The Trials and Tribulations of an Aging Wannabe Internet Entrepeneur

Hi,

    I’m Keith Smith & I want to be a successful Internet entrepreneur. God, I’ve read enough stuff to believe I should know everything about internet marketing & blogging but it really isn’t about the reading of material but more akin to “doing” internet marketing etc. I suppose I took the bull by the horns about 6 months ago after being laid off from Jaguar LandRover end of 2008, spent a few months not really knowing what to do & then decided that I would have a shot at trying to make money online.

It’s definitely not like going into a bookie & having a bet. There, you either win or lose & know your fate pretty much straightaway. I’ve certainly found out that Internet marketing isn’t straightforward but is a number of quite complex strategies, which need to be worked on, & nurtured over a period of time. I suppose it’s like building a house, if you don’t set suitable foundations, the whole structure could be unstable & will be liable to perish.

Of course, any wannabe marketers need to understand the logic of marketing and thus will need to learn the basics but it is pointless trying to learn everything before you set sail. There are copious amount of available data, courses, eBooks, audio downloads, coaching programs & the like but all that I can say here is to buy & download sensibly & do the groundwork before you start to build your business. Sometimes though, the effort required to cope with all this information & the fact that you will soon realise that pay cheques & Paypal payments are not dropping into your bank etc within days, tend to blunt the enthusiasm & thus scupper any chance of making it as an Internet marketer. It is going to be a long & lonely ride, plenty of support from the edge but you need to be in the water yourself to learn how to swim.

I’m talking from personal experience here, not really knowing when I launched on day one exactly what was involved & at times, running round like a headless chicken, trying to keep plates spinning, running from one to the other because I didn’t have a route map, a daily or weekly plan to adhere to which is exactly what you need when you start up. I was looking for more information & was up & down links like snakes & ladders, all the time reading, downloading, more reading but not a lot of “doing”. Its going to be slow, its going to be tedious at times & it can also be rather disconcerting when things are not happening as quickly as you think they should. All that I can say here is that you cannot see your beautiful new home when you are digging holes in the ground for your foundations. You can see an artists impression or a set of plans but you can’t touch anything. Just make sure you have a solid foundation & the beautiful house will follow. Stay focussed & stay positive.

Here’s what to do. From all the information you have read, you will have found the vital information you need for your initial start up: set up a website, set up a blog, get onto Facebook & Twitter. Great start, excellent advice, but where do you go to set up a website & a blog? There are just so many options to both of these vital pieces of the toolkit that you need that it is so easy to pick the wrong one first time which leads to wasted time & effort & sometimes money. I went for a cheap website initially but as I began to set up I began to realise that there are restrictions that as a beginner I was not immediately aware of. I would recommend that you choose a domain name that you will have to pay for, albeit not too expensive, this will give you more flexibility, your own dot com or dot org address & your own email address at your website. I found with the free hosting sites you cannot have an email address but the biggest thing here is appearance to the outside world. You will not look particularly professional if you are operating from a website where your business name may be accompanied by the name of the website operator. My initial site address was …keith-smith.Weebly.com. Prospective subscribers would know you were using a free website & it just creates the wrong image for your business. You must look and act professionally at all times. Use Weebly by all means but purchase a domain name from the outset. You can build your websites easily, you have plenty of design & theme options & can make them look very professional & publish to the outside world as soon as you have completed.

            The same applies to your blog site. I use WordPress, there are others but I chose this one. However, what I didn’t realise initially is that there are 2 options here, a free one, WordPress. Com & a paid one, WordPress.org.  Unknowingly, I chose the free one. Like the free websites, you are accompanied in your URL by WordPress, i.e. yourname.wordpress.com, rather than yourname.com if you buy your domain name.

Setting up is easy; posting blogs is simple enough for an old timer, loads of widgets & stuff to make your blog look professional & efficient. I will be upgrading to dot org fairly soon. Again, this is just to maintain a professional outlook.  When you are ready to start posting blogs, ensure you have done your research into popular, moneymaking niches, do your keyword searches to identify niches with the most potential.

Choose your material carefully; write about things you are passionate or knowledgeable about.

To further develop your image & reputation you should register with Facebook, Twitter & possibly YouTube. You need to build lists of friends & followers who are potentially your subscribers & customers in the future. This can be a painfully slow process in the beginning but I would suggest you start with Facebook & Twitter, building your lists from people you know initially & then expanding with people they know & so on. Being a Billy No Mates, I sat there on the 1^st day & couldn’t think for the life of me where to start. Now, after 3 weeks I have nearly 250 friends all over the planet & 740 followers on Twitter. Not ground breaking I know but a few weeks ago…?

With Twitter, I would also recommend that you sign up (free) for Social Oomph & Tweet Spinner which will help you to automate sending tweets, help you find new followers & also keep your Twitter account clutter free, thus saving you precious time. Take a look at this short article on Time saving when Tweeting: http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1995974. When you start to use either FB or Tw, don’t start trying to sell & promote stuff from day 1, steadily build up your profile & reputation, try to enhance you image by putting out interesting or thought provoking Tweets & messages. You are trying to build relationships with the rest of the world remember, not selling from a stall, so nice & easy does it.

Remain focussed, Remain enthusiastic. Persistence pays! Rome wasn’t built in a day! Neither will your lists be! I have found, using Social Oomph, I am picking up around 15 – 20 new followers everyday, just from keywords or tags. I am doing nothing at all to collect those new followers, I know the numbers are not ground breaking but they are new followers for free. Take a look at this article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Automate-Twitter-Using-Social-Oomph&id=3256345. I am investigating other means of getting traffic or new followers & I will let you know in future hubs. Any suggestions or comments from other, more advanced readers here would be very much appreciated.

To continue, I am not going to fill this blog with endless things to do but just reiterate the things you must concentrate on in the early days & weeks following your decision to launch your business. Remember: get out of bed every day with a positive approach & a list of 5 things to do. Try to complete your list every day.

1.      Purchase a domain name & build your website

2.      Purchase a domain name & set up your blog site

3.      Carefully determine your niche markets

4.      Sign up to Facebook, Twitter, Social Oomph & Tweet Spinner

5.      Check out the 2 Ezinearticle links above to help with your automation.

6.      Start to build your lists on FB & Twitter

7.      Think about some original or thought provoking output for FB &Tw & start sharing

8.      Sign up for an Ezinearticles.com account & if you think you can write an article or two connected with your niche market, do so & submit it to Ezinearticles. If you can produce interesting material, this will help to generate traffic to your site & also help to improve your status/ranking with Google. (Google loves Ezine stuff, More about this next time)

9.      Using the same rationale as 8 above, write & post blogs connected with your niche market. Not too many to start with, perhaps 2 or 3 each week to help generate a following. Don’t expect miracles in the early days. Stay Positive. Stay Focussed.

10.   Sign up & submit original & interesting articles to HubPages.com, just like me.

This is more than enough to be going on with. My intention is to post again on a weekly basis to keep like-minded people up to date with my progress & to impart any lessons learned which might assist.

Rgds, Keith.