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Story Ideas - - Confessions of an Internet Marketing Wannabe
By Deb Gallardo
This post is actually in response to a cross-blog posting on Lynn Terry’s ClickNewz site. For my readers expecting story ideas, this article can be viewed as a character profile which can spark a story idea.
Lynn,
What about hearing from an in-between-bie — neither a newbie nor someone experienced in IM? You know. The person who knows a lot of the pieces of IM but hasn’t been able to fit them all together, so she’s still not making money online after 2 1/2 years? Would you like to know what THIS kind of person thinks about Internet Marketing?
I started studying IM in earnest in April of 2005. I shelled out big, big bucks for Yanik Silver’s Underground Seminar that same month, which was probably not the best event for a newbie to attend and I could have used that same money in better ways at the time.
Oh, well. Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 vision.
That September my full-time job was downsized to part-time and so I was forced to seek full-time employment, even though what I really wanted to do was get an online business going.
Since I had already paid for the Women’s Power Summit — a one-day seminar hosted by Dr. Jeanette Cates and Alex Mandossian before Big Seminar — and my airline ticket and hotel reservation were paid for, I made the trip, despite friends who thought I was nuts spending that kind of money. Still, I’m glad I went, and it was life-changing, but not in the way I expected.
One of the speakers was Stephanie Frank, author of “The Accidental Millionaire.” From the now-infamous chapter seven of her book, I realized I have been suffering with ADD all my life. I learned why ever since I was in high school and facing an all-nighter before finals that, just when I needed clarity and to dig in there and get to work, I would fall asleep — practically passing out.
It turns out that in people with ADD, the frontal lobe of the brain shuts down when overwhelm sets in. And with ADDers (I just made that term up…) this can happen easily.
“Ordinary” people sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees. ADDers see the forest AND the trees, AND the grass, AND the moss, AND the leaves, AND the bugs on the ground under the leaves, AND the dirt, AND… You get the point.
It’s hard NOT to be overwhelmed when you not only see the big picture, but also EVERY detail, all in a big rush. And it’s this that causes overwhelm. My brain just doesn’t know how to process the information, let alone break everything down into steps.
I don’t remember the statistic, but a huge percentage of entrepreneurs have ADD. This condition can actually be an advantage, because the ADD brain can multi-task like nobody’s business. In fact it’s about the only way it CAN function without boredom setting in.
IMHO, there is TOO much information out there — too many pieces of information. Yes, there’s junk out there, but there are also a lot of EXCELLENT products by reputable marketers who not only talk the talk but walk the walk.
I’ve bought Jim Edwards’ products (Mini-Site Secrets, 7-Day eBook, Turn Words Into Traffic, plus 33 Days to Online Profit with Yanik Silver), Dr. Jeanette Cates’ (Drain Your Brain), Perry Marshall’s (The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords), Alice Seba’s (CB Moms with Jeff Mulligan and another product I can’t remember the title — sorry, Alice!), Jimmy D. Brown’s and Ryan Deiss’ (Info Product Mastery, plus a subscription to Jimmy’s monthly List and Traffic membership site and Ryan’s Piggyback Traffic), Rosalind Gardner’s (Super Affiliate Handbook), and Cory Rudl’s (Insider Secrets to Internet Marketing) posthumously.
As you can see, I did NOT buy junk! Every single product is invaluable.
I should mention by way of explanation that I’m a 58-year-old single mom with a classical music degree and licensure as a public school music teacher. Because I was a stay-at-home mom for step-children and then a baby at age 39, I don’t have a great work history. Now that I’m 7 years from retirement, I’m no longer considered the kind of candidate schools want to employ.
I’m also a singer and actress of some note locally. Since I’m a writer, I’m also a whiz at Microsoft Word.
But despite my expertise, I couldn’t see how to monetize my experience and knowledge. I have all these great products, only SOME of which I’ve been able to work my way through. Obviously it’s not the products. It’s ME!
With each of these wonderful products I’ve learned sooo much about IM. But I bought all of them in the wrong order. Each is highly specialized. In some cases I’d buy it thinking I’d be able to use it when I got to that stage, stockpiling riches I wasn’t ready to use.
With those products I started to use, I would get to a certain point and something — a detail, a problem with a step I didn’t know what to do about, a concept I didn’t understand, or another product or service I needed to buy — something always sent me back to square one. (Or so it seemed.)
And now it is late October 2007 and I still am not selling anything online. My finances have totally tanked. I am still only employed part-time as a church choir director living with my 82-year-old mother on $240 (pretax) per month. During the summer it was $120 per month. My mother makes more per month in retirement than I do.
Creditors are hounding me daily — except right now my phone is temporarily out of service because I can’t pay the bill. I’m looking on that as a blessing in disguise…
I don’t care what anyone says. I just can’t work up enthusiasm for building Adsense sites about subjects I’m not interested in, and even with my ADD brain which is curious about a LOT of subjects, I’ve not found any subject that I can throw myself into, which is the only way I operate. No half-*ssed, half-hearted, just-do-it-for-the-money thing is going to work for me. I absolutely can’t stay with it.
Lord knows I’ve tried and I have a hard-drive full of PLR on every boring (to me) niche under the sun. If you can do that and make it work, more power to you.
Besides, I’m still struggling to build ONE website. (I’ve moved twice in the past year and now I can’t find Jim’s mini-site course when I really need it.)
Early this year I threw up my hands trying to do niche market research. I just couldn’t find a subject I liked that had all the criteria for a “hungry market.” So I decided to just go with what I DO KNOW and hoped there was enough of a market for it.
I wrote an ebook on a subject I know a LOT about, which is how to find story ideas for creative writers. I finished it in a few days and tinkered with it and expanded it and polished it over the next few months. Yes, I’m anal retentive on top of my other flaws.
Then I got serious about this blog and changed it from an eclectic mixture of way too many subjects (it reflected my ADD brain) and focused it exclusively on story ideas for creative writers.
I got part-way through Ed Dale’s F/R/E/E 30-Day Challenge this August, so I learned something about Web 2.0, and got hooked up with some of the social bookmarking sites. Little by little I’m climbing in the organic search results, from page 30 to page 15 for one of my search terms and from page 15 to page 5 for another. Nothing stellar, but it’s progress.
I put John Reese’s BlogRush widget on my blog, and that’s sent me a tiny trickle of traffic. I got my first comments this week! Trackbacks from two blogs. Woohoo!
But my frustration level (not to mention anxiety level) is just about off the chart! I have a product and only half a website for it. I am stuck in so many places, it’s a wonder I can still function.
- I have a sales page but I’m stuck on how to integrate with Paypal to make the sale.
- I have a download page but I’m stuck on how to integrate THAT with Paypal after the sale.
- I don’t have a squeeze page to capture customer info, and I’m stuck because I am LOATHE to write an ezine when I don’t want anymore email myself. Besides, I’m having trouble keeping up with my blog, let alone an autoresponder email series. So what can I use to ask for customer info?
- I could compile some of my blog articles into a free report to give away and make people register for that. BUT, if they’ve read my blog and then buy my ebook, won’t they consider recycled material they could read for free to be a non-bonus? (Of course I don’t know how many people have actually read my entire blog…)
- I have a related product from another marketer that I can give away as a bonus, but I don’t feel it’s related enough to my topic to use it for a squeeze page offer.
- I have wracked my brain for more bonuses but come up dry except for making an audio and/or a video version.
- But since I haven’t yet created either audio or video versions, I’m not sure the promise of them in the future is a viable bonus.
- Once I figure out what to offer as a squeeze page “carrot,” I’m still stuck not knowing where in the site hierarchy the squeeze page should go.
- I am stuck not knowing what to charge and how to value the bonus(es) or the possible free report I mentioned. I feel like I’m just making up prices out of thin air!
- I’ve put an excerpt of my ebook on my blog and on my main site as an enticement and to give people an idea of what they’d be getting. For the excerpt, click here.
- I have absolutely no back-end products. And I can’t figure out how to set up my site to sell affiliate products. I don’t get the layout and I don’t know how to structure a site around affiliate products.
I’m stuck, stuck, stuck!
And yet, I feel like I have to be sooooo close to getting where I want to be. But it’s like I’m stumbling around in the dark and haven’t a clue if I’m close or not because I can’t even see where I’m going.
Then I read about your 20/20 challenge and your launch, and I realized that this is what I’m doing. I’m launching a product. I must be crazy! I don’t know how to do a launch.
Every single aspect of this business has a learning curve. And it feels like I still have so much left to learn.
Because of finances during my unemployment these past 25 months, I’ve had to do everything on my own. I can’t afford to pay anyone to help me.
I say I have a sales letter, but I wrote it myself. What are the odds it’ll do the job? Honestly.
I’ve designed my own site. What are the odds it’s any good?
My ebook, I feel pretty good about, but I could go on tweaking it for the next century. I won’t, however. I’ve stopped worrying about version 1.2 until I finally launch — if that ever happens. At this point I’m not so sure.
And I’ve already listed all the areas where I’m stuck. Given all that, Lynn, I feel pretty hopeless, even if I’m an optimist by nature. I’m so discouraged right now, even without the well-meaning friends who keep saying, “So when is this website thing going to start making you money? You’ve been at it for what? Two and a half years? How long does it take?”
I honestly don’t know how I’m going to survive another year of this. If I had it to do over again, I would not buy products, I would buy a mentor’s time and buy other people’s expertise. Now it’s too late for that.
I wish you well on your product launch, but don’t look for me to buy it. Aside from not being able to afford it, frankly I don’t need another great product because I already own some of the best and they haven’t gotten me where I want to be.
What I really need most is hands-on help. I also need my hand held, my fears calmed, my confidence built, and my next step laid out for me. Unfortunately, those things don’t come free, and free is all I can afford right now or in the foreseeable future.
Thanks for reading.
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October 24th, 2007 at 6:53 am
[...] with other bloggers - and have even had bloggers start them with me. In fact, I just came across this post on Monday, which I will respond to here on ClickNewz later [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
[...] Deb Gallardo responded to my recent entry titled A Newbies Perspective in a post on her own blog. Deb is a published author that specializes in helping fiction writers find story ideas, and has been trying to make money online for over 2 years now. You can read her response to the IM Newbie discussion at: Confessions of an Internet Marketing Wannabe [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hi Deb
Its a mine field out there! I launched my own book last year outlining a number of the issues you raised in your great and honest post.
The internet truly can be a place to earn thousands if not millions, I’m still trying to get there myself and can relate to so much of what you are saying.
My three main internet pitfalls would be:
1. Information overload, this for me is the big one. The important thing is to try and focus on one area of Internet Marketing before you are pulled by another convincing sales letter, and hence try something else.
2. Everything is made to sound so easy, but even the easiest thing online requires an education, and this is often a steep learning curve.
3. Over commiting financially- Every day, we can all face a new product offer, all of which sound compelling and the next big money maker. In truth they maywell be but if you are not careful you not only find yourself spending more money, but also create confusion by receiving more information to look at alongside the rest of it on your desktop.
I’m not trying to rub salt in the wounds, and I’m going to make a suggestion, genuinely not to burn you some more, but to try and help!
I’m going to make you aware of a free memberhsip site which may assist you with some of the issues you mentioned, secondly I do know of a video membership site which shows you everything you described has an issue and you cancel at any time.
You know where you are at present, this site costs $27, I wont get involved in any more detail at this stage. Having found yourself let down with previous expectations I know it is difficult to trust in more recommendations, so I’m going to leave the decision to you.
If you want to take a look at this site fine, if you want details of the free site only thats fine aswell.
If I can help I want to where I can, I have a large degree of empathy with you and where you find yourself.
Kind Regards
Chris
February 2nd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Chris,
I just realized that I didn’t publicly thank you for your great comments here. They were thoughtful and well-intentioned. Right now I’m working directly with Lynn on a step-by-step plan. Yes, Camtasia is on the list, but first I have to build a list, which is #1 on the list. I’ll take you up later, though, on your offer to help when the time comes. Thank you!
Deb
June 13th, 2008 at 12:12 am
[...] seek full-time employment, even though what I really wanted to do was get an online business going. Read the rest of Confessions of an Internet Marketing Wannabe (Opens in new [...]
July 21st, 2008 at 3:40 pm
[...] I said: I’m so discouraged right now, even without the well-meaning friends who keep saying, “So when is this website thing going to start making you money? You’ve been at it for what? Two and a half years? How long does it take?” [...]