Warning: Slight rant ahead!
In Chiang Mai (where we currently live), there is a weekly Internet Marketing meetup. I have gone to numerous sessions and think it’s a good place to get inspired and meet like-minded people. However, if I were to divide the people going to these meetups into 3 groups, they would fall into one of the following categories:
- People who are newer to the concept of internet marketing, admit to know little about it, and haven’t made much (if any) money with it.
- People who have played with internet marketing for many years, claim to know everything about it, and yet haven’t made much (if any) money with it.
- People who are seasoned internet marketers, admit to still not know everything, and yet are making respectable incomes (to fortunes) with it.
NOTE: Although I used this example to categorize people coming to the local meetup, I believe most Internet Marketer wannabes could be put in one of the 3 categories.
As someone whose family makes 100% of it’s income online, I love talking about SEO and internet marketing with people in group #3 who are as successful as (or even more successful than) I am. I always end up learning something new from them, gain new insights into their business strategies, or simply get inspired to step things up a notch in my own business.
Group #3 is fairly open to sharing – not so much to brag about what they all know but – what they’re doing that is working for them. Meaning they won’t make your head spin with what you need to do to copy their success. They keep it simple because they know little knowledge with strong execution will always beat a ton of knowledge with no execution.
Group #2 – contrary to group #3 – LOVES talking about what they know, but hate talking about what they’re actually doing. Why? Because they’re not doing anything worthwhile or what they’re doing is questionable and short lived at best. They simply do not have the results to back their vast knowledge base. In other words, they like to spew off their head knowledge but have no experience on the topic to draw from.
You will often find them trying to give advice to newbies – confusing the hell out of them. They are also not afraid to give unasked-for-advice to those who are actually crushing it online. Oftentimes insisting the successful marketer is doing something completely wrong, is focusing on the wrong things, etc.
They like to make a lot of noise and – as a result – no successful internet marketer cares to talk business with them. We hate talkers, but LOVE doers.
Heck, I have been cornered a few times by “SEO gurus” who found out I make my bread and butter from my dozens of top Google rankings. They start yapping SEO lingo I know nothing about and have crazy ranking formulas memorized, etc. I’m blown away, but when I started shifting the conversation from theory to results (in the end, results are all that matter), they get very uncomfortable and confess that they aren’t actually making any money from their Google rankings (yet) because they don’t actually have any (yet).
If anything, they were making a bit of money selling ebooks teaching newbies what they “know” about SEO. This always bothers me. You shouldn’t be teaching SEO if deep down you have no first hand experience with it.
Get Started Already!
The people who are actually making money (group #3) often times have a hard time understanding why group #1 has to have all the answers before they do anything. Which is why we always say: Just get started!
Sure, learn the basics, but get started. Untie the boat and get on open water. The sooner you leave the port the sooner you will be able to leverage the wind to get you to where you’re wanting to go. This isn’t something you can do while anchored or tied on shore.
In other words, start getting out there, create content, and then worry about SEO. Creating/publishing content should ALWAYS be your first priority.
If you’ve already gotten started with the content and think it’s time to look more seriously at SEO, here is a quick start guide I put together to get you started.
Whatever you do, don’t complicate SEO and certainly don’t lose sleep over it. Start with the guide I just mentioned and keep following along on this blog. I promise I will decomplicate SEO for you by breaking everything down and showing you exactly what I do.
Should you have any questions though, be sure to ask in the comment section. There is no such thing as a stupid question and hey, if you ask it and we figure it out together, someone else won’t have to ask.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, if you are in group #1 – just trying to figure it all out – take what I’m teaching you and implement it. Don’t complicate it, just do it. If you have a question, just ask, and hopefully before long we’ll get you into group #3 territory.
If you’re in group #2 – where you think you know everything there is to know – forget everything you know and start implementing the basics. The reason you’re not making any worthwhile money is not because you don’t know enough, but because you don’t implement enough. Let’s get you implementing and let’s get you into group #3 territory as well.
Learn to execute, not to know. Focus on the basics and execute them!
