Learning Internet Marketing

Yay, I managed to upload a picture. And with no trouble at all in this new version of blogger. This is my husband Don and I. It was taken two years ago, but we look almost the same - just a little heavier and grayer. We want to wish you a happy holiday, full of friends and family. And all the best for 2007. Until next time, Carol

I am still not able to do anything with a greeting card I created. Here I was feeling so proud of myself that I managed to record my voice and everything, but I am not able to send it to the people on my small newsletter list. It is so frustrating. I am beginning to realize that online marketers are exceptional people if they can learn all there is to know and actually make money at it. Do I have what it takes or will my tombstone say - she died still trying? Until next time,                              Carol

After another day of throwing in the towel and deciding I will sell my computer and take up knitting, I am up and at the keyboard again. I feel like I'm in a boxing match, down and out, but I keep getting up and trying again. Hopefully this Internet Marketing learning will not leave me bruised and beaten. After a while, I feel like I can't give up - I've spent way too much time and money to quit. I realize that something is getting into this old brain when I talk to non-Internet marketers about some of the things I'm doing. They are so impressed that it gives me the drive to want to continue. But when I get back in the ring with the pros, then I realize I am a small-town boxer who doesn't really know how to fight. What I need is a good coach and I think I have found a couple of them. I need to put on blinders though and not get distracted by all the other coaches out there, each trying to get me to follow their style. There may be a lot of rounds left in this ...

Okay, the first mistake I made involved my first tutorial purchase. Almost three years ago now, my birthday present to myself was a $300 course on Internet Marketing. It came in the mail, in two binders, plus two cds (that's a picture of it and Corey Rudl was the author). It was an excellent course and is highly regarded in the industry. The problem was that I was in too much of a hurry. So I skimmed through the binders, mainly reading the titles, and got through maybe the first four chapters. Then I decided I better get going and get my website up, armed with all this new - and undigested - knowledge. The term "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" was meant for me. Now, three years later, I have a number of partially finished sites and I never did finish even the first binder. So my first order of business is to spend a little time every day reading that course. How do you keep from getting distracted when you're learning? Until next time, Carol

First of all, I don’t do HTML. I did learn, but I would rather spend time writing my content than trying to remember codes. Many web hosts use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). They also support HTML, if you’d rather use it. Find an inexpensive hosting service that has all kinds of neat features and is really easy to do. Ask your friends and associates who they use. Show off your photos, display your eBay or craft items for sale, even send a newsletter in no time. When you find a hosting service with all of the features you love, just make sure that the server isn’t too slow. Otherwise, all the great features won’t make up for the frustration when it takes hours to update your site. - See I told you I have already made every mistake you can think of. Maybe this blog should be called What Not To Do. Now have you started planning your website? Until next time, Carol

After reading old blog posts of mine for the last two years and realizing that I start the year off with a bang and end with a fizzel, I decided to start early this year. As noted on my intro, I am learning to make money on the Internet. So far, that is not easy. I have made some progress - two websites and three other blogs, a very small opt-in list for my not very regular newsletter, adsense set up in a few places, affiliate links in others. If you don’t understand what those terms mean, you are even a newer newbie than I am, so I will explain for you. That will make me feel smart and will also help you, unless of course, I give you the wrong information. But if that happens, there are many marketers online who will willingly take your money in return for their advice. Opt-in simply means that a person signed up for your newsletter and double opt-in is the term used when they not only sign up once, but they click a link sent in a follow-up email to confirm that they did indeed wa...