think it’s still a good idea to know some basic stuff because you don’t want to hire someone to do minor changes to your sites for you when they are so easy to do yourself. Plus you’ll be in a better position to evaluate the quality of someone else’s work.
2. Information overload …(25%)
Many people complained that they are bombarded with information, books, products, ads etc… each one claiming to be the info they need to make millions online. They are CONFUSED.
No one’s product I have seen clears up confusion about what it takes to make it online better than mine.
New Internet marketing products are coming out at an incredible rate and since everyone in the Internet marketing ‘industry’ knows how to get a product created quick and easy using Elance, Scriptlance.com, etc there are more new products being promoted every week.
The Internet marketing niche is huge and there’s still lots of money to be made in it and I have not changed my mind. But the market is changing… newbies and those who have been buying Internet marketing ebooks, course and manuals want to know that what they are buying has lots and lots of value and the product is different than the other products being promoted and how it’s different.
Educate your customer better, give them value and they will come back to you. You do not have to be an ‘guru’ to make money in this niche.
But you do need to deliver a lot of value for the cost.
3. How to get traffic cheap or free. (25%)
If there was a source for perfectly targeted traffic that was also free or cheap… guess what?
It wouldn’t be free or cheap anymore.
If there are NO barriers to highly targeted traffic, everyone would be using it. The really targeted and best source of traffic on the net is not free or cheap.
You’ve heard the saying, “You get what you pay for.” That was never more true when it comes to traffic.
So what’s the best source of traffic for your website?
Your own list is #1.
Here’s a tip… when you go to Alexa.com and type in a website address watch for the ’spikes’ in the traffic graphic shown for the site. The ’spikes’ are when the owner of the site sent an email with a link to one of his pages on his site so that his subscribers would visit his page. These ‘visits’ are all counted in the Alexa ranking.
These spikes also occur when JV partners send traffic to a site during a special promotion. Most of the traffic you see on a site comes from email marketing. Very little of it comes through SEO (search engine marketing) – except for those sites that get 1st page ranking in their chosen keywords, very little traffic comes from natural search engine ranking.
Don’t have a list? Then you need to build one ASAP. Your job online is to build your list.
Advertising online has one job: Getting people to opt-in to your LIST.
Your best source of traffic comes from links you’ve put into your email messages to your list! The second best source of traffic is targeted advertising through PPC or offline ads or direct mail.
4. No product or service… (6%)
Finally, many people stated that they did not have a product to sell and needed help putting one together. Since it’s relatively simple to put a product together, I think the responses had more to do with creating the ‘right’ product, positioning and the actual product creation process than simply not knowing ‘how’ to do it.
Even though product creation is ’simple’ it is not easy and it involves a lot of work. Any type of product that can make it easier to create your own info-products and software will have a ready acceptance in the marketplace.
The barriers most people run into is when they try to ‘think’ of a product to sell which is the exact opposite thing they should be doing.
If you are the one having this problem you should be monitoring discussion boards, newsletters and opinion sites to determine what problems exist in niche markets and then create a product that solves that problem.
Let the market decides what it wants.
That’s it. Those are the most often cited barriers to making money online. I hope this has been helpful.