Internet marketing Archives - Page 10 of 18 by Mark Murnahan

How To Avoid Going Broke in Business

Free advice? The Internet is full of it. You cannot swing a cat without hitting somebody willing to give you free business advice, marketing advice, tips, and ideas. So what is it all worth? I will answer that later, but first, want to share a story of my Monday with you.

I got a call from a good friend who is a top-level economist. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, and has an impressive job. He is a brilliant economist. We talked about solutions for a mutual friend’s locally-focused service industry company. While we spoke, he was in the car and driving through a strip mall with a huge grocery chain. He gave his opinion of how chilling it is that the once-thriving strip of over 30 businesses has only three businesses left. We talked about the huge challenges a business faces, and how scared companies are today.

What does it all mean, and should you be scared? Allow me to share some observations. First, should you be scared? Yes! Heck, I am scared for you. The numbers are against you, and if you don’t change with the tide and swim harder and faster, you will not make it … you will drown. Even the most brilliant business minds have had to make some big changes in the past couple years. Some will succeed, while many will give up. The worst change a business makes is that of just “riding it out” or taking a “wait and see” approach. In order to make it, it will take action … uncomfortable, scary, swift, and decisive action. If you are not sure I am on the mark with this, just watch this recent video!

Taking Action to Avoid Going Broke

Let us, just for a moment, stop allowing the blindness of false positivity to get in the way of logical thinking. I know, it feels like things will be better if we think positively and maybe if we ignore the downsides, economic conditions will improve. This is not a case of ignoring it and it will go away. Quite the opposite. If you ignore your business challenges, the business will go away … not the challenges. So what can you do to come out of this better than the rest, and even better than before? After all, that is what you hope for, right? Whether you are trying to catch up, trying to keep your lead, or trying to break records with success, doing more business tomorrow than you did yesterday is going to require some changes. It does not matter if you are ready for change or not, change is ready for you.

Only Wet Babies Like Change

Here is an example of fearing change that nearly cost many millions of dollars.

A few hours after visiting with my economist friend, another friend dropped by to pick up a modem from me. I have an Internet company. I have modems of all shapes and sizes. While we visited, I told him I am looking for a new sales representative. Actually, a presentation representative is what I am seeking, because I really hate boardrooms and ridiculous business politics. I am worn completely smooth each day with lies and excuses from companies who contact me, and I want to pay somebody who is willing to filter it out for me. Tom is a lobbyist, and I know he is well-networked and knows a lot of motivated people with good business experience. I told him I that am entirely worn out by answering the same questions each day, and hearing the same sob story from companies over and over. I decided that it simply is not good for me to face ignorance and indifference, and it sucks away a little bit of my soul every day.

He related my services to a bill he helped to pass that would cost the State of Kansas millions of dollars, but then return nine times that much by its passing. He told how frustrating it was to explain it to so many people who simply said “the state can’t afford it” because it was not in the budget. He understood how exasperating it was that the concern was the money, but that there would be far more money soon after the passing of the new legislation. The math was done … it added up, but legislators would still express fear of passing the law. Tom gets it! Tom has been in my shoes, and he understood why my fingers are tired from making that reaching for the throat to choke somebody gesture when somebody leaves their brain on the nightstand the day they call me.

I hear the same thing that Tom heard from legislators in my job every single day. People want to free up the money to spend on good marketing, but they cannot see beyond the check they write. They cannot see the vision. Sure, I can, because it is my job. I know the math, and I know that for each dollar out, there are dollars in. I know risk-management, and I know how to calculate expected returns. I know how much my clients benefit from what I do, but for new clients, it is as if it is just a big blur … it is something they cannot see.

I hear you, people … I get it … you are paralyzed with fear, but there is a point when you have to push the “go” button or go home without a job. Business will not cure itself.

What Makes Business Happen?

What makes business happen for you? It should be clear that if more people know your business, and understand the benefits of doing business with you, it helps your company. You know this, right?

While everybody is out there vying for your customers, you must market your company better than ever. That does not mean having a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. It means understanding how to use the tools. It means having a better plan and understanding that execution of the plan must be done better than the competition. It means that marketing is not a commodity, and that Pepsi beat out those other cola companies because they had better execution of a better plan. Luck only spreads so far, and after the luck is gone, it is going to take marketing talent and marketing creativity.

Marketing Made Cheap

There are a lot of cheap marketing offerings out there. I was curious about some of them, so I decided to dip my hook in the water and see what fish would bite on a small worm. I wanted to see how people really think. I took a call from one of those squillions I normally weed out who asks for prices instead of wanting to know what he is buying. I asked all the important questions. I took a little time for discovery, and found that I could take his competition to the wood shed and bare-assed whip them like an angry stepfather.

I took it on the chin and wrote up an eight page plan for his stated budget of $2,500 (yeah, I laughed, too). It was a full-featured proposal including much research, custom blog creation, search engine optimization, social media marketing, five Murnahan-written and circulated blog posts, and web hosting for a year. The expected return was many tens of times the investment. I mean, this guy would have been set on a path paved with Murnahan-engraved gold bricks, and just because I wanted to make an example of somebody.

I received an email from this company owner a couple days later and it read as follows:

I hate to admit this, but I can’t afford your services. At least not in the immediate future. I really like your ideas and respect your abundant knowledge.

I’m respectfully declining your services.

Sharing My Findings About Cheap Marketing

I could write for days about things I have learned about people hoping to get something for nothing. It is not new, and a lot of people really think of marketing as all the same … that it is a commodity. It is easy to overlook or ignore the research details, planning, execution, talent, experience, reach, and other assets in a good marketer’s toolbox. In this case, I decided to share my example of delving into the cheap marketing arena with some people. I asked a small sample of people who know my work fairly well how much they thought my absolute floor is for taking on a new project. The answers averaged around $80,000, with none answering below $25,000 as what they thought the absolute lowest project that I would or should take on as a marketing consultant. Well, what I should do and actually do are two different things. I will take on small jobs if I like the people and I like the product. I liked the guy with a $2,500 budget that I wrote an extensive plan for. Do you think he made a good business decision? I don’t benefit by lying to you, so here is the truth. In this case, a measurably better decision would have been to pay the marketing guy before the light bill or the mortgage.

Good marketing is really hard to find, and sometimes hard to produce the upfront cost, but the bottom line is that if the marketing is performed well, it will make you more money. Good marketing is an investment, and not a cost. If you find a good marketer, you must never forget that fact.

About that earlier question of what all that free business and marketing advice is worth, the answer is as different as the people offering the advice. My advice and the next guy’s advice are not equal, and marketing is not a commodity.

Imitation Marketing Means Imitating Marketing Failure

Trend, fad, popular, meme, hot, new, fashionable … word it however you like. Everybody wants that piece of whatever it is that works in marketing today. Companies and individuals frantically try to be on the leading edge of a wave that promises to be the “next big thing” that will bring them success. They hear how well it worked for this company or that company, and then make carefully calculated efforts to imitate that success. Perhaps they always heard it is best to imitate success, but on the flip-side of that coin is the far more likely outcome of imitating failure. I call it “imitation marketing” when people strive to imitate success, and it comes with a good side and a bad side.

Anybody who has used popular social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and the rest, has surely watched the imitation that happens every day. Somebody tweets, facebooks, or blogs about something “hot” and all of the sudden every other blogger scurries to their keyboard to blog about the same thing. If you catch on with things that are “hot” in a market, you have a greater chance of catching your 15 minutes of fame that was promised. Let’s face it, a lot of what we see each day on the internet is just the same thing, regurgitated with an alternate slant, and worded slightly different. If you look at any industry, you can see all the competitors mocking each other while only a few really stand out. Is that imitation really going to produce the results they are seeking? The odds are against it. There is a near infinitely greater chance of wasting time, energy, and money!

The Imitation Marketing Monster Eats Its Young

In this Internet age of vast information and lightening fast social media reach, we have collectively created a monster of sorts. What many people do not understand is that it is a monster that eats its young and as the cycle goes on, it eats itself.

Along with economic insecurity over the past couple years, it has become easy for people to believe they can save money by handling their own marketing. The Internet is the obvious place for this to happen, because it is easy. Anybody can put their name out there on the Internet and cross their fingers. The craze for do-it-yourself marketing on the Internet has created “marketers” out of about every living being that has a pulse, and a mouse to click with. Standing out from the crowd will take something unique, and not just “imitation marketing”. If you are up to the task, I am here to try and help you with my experience.

Whether you like this or not, you are right there in the thick of it. There is no other reason for you to read my blog than to try and know a better way to market what you offer and to become more profitable. Face it, you are here because you want more money, and you think you may pick up a tip to make that happen faster and cheaper than your competition. It is either that, or you have it in the back of your mind that you may pick up the phone and hire me to produce and implement a plan for your marketing … but that is only a tiny fraction of the people reading this. I am here to try and help you in either case, because it is what I do. I want to see you be successful.

Pay attention as I give you a surfing analogy: The waves of popular methods of Internet marketing exposure come a lot faster than ever before. By the time you see the wave, your window of opportunity to surf it to the beach has already closed. The riders of that wave were on it way out at sea, and it is moving far too fast to jump on now. If you want to surf in today’s marketing ocean, you are better off making some waves of your own.

I do not want to discourage you, and if I do, I will make it up to you with some encouragement. I am going to tell you what you are up against in your marketing, in order that you can prepare for the challenge.

Meeting the Creative Marketing Challenge

I just have to share a piece of reality in order to emphasize my point. Most of my readers are still swimming along in the vast open water and trying to stay afloat by imitating success. What they seldom realize is that by doing so they carry a higher risk of failure than hiring it out to experienced people like myself who do this all day long … for decades. They will soak up every bit of useful knowledge the vast Internet has to offer, and then try to create something more inspired and genius than all of the trained marketers who have facts, figures, creativity, and experience on their side.

Just as a simple example, consider how creative you are feeling today. Do you have it in you to write three, four, or five blog articles and marketing copy to promote your brand … or even one article? Do you have it in you to be sure what you produce is in front of hundreds of thousands of people … or even a thousand people? The right people? Can you write three books in three months (and actually have them sell) … or even one book? Can you write something and be assured that it will be listed within the top five results for the keywords you targeted less than ten minutes after you publish it … top 2,000 results? Do you have these things on your side? Well, I do, and there are others out there like me. That is what you are up against. When you get busy with your marketing, be aware that a lot of us make it a full time job, and some of us are damn good at what we do. To get ahead, you will have to be damn better.

The rampant drive for do-it-yourself marketing is one of those crazes that, like all other fads, has seen its time and is a wave that already crashed on the beach. It was a great idea, but when you are one of millions of people attempting to be the loudest, smartest, and overall best at what you do, your voice is squelched by the static. So, is there a fix? Yes! This is where I make it up to you if I discouraged you.

Stop Seeking Marketing Waves and Start Making your Own

Stop doing what they are doing. Stop trying to play follow the leader. Do something genius. If you spend your time making more waves and less time trying to catch one that is over your head, you have a lot better chance of surfing all the way to the beach. It may be easy to look at successful marketing and say “I can do that, too” but the odds are overwhelmingly against you. We trained and experienced marketers stacked the cards a long time ago as we earned our battle scars. We have been there, and we have done that. There are a lot of guys like me who spent 100 hours per week for years of our lives studying, practicing, learning, and tapping into every resource available to crush the competition of our clients. There is simply no way to beat us at our own game, so instead, you must create your own rules. Make your own waves. If you want to do it yourself, do not even try to do what everybody else is doing. You do not have the same resources as the competition, so don’t try to market as if you do. Take a serious inventory of your strategy and what resources you have at your disposal to implement that strategy. Stop trying to figure out how to do what the others are doing and get serious about what makes you different and better.

Tips for Overcoming Imitation Marketing

Try sitting in a quiet and dark room for an hour and think about what makes you different. Bring a voice recorder to take notes. Repeat this as often as you can. Read more books, blogs, and do everything you can to exercise your brain. The more you use it the more creative you will become. Read my blog. It really has a lot of great brain food to boost up your creativity. Start blogging! Read these really good reasons to blog and also read about how blogging improves intelligence. Seriously … go do it and stop trying to make excuses. This is for your benefit, after all. This is intended to help you increase your marketing talent.

Get really serious about what you are doing and stop letting yourself become comfortable. If you are going up against professional marketers, you are going to have to get serious with your marketing creativity, and it just doesn’t come naturally … it takes a lot of hard work. I get paid to make my clients successful, and if you want a piece of any market I am in, you had better brew another pot of coffee and plan to stay up all night.

Go sit in that quiet place and think really hard about how you are going to do something that nobody else is doing, and start figuring out how to make some waves. If you are not up to it, you should start getting settled with the lackluster results of “imitation marketing”, and be ready to take some heavy risks of failure. My hope for you is that you will try harder than ever, and take some of my tips. Otherwise, hire me to do the work for you and go get some rest … this marketing stuff is exhausting!

Improve Local Search Marketing with Global Authority

I recently visited with a local search engine optimization (SEO) client who did not understand the value of blogging about things outside his local market and having items of global interest on his website. He believed that focusing more on things local to him were of the highest importance. It got me to thinking that a lot of people with a local marketing focus may have similar belief. I want to shed a little light on the subject and explain why globally appealing content can create huge benefits to local search results.

Since I have been in my industry for well over a decade, I sometimes forget to break things down and make them really simple for those who are less familiar with my work. That is what I want to do today. I will try to make this easy to understand.

Local Search Marketing Made Easy

I notice a lot of people trying really hard to accomplish local search marketing goals by focusing on website content about local topics. These things have their place, but a common mistake I find is people attempting to tap into the same local resources that all of their competitors are using. It is a sad shame that many of these people are just wasting a lot of time imitating failure.

If you want to know an easier way to improve local search marketing results, try looking outside of your back yard and appeal to people on a broader basis. With a global audience on your side, beating the local competition is easy.

Website Authority is Authority, Wherever the Location

When you produce information on your website that is relevant to your industry, whether in your local market or globally, it enhances your authority. It can do this in a number of ways. It gives more potential terms that people can search for and find your website, but you just want the local ones … I get that. I understand how you could think that somebody finding your website in an outside market may not seem very useful, but it is! It is extremely useful, and in fact, even more useful than all the locally focused content put together.

You may wonder why this is the case. Simply put, information with broader and less localized appeal will help to enhance and grow the incoming links to your website. This means links that point to your website from other websites. Links create quantifiable authority by showing search engines that other people see you as a quality point of reference. Now you may wonder how the broader appeal will build valuable links to your website. I will explain.

Local Content Means Local Links, But You Need Diversity!

If you spend much of your effort trying to focus only on local matters and excluding the rest of the world, you are making a costly mistake. You may find some people linking to your website, but it will be far less diverse, and far less beneficial than a wider global reach. Sure, a link from your local newspaper or television station is great, and it will certainly give emphasis to your location, but location is not the real battle here. It is easy to show where you are, but you need to be an authority in what you do and not just where you are.

With too much focus on location, you will be less likely to find people linking to your website from all around the world, and geographical diversity of incoming links matters … it matters a lot! The way you get this to happen is by producing things with a widespread appeal that will be picked up by bloggers looking for a resource to cite, users in forums looking for a link to reference a given topic, and other social media users who like your message enough to share it. This will only happen if it has relevance to them. If you focus on local issues that hold little relevance outside your market area, you are neglecting these people who may otherwise share the information with others. They will share it with others by using links to your website.

Do Incoming Links Really Matter?

I think a lot of people will underestimate the importance of the links pointing to their website. The value of these incoming links is not the people who click on them, but rather the search engines that follow those links and add them all up to determine your overall authority within your industry. If you want to know how to do the equivalent of killing a grizzly bear with a looseleaf notebook, you better stick around and read the article titled “SEO Backlinks: Why Most SEO Fail at Link Building“ When you have enough backlinks (links pointing to your website from other websites), you can put just about anything you want on your website and expect it to rank highly in search engines … local or not. For example, if you search Google for “unicorn hunting expedition” you will easily find my blog right on top. Similarly, if you Google “unicorn hunting expedition Topeka” I am still right there where my local market can find me.

Search Engines Know Your Location

Another factor of local search that should never be overlooked is that search engines pay attention to where you are located when you perform a search. When people search for something that has a lot of local results, all other things being equal, the local results will be given preference. Most search engine users do not override the local search settings of Google and other search engines, and many do not even know they exist. This is just another reason that you will do well to focus on useful and creative content that appeals beyond your back door. Again, I will remind you that you need to show authority in what you do, rather than trying to build emphasis of where you are located.

I welcome your comments here on my blog, or you may respond privately if you are feeling shy.

Facebook Profiles Are Not For Business … Facebook Pages Are!

I guess it should not shock me to see the many Facebook profiles with a company logo or even a company name instead of a person. It seems that a lot of people simply do not realize the difference between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page. I will break this down really simple for anybody who is confused.

Facebook profiles are for people, and not businesses. Facebook will delete your account for using a profile for a business. They may not catch each one, but I have seen it happen, and there are a lot of people out there who will report businesses using Facebook Profiles for business. It is written clearly in the Facebook rules as follows: “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain”.
Facebook Pages are for business, and include features that are better suited for a company seeking to do business on Facebook. They are easy to create, and may save you from a deleted account. Go and check it out for yourself. Here is the link to create a Facebook Page.

The Receptionist and Facebook Marketing Expert

In this age of social media frenzy, a lot of people are scurrying to find the next silver bullet that will assure them the highest level of exposure at the very lowest cost. Small businesses are trying to turn receptionists into marketers and SEO (search engine optimization) experts. The cost of this can often mean utter failure, embarrassment, and even banning from the world’s favorite social network.

I see a lot of businesses using Facebook Profiles and it stuns me every time that they actually think it is fine to do so and that it is normal for potential customers to have to send a “Friend Request” in order to communicate with them on Facebook. Really, doesn’t that seem like an obstacle? Wouldn’t it make more sense that people can freely choose to communicate and see what a business has to say?

Facebook Pages and Other Facebook Business Tools

Facebook provides a lot of useful tools for those people who choose to use the Facebook service and Facebook Pages properly. There are many possibilities to integrate Facebook Pages and other Facebook business tools with your business website. For example, below is a Facebook “Like Box” including a stream of recent activity on my newest Facebook page. It allows people to “Like” my new Facebook Page from right here on my blog, without even having to leave and go to Facebook.

Just one more thing! Did you “Like” my newest Facebook Page yet? I plan to share some things and have some discussions there which will not be here on my blog. Go ahead … I made it easy for you! See below!

Internet Marketing Truth: An Internet Marketer Fights Lies With Truth

In today’s marketplace with all the desperate static on the Internet, it seems that honesty is hard to find. I can give you instances like the guy I found claiming to be an Internet marketer for over 25 years; the liars telling you that more followers on Twitter will make you money; or the many search engine submission jokers with pink ponies for sale. I can list instances of lies, deception, and fraud in Internet marketers all day long. I have heard Internet marketing described as “the last refuge of sleazy,? get-rich-quick scumbags too slimy to sell used cars.” and I agree with that statement.

The fact is that I am not here to sell you anything. Only a small fraction … and I mean a tiny number of the people who will read this can afford my services or care enough about their company to build a business the way I do it. I want their money, and not yours. Just relax, my hand is not reaching for your pocket.

This article will possibly bore you to tears, but at least you cannot say I never gave you something. I am going to give you some harsh truth about Internet marketing. For those who choose to brave the truth, my work here is worth my effort.

If you smell one whiff of typical Internet marketing “bullshit perfume” in what I will tell you, just turn the page and don’t bother coming back. I want to tell you how to truly achieve success in a market, and I am not going to lead you wrong. If you don’t come back, at least I know that you are not serious about doing the right things for the right reasons. That shame is on you.

You can chock this up as just another blog post from an Internet marketing guy trying to seem revolutionary, or you can drop what you are doing and listen to the truth. The truth of how I truly, factually, and without lies, have earned millions of dollars for myself and my clients using the Internet … and how much I hate the directions my industry has taken. You may not want to read all of this, because it will not spell out a glorious pink pony ride to success or the convincing unicorn hunting expedition that other Internet marketing and SEO people hit you with every day, like this Johnny Come Lately Internet Marketing Parody video.

I made a late night coffee run with a friend who reminded me how much truly spectacular marketing takes benevolence, persistence, honesty, integrity, intelligence, and marketing talent. It really requires a whole lot of other “magical” secrets that the huge wave of Internet marketing “experts” will try to sell you, but the piece I want to focus on here is truth about Internet marketing. Not the kind of truth you may expect, and not the kind of truth you may want to stick around and endure. I am offering the real deal. I want to give you the honesty about Internet marketing that you may be missing, and help to set you in a better direction.

So, you want the truth about Internet marketing. This will require you to read, and against all forces of outside persuasion, to pay attention to what I tell you. Only a desperate need to rush and read the next ineffective ideas of how to improve website traffic and reach more people to sell your stuff to should tear you away from this. I understand, there is a lot of that bad Internet marketing out there, and it all seems very tempting. If you are under time constraints to get rich today, go ahead, you probably have something more important to do. If you must go, just get lost … this is a story of truth in Internet marketing that I am telling, and not a ploy to help you get rich fast or to get you to buy my stuff.

Oooh, look … there is something shiny over there … *blinking advertisement* … you should click and check that out. Really, go ahead, you are not going to hurt my feelings. That is the way of the Internet. Click away, because you may get massively rich with that very next click. That seems to be the popular message these days.

OK, since you are still with me, and if you can shut out the temptation to go see the next message on Twitter or the next thing your friends on Facebook just did, sit there until you finish this.

I am going to give you a tip. I am going to tell you why and how it takes more than all those Internet marketing lies people will lead you to believe, and why I drink more coffee and smoke more cigarettes than the average person. It is so that I can be consistently alert and useful in my SEO and Internet marketing career. I know work … I know real work, and what it really takes to earn millions of dollars in Internet marketing, for myself and for my clients. No, not the crap you see in most marketer’s arsenal of fakeness … the real deal. I have walked a high and narrow path with hell on each side and I have battled business alligators until I found the swamp plug. I have endured insane work schedules and taken the risks that wives hate their husbands to take. I even released a book titled “Living in the Storm” to share what it takes to become successful. I wrote it as a man who dropped out of school at fifteen years of age and owned successful companies before many of my classmates finished their schooling. I have also been there to wave goodbye to a half a million dollars in fine cars when I decided that I could not justify my six digit per year second job as a race car driver. The truth is that I have walked along the highest steps in the top percentile money earners worldwide, and I have also looked in the cupboard and found nothing but peas and pancake mix and found a way to make a fantastic meal of it to get there. If you want lies and you want to find a shortcut, at least be ready to live as hard as that successful dropout kid I have grown up to be. That is a bit of truth about what it actually takes to be a success. You have to be ready and willing to make sacrifices, and be ready to work hard … or pay somebody who has been willing to make those sacrifices for you, and learned the truth about Internet marketing.

For your own sake, if you think it is easy to have Picasso hang on your wall, walk across a rug worth more than the $50,000+ desk you write blogs at, or ride a motorcycle that cost more than your first two homes combined … go ahead and read from those Internet marketers who know an easier way than I did, because it took me to my knees more than once to have those things. Go ahead and suck it all up and believe them, but don’t come to me to fix what they mess up for your business. Also, don’t blame my industry for your being too naive and getting conned into something stupid. Now, if you are ready to work hard and stop chasing unicorns long enough to learn something useful about Internet marketing, keep reading.

I am going to give you a piece of truth about Internet marketing, social media, and SEO that you can confirm. Here you go:

Internet Marketing Success Requires Hard Work

If there is no sacrifice, it probably will not work. Otherwise, everybody else would be doing it, and then the market would no longer be so great … kind of like the market for good SEO and Internet marketing. Instead of selling real services with real marketing strategies that work, the majority of Internet marketers are all trying to sell you some crap about how you can get it all and have it all just by sitting there at your keyboard adding up your money. They are lying to you. Go back and read my blog to see if I am telling you the truth. Just go and read the last few days, few weeks, or few months of my work of telling the truth about Internet marketing.

Maybe you think that due diligence will take too much of your time and you may just miss that next click from a Twitter friend or you may not catch that link that will make you filthy stinking rich. What it may save you is a whole lot of wasted time and money spent on Internet marketing with the wrong agenda. Let me remind you that I am not here to sell you anything. What I want from you is enough of your time to stop believing in all the unicorn chasers and static makers, enough to put them out of business. Then, perhaps without all the suspicion and static making the Internet deaf with something worthless to sell, we can all benefit. We can start looking forward to a world where people can see through the clouds and build their businesses the right way again, instead of getting scammed out of more money and then looking at the whole Internet as a failure.

Let’s face it, good marketing that brings loyal customers is trickier than ever. It gets harder and takes more creative marketing to be heard above the rumble of bottom-feeding Internet marketers who want you to believe that you will get what you want and will not have to make big sacrifices. You have probably heard somewhere that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Yeah, well it seems that a lot of people overlook that sensible statement as soon as they switch on their computer.

As I visited with my friend late last night, I gave him a fantastic rendition of many things he could do to effectively build his business and reach all the right people. He and I both know that I would never sell him anything for money. The things we brainstorm together are the best kind of honesty, and without any awkward agenda. He is a long-time technology guy, like me, and he strongly agreed to everything I said. If he disagrees, he is a close enough friend to be extremely stubborn. As it was, it was one of those light bulb moments for him, and he quite frankly flattered me with his attentiveness to my ideas. I shed light on his marketing thinking, and I feel really great about that.

We had one of those conversations where we came up with some brilliant business ideas for his company, but he kept trying to switch it around and focus me on how to improve my company. He complained about how I constantly have great ways to help monetize other people’s ideas, but yet, I will overlook the best direction in my own business. He called me a “cobbler with barefoot children”, and I had to agree. He really nagged me about how hard I work for others, and the sacrifices I make to build their success. It is not the easiest thing for me to hear, because I actually know he is right. He is one of the closest friends in my life, and when he kept trying to focus me on how little I try to maximize my own company, I had to internalize it. It kind of stings to feel my shortcomings, just as it does for most people. It is not because I don’t have the talent or the drive. I guess it is just because I am really focused on what I do. I make people more successful in their business. That is my job, and it is something I am passionate about.

So, my plan for following up on Mike’s urge to focus on my own business is not just for my own benefit, but to benefit others as well. My intent is to inform people that as long as there is static in my industry, it hurts us all. As long as people keep believing that it will be easy and not take serious efforts and make sacrifices to build their business, I have done us both a disservice.

Internet marketers who will tell you the truth and the ones who are just out of your reach are the ones you listen to. You know that you probably cannot afford their services anyway, so they really are not a threat to you. You nod your head as you read their blogs, and it all makes very good sense. Then you walk away from it and try to trust an industry of thieves to implement it cheaper, or try to do it yourself. If this rings any bells for you, please take a step back and look at your motivations. Take a moment to decide if you have the persistence to do things better than before. Take the time to use the sincere honesty that you will find here at my blog and those of a few other industry leaders. Use it … don’t just try and hold onto that hope in the back of your mind that there really is a simple way to win.

The truth about Internet marketing as I know it is that I have to keep turning away companies who want and need my help, but they have wildly misguided ideas of what it really takes to be successful. I am tired of watching so many people suffer from the belief that it should all be so easy and that anybody can do the job. These are the same companies who come back to me after they get the shirt ripped off their back and can no longer afford to implement the best solution to their needs. I think it is a damn shame.

Maybe if I tell you the truth that you didn’t want to hear, we can all be more successful tomorrow than today. The truth is that I am seeking one new client … just one, and it probably is not you. I have turned away a lot of people in the process of seeking that one new client. Maybe in exchange for some truthful and useful articles about Internet marketing, you can help me find that one new client. Maybe you can help to clean up my industry and remind people that there is no pink pony ride to success.

Perhaps you know a business person who wants to do it right and is not afraid to start seeing the truth. If you know somebody who needs to impress their board members or investors with more profit, please pass them my name. If you know somebody who can make serious sacrifices to make their business more profitable, please pass them my name. I only want one, so it would be hard to call me a big threat.

If you know somebody being conned with the vision of easy and cheap success, please help them to know the truth about Internet marketing, too. It is going to take a lot more work than most people are ready to withstand.