Five Internet Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

On most if not all Internet Marketing blogs, you’ll always see the author telling you what you should be doing. A lot of the information is repetitive such as find a niche you enjoy, build a blog, start building links, optimise your site for search engines etc. This kind of information gets old quickly and sometimes you want to read something fresh.

So, in order to switch things up a gear, I thought it would be good to look at a number of things that you may be doing incorrectly, or in other words, things that could be hindering your performance.

Some of these will require you to be completely honest with yourself to see where you could improve.

Too Much Self Promotion

How often is it that you see people with 20,000+ Twitter followers and only 100 blog subscribers? I know that personally I see this on a regular basis. I’m sure that a large following and ‘presence’ on some sites might earn you some cash here and there, but is it really going to sustain you over the long haul?

John proved that Twitter users do buy products, but only when you are a trusted name already and you have a very targeted, very niche following. If you want to link your name with your brand then self promotion can be a good thing, just don’t go over the top and forget why you got into internet marketing in the first place.

Constantly Looking to Get Rich Quick

Making money online is actually quite simple when you think about it. There are literally thousands of guides out there that tell you how to do it, and all you have to do in a lot of cases is follow them. The thing is though, most people just don’t have the patience or the perseverance to keep things like this going. We are a generation that wants results, and we want them now.

People don’t want to wait 6 months to a year to make money, yet they’ll happily keep spending $7 or $39 there to get the latest spammy eBook. Work on building long term value and don’t look for short term solutions. All the people you may idolise like John, Shoemoney or Darren Rowse all worked hard for a long time.

Thinking You Need All The Answers

When I first started online 4 years ago at the age of 15 I wasted all my time researching, non-stop. I thought that I needed to know exactly what was required for me to make money online. It wasn’t till a year later when I actually started putting my plans into action that I learned far more than an eBook or blog post could teach me.

Theory can be useful, sure, but it’s not until you start taking action that things will start to fall into place. Funny that, isn’t it?

Doubting Yourself

It was Henry Ford who once said “If you think you can or you can’t, you’re right” and I fully agree with him. Self belief is a huge factor towards motivation, productivity and other factors necessary for succeeding online.

The way I like to see it is this: there are going to be countless people who are going to tell you that you can’t do it, and because of that they’ll never take action either. If others are going to doubt you, why doubt yourself as well? If anything, use their lack of belief as something to motivate you to succeed.

Procrastination

Procrastination affects everybody, but it can seriously affect someone who makes their income from the internet. Sites like TechCrunch became big because they broke news before anyone else; some affiliate marketers make thousands in a niche because they put the site up before anyone else.

Apart from just being able to get things done first, procrastination holds you back because you aren’t actually getting things done. It’s as simple as that. Did the extra 30 minutes chatting to your friend or going out for a coffee really help you? Did those 15 minutes browsing round Facebook impact your life for the better?

If you can cut out the majority of the times you procrastinate, you’ll benefit greatly for doing so.

What other internet marketing mistakes can you think of that people make?

Glen Allsopp writes for PluginID on the subject of Personal Development. He’s also released a free eBook that helps you make easy money online, now.