I could read only so many e-mails and I just could not stand it any longer. I had to sign up for something.
The first one I signed up on lasted one day before I canceled. It was some kind of 1-2-3 Easy Steps to internet success. The promotional material had all kinds of info on how they provide all the information and resources to set you up in an internet business. They would provide you with email letters you can send out to all your contacts and an exciting blog page to drive your message and more and more. So being convinced that it would be easy I signed up.
Step 1, sign up, Step 2 pay $47.95, Step 3 get 20 other people to do the same thing, then get them to repeat Steps 1, 2, and 3. I got as far as the sign up part. MLM, Multi-Level Marketing, makes some people plenty of money I am sure, but I am just not going to play that game. MLM has no product or service, just winners and losers. The winners are the ones with the money and the losers are the ones without the money. Once I read the second page of their info I was out of there.
The good point is that I discovered my first internet business filter, I really did want to provide a useful product or service, I just did not know what. It is interesting what you discover about yourself if you just get in there and try things out.
The next thing I signed up for was called something like, “A Business in a Box”. What a catchy name, don’t you think. I could not resist it, every thing I needed to know in a 10 CD package. You can just about get a college education in 10 CDs now a days, this had to be good. What it amounted to was 10 CDs of audio, recorded at a seminar, on internet business. It amounted to a long list of magazine articles that were presented by very good speakers, no doubt about that, but the promises of “Business in a Box” was not even close. After lessening to a few of the CDs, I sent the package back.
Well, I have been reading lots of e-mails by now and was involved in a few “mini-courses” on ecommerce. One with real content that I re-read is from Shawn Casey. He puts out a mini-course of 27 emails on different topics of ecommerce. You can find Shawn Casey at his blog; http://www.shawncasey.com.
Another mini-course I was reading is from Seth Chong. He emails out one called, “Dummies Secrets to Internet Marketing” Now I hate those “Dummy’s” books you see in every book store you go to, but I signed up for this one any way and I am glad I did. He puts some solid info in his letters. I suggest you check it out. His email is; sethchong@imviral.com.
Another Newsletter I like to read is “AuthorResources NewsLetter”; Admin@eAuthorResources.com. They provide plenty of straight to the point info on authoring ebooks and how to market them and stuff like that.
My point in bringing these guys up is that I was learning about how big the internet business world is and that it is divided up into many little parts and each part has its own way of making a little profit. So I started looking for a service that provided everything I need to “really” do business on the internet. I found a couple organizations and signed up at “Internet Speedway,” http://ispeedway.com. If what you are looking for is a full service provider that can help you put together everything from domain name to web page design and help you develop product list and marketing plan, then Internet Speedway may be for you.
Not knowing what else I want to do I selected vitamins supplements as the theme of my business and started developing my web page in ispeedway.com. It developed pretty quickly. And in a week or so I had a working page with products, and a way to pay for it through the internet and I was listed in a bunch of small search engines and I had a strong opening letter of content, and I was not satisfied at all.
Do you know how it feels when you know that you don’t know something but you don’t know what it is you don’t know? Well that is how I was feeling, so I put off my ispeedway word and went back to reading. I found a big piece of what I was looking for in a eBook in a newsletter from Stephanie Mulac, http://www.90percentattitude.com. The name of the eBook is “Website Success Blueprint.” If you are an ecommerce newbee like I am, I strongly suggest that you get this ebook and read it. This is not a huge read, it is only 16 pages long, but it changed the way I approached everything.
Step 1 – What do you want to do? The answer “anything” just wont cut it.
Step 2 – Domain name
Step 3 – Domain name purchase
Step 4 – Create Hosting account
Step 5 – Email account and auto responder
Step 6 – FTP software installation or some kind of web page editor
Step 7 – Web page templates
I had not settled on Step 1 yet and did not know it until I read this little eBook and spent some time thinking about it. I needed to decide on my little niche and settle on it.
Niche marketing: is the process of finding and serving small but potentially profitable market segments and designing custom-made products or services for them. Example: Cars are a very broad market with a lot of competition, but Custom Wheels is a refined segment of the car market that might provide a better profit. “Website Success Blueprint.”
After working on my ispeedway account for about three weeks I canceled that account. I now knew what I wanted and ispeedway was not it. I would like to be clear about the “Internet Speedway” service, it is a good service, everything worked without any problems, and I learned a lot in my short time there. I just decided to try something else.
I had decided on my niche and everything from here on is targeted on getting me in that direction. I have spent a month wondering what I was going to do and now it is set. I am so excited about it I think about it all the time now.
Have you decided, What do you want to do? as Step 1 ask? If not then don’t spend one more dollar on anything, just keep reading about lots of different topics. There are hundreds of free eBooks available on everything internet. One will light you up and you will know. Then and only then will the domain name and hosting and products decisions be a logical conclusion to the first step. I will be looking forward to reading you letter about what you decided and how you got there.
