Choose Your Mentor Wisely
Nov
If you’re new to online marketing or blogging and are looking to earn money doing them, then you’ve already figured out that there a million different money making methods taught by a million different “guru’s”. Being so overloaded with choices is overwhelming and it’s very difficult to know where to begin.
This is exactly where I was a few short months ago…lost. I had typed in “how to make money blogging” into Google and found more than 8 million results. Just looking at the first and second pages, I saw some big name blogs and a lot of smaller sites I hadn’t heard of. Upon further reading, I found that quite a few of these sites had what looked to be some very good stuff.
I then Googled “Internet Marketing” and got more than 150 million results. The first few pages were comprised of entirely different sites and many of them looked to be very helpful as well. Hmmm. Where to begin? Who is legit and who is a scam artist? This is a very tough thing to answer because there’s no way to know if you’re new to the online marketing world.
A major hurdle for many of us is that we don’t have the time and/or patience to sift through the endless resources made available by the Internet Marketing “experts” trying to find the legitimately helpful ones. We could literally spend months without finding who/what we’re looking for.
So, after a few months of running searches and downloading (and reading) every single free blogging eBook I could find, I was given the name of a pro blogger who would change my entire outlook towards the blogging business model.
That blogger was Yaro Starak and I really resonated with his message and philosophies about blogging. His website, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com is extremely insightful and although he is highly successful, seems to be write with the new blogger in mind.
After reading most of his blog posts, I downloaded his free eBook, all of his Podcasts, and signed up for his email newsletter. I soon realized that he was the real deal and truly wanted to help his readers.
Now, I’m not trying to push Yaro’s methods on anybody, I’m just trying to make a point. The point being that you need to find a mentor that you can follow and learn from.
Why You Need A Mentor:
When you are just starting out in Internet business, you’re going to suffer from Internet information overload. There is simply too much data online for us to ever process (but we try anyway!)
A few main reasons it makes sense to find a mentor are:
- You suck at Internet marketing (and you cannot afford to suck at this!)
- You have no direction with your blog and desperately need it
- It saves you a tremendous amount of time following someone who already has the success you want
A few questions to ask yourself:
- Are they successful in the specific niche you are trying to become successful in?
- Can you relate to their writing style?
- Are they offering real value to you?
- Do they have a successful track record in their industry?
- Do they seem to be honest and sincere in wanting to help their readers?
Take my niche for example, which is how to build a profitable blog (mostly), and you will find that there is a seemingly unlimited number of people teaching their “proven” system of making money online.
Before you jump at the first program that looks great, you will first need to figure out exactly how you want to make money online. There are many ways in which you can do this.
A few of the more popular are:
- Affiliate marketing
- Niche website marketing
- Membership programs
- Digital product sales
- Google Adsense
- Direct Advertisements
You can certainly try your hand at all of these to see which works for you, but it will be very time consuming and you will end up wasting tons of time. I actually spent 2 months working on a niche website, writing a bunch of keyword rich articles, working on SEO, and then realized that it was just too damn boring. I threw in the towel shortly thereafter. It just wasn’t a good fit for me.
As it turns out, I actually learned a lot about marketing, keyword research, and SEO, so I feel it was worth the time (although I never took my website live).
My advice would be to do some research and try to find a mentor/program you can really get behind and learn as much as you can from.
Following someones system to a T has its advantages, but just remember that you will need to stand out and do things a little differently to get noticed in such a competitive online marketplace. It’s great to be creative, but let’s not reinvent the wheel here.
Following the core principles of a successful program is the best way to get it right the first time.
