Exposing the myth of internet marketing

Reading time: 7 – 11 minutes

re: the myth of internet marketing

Bear with me, there’s a little back-story here, and you can skip it if you like – but I recommend you don’t because there is some valuable insight buried in it.

Ok… I am unabashed about calling myself an internet marketer and entrepreneur. I started selling stuff on eBay in 1999. In those days there was no PayPal. I didn’t have a digital camera so I shot my pictures on 35mm film and scanned them to upload to eBay. Digital cameras weren’t even close to film-quality at the time and they were silly-expensive to boot… big-boy toys really.

Even before 1999 I had been involved with the old BBS communities as a teenager. My brother and I ran a BBS on an Apple 2 computer using a phone line we put in. People who used the BBS were very supportive and sent donations, which helped cover costs (we were kids, remember, so we didn’t have much earning power ourselves).

So you could say I’ve grown-up with the internet. At 37 I remember having a rotary phone in the house… and black-and-white TVs, so I don’t take the instant gratification of today’s downloadable culture for granted, but I did learn and adapt as changes came along.

It may surprise you to know I’m not a computer-geek. I’m a marketing geek. Computers are just tools, like the saws and planes I used when I was a cabinet-maker before I went full-time into marketing. The machines are a means to accomplish the end.

I was starting with my own business-ventures in the early 1990s – before the internet became a viable marketing medium for anything I wanted to do, so I used old-school marketing methods first, then adapted to the internet as it became bigger and more interesting. More importantly, it became a way to reach more people.

As I became aware of this I started to think differently about who my customers could be. As a woodworker I was dealing with a local market only. As an internet marketer it was a different situation entirely, though when I got started my customers were almost exclusively in the US and Canada.

These days the internet is a worldwide marketplace. I’ve sold stuff to people in dozens of countries.

As the world transforms into a global marketplace with very little barrier to entry, you or me or anyone with a computer and a connection can start a business and have an opportunity to flourish.

BUT – there’s a big myth out there…. and if you aren’t careful you could spend a lot of time floundering around, chasing money-makers instead of building a real sustainable business. I can tell you from experience, because I, myself, invested a lot of energy in chasing money-makers instead of making a real plan for a sustainable, long-term business.

A lot of other marketers made the same error. They chased the quick money – selling whatever people would pay money for, even if it was no good… and consumers, burned too many times, started to become very skeptical.

And NOW, as a reward for all our short-sighted behavior, all marketers are now confronted with a skeptical and cagey customer.

This customer, well, he turns to the internet and researches our products and services in depth before we even become aware of his presence. He doesn’t need a salesperson to get educated… in fact he won’t even agree or request a phone conversation unless, in general, he’s pretty sure he is open to buying.

What this means is that there is a silent majority of prospects for your business you aren’t even aware of because they choose to remain invisible to you, observing your marketing but remaining anonymous. This is not the same as in a brick-and-mortar store where people will come in and look around and not buy; because in that situation you can at least observe them, the way they dress and so forth and talk to them about what they are looking for.

With the internet media the conversation is most often one-way, and while your prospects listen and absorb your marketing message, they seldom give you meaningful feedback as to why they don’t buy. You only usually get feedback when they do – because at that point they invest in entering a dialog and relationship with you. Up to the point where the customer opens that relationship with you, the vendor, you are usually flying blind, relying on a generalized impression of what your average customer might want rather than the sort of valuable, specific feedback you could get if you could only engage your prospects in a dialog.

The solution is, as with all real-world solutions to growing your income, not, as they say, “easy-peasy”.

In fact, it is hard.

And because it IS hard almost nobody you compete with directly will go the distance to implement the solution… and thus if YOU strike forth with indomitable will to succeed you will have an advantage your competition will gnash his teeth over, fretting “that sucker’s no better than I am at this business, why is he kicking my ass at marketing and sales results?”

See, the MYTH of internet marketing is that it is easy because there are large aspects of it which present opportunities for leverage, economy, and automation. But this does not make marketing easy; it merely gives it the potential for efficiency and big profits.

Business, my friend, is often anything but easy – but the rewards of overcoming challenges of business can be enormous, both in terms of who YOU become and the amount of money you earn.

So, it’s worth it to do the hard stuff, because the willingness and ability to do the hard stuff is what separates the ordinary achievers from the people who get incredible results.

And which group would you rather be in?

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Let me go back to my earlier business experiences; I had a small cabinetry business. If you’ve been reading my stuff for awhile you know that woodworking was close to my heart but making a living at it was tough. Not only did I have to be good at doing the craft and doing the work on schedule, I also had to market and manage my business.

At some point I realized that I was more interested in marketing than woodworking and I began to make a career shift. This is relevant to YOU perhaps because if you are like a lot of Americans your previous career skills may no longer be in demand. I found an article on CNN.com that cited a study showing in the next ten years employers are going to shift from about 29% dependence on outside consultants to about 41% – which means 12% of the jobs that pay benefits and steady salaries are going to vanish.

What this means for YOU, is that if you want to get ahead in the next few years you either need to have some sort of in-demand skill like specialized computer programming, or you need to be able to market YOURSELF, either as a free-agent independent consultant like me or just to land a steady salaried job until that employer decides to eliminate it and put YOU back out in the job market again.

Either way you slice-it, we are entering or already are in an era when your ability to market your special skills are what determines your earning power.

You can either look on marketing yourself as a dreadful burden, unfamiliar and scary – or you can see it as an opportunity to create the lifestyle and livelihood your parents never imagined, tied-down as they were to employers and by geographical obligations to stay close to where the work was.

I think you should seize the opportunity. That’s my style and it’s my pleasure and self-appointed duty to inspire and lead you, according to my own talents and gifts, towards a life of more self-sufficiency than you’ve perhaps ever realistically imagined for yourself.

It all starts with your commitment however – your solemn, heartfelt commitment to bring great value to the marketplace. This is the part of it that is easy to miss because, for the last ten years or so, there has been so much CRAP sold on the internet, get-rich-quick schemes and such, that consumers are justifiably resistant to marketing messages which do not come from a source of complete and verifiable congruency.

… which is another way of saying you better be a real good con-artist or you better be real good at your chosen specialty – and passionate and committed to marketing yourself as the BEST solution to the problems your clients face.

…which is another way of saying you must believe wholeheartedly in the goodness of your mission in the business of earning your livelihood.

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Lots more coming.

I’ll either be doing an audio-podcast, perhaps weekly – or maybe video. I’m leaning in the direction of audio because video takes a lot more time and energy to produce and honestly I don’t think most people like watching talking heads on the internet, at least not for very long.

What’s your opinion or preference?

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Loren Woirhaye prefers to play gypsy music on guitar or accordion – but when he isn’t doing that he writes direct-response copy, consults with clients to help them make money with their websites, coaches people who want to fire their employers and blogs about success, life, his personal foibles, and online marketing at http://malibumentor.com/blog

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The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.