How-To Fail Miserably in Business on the Net - in Seven Easy Lessons Starting Today!

By Pamela Heywood
Posted Thursday, December 2, 2004

Do you know how much easier it is to learn the right way to do things if at first you see the wrong way? Think about it. Think about everything you ever learned by trial and error from the first time you fell off you bike onwards. Well, I'm going to show you how to apply this learning principle to your online efforts in seven easy lessons, no risk. And believe me, I'm an expert!

1. Don't get your own domain

Why would you want to invest a measly $35 (max) in your business annually on some name? You know who you are, right? You have no trouble believing that several hundred gazillion Internet strangers in almost as many countries will trust you - if they find you - even without a reputable brand and ID.

Fine, go get yourself one of those l-o-n-g URLs at a free website that takes at least as long to load as it does to remember. Better still go get one of those self-replicated, absolutely identical, clone "programs" with a FREE website. Write me when you get it to the top of the search engine listings. No, I cant wait that long, write me when you get it listed on the search engines at all. I expect my mailbox won't be overflowing.

2. Don't have any original products to sell

You're OK with that business-in-a-box (for people in boxes, I guess?) that only requires you to give things away. It only cost you $69.95 to get in, so there's no risk. No selling, anyone can do this ... You'll earn $689,000,075 daily (give or take $689 million). On WHAT exactly, may I ask?

While you're at it, just get a heap of affiliate banners, throw them on a page, invite two friends to visit and they're gonna buy stuff. Don't sell anything you know about, don't use the products and services yourself and above all make sure there is no information, explanation, testimonials or even text anywhere to be found on your site.

Don't be fooled by the "experts" who tell you that the only way to make any real money is to have something that's 100% yours (your profit), can be delivered online and is not only wanted by your carefully chosen market, but actually useful.

3. Don't publish a newsletter

See lesson 6 if you MUST do email marketing. Everyone, well both of them who found you by accident, maybe they were the two friends? Is gonna buy, buy, buy, the moment they hit your website and read your carefully written information about your products and services that tells them what's in it for them. Oh, no I told you that you don't need it. How silly of me.

Don't think that you have to prove yourself to be an expert in your field: don't think that the least it does is keep reminding folks to come back and that you didn't fly-by-night. You'll never need to ask people to recommend you to their friends or put your offers in front of them many times before they'll be comfortable to buy from you. Forget marketing rules.

4. Submit your site to 100,000,000 places daily

You've got masses of time on your hands right? So you can afford to spend it all, wildly submitting your site everywhere to 9 million search engines and 99 gazillion free links pages.

Throw enough $*** and it will stick, won't it? It'll stink too! When did you last look for something on the 9 millionth search engine? When did you trawl around links pages looking for a good deal? Do you think you're the only one who doesn't?

Don't let anyone tell you that the search engines will penalise you for over submitting or for linking to pages not designed for human beings (yes, they can tell the difference). I'm not exactly sure how the technology works to get you a negative listing.

5. Advertise, don't advertise

Advertise your standard off-the-peg, tried-and-tested advert that came with the "program", complete with your long URL with your little number on the end, everywhere, anywhere.

Don't worry about it being ignored because it's the same as everyone else's that appears right next to it day in, day out. Don't worry about cheaters knocking your little numbers off and doing you out of your 75 cent commission and most of all don't offer your goods in exactly the right market.

Where is that, I wonder? You'll never need to know.

When you do find a good, well-written, original, benefit packed and correctly formatted ad, only ever use it once. That will be enough for the whole world to see it and make you rich.

6. Send spam

Lots of it! This is great, and does double-duty instead of informative newsletters or pesky advertising. Buy specially cleaned lists of "safe" names and addresses of people who are just eager to receive "information on great money-making opportunities". It's a little vague, but these people obviously know what their avid, carefully harvested readers want and a good deal when they see it.

You really won't upset your ISP every time you send out those 2 million emails and have 3 million of them bounce back at you clogging up their mail server. So long as you say this is not spam, it isn't, right? They'll forgive you and even give you a fair trial, won't they?

And reputations are dead easy to get, aren't they?

7. Forget people, this is technobabble time

Now pay attention here, this is the most important lesson. This is the Internet folks. Let's see how it works ...

There's all these computers connected to all these computers all around the world and all you have to do is send all of these computers lots of identical messages back and forth - this is called Internet Marketing - and lots of money will magically arrive into your bank account.

There are no humans involved. You don't have to talk to them, inform them, woo them, care about finding solutions to their problems, know who they are and what they want ... The rules of human nature, as well as those of business, are totally different in cyber-paradise than they are in the real world. The Internet is not the real world.

Congratulations! You've now completed the entire course and graduated from the Internet's First School of Failure. Read back between the lines and I'm sure you'll find the path to success.

(This story was entirely fictional, all resemblance to real people, either living or dead, any offers, services, products or vague "programs" is entirely coincidental.)

About the Author
Pamela Heywood is webmistress of (http://www.tucats-design.com) - Building Your Online Business Instinctively. Subscribe to the weekly TuCats Mewsletter (sic) mailto:subscribe@tucats-design.com and get regular FREE hints, tips, articles and resources.