Here is a comment that I wrote to Ed Dale’s blog. He’s ramping up to launch another 30 Day Challenge, which is a free, 30-day high intensity guided course on Internet Marketing, geared primarily for beginners. It’s a great course and it’s one of the things that I did last year that gave me a great kick-start.
Ed was commenting on how last year’s 30 Day Challenge was the biggest one to date, yet he didn’t see any increase in the number of people that sent him success stories. He’s been beating himself up trying to figure out why.
Click here to read his original write-up.
I’m posting my response because I think it may resonate with a lot of new marketers out there. When you get into the IM world, there are WAY TOO MANY different offers, each one “promising” to revolutionize your life. It’s easy to get stuck in a trap where you just buy and learn, but never DO.
Here’s my response…
Great post Ed. I’d like to give you a bit from my side of the fence…
I went through 30DC last year, and it was awesome.
I know that this might be contrary to your intent, but I believe 30DC hit me at just the right time in my marketing career… Early enough to learn from and use to develop my business (which was a web development firm at the time), but before I had the experience to know what gaps were missing in my knowledge.
Perhaps it’s my roots in R&D, but the more I learn, the more questions I realize that I haven’t answered.
The 30DC was GREAT for be because it started answering those questions I knew I needed to solve, but there was SO much GREAT info that it actually overwhelmed me at the time because I saw so many new gaps open up.
It was because of the 30DC that I’ve spent the last year focusing on learning copywriting and PPC management, because those were my greatest gaps in knowledge. So here’s what has happened since then:
START OF 30DC 2008: Early in my web development business, and used the techniques for some of my clients.
END OF 2008: Realizing that “web development” isn’t where I want to be. While I still do it when it’s a CRITICAL project, I am now focused primarily on marketing.
TODAY: I’m charging roughly $200 usd/hour doing coaching, teaching and managing marketing campaigns for clients.
I also grew one of my clients 7-fold over a course of 6 months, and they are doing somewhere around $3M worth of sales/year now. I have taken this “system” that I have developed for the client, and am now applying it to other cosmetic surgeons, where I do the work for them and they can focus on taking care of their patients: http://www.physprofits.com
Anyway, I’m rambling now…
To wrap this up, it took me a lot of time to get to this point, and it involved a LOT of people and information. I even read “My Life in Advertising” by Claude Hopkins (talk about old-school) in addition to TONS of current-day stuff from Sugarman, Joyner and Carlton to name a few.
Don’t get disheartened by the lack of feedback and successes. 30DC was a perfect stepping stone into this whole IM market for me, but it wasn’t the only thing (sorry to disappoint). =) It took time, effort, anguish, learning, dissecting, evaluating, and trial-and-error to even get to this point, and I’m nowhere done yet.
The biggest issue that I see in the IM space is that there is SO MUCH NOISE! Everyone is saying that this product is great, and that product is great, and when you’re new to the IM world it seems that the only way to succeed is to spend all your time learning, and then you don’t have any time left to DO!
I think it was Dan Thies from StomperNet that said in the anti-LSI video that you need to be a “wizard”. Corny, but I think he’s right. 30DC can teach you where to start, but it’s up to the individual to actually learn, become the master, and fill those gaps in knowledge that they find during their journey. When you’re helping out at the beginning of that journey, sometimes your students have instant success. But probably most times, you are one of the first spokes in their wheel. And it takes a lot of spokes to make a make a wheel round.
Best wishes, and looking forward to some more great 30DC material! Keep your chin up, my friend!
-Kris Hardy
