If I were to ask you to guess why the vast majority of Internet Marketers fail to make any money online I’d be willing to bet cold hard cash that the answers would range from product selection to website design and everything associated with selling and marketing in between.

What if I were to tell you that you’re absolutely dead WRONG!

Of course things like traffic generation, list building, finding a profitable niche, website/blog design, auto-responder series, etc. are vitally important, but I’ve discovered through scores of conversations with new and struggling online marketers that it is something far simpler than the mechanics of online marketing.

The fact that it is so simple is the main reason so many folks miss it.

OK rather than draw out the suspense, I’ll let you in on the secret missing ingredient that causes most online marketers to never…

• Generate substantial targeted traffic…
• Build a list of hungry subscribers…
• Or… make consistent sales.

Drum roll please…

OK, here it is… ACTION!!!

That’s right; the vast majority of new and struggling online marketers do not take any action toward building their businesses. Most are stuck at the point of what is commonly referred to as “analysis-paralysis.”

These are good people, who begin with serious intentions about building an online business and then get stuck collecting and analysis information that in reality they’ll never, ever use.

Does this sound familiar? You join scores of subscriber lists, download tons of free eBooks and software and in fact, join forums and spend hours looking for that secret or special formula that will result in a break-through.

If what I’ve just described resonates with you, you may be stuck in this boat!

At this point, you probably know more about Internet Marketing than most seasoned veterans, but thats it. You’ve become a repository of information about Internet Marketing. But knowledge alone is not enough. What makes things hum is doing!

NO ACTION = NO SALES!

All the good intentions in the world amount to zero, zilch, nada if you never do anything.

The most common reason for this paralysis is information overload!

If you’ve ever been in a fine dining restaurant you’ve probably been presented with one of those menus with a thousand choices on it. So many choices that you become overwhelmed and end up ordering a hamburger as a result. The sheer volume of choices caused you to actually choose the lesser of many evils so to speak.
Rather than taking a chance on something perhaps unfamiliar on the menu, you can’t decide so you end up taking the safest path available – Cheeseburger & fries!

How can you (if you’re in this boat) overcome the analysis –paralysis and information overload and start making some money?

The answer is again simple. You need a plan. There is an old adage in sales that says, “Work you plan and plan you work!” It’s proven and sound advice.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re likely to end up some place else…

If you do not have a specific game plan, one that you can put your hands on, you’re doomed to fail.

For a very limited time, I’m giving away my free report, 48 Hour Action Plan, that walks you step-by-step through a simple outline for planning day-to-day activities you need to do to make money online.

Consider this – You can start making money without creating a product, without dealing with support nightmares and even without a website – almost immediately using this proven strategy!

Go here now to grab your copy while they last! -> 48 Hour Action Plan

Strategy #1: Planning For Online Success

You can want to do the right thing, and you can even want to do it for the right reasons. But if you don’t apply the right principles, you can still hit a wall.

Goal setting is a powerful process. Stephen Covey calls it, “the manifestation of creative imagination and independent will.” Setting goals is the first step in planning your success.

Goal setting is the practicality of “eating our elephants one bite at a time,” and of translating vision into achievable, actionable doing.

Here are three vital questions you must ask yourself: What? Why? and How?

1. What do I want to accomplish? What is the end I have in mind? (i.e.earn an extra $1000 per week, per month…)

2. Why do I want to do it? i.e. To pay for my child’s college education, buy a car, go back to school. You have to decide the “why?”

3. How am I going to do it? What key principles will I need to achieve my goals? What service or product can you provide that the marketplace wants or needs? What problems can you solve?

Once these three questions are answered you can begin the planning process toward actionable steps.

I want to make money online is not a goal! That is a wish…

A goal must be specific in nature. It should be quantifiable and time bound. Here is an example. I want to earn $500 each month beginning in the next 90 days. The $500/month makes it quantifiable. The “per month” and the 90 day time frame establishes a framework that is achievable.

I am going to fast forward here for a moment.

What will it take to earn $500 per month? Let’s examine this further. Let’s say you’ve selected an affiliate product that pays a commission of $47. If we break the process down it might look like this:

$500/month/$47 = 11 Sales

11 Sales/4.3 weeks = 2.5 sales/week (3 sales)

If the conversion rate is 1% (meaning that for every 100 people who visit the “sales page” you make 1 sale… You need to drive 300 visitors per week to the site.

300 visitors x 1% Conversion Rate = 3 Sales@$47 = $141

From this simple process map we can see that your #1 Priority would be to DRIVE 300 Visitors To Your Affiliate Link every week.

We’ll talk more about traffic in future posts, but right now, grab this resource:

48 Hour Action Plan – 10 pages.

To you success,
Bob Coleman

P.S. I’ll post Next Lesson In A Couple of Days… How To Monetize Your Online Business

Saw this over at Warrior Forum… Words of Wisdom from Dennis Gaskill.

If you want to learn marketing, if you want to make money online, why aren’t you focusing on that?

If your focus is on finding fault with how other marketers conduct their business, what will that result in? We get that all the time here, and all that leads to is finding more things to find fault with. Creating your own little black clouds of self-pity aren’t going to take you where you want to go.

What you focus on expands.

Those aren’t my words. Self-made millionaire T Harv Eker wrote that in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.

If your focus is on how EZA, or Facebook, or Squidoo is doing you wrong, guess what you get? More things to complain about because more things will go wrong, or you’ll perceive things that way, which makes it your reality just the same.

What you focus on expands.

If you compare yourself to someone else in IM, disparaging over how far ahead of you they are, guess what you get? A continuing gap between you and them. If you believe others are just lucky and you’re not, you’ll keep having a lack of luck.

What you focus on expands.

If you focus on what you lack, what do you get? More of what you focus on…more lack! If you’re not making money and that’s your goal, why are you focusing on things that aren’t going to help you reach your goal?

We also get a lot of what I’d call “socializing” type questions here. Those are questions designed to start a discussion but which are not likely to evoke responses that are useful to doing business. When you learn to ask better questions, you’ll get back better information.

What you focus on expands – but it goes deeper than what our conscious mind envisions. What we really look for is often determined by what lies deep in our subconscious. It lies in our long-term attitudes and patterns of behavior.

I’m not going deep into psychology here, but I will say that any significant change we want in our external world often means making a change in our attitudes and ways of habitual thinking.

If we keep thinking like we’ve always thought, and keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll get the same results over and over. It’s foolish to walk the down the same path every day and expect to come out in a different place. If you want different results than your getting, you have to do something different.

I like how Jim Rohn put it, “If you want more than you have, become more than you are.”

One more psychological point: If you see rich people or successful people as bad, then you will self-sabotage your efforts at becoming rich and successful.

Why?

Because deep down most of us want to be and believe we are a good person, but by equating rich with being bad, your subconscious desire to be good will win out and overrule your conscious desire to be rich in order to eliminate the internal conflict. Guru bashing is a dangerous game, not to them, but to your own wealth.

Not making it? Take note of what you’ve been focusing on and you’ll likely discover why you’re not making it, because what you focus on expands.

Next, look at what distracts you from keeping your focus on your goal and you’ll discover where you need to make changes. Here are some common things that go wrong:

- too much television
- too much random surfing on the net
- too much game playing
- too much partying
- too much negative thinking (you ever met a rich, happy pessimist?)
- lack of self-discipline
- lack of clearly defined goals
- lack of self-motivation
- lack of self-worth/self-esteem/self-respect
- laziness in thought and action
- anything that veers you off course

When you learn to better focus your thinking and actions toward a worthwhile goal, you’ll start to realize the results you want. Be grateful for any positive results no matter how meager they may be, for what you focus on expands.

What are you focusing on?

MLA Style Citation:
Gaskill, Dennis “Here is Why You’re Not Successful in IM” 6 Apr. 2010 WarriorForum.com. 10 Apr. 2010 .