I have noticed over the past few years, as more people read this blog, and have joined my Squidoo for Beginners course, that there are definitely two different types of “new marketers” and I’m sure it probably translates to the rest of the world as well.

Those Who Want to Be Fed.

I get emails regularly from people who have questions. Many times the questions come from an email I sent out, or a lesson in one of my courses. Often times the answer is directly in the message the person has been reading.  If it’s not,  it is a question that is general knowledge and the person could easily find the answer themselves, but, instead of looking for an answer, they instead email me.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love talking to people and helping them move forward. Questions about the intricacies of a marketing plan I welcome and enjoy. However, these “feed me” questions not so much.

When I first started, and even still, when I had a question I went to Google and asked the question. 9 times out of 10 Google will give me the exact answer I’m looking for on the first page.

For example, today I received an email asking if  Google sees RSS feeds on a Squidoo lens.

By itself it’s a pretty good question, however, the answer was in the email the person replied to. I decided to go to Google and see what it told me.

I Googled “Does Google See RSS feeds on Squidoo lens” (without the quotes. Here’s what I found 6 listings down:

I clicked through to see the whole article, and there is a grand explanation of Google seeing RSS feeds there.  So how long did it take me to find that information? All of about 30 seconds.

How long did it take someone to email me the question, wait for me to get the email, wait for me to reply?

Way more than 30 seconds.

It just surprises me a little how little this group of marketers will do for themselves. I have yet to figure why this is.  Because there is this other set of new marketers, the ones who are learning to fish.

Those who are Learning to Fish:

This group of people tend to go to Google for answers, if they can’t find it at Google they look somewhere else. They search for the how’s, why’s and when’s on their own. If once they have found some information and have tried to put it together but are having difficulty, they THEN ask a question about the information they have found.

Those questions help them hurdle a marketing bump and they continue to move forward.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about being fed vs. learning to fish.

Those who want to be fed do not succeed.  Sorry if this pisses some people off, but it’s the truth, in Internet marketing at least. Here’s what I see. Those who want to be fed, have an easy out when someone doesn’t feed them what they want/need.

These people are already looking for an excuse to quit. They are looking for someone to blame beside themselves when they don’t “make money online” and the fact that so and so wouldn’t help me is a perfect way to do it.

The people who are learning to fish are the ones who read, learn, and act. They are the ones who will build an internet marketing business no matter what! They are the people who do not let anything stand in their way. They will hunt down information, find a way around a problem, and continue to move forward.

These are the people who will not let anyone stand in their way, and no matter how long it takes will find success.

Who are you?

Are you looking to be fed or are you learning to fish?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying people can’t change. Maybe recognizing there is another way to do things may give you the push you need to start learning to fish, or maybe you’ll take this as the perfect excuse to quit before you even get started. However, when you give up on this whole “make money online” thing take a look at your reasons and who you are “blaming” for your lack of success.

What have you done, what did you learn, and how did you implement all of it?

You can’t say “squidoo doesn’t work” if you have actually put up 100 lenses.

You can’t say “keyword research doesn’t work” until you’ve built a list of 1000 keywords and built sites around a LOT of them, and a lot is not 5.

You can’t say “so and so is such and such” because they couldn’t/wouldn’t answer your question that you could easily have found the answer to if you had just taken the initiative to look.

Really, there’s really no right or wrong in this, it’s just a matter of awareness, and taking responsibility for yourself and where you are in your life.  It’s at least something to think about, who you are, and what you expect from yourself and others in your online marketing journey.

Post from: Internet Marketing Strategy for Moms

Do You Want to Be Fed or Learn to Fish?

I did this for my last product creation. I used a paid service that was recommended to me by Russell Brunson. It worked great, but after the short intro period you have to pay for the service every month.

Today while I was looking for some information on creating spreadsheets, I found that Google has added a very cool feature to Google Docs.

They now allow you to create a poll or a form to ask your readers questions. You can send it via email or embed it in a web page.

What makes this super cool is as soon as your readers respond to the poll it is automatically inserted into a spreadsheet at Google docs.  This gives you the ability to easily see answers, and make decisions based on those answers.

If you need to create a poll for free I highly suggest you take a look at the new form feature at Google Docs.

Here’s a link to their blog post with a little more info about using it.

Basically you just log in to your Google account and choose “Docs” then choose a new form. It’s a pretty step by step process from there, well explained by Google.

Here’s a couple ideas I have for ways to use this information.

• If you have a Send Out Cards business you could send an email for asking for everyone you knows snail mail address. This will go directly to a spread sheet and you can upload it to your SOC database.

• Ask a couple questions about a new product you want to create.

• As a blogger you could ask questions about what your readers want to read.

• Hold a contest where people enter by providing you information you need for another project.

I’m sure once the ideas get flowing you will come up with tons more. I’d love to hear some ideas you come up with for using free polls.

Post from: Internet Marketing Strategy for Moms

Create a Poll for Free

LearnItStepbyStep.com is a membership site I created with a good friend and partner of mine Andrea. We have been getting emails from readers who have hit a bit of a gap between what you need to know to get going with One Week Marketing and their actual level of knowledge.

We decided to take action and create a place where even the most beginner marketer would be able to find the answers to get started with One Week Marketing.

As this site evolves we are planning to provide this type of internet marketing help for other ebooks already on the market. We will also be finding things for the network marketers out there as well.

Just so you know, we have spoken to PotPieGirl and she is 100% behind LearnItStepbyStep.com. Here’s what she had to say about the launch of our site.

The hardest part of learning internet marketing has got to be the “self-education” part.  It is hard to feel inspired when you feel so alone with no one to answer your questions or to simply give you a swift kick to get you back in gear =)

The One Week Marketing Action Plan is perfect for those that feel lost and without direction - but even still, there are still questions and small learning curves that must be tackled.

I am SO thrilled with Jackie and Andrea.  They have given my OWM followers a home and a safe place to get their questions answers (and to get a swift kick when they need one, too!)

LearnItStepByStep.com has my personal seal of approval and my highest recommendation.

Thank you Jackie and Andrea!

You two are a God-send!

Jennifer
~PotPieGirl
OneWeekMarketing.com

With that seal of approval we’ve had members joining since we launched. We are charging a very low price to kick things off. We want this information to be accessible to everyone. We will be increasing the price of the membership site after each 50 members have joined, so now is the time to join while the price is low.

On the fence about LearnItStepbyStep.com?

Now you have a chance to WIN FREE MEMBERSHIP to LearnItStepbyStep.com. In an effort to answer real questions from real people and make our site the biggest value for those who need it we are holding a contest.

Contest Guidelines

Send us a list of the questions YOU have from One Week Marketing.

The more questions ~ even super basic questions ~ the better.

We will be looking through the lists entered and the person with the most questions will win.

The person with the most questions we have not already covered will win as well.

You must be willing to ask your questions in the membership area if you win.

Submit your list of questions (in ONE document ~ we will not add multiple lists together) by November 27th, 2008.

We will be announcing the winner on Nov 28th. This will give you plenty of time to get started over the holiday weekend!

CONTEST PRIZES

What do you win?

The person with the longest list of questions relevant to implementing One Week Marketing will win an annual membership and access to all the content available in the One Week Marketing Module.

a $37 value

The person with the most questions we have not already covered in the membership area will receive an annual membership but ALSO a month of FREE coaching.

A $74 value

Who can enter?

Anyone can enter, whether you are a current member, or have never stopped by before.

You must have a copy of One Week Marketing, and ask questions related to this particular book for your questions to count.

If you don’t have italready, grab yourself a copy of One Week Marketing. Even if you don’t win the contest the book will get you moving forward in your Internet marketing career, and you’re welcome to join LearnItStepbyStep.com to get any help you need.

We also offer some basic tutorials for FREE We will be adding more tutorials as we go, and will be adding some tutorial vidoes as well.

Let the contest begin!

Post from: Internet Marketing Strategy for Moms

Win a FREE Annual Membership To LearnItStepbyStep.com

Spark Plugging ~ a great site for work at home resources and community for Web 2.0 entreprenuers has put together a list of 63 WAHM Blogs, and is asking the public to vote on their favorite.

So dear readers, I’m asking you to high tail it over there and vote yours truly!

Then take some time and peruse the list. There are a LOT of really good blogs with great information over there.

To vote all you have to do is put who you are voting for in the comment section.

It’s a really fun idea. Contests are a great way to get more traffic to your blog.  Especially when you are offering other bloggers some great prizes.

Here’s what I see SparkPlugging missed, and what a lot of bloggers miss when they run a contest.

They didn’t even let me know!!

If they had notified the entrants of their contest that they had in fact been entered they would all probably be doing what I’m doing right now ~ sending their readership to the contest to vote.

This means more traffic, for Spark Plugging, more subscribers ~ it’s a really cool blog ~ and probably even more cash ~ you know someone’s going to click a link right?

Keep in mind when you set up a contest all the ways you can help drive traffic to it, including getting the entrants to help.

Now I’m off to tweet this contest so I can maybe get more people to vote ~ see what I mean?

You never know who has a big list, twitter followers, myspace friends they’d be willing to send your way so they can win a contest.

Post from: Internet Marketing Strategy for Moms

I’m In A Contest and I Didn’t Even Know!

Yep, the Keyword Research Revealed WSO is LIVE!

If you’ve thought about getting a copy of Keyword Research Revealed but haven’t now’s your chance to knock another 10 dollars off the price.

As soon as this WSO is over I will be putting the regular sales page up and the final price will be 37 dollars. So if you’ve been on the fence now’s your chance to get a killer deal on this excellent step by step ebook.

If you’ve ever bought an ebook or read somewhere to do “good keyword research” and just didn’t know what that meant or how to do it. Keyword Research Revealed will walk you through step by step everything you need to know to find great traffic pulling, money making keywords.

Ok, this isn’t a big sales page, I just wanted to let you know it was live. If you’ve already bought a copy please feel free to leave your comments on that thread.

As long as I’m here, let’s just talk about doing a WSO real quick.

It can be a very easy way to launch your book, and your internet marketing career. People have started million dollar businesses on the WSO forum.

In case you don’t know, WSO stands for Warrior Special Offer. It is a forum over at the Warrior forum where you can provide a “special” deal for the people of that forum.

Here’s the basic rules of running a WSO.

It has to be YOUR work. You can run a WSO with PLR or MRR products.

It has to be a special price found nowhere else on the internet.

You have to have at least 30 posts in the regular forum to run the WSO.

No hate, drugs, gambling related WSOs.

That’s pretty much it.

Now to actually post your WSO.

It’s pretty simple. You go to the WSO forum, and click “new thread” just like you would in any other forum to start a new conversation.

When the new thread opens you will see a form to purchase your WSO. It costs 20 dollars per thread, and you can buy up to 2.

When you choose how many threads you want and hit enter it will take you straight to paypal.

Once you have paid your 20 dollars it will take you back to the forum. Just click on “new thread” again and the thread will open and you can write away.

You will need to know the code for forums ~ BBCode, to make changes to the fonts, and add links in your WSO. No worries. There’s an entire page of BBCode information on the warrior forum.

You also have a preview button so you have a chance to check your coding before it goes live. Once you have your WSO just the way you want it you simply press the submit thread button and LIVE it goes.

It’s a pretty simple thing to do, and there are always warriors looking at the special offers. It’s a great way to get some eyes on a new product and possibly create a bit of buzz!

Post from: Internet Marketing Strategy for Moms

Keyword Research Revealed WSO is Live