Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that the only difference between success and failure online is EDUCATION.

When I first started selling ebooks on eBay and online I was in no way educated in Internet Marketing techniques, in fact I had never even heard of Internet Marketing to be honest.

I had never designed a website.

I had never designed graphics.

I had never written anything in my life, except at school many years before.

I didn’t know what a domain name was.

I didn’t know what web hosting was.

I had never used ftp.

I didn’t know what HTML was.

I had never wrote an article.

I didn’t know any SEO.

I didn’t understand keyword research.

I had never used an autoresponder.

I had never visited a forum.

I had never even read an eBook!

I could go on and on about all the things I didn’t know how to do but I won’t bore you.

I had literally never done anything online except send some personal emails, buy some bargains from eBay and play free online games.

The reason I am telling you how much I didn’t know, is just to show you that education can make all the difference.

If I can learn what I did and get to where I am now, you can do it too.

I know sometimes you feel like you will never learn everything you think you should know, but seriously YOU WILL, JUST GIVE IT TIME.

You will know from previous blogs I keep harping on about not finding success overnight, and you won’t, most marketers don’t, so don’t be too hard on yourself, give yourself some breathing space and be prepared to work at your online business success over time.

I guess my online ventures began when I realized people were making money online selling information products I was instantly hooked.

I thought to myself, what an easy way to make money, but boy was I wrong.

The nights I spent pulling out my hair I am surprised I have any hair left!

I used to get so frustrated online and sometimes I still do.

For example yesterday I was branding an ebook using a PDF Brander.

Now I used this software without any problems about 2 years ago, but as I had not used it since I had completely forgot how to use it.  Just goes to show that the saying is true “if you don’t use it you lose it”.

Steam was literally coming out of my ears as I tried to get it to work.

I finally gave up, submitted a support request to the software site, then sat down with my newspaper and a drink.

After about a half an hour, when I had calmed down, I went back to my pc and re-read the instruction manual, done some changes to the ebook and BINGO it worked.

I suppose I seen submitting a support ticket as the easy way to do it, but as we all know, you don’t normally get an instant response from help desks so you are left twiddling your thumbs awaiting their reply.

Thankfully, after I re-read the instruction manual, I managed to work out my problem, to say I was relieved is an understatement, I hate not knowing how to do something, and I think that’s a good personal trait to have, I will not let anything beat me.

I don’t know about you, but I become a woman possessed when I cannot do something, I move heaven and earth to understand how I can overcome a problem and I don’t give up until I have conquered whatever I am trying to master.

Too many people give up at the first hurdle online, that’s why so many fail.

You have to educate yourself in any way you can.

If you search the internet you can almost always find a solution to your problem in various formats.

Many times you can actually get the information for free too.

Now, if you have the money, you could of course just by buy a $5000 product to help you out.

But being serious, you can’t really buy high end products every time you need a solution.

You can get lots of amazing content on the internet for free.

That’s the beauty of the internet, free information.

You can easily search google or yahoo for free content on any task you are struggling with this can give you access to:

Free reports.

Related forums.

Blogs.

Articles.

Free video tutorials and more.

When you don’t have a lot of money to spend educating yourself, then the only way is free information.

That’s exactly how I started out, dumb and poor!

I never had any spare cash to waste, all my money was accounted for, so my only option was the freebies.

Now we know that nothing in life is free there is normally a catch somewhere.

For free information you might need to part with your name and email address.

Your email address is a small price to pay for something you need, and at the end of the day you can always unsubscribe if you don’t like future follow up emails that are sent to you.

It’s important to realize that unfortunately there is not some Internet Marketing USB stick that you can insert into your brain and instantly download all the information you need to know immediately.

You are going to have to learn some “stuff”.

So in essence you are doing a swap, your email for a solution to a problem your having.

Someone has took the time to write or talk about your problem, and create a solution for you, so I think it’s a fair exchange.

But their solution may not be the one you want.

For example:

I remember when I wrote my very first ebook, I think the title was something like “How To Catch A Cheating Spouse”.

The ebook was my first attempt and I had used a personal experience to create it, I detailed all the various steps you can do to catch your cheating spouse.

When I accessed the free content, I was told I would need adobe photoshop,  which cost a pretty penny and I couldn’t afford it.

Other free content told me about free imaging software that could help, so I downloaded it and tried it out.

7 days on and I had a basic design ecover that looked more like a dog’s dinner than a sleek ecover.

That’s what I mean buy the solution might not always be the solution you are looking for.

I needed to find out how to design an ecover, I designed an ecover, but the output was not what I had desired.

So I went back to google, searched for cheap ecover designers, I found one I liked, sent him $10 or so and within about 1 hour I had an ecover.

Now my ebook was ready to go, but I had wasted the best part of 2 weeks trying to get an ecover.

In my early days I was a “jack of all trades and master of none” and I don’t want you to make the same mistake.

I felt like every part of my business had to be done by ME, my website was like my baby and no one was touching it.

This was a very bad fault on my part.

You have to learn when to outsource parts of your business.

I learned an  important lesson that day, that if I ever need graphics again, I would just pay a professional rather than spend hours trying to save some money and design them myself.

In fact, about an hour ago I paid a designer to create some graphics for my new website that will be coming out soon.

If you end up trying to do everything in your business yourself, you won’t get very far, you won’t have the time.

It’s simply too much for one person.

If you are chasing this dream lifestyle on the internet, when will you have time to reap the rewards?

Your time can be better spent when you let others help.
But how can you get other people to help you?

You need to build online relationships.

Now this might sound quite hard, but it’s really not.

You can easily build up friendships and relationships with other people in your market simply by visiting related forums.

Forums have a wealth of experience at your fingertips.

Remember earlier I said I submitted a support ticket and had to wait for a response?

Well in a forum you can submit a post and you will receive almost instant free help (depending on how many members the forum has) and not everyone on a forum is just out to make money, many forums members are just genuine people like you and I who want to help.

There are people in forums who are happy to help and these new connections can open up a whole new world for you and your business.

When you need help, find a relevant forum and make a post asking for help.

I have met so many nice people through forums and I actually consider them to be my friends now, we have been in contact so much and done so much to help out each others businesses.

If you need help and you cant find an answer from the “free stuff method” try forums.

Don’t be afraid to post in a forum, people won’t laugh or insult you if you ask a stupid question.

We were all newbies once upon a time, the Internet Marketing USB stick does not exist remember.

Don’t struggle along alone, join a forum and get help.

There are literally thousands of forums you can join, just search google for your niche forum, ie. blogging forum, traffic forum, website design forum etc.

Find some, sign up and get posting.

Another good idea is that many forums have a private messaging system, ideal for those amongst you who are too shy to make a post in front of all the forum members.

You simply send a private message to one of the members, and then they reply (if they want to).

Then you can ask them your question and see if they can help you out.

Now they may not have an answer, but more likely than not, they will say they don’t know but tell you another member on the forum who might now the answer.

Then you can contact them.

Any forum I have ever been on has always been friendly and helpful to me.

If you don’t know where to turn on the internet for help, you can’t find any information on it, find a related forum and ask in there.

You don’t have to learn everything yourself, it’s ok to ask for help, so find some forums and start building those online relationships.

Good luck, Sally :)

PS. Have you filled out my quick survey yet? You can fill it out here: Sally’s Quick Survey

Filed under: Internet Marketing

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