I was checking out my Google Reader the other night night and saw Darren list some points about some posts he read. One point really stuck me, “There is no one-size-fits-all formula for internet marketing success.” That point is so incredibly true, and I don’t think it is said nearly enough.
I am sick of bloggers (especially popular ones) who basically say “throw some adsense up and ask for a link, you’ll be fine” as their advice for Internet success. It is so much more than that, and sometimes I just feel like throwing a rock at those folks who mislead their readers so much.
In my 11 months of blogging (6 or so months of serious blogging) I’ve learnt a few really important things.
To live off the ‘net you must be able to do everything (e.g.: even if you hire a web designer, you should still know how to modify HTML), you must be extremely patient (another point not said nearly enough), and you must be prepared to do this, that, this, that, and another thing before you even make a single penny.
And the things that you must do before you make a penny are very different depending on your target audience, your style of writing, how good your people skills are (mine suck, by the way), etc. I think prospective Internet entrepreneurs will at one point or another think that everything the pros say will help them, when in reality maybe only 50% of it will. The other 50% is stuff that doesn’t apply to them.
I think the problem is the popular bloggers don’t know how a less experienced person may view their thoughts sometimes. The popular bloggers are so experienced that “making a few bucks is easy” or “hitting the Digg front page is a piece of cake”.
As I write this John Chow’s recent experiment crossed my mind. He wrote a post the other day about how he is going to make a blog and not tell anyone it is owned by him, and get it super popular as a “nobody blogger”. While I do wish John good luck, I think his experiment is severely flawed from the get-go - he has enough experience to make a blog super poplar without breaking a sweat (unlike the rest of us).
I really hope John writes things in a way that doesn’t make people think “oh, its a piece of cake”. For the popular bloggers,it is, but for the rest of us it is a huge deal. Because of that I have a feeling (hope I’m wrong) that he will make it seem too much like “if you copy exactly what I did you’ll become rich”. In reality it isn’t as easy as mimicking what someone has already done.
It’s all about doing your own experiments.
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