The Tale of Mr Newbie and The Truth About Total Failure

By Dave Powell
Posted Friday, June 18, 2004

If you are new to Internet marketing and your web business makes no money, or worse still a loss, you needn't worry about looking a fool - chances are nobody will ever know!

Explain?

Well, if you really fail that dismally, chances are no-one visited your site anyway. It’s a fact that most people new to Internet marketing, "newbies" as they are affectionately referred, very often follow a very similar pattern of evolution.

Firstly, Mr Newbie gets enticed to the "easy" money and vast riches that the Internet offers. He can see that people are making big money on the web, so what's the obvious step - that's right, get a website!

And what is the theme of Mr Newbies website? How to make money on the Internet, of course! So why does he choose to tell other people how to make money on the Internet BEFORE he has made even one dollar himself?

Well, he finds the biggest array of ready-made products to sell that he could ever wish for - ebooks, courses, affiliate programs etc.,etc. and lots (and lots) of well designed ads that tell him that to resell this product, or represent this program will bring him huge (and instant) rewards.

The smart choice would have been to have taken one of his hobbies, or an area of specialist knowledge that he may possess, and built a niche website around that theme. Promotion would have been easier and potential customers may have even come looking for HIM. He could even have started building a newsletter list before he had a website.

But hey, Mr Newbie has heard you can make cash in Internet marketing in 30 days! Why bother doing any work?

Instead he decides to enter one of the most competitive arenas of the modern business era - not just marketing on the Internet, but marketing products ABOUT Internet Marketing.

He is competing against huge amounts of savvy marketers who use every trick in the book (and some that aren't) to wring every last drop of spare money out of that other man - "Mr. Average Web Surfer With A Credit Card".

So what does our friend do?

He buys an ebook that tells him what to do, he can't go wrong with this one. Heck - the "expert" who wrote it, is even going to let him sell it as his first product. (Mr Newbie new that the platinum package was worth those few extra dollars!)

From here on, it is often the same story - a lovely website, a clever domain name, and lots of evenings at the computer in the spare bedroom staring at the screen when the kids have gone to bed pondering one major aspect of Internet marketing that is quite vital to the ongoing profitability and feasibility of the whole project while twiddling his thumbs -

WHERE ARE THE VISITORS!

Mr Newbie gives up.

Since I was a kid, I've always hated sad endings.

So let's assume Mr N. decides to give it one last chance - what should he do?

Well money can be earned in the competitive field of Internet marketing, but he obviously needs visitors to his website
- more than just throwing a bit of money at banner ads, or pay-per-click search engines.

Both can be fine, but what he really needs is a traffic plan.

Firstly, he realizes that there are two main types of traffic - paid for and free.

He makes a list of all of the free traffic generating systems he knows, and researches a few more.

He is amazed at how many good traffic generating programs there are, and how many are so easily implemented. One involves setting his start page differently. With one he has to add an exit pop-up, and with another he has to surf looking at webpages to earn hits to his own.

Mr Newbie gets an immediate increase in visitors to his website. What's more, because of the viral effect of some of these plans, his traffic grows on a daily basis. He also gets a lot more subscribers to his newsletter.

Secondly, he gets a vital component; he gets an ad tracking service for tracking his ads, so that he knows which are pulling in visitors and which ones aren't. He is now ready to tackle paid advertising.

Now that he can measure the success of each individual ad, he is astonished at how he can make money. Even though he gets a terrible response rate to one ad, it turns out that he still makes a profit from it. He wouldn't have known this before getting his ad tracker. He doubles the size of this campaign and makes more money!

Mr Newbie gets amazing amounts of visitors from his traffic plan, from his list of free traffic generators, and from his list of places that are profitable for his paid ads - his business is a success!!

Last I'd heard of Mr.N he was sipping cocktails and sunning himself on a white sand beach someplace. Oh, and he'd changed his name to Mr.G - or Mr Guru, to give him his full title.

About the Author
Have a look at the traffic plan Mr Newbie put together at:
(http://www.internetincome4u.com/MrNewbiesTrafficPlan.htm)
Full-time online marketer Dave Powell was once Mr. Newbie. He now runs the Income Online Review Newsletter at:
(http://www.internetincome4u.com)