What Would You Do Wednesday…

Back a few years ago when I was doing some individual coaching with Courtney Tuttle I really just wanted him to tell me what to do. I wanted a list of stuff so I could just go do it.  If I got the list and did it I would be making money and that’s really what I wanted; to experience success (finally)! If I had the list and did it and didn’t make money there would also be someone else to blame besides myself for my failure!

He said to me…

Internet marketing is 90% art and 10% science

I thought he was crazy and I was pissed, but I slowly realized just how right he was. There is no list. Every action you take creates a result. From that result you have to look at what’s happened and go from there. Make a decision based on the results and what you have to do to get where you want to go. No two campaigns/websites/lenses will ever go exactly the same. That’s why there can never be a list… there may be an outline… but no list. Not only is there no list of “do this do that”, but there’s also no list about how to proceed when you get an idea. There are a ton of different things you could do, at least 4 or 5 directions you can go with any idea. So how do you know where to start?

That’s the art part and it really is 90% of the whole thing.  It’s something you gain from experience, from failure, from success, from time.  I thought it would be fun once in a while to take a question I get and play it out on paper, the thoughts that go through my head as I decide what I would do… so here goes.

Recently I had someone ask:

You’ve got this Ironman lens, it’s made some sales… now what would you do?

This question came from my LearnItStepbyStep.com membership site, that breaks One Week Marketing down into little pieces with easy step by step instructions. When I get questions there it’s tough for me because the site is based on OWM, I feel compelled to stick to answering questions as would work with that program… but those possibilities aren’t necessarily what I would do.  AND… as time goes on and I find things that work/don’t work, my answers change.

Here’s what my thoughts were, as I pondered the question. Remember, that my talents, likes, dislikes, passions are all taken into consideration when making these decisions. As well as what’s worked for me in the past, what I feel like I can follow through on etc. No two people will come up with the same answer, because no two people are the same. These are my answers… they may or may not be yours.

Here’s how my brain spun through the brainstorming process

Hmm… I could create a micro niche site for it. I know the keyword phrase works. I would have to get a trademarked domain name. Hmmm… don’t really want to do that. Ok… I could do a little more keyword research and find some more inversion tables that fit my research criteria, and build a site with more pages, targeting one inversion table on each page. That would mean I have to do linking to each page, to get each keyword to  rank in the search engines to drive traffic.

ponder ponder ponder. (a day or so went by ~ at least one sleep)

I have 22 other sites on a list that need to be worked on. I am not really very passionate about inversion tables. It’s working on Squidoo. It’s in profit. All these other sites really need work. I don’t need another project to work on right now. I don’t think it would get finished if I started it. Then I would feel guilty for starting yet another project that didn’t get finished. That’s no good.

I’m just going to leave it alone. It’s making money. I’m not going to mess with it, and let it keep making money while I continue to work on these other sites which is what’s on my list.

I know other people use Squidoo as a “market research” area. I find that difficult. Once something is done for me, it’s done for me. I have a hard time going back and building something else out of it. I am never short on ideas for sites, so I usually leave lenses as lenses. That works for me.

Lenses can provide great research ~ and can easily be built into something more… that just isn’t the way I usually go.

Do you have a what would you do… question? Feel free to ask it in the comments, and I’ll save it for another Wednesday. If you want an immediate answer join the KISS Club and start a “what would you do thread”. I’ll be happy to answer today.