Internet Marketing Singapore: “Wake Up Your Idea!” Volume 1.0

photo credit: iEEEj

Okay – for those of you who are not from Singapore, you might think this is  a post about innovation. However, my army sergeant major used to say this all the time and it means “stop dreaming and pay attention” (it’s Singapore slang).

The reason for this post is simple. Internet marketing can be easy. But most of the time, it is not. Why? Because it means you need to be an entrepreneur. You have to be able to stop dreaming and start waking up to reality.

Another friend of my wife asked me “should I go into internet marketing?” and “how fast will I show profits”. For heaven’s sake, these questions are like asking “will I go to heaven”!

Of course you will go to heaven, but do you know how to get there? Do you even have the appropriate belief in a religion to get to their heaven?

Let’s list the issues people have in internet marketing.

1. “How soon to make money?” issue. This is the wrong question to ask. You’re treating this like a business venture, you will know that asking this question is redundant. You will need to:

• Create a business plan. Do some feasibility tests. Run some numbers using an excel spreadsheet. If you’re not familiar with the area of business, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it like a home run dream plan. Wake up! Look at the facts. If you don’t understand the market and revenue models, investigate. Ask others in the industry. Get a coach. This is the reason why Warren Buffett does not trade in stocks that he doesn’t understand.
• Explore the concept widely by investigating competitors.
• Create a business model – a way to run the business, generate revenue, and secure profit. Set your revenue targets.
• Test it and measure your first effort.

2. “Will Internet Marketing Work?” issue. This is like asking “does a toilet flush work”. Of course it does, but just as all flushes are not made equal, neither are marketers. Wake up to this fact – if you are not a great marketer, what does that mean? Why is it that Nike, for example, outsources their production to various developing countries but focuses only on marketing? Because that is their strength. If you aren’t a good marketer, you either build the skill or you focus on something else and bring in a good marketer into your team.

3. “I have no idea” issue. This is again, a skill problem. If you don’t have the right knowledge and exposure, you will never have an idea. It’s like if you never had a positive vacation experience, you’d probably never wonder if there are other vacation spots to go to. Innovation and creative thinking are among some of the most valued skills that an entrepreneur has to have. If you don’t have this creativity, then you might as well go find a job. The alternative is to invest in learning how to create great business ideas. This will never make you rich because ideas that remain as ideas are just castles in the sky. BUT if you don’t invest in it, you will never be able to get started in the first place.

4. “His model works, so mine should” issue. I think maybe you’ve been watching too much TV? Just because someone created an internet marketing product to sell online does NOT mean that you can create another product in, say, “Positive Thinking” and expect it to work. This is because you can’t see the behind-the-scenes of the business. Does he:

• pay $50,000 for marketing on the web to make his $1m? Are you willing to do that?
• have 10 teams of content developers and writers who cost $100,000 a year to pay and motivate? Are you willing to invest in that?
• have a proprietary system that enables efficiency in the internet age that he spent 5 years perfecting from other modes of business experience? Do you even HAVE business experience? And if you don’t, are you willing to invest 5 years in it?

See, by the time you reach this, you’d have realized that there are things you need to test. I mean budget it and test it. If it doesn’t work, analyze, learn and move on with something else that might work.

In the words of Yoda, “Much you learn, you have”! But you have to start your training somehow.

Good luck!

p.s. if you haven’t gotten a copy of Secrets Of Internet Millionaires yet, or if you haven’t read it 7 times and practiced it for at least 7 runs, you’re not getting any closer than when you first began!

p.p.s. more entrepreneurial mistakes to watch out for coming soon, so bookmark the page and stay tuned!