Seekness!

So many people hear about that friend who lives the dream that comes with making a full-time living through internet marketing. The passive income. The flexible schedule that lets us work in our boxers, in a coffee shop, on the beach, or anywhere we feel like being. The lack of a boss, and in lots of cases, even clients to answer to.

It all sounds great, and once we’ve decided we want that for ourselves, we frantically search the web looking for a blueprint that sets us off on our way to that promised land of passive riches.

If we’re lucky, we end up at a valuable resource like WarriorForum or WickedFire that lets us read about the stories of many others in the same boat – some of them successful and kind enough to share their stories.  We may end up buying a WSO or some other product that shows us one person’s method and approach, and if we’re lucky once, it may actually work.

Others may fall right into to one of the hundreds of “Make Money Online” products that claim to show you how to make thousands of dollars a day with the click of a button.  Autoblogs, one page “Sniper” sites that you can set and forget. Link blasting tools that promise to get you ranking for anything you want with some spun articles, social bookmarks, profile links, and more.

Do these things work? Some do, some don’t – but it’s not always that simple. I come across so many people who commit to doing whatever it takes to succeed in this industry but quickly fade away after a few days, weeks, or months. If you’re in that boat right now, you’re most definitely not alone. Your lack of success could be related to one of a number of possible reasons. More likely than not, it’s a combination of some of the reasons I’m about to list.

Be honest with yourself and use this info to try to identify where you’ve gone wrong. Everything is fixable and with a little self honesty, effort, and consistency, you can overcome any problems you’re experiencing and break through.  Here are 10 possible reasons you may be failing at internet marketing. No matter what method you’re going after, there’s a good chance these factors may apply to you.

1. You’re simply not doing enough work. No, you’re really not.

Most people out there don’t realize how much work it really takes to succeed in this industry. As the saying goes, content is king. As Google fine tunes its algorithms to meet its mission to give searchers the most value content possible, this couldn’t be truer in this day and age. If you want to generate traffic, you’re gonna have to put as much high quality writing as you possibly can around the web. I don’t care if these are your own sites, web 2.0 sites, forum posts that link to your content, tweets, Facebook posts, article directory submissions, or anything else. When it comes down to it, people will only find you if you’re producing new material.

If you’re not willing to put in the work, you won’t see results. I have a friend who’s 4 months into this business. He’s only making a few dollars per day and can’t understand what he can be doing more effectively in order to boost his daily earnings. “Do I need more backlinks?” he asked. “Do I need a better backlinking method?”.  “Did I choose bad niches?”.

These all seem like reasonable questions, but in his case, it turned out he had only written about 120 articles of site content since he started – or an average of one article per day.

It should come as no surprise that he’s making what he’s making. When I first started out, I made the commitment to write at least 10 articles’ worth of site content per day, and I did just that. 12 days into it, I had amassed as much content as he had over a four month period. And I was probably making a few dollars per day at that point.

If you want to make more, you’re gonna have to grind it out. It’s not fun. It’s not glamourous. But it’s how you get your start.

Make the commitment to stick to a daily routine. No matter what you do, don’t veer from it. When I started out, I promised myself I’d have my 10 articles to show for my day’s work no matter the circumstances. I wasn’t going to sleep until my work was done. And guess what? There were nights where I was up until 6am finishing the job because I wasn’t allowed to sleep until I did what I made the commitment to do.

Trust me on this one. This is probably the most common reason for failure and I can’t emphasize it enough. You’re not doing as much work as you think you need to do in order to see measurable results. Some people get lucky with websites that suddenly hit it big. I have, and you likely will one day too if you stick it out. But when it comes down to it, it’s all a numbers game. The more content you throw up, the better the odds something like that will happen.

How much work do you plan to do on a daily basis? Make that decision right now and stick to it. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re probably not serious enough about really wanting this for yourself.

2. You aren’t learning from your mistakes.

“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.” – James Joyce

Embrace the opportunity to fail. Every successful person does it. Most venture capital firms are very interested in investing their money with someone who’s failed at a past business venture and ready to go forward with a new one. Of course a longstanding track record of failure after failure might be a different story, but the reasoning is simple. Failure gives us insight into what doesn’t work, which is all the more valuable when it comes to figuring out how to make something work.

This couldn’t be more true in the world of internet marketing. Potential missteps exist in so many forms. Keep some of the next possible reasons for failure in mind, because most of them are mistakes. If you can relate to any of these, identify your missteps and learn from them!

3. Bad niche selection.

Maybe there’s simply not enough money in your niche. If there is money, maybe it’s too competitive and you haven’t written and/or backlinked enough. They say that you should avoid the most popular niches when starting out, but I don’t entirely agree with that statement. It all depends on the difficulty that it might take in order to rank for whatever you’re targeting. If you’re going after two or even three word heavily searched keywords in popular niches and wrote a few articles targeting that very term, congratulations on having wasted your time. Then again, if you’ve written a boatload of content within a particular niche on a range of different subtopics and keywords within that niche, the long tail traffic will begin rolling in over time, especially if you update your site regularly and throw some consistent links back to it.

4. You’re not giving Google what it wants.

Not only is the search giant constantly tweaking its algorithm, but there are certain rules in place that could easily be deal breakers for your site if you’re violating them. Do you read their webmaster quality guidelines? If you haven’t, leave my website now, read them, and then come back. Really.

Maybe you have too many ads up relative to your content. Maybe you’re largely copying your sites’ content from other sources and offering nothing unique. Perhaps your articles are blatantly low quality, with meaningless drivel that simply targets a keyword.

“Electric blankets are a great way to stay warm in the winter. When it gets cold, nothing can be quite more comforting than an electric blanket…

….you can find electric blankets by searching Google, looking to Amazon, and other local retailers like Walmart.”

Look at all familiar to you? Shame on you, and sorry you’ve wasted your time. That don’t work no more. Don’t try to fool Google and searchers. Produce something meaningful and you’ll be rewarded for some time to come.

5.  You’re getting visitors, but they’re not converting to sales, leads, ad clicks or list subscribers.

This is one of the better problems to worry about. Getting traffic to your site is typically going to be the hardest thing to accomplish starting out so if you’ve gotten to that point, I pat you on the back. You’ve obviously succeeded at producing some good content and you might have done some smart keyword research and backlinking to get to where you’ve gotten.

Anyway, there are a number of reasons that your visitors may not be converting. Here are a few.

• Bad ad placement. I don’t know if you’re using banners, text links, pop ups, or something else, but try switching up the placement and making it more visible. Whatever you do, you don’t want to overload your visitors with ads (which can also have a negative impact on ranking), but you’ll need to position things strategically if you want them to see what’s on offer. Change some things around. Do A/B testing wherever possible and keep a close eye on metrics.

• Bad looking ads. Maybe your placement’s fine but the ads aren’t being noticed. If they’re Adsense ads or other text ads, tweak the size and/or color of the text. Play around with link color, text color, text size, background color, and any other possible settings to make sure that your ads stand out enough to visitors so that they’ll notice them (without putting off with something that’s just obnoxious, of course).

• You’re linking to a bad affiliate offer. Check the creative of whatever landing page you’re linking to. Whether it’s a lead capture form or a sales page, it’s critical that whoever’s doing the marketing has wisely built their landing page. I’ve marketed Clickbank products that convert 1 in 20 (this is great), and I’ve marketed others that I’ve literally sent hundreds of visitors to without a single conversion. Look at the way the page you’re linking to is laid out. Look at what they’re selling and the price it’s selling for. Is it something you’d be interested in if you were looking to solve whatever problem this offer does? Be honest with yourself and think about that. Because if you’re sending visitors to a page and they’re not converting, you owe it to yourself to switch products ASAP. There are plenty out there so look for more.

• Bad keyword targeting. You need some form of tracking code on your site that lets you see how visitors are finding you. Usually, your content will be targeting a specific keyword (or a few), and the percentage of visitors that click your ads/offers can EASILY be tied directly into the nature of the keyword the visitors used to find your site.Let’s use a simple example here, and say that your niche is TVs.  If you’re targeting “plasma TV deals”, there’s a very good chance your visitor will very obviously be interested in any ads that you display pushing off plasma TVs. On the other hand, if the keyword is “plasma vs. LCD”, despite the fact that it gets a ton of monthly searches, this reader is probably just looking for an article that explains the differences and talks about which is better. Think about the commercial intent behind the keywords you’re targeting. A different word or two can make a world of a difference when it comes to monetization.A good way to measure this is using the Google Adwords keyword tool via the “Competition” bar that displays when you search for keywords. The more full that green bar is, the more advertisers are bidding on that keyword. Paying advertisers obviously know what buyers are interested in, so this is a great way to measure potential buying interest if you’re unsure about whether the keyword you’re targeting is likely to convert.

6.  You’ve chosen to build sites around subjects that are simply too boring.

Even if there’s money in niches like payday loans, refinancing, asphalt, and heating systems, they’re boring as $h!t to write about. Don’t fall into this trap and try to find a niche that genuinely interests you – at least a little bit. You’ll find the writing to be much more bearable.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you should go ahead and write about something you love if there’s no money behind it. I see so many people in the industry telling IM newbies to find a subject they’re passionate about and to devote their first site to it.

Love cooking? That’s great and all, but see how much you love it when you’ve written 200 articles with recipe ideas, only to find that readers only wanted to use your recipes without dropping a dime on you or any advertiser. Sure, there are things you could do down the line to monetize a cooking site, but why spin your wheels like this when there are faster ways to get there? It’s especially important when you’re starting out that you go with something that begins to earn money once traffic begins coming in. You need to see some kind of reward for the fruits of your labor, and a bunch of oohs, aaahhhs, and thank yous for the tomato mint quinoa salad recipe you shared isn’t gonna pay the bills and let you quit your day job.

When all is said and done, try to find that middle ground. It doesn’t have to be the most lucrative niche out there, but there needs to be some money behind it. There are hundreds of them out there. Look around you and think about things you’ve recently bought. Problems you need solved. Things you see on store shelves. Commercials you see on TV. The inspiration is all around you.

And of course, if you can stomach the idea of writing about uninteresting subject matters with money tied to them, all the better. If these are things that people need, there’s every reason to consider throwing up a website about it. There’s a good chance you’ll have less competition here since we’re all human and usually tend to shy away from things we don’t like. Otherwise, leave the boring niches to the outsourced help you hire down the line once the earnings are rolling in

7. Your backlinking method isn’t effective.

Without links back to your content, there’s very little chance that you’ll rank for whatever you’re trying to rank. If you’re the NY Times, Amazon, or another major authority site with a ton of history, content, and trust, you won’t need this; but the little guy needs some show of confidence from the rest of the world before Google will really love ya.

Maybe your link profile isn’t varied enough. That profile link packet you bought and went through once or twice just isn’t enough these days. The bookmarks you threw up on Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon won’t be enough either. The directory submissions don’t work on their own. The blog comment spam campaign you spent a few hours on won’t do the job. Neither will those few Ezinearticles that just got accepted.

When it comes down to it, a natural looking backlink profile is what works. What does this mean? Get links from as many sources as you possibly can. Social bookmarks, article directories, web 2.0 sites, directory submissions, RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook links, blog comments (from related blogs on the same subjects), forum posts and signatures, etc. Scatter it out and don’t do it all at once. Don’t just link to your homepage either. Spread it around to the inner pages of your site, all of which should have great content too.

Keep it steady and mix up your anchor text so that it’s not just targeting one keyword.  If the majority of your keywords say “how to get a mortgage”, is it conceivable that a number of sites and users around the web miraculously linked to you with the same exact 5 words in their anchor text? Very doubtful, and the search engines are onto you. Mix it all up and do so responsibly. Most importantly, any links that you do throw up should be surrounded with content that’s valuable to those readers who stumble onto the pages that contain your backlinks. It goes a very long way these days.

Linking irresponsibly can easily bring a ranking penalty (temporary or permanent) into your life, and that’s the last thing you want to worry about when you’re just starting out. It’d be quite the crippling blow that most wouldn’t have the persistence to bounce back from.

8. You’re not being patient enough.

These things really do take time. Unless you’re using PPC, going on a social media rampage, comment spamming chat rooms, or deploying some other method that brings in an instant flow of traffic, you need to give it time. Most of my sites take at least a few months before I really start to see visitors en masse, and as long as I continue posting content on them, they continue to improve even more with age.

Time is your friend in the world of internet marketing, and even if you’re doing everything right, pouring your heart into the work and producing some great content on a daily basis, you should still expect not to make much (if anything at all) during your first month or two.

Give it time and keep on doing what you’re doing. One day you’ll wake up to see a pleasant surprise. A huge jump in traffic, your first affiliate sale, or some other encouraging result. And as long as you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, it only gets better from there.

9. The method you’re trying out doesn’t work well.

Maybe it used to work and times have changed. It’s also possible that you were duped by a product creator who peddled off a method that sounds great on the surface but doesn’t have the real world results to back up its claims. I’ve seen some dirty tactics used to market products and methods and it’s very well possible that you’ve fallen victim to one.

Whatever the reason for your adversity, it’s always good to change it up a bit if you’ve given it an honest shot and haven’t faltered in some of the above potential internet marketing missteps I’ve cited.

There are literally hundreds of possible ways to make money online. List building, product creation, affiliate sales, CPA networks, Adsense, Amazon, Ebay, freelancing. These are just a few.

When I started out, I decided to spread my work out into a few methods, hoping that one would hit it big. You should do the same. In doing this, you’ll also get a feel for which line of work you find easiest and most enjoyable. Give a few things a shot, without spreading yourself too thin.

10. You’re spending too much time reading through forums, products, and blogs like these. Go away. Now.

It’s absolutely true. I’m amazed to visit forums and see so called experts who have post counts in the thousands on those forums. How could someone with 4,700 posts genuinely have the time to spend both preaching their gospel on forums all day AND building a successful internet business? Not possible.

Forums and blogs can be a great resource. They can open you up to new ideas, help you learn about (and be inspired by) the successes of others, and give you a general sense of community that reminds you that you’re not alone in this struggle to figure this all out.

But…they’re a huge distraction too. Get yourself out of the habit of relying on these communities and feeling the need to keep up with “the news”.  Here’s some news for you – there is none. The most successful people out there are the ones who aren’t posting everyday because they very well realize their time is best spent focusing on ways to grow their own business. The biggest earners stay under the radar and you don’t know of their existence. Adapt that mentality and your productivity will shoot up.

For that reason, I don’t plan to post on a regular basis here. I have plenty more to share, but I need to worry about myself too. I’ll throw up some more posts as I have time. And until then, it’s back to work for me.

Go back and read each of these reasons once more. Try to figure out where you’ve gone wrong, because it’s almost guaranteed to be related to one of these reasons. Tweak your approach from there and you won’t be one of the thousands of those who quietly fade to IM dust during the days and weeks to follow. It’s in your hands from here.