In internet marketing or in any business… Ever heard of analysis paralysis? It’s the over analysis of things that results in getting no job done. You’re so eager to make it perfect, you forgot the most important thing… Doing it.

I use to have this problem and I still do every once in a while. You might have experienced it but you’re not aware of it. Reading a lot of materials thinking that it might help you. But it only paralyzes you. The most important thing is to just do it.

I read the book “Rework” its about how to manage a small online business. Its not a book how to make adsense sites nor do affiliate marketing nor “How to be a blogger”, its a general book on how you become consistent at successfully managing your small online business. What strikes me with this book is to keep it simple. Being a small online business is great. You don’t have to act so big, so the good or bad things you do, nobody will know or even care.

My point is, if you spend more time doing the things in your mind instead of just pondering on it all day, you can go places and move forward. There is something we call, iteration. Where we continue to add improvements to something. Be it a blog, an ecommerce site or affiliate campaigns, it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares if you mess up. Nobody will laugh at you. You can still change things. Remember, its your business and you have all the time in the world.

Ok. You might have some questions in your mind such as:

- I don’t have money to start my own business
- I don’t have experience in running a business
- I don’t have time
- I don’t know how to run a business

And my answer is:

- I don’t have money to start my own business

Having no money for business is the most common excuse. You can borrow money. Sell some crap things you don’t use. Get a loan. Rob a bank. Seriously, we are not in the great depression. Money is everywhere. Furthermore, online businesses are not that expensive to start. You just have to need a website for around 2,000 Pesos. Just a website and you’re open for business. Remove the idea that you need a lot of money to get started. You don’t. At least not in an online business.

- I don’t have experience in running a business

Neither do I when I started. I’m a computer engineering graduate. Pure technical stuff. The kind of guys that would never ever think of running a business but only to fantasize about working in a large and popular company. But I did. I manage to pull through. You just have to have the determination to go and act on your ideas. Remember that thoughts and ideas are spiritual in nature and perishable, act upon them and you give it respect. Ignore it and you’re stuck with the idiots who blame the government for their misfortune…

- I don’t have time

Sure. And I’m the mad hatter.

- I don’t know how to run a business

Read books? Go to seminars? Go to conventions? Surf the internet? Ask a family relative who has a business? Ask a friend who has a business? The list can go on.

The moral lesson of the story is, Just Do It. And when you do it, you will be victorious.
Nike is the god of victory in Greek mythology.

I got a chance to meet a businessman that owns a driving school here in Bulacan, 40 years old, 3 years in business. And one thing that strikes me during our 2 hour conversation is that when he said “You just have to take risk. Just do it. Sooner or later you’ll get pissed about your work. How plain and routinely you go to work everyday to receive a measly pay check. You will want change. But that change is with a cost. It’s up to you if you want to take the chances. Any successful person will tell you, “I’m glad I took that chance” and I’m happy I can say that as well.”

Have you ever experienced having to decide on what keywords to optimize, what products to promote but still, the money isn’t coming in? I have, and through my experiences, I have come to find out that there are 4 factors that should be met, to have a successful campaign in affiliate marketing, blog or any other online business.

Market Research

People are using the internet to find what they need, what they need to know or need to buy. Therefore, it is only logical to think of the search term they enter on search engines as potential market. Like for example, web design is a market and affiliate marketing is another market. And these market may be subdivided into different sub markets like real estate web design, small business web design or web 2.0 web design. If people are entering those keyword terms in the search engine, they want to know about those terms or buy products related to those terms. It only makes sense to know which keywords are used by the market to buy a product or search info about the product.

Searches

Are there people looking for a product or a solution to their problem? If there are, there is opportunity. Like the Law of Supply and demand.

Competition

I used to be afraid of going to competitive market. Simply because I am still noob at this that I look for market that are high in traffic and little to no competition. I have come to find out that this is wrong. The best market out there are those with high competition. Because many people are there, the market can sustain the spending of your competition in advertisement. I am now more afraid to take on no competition market because there must be a reason why no people are in there. Maybe the market isn’t buying.

You can easily do a market research by using google and their tools. One of the best tools out there and is free is google’s keyword tool at google.com/keywords.

Traffic

Bloggers are master of driving traffic to their site. They are good at creating and spreading buzz all over the intarweb. I am always amazed by how good they drive traffic to their site that my server crashes. I’m not mad or anything, just amazed. But with regards to this topic, are we getting the traffic that are related to our market?

There are 3 kinds of traffic

1. The Browser - People that are just passing by. Probably a friend or someone that knows you that want to check out your site from time to time. Maybe they buy, maybe not.
2. The Iffy Traffic - People that are on the edge of buying but still hesitant. They arrive at your site and decided to buy later.
3. Trickle Traffic - These are people that are ready to enter that credit card details. Trickle traffic is sometimes defined as low but laser targetted traffic.

With this in mind, are you getting the best quality traffic from the search engines?

Conversion

So you have a market and you got traffic going to your site and the people visiting your site are the right people. The next question is, are they willing to spend? There is no other way to test the market for conversion rate but to promote something and test it out for a week. Sometimes I will use amazon affiliate to test the market out or pepperjam offers. If someone buy within a month’s time, you know you got a winner market. According to survey, for every 200 visitors you should get 1 sale, this is to know if the market is feasible.

Product

Once you got your market, drove traffic to your site and you know that people in the market are actually buying, its time to find a real product. This can be your own product or services or focus on promoting affiliate product.

As you can see, the 4 factors should be done accordingly. People sometimes jump to the next phase as developing the product first before they promote and drive traffic to the site. Or they drove traffic to their site first before actually knowing if there are people searching for it. The good thing about the internet is that, you can never guess.

I believe in the saying “The best investment you can never go wrong is YOURSELF”. I have been messing around for this past week with paid search internet marketing (PPC) and so far I have wasted $250 (Php10,000) worth of clicks and got no sale.

If my parents found out I wasted this kind of money I know they’ll be angry, but hey, this is extra money, money I earned and I’m willing to spend to learn a few things. We still can eat for months even if this money is gone.

I’ve bought tons of ebooks on affiliate marketing before and all of them really are thrash and you can’t learn anything from them, so I’ll just use my own money to learn my way. Self study to say the least. Scary, yes. But its just, well… money. “Take risk while your young” kind of thing.

After this epic crash and burn in PPC Affiliate Marketing, are you still willing to give another shot? Of course, though, I’ll stay away for a while to focus on my ebay affiliate sites so I can make money and leverage that money to PPC internet marketing.