Would you like to know what the key to being successful on the Internet is? It lies in constant testing. You have to see what works and what doesn??™t. All of this takes time as well as money. The first nine months are critical and can either make or break you as a marketer. During this time period you are busy exploring every possibility such as attending seminars and workshops in order to learn everything you can about Internet marketing. This holds true not only with the Internet but with any form of education.
You need to spend 5+ years in school if you wish to become a doctor. You also need to spend 5-6 years in school if you wish to become an engineer. On the average, it takes approximately four years to become an expert in a new field. There is not much difference with Internet marketing. The first year is spent in education and the second year is spent in experimentation. The third year is where you take action and the fourth year is where momentum kicks in. Finally, the fifth year is when you realize a profit, and the sixth year means higher revenue. As you see, there are different phases in the Internet marketing business. In order for you to be successful, these have to happen incrementally. This is not true with everyone. If you put your nose to the grindstone, you can cut down the time factor significantly. I have seen people become successful on the Internet within months starting with nothing, but this is an exception rather than the rule.
The biggest issue that Internet marketers face nowadays is that their funds run dry while they are bootstrapping their ideas. Lord Liver Hume who was the founder of Unilever of the United Kingdom was a phenomenal entrepreneur, marketer and philanthropist. He made the following statement:
???I know the fifty percentage of my marketing dollars are creating results for me. The problem is I do not know which fifty percentage is really working and which fifty percentage is not working.???
One of the things I did very early on was taking a job as a marketer. I went to work for a big company and tried to understand the marketing, their channel strategy, their customer acquisition methodologies, their lead generation, their product placement, how well they are able to utilize customer service techniques to solve problems with customers, etc.
I tried to effectively learn all these things at the expense of another company. I gained much needed experience, committed all sorts of mistakes and gained valuable lesson that later on became my tools for success.
Herein lies the key ??“ the faster you test, the faster you will get results. You must decide on the proper course of action that you need to take to make your business a success. What if I have to spend $100 and have a hundred things to invest in? I will have to struggle and scan through hundreds of investing options to see which one is going to give me maximum profit. If these options are narrowed down to just two or three, I can take that $100 and make an investment based on fact to see what will work. The key is that the less options you have to test, the chances are that you will be successful.
The movie industry figured out this concept long ago. If a producer is given enough time and money, then he or she is capable of making a successful movie. Over 90% of successful movie producers today either got lucky with their first movie or they had enough money to fail many times before they got their first big hit. If you continue to struggle with your marketing business and have to constantly borrow from credit lines and credit cards to fund your business, I recommend that you take up a marketing job with a good company and learn from their failures. This will help you gain more insight so that you will be able to branch out and create your own success down the road.