I realized I have not be blogging here since March 2009. Been busy with off-line work and maintaining my other websites. It has been slightly over a year since I ventured into internet marketing. If truth be told, I have had less than stellar results.
Where Did I Go Wrong?
1. Following the advice of just about every internet marketer/Guru out there. I am talking about some serious information overload here. It wasn't the hype, I'm a marketer and I recognize what hype is. No, I just had to try everything once just to see if it worked.
2. Lack of focus equals a waste of time. There are so many ways you can do business on the internet, that I couldn't decide on a business model. I failed terribly in affiliate marketing, stank at building a list and kept trying to do too many niches.
3. Tried to do everything myself and ended up being less efficient and effective than any reasonable person should be. Again, this was because I just had to try everything once, just to see for myself what it was all about.
4. The Make Money Online niche is the bane of all newbies. I liked marketing but that was really no excuse why I built a website on internet marketing. I had no credentials at all. It is understandable because when you just start out, you are reading everything there is about internet marketing. So it made sense (to me at least) that I ended up down this route, and besides you learn best if you built a website. It would have been better had someone actually set me right. As it were, almost everyone I knew didn't know squat about internet marketing.
5. Didn't have the know-how to capitalize on my search engine results.
I am glad to say that I finally came to my senses and created a website about something I knew about. So 6 months after I built my first site, I built my second site, www.AboutSabah.com. At least that is working out. It could have been worst. At least, I didn't blow a lot of money of stuff I didn't need.
So Did Anything Go Right At All?
1. The first ranked on the first page, first result for my keyword. Out of 300,000 pages. Not bad for a first website. The second website also ended up on first page, but not the first position for my keyword. Out of 18 million. I would like to say I knew what I was doing, but I have to give the credit to wordpress. It is awesome.
2. EzineAritcles accept all my submissions, so this meant I could at least string a sentence together in English. Just didn't have the motivation to continue after writing ten articles.
3. My first website, even though on the first position/ first page of google didn't really see much visitors. It also managed to get a page rank of 1 after 9 months. My second website, averages 3000 visits per month, from 2000 unique visitors by the third month. Achieved a page rank of 2 in the fourth or fifth month.
What I Learnt So Far?
Here are some of the lessons I learnt about internet marketing.
1. Follow your passion, and focus on creating content for it.
2. Don't be shy in marketing your website and asking for the sale.
3. Leverage on the first website if you want to start a second.
4. Stop reading about internet marketing and start working on your website. Develop your business model.
5. Internet marketing is almost exactly like off-line marketing. It's a business and all marketing rules apply. The only difference is the environment and the channel.
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