To become successful online it’s important to “move up the food chain”.

When I started out in April 2010 I was seriously spinning my wheels and getting zero results for the many months that followed. Here’s some of the things I was doing wrong:

  1. Buying completely unrelated products basically because the marketing “told me” I needed them
  2. Endless research of different business ideas and trends
  3. Reading every single email from made different marketers “in case I missed something”
  4. Putting far too much faith in what internet marketers were telling me rather than looking at how they actually made money!
  5. And of course, generally being utterly confused as to what I was doing!

To progress on and leave this bad state of affairs behind it’s really important to transition to a new mindset (which I guarantee you’ll enjoy much more).

First, there are some core skills you must know to succeed online:

  • The business model of doing making money online (why giving FIRST is crucial!)
  • Understanding why building a list of subscribers is the #1 way to becoming successful online
  • Knowing how to use WordPress
  • Knowing where the profitable niches are online and how to find them
  • Knowing how to set up a squeeze page and a sales page
  • Knowing the basics of email marketing (e.g., writing good copy and using autoresponders)
  • Creating basic products (even if it’s just a short eBook to use as a free gift to build your list)
  • Realizing that you should ONLY invest in new training when it matches what you are doing right now
  • Realizing that generating traffic is crucial, there is no magic to it and it’s a skill you need to learn
  • Starting to think and feel like a marketer and less like a consumer

Of course, this is exactly what we do inside our members area (yes, a very subtle plug there!) but the last point is really what it’s all about. A good example is when you receive emails from other marketers. Next time this happens – probably later today – ask yourself what your FIRST reaction is:

1) Are you immediately engrossed in the content and thinking whether the opportunity in the email is something that could work for you and if so should you buy it?

Or…

2) Are you looking at how the marketer constructed the email. What caught your eye about the subject line? Have they used a story to introduce a problem and then provide a solution in the form of a product? Are they using social proof (e.g., testimonials). How about the length of the email and how have they linked to web pages?

I’m not saying here don’t buy anything from anyone again, far from it, but always be looking to reverse engineer the methods of others rather than just consume whatever you are fed.

As I said, learn from one of my big early mistakes too. Look at what people are doing rather than what they are telling you to do. This is HUGE!

Can you related to this? Agree, disagree? Happy, angry, confused? It’s all good – just drop a comment below and we can all benefit from the discussion 🙂