Newbie
That single word is loaded with so much negativity, that I hate to even say it. Whoever invented it is some kind of wickedly cruel wordsmith.
But while the word itself just sounds demeaning, it’s really the implication that saddles us with fear.
Look, we’ve all been there, and it’s uncomfortable.
Nobody wants to be the oddball in the room fumbling around like a clumsy child.
When you first start trying to sell stuff online and promote your website, it feels like all eyes are on you and every mistake you make.
It is, however, inevitable.
We are all beginners, newbies, rookies, or whatever you want to call it at some point in life.
If that scares you, you need to take a reality check.
If you want to do ANYTHING online, you have ABSOLUTELY got to get over this fear. In fact, I’ve said it before, but “I Secretly Hope You Fail Online”
Now instead of just suggesting you take action and quit worrying about failure, today I’m also going to help you skip past the biggest and most obvious rookie mistakes.
Take my advice today and you’ll be 9 steps closer to breaking past the newbie barrier!
1. Hotshot
I love confidence. It can take you very far in life and love. It can also do wonders for your business, up to a point.
This newbie mistake is rare, but after a few small victories can rear it’s ugly head.
The newbie Hotshot takes confidence just a bit too far.
They say that “Money Talks and Bullsh*t Walks”
As a beginner, it’s okay to be confident, but know your place. The proven experts don’t owe you anything, and you need to earn your first respects.
The hotshot newbie is too pushy, and demanding. ”Give me a JV, because I got the greatest thing since sliced bread and you’ll make a fortune” does not fly well with the real hotshots in your market. Especially if you got no data to back up that claim!
The lesson here, is that you shouldn’t expect anything you haven’t earned in your market place. When looking for partnerships it’s NOT all about YOU.
Authority and respect are yours for the taking, and when you earn it, the experts will find you.
2. Lost Puppy
This newbie is the complete opposite of the hotshot.
Most experts have it in them to want to help the little guy. We might not always admit it, but deep down we remember what it was like to struggle, and be confused.
Sometimes this backfires in a big way for us.
A business mentor can be powerful but when you find one be careful not to scare them away.
The lost newbie successfully manages to communicate with a bona fide expert, and then follows them around EVERYWHERE forgetting how to make even the most basic of decisions.
I was having lunch with a few marketers recently, and Jamie Lewis (name dropping google alert bomb!) commented about a student that would constantly ask question after question about the most basic and unimportant issues. He was obviously annoyed by it. Don’t be that student!
Look here, you can decide what color background you want on your webpage. You don’t need us for that kind of stuff. Respect the time of those that help you, by learning to handle the little issues and make your own decisions. You’ll get more respect and help in return.
3. Carting Crap
“What to sell, what to sell?”
Something stinks, and I’m pretty sure it’s your products.
Nothing sets the newbie up for failure like selling terrible products.
Just because it’s got shiny graphics and a nifty e-cover doesn’t mean it will be flying off the shelves with the push of a button.
Whatever market you choose, do a little research or testing to find out if it’s really something people want to buy. You can get EVERYTHING else correct, but lose out on this one mistake.
4. Phoney Money
Here’s a trick I don’t recommend you try at home. Just take my word for it.
While driving, look off to the left. As you do this for any period of time, you will find that the car has magically started heading ever so slightly in that direction.
We are programmed to go towards whatever it is we focus on.
Often times this manifests in the newbie as a desire to start out in the make money online niche. We study it, and therefore gravitate towards it.
This is fine if you know how to do it correctly. After all, I’ve sold cosmetics as an affiliate without having ever used them myself, and despite my good looks I’m no expert beautician.
Here’s the mistake. With no expertise, and no idea of product quality, they make wild claims and come across as a complete fraud.
The most absurd example, is the newbie that asks a question in a forum like.. “My site has no visitors…how do you get lots of traffic?” while their signature promotes something like “get an avalanche of massive traffic overnight”. Whoops!
I can promote a product I know almost nothing about, if and only if the one thing I do know is that it works.
Can you show that it’s as good as you say? Can you leverage the expertise of someone else?
If not, re-think your marketing strategy that claims YOU know those things yourself.
5. Oblivious Evaluation
The last step in a business strategy is to evaluate results. This will pinpoint areas ripe for improvement.
The newbie however, charges forward with reckless abandon, oblivious to the swiss cheese of a business they are running.
Don’t know your squeeze page conversions? Good luck with that!
Getting a surge of traffic out of nowhere? Better find out where they came from or it will be gone as fast as it came.
Until you monitor what’s happening, you’ll never know what is actually working.
Get a clue, and evaluate all areas you can improve.
6. Easiest Error
EVERYONE is looking for the easiest thing to sell, the easiest traffic to get, and the easiest buck to make online.
Therefore, this newbie mistake puts you up against the LARGEST amount of competition!
Think about that a second.
Taking what you think are shortcuts, actually make it HARDER to make money online.
More competition means lower prices, means lower profits, and a race to the bottom barrel of epic fail.
Skip this error in logic, and go for the traffic, products, and efforts that are just a bit beyond what the crowd is going after. You’ll quickly find yourself heads above the rest.
7. Chasing Traffic
Did you get a little traffic from that article. Great!
Did it take all day to write? Not so great.
Get first page rankings? Great! But it’s for a keyword that only gets 100 searches a month? Not so great…
If you can’t do something quickly and efficiently, with the ability to scale to large numbers than you are chasing traffic.
This goes along with the previous mistake. When you chase after the easiest methods you’re going to get diminishing returns.
Instead go after the big fish and put yourself in the middle of all the traffic that’s already out there.
Don’t blast a million articles to thousands of junk directories, when one really good guest post on a popular blog can get the same results.
8. Renaissance Wreck
I get it. You’re on a budget, and there are a lot of things to get done. They cost money, or time.
However, one of the biggest and most common newbie mistakes is to take on learning everything in order to do it all yourself.
I’m the most guilty of anyone on this. I can do anything related to a web business online, but it has set me back more years than I’d like to count.
You’re much better off to save up and hire professionals. You’ll end up with a better product, that still gets done faster.
I can’t tell you how many successful online marketers I’ve met that don’t know the first thing about HTML coding, but run massively profitable websites.
Knowing everything is simply not necessary, and trying to learn it all will set you back YEARS. Learn to find and manage talent and you’ll get much farther with a far better product.
9. Perfectly Awful
We’re getting personal again here.
I cannot stand imperfection. I will tinker and tweak down to the last single pixel.
This newbie mistake isn’t just about being a perfectionist, though. There are advantages to wanting the best.
The trouble here, is not knowing where to be perfect.
If you obsess over the exact shade of grey for your background, or waste time evaluating the indentation of your bullet points, you’ll find yourself straying farther and farther away from profits.
Newbies love to obsess over all the wrong things.
A blank page with good copy will outsell a shiny minisite with bad copy. Adding endless bells and whistles to a product won’t help if you’ve missed the pieces your market really really wants the most.
The end result of over thinking, over analyzing, and over perfecting your business is likely to end up perfectly awful!
There you have it folks. If you haven’t made those mistakes yet, consider yourself lucky.
Take my advice and you’ll be well on your way right past newbieville.
Enjoy,
Now speak up. Let’s hear it… What are you favorite WORST newbie mistakes?
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! And so many people come to mind as I read this … which made me laugh too. And it was a good reminder of some of the lessons learned personally along my own journey too. As entrepreneurs we earn the respect and lessons as part of the journey. Those who don’t of course … maybe they need to read this post and re-evaluate.
Silly newbies are such an easy target, I couldn’t resist! Just kidding of course. We’ve all taken hard knocks. Best to learn from the ones that already took them the hardest and soften the blow
Thanks for the comment love.
I have learned building relationships is key to building downlines.
Most buy into a program because they have faith in you helping them.
Many of the trainings teach this process and it seems to work for me.
Thanks for posting the info it is a good refresher to remind us how to build with a proper aspect of doing business.
I’m not a fan of downlines, etc, but thanks for the comment. I think too many get into those for the hope of a big windfall, and no regard to the products. (add that to the list as one of my earliest mistakes)
Ross, great job on PromotedProfits.com! I have book marked it and will continually check it as I could reflect in a few descisions I could have made and saved as your put it “years”. even down to the email Kudos
Take Care,
William
Thanks, you’re welcome back anytime!
Thanks Ross, I’ve just started internet marketing 2 months ago and doing all these mistakes .. Thanks for the post.
It’ll help me.alot…
Very glad I could help. That’s what I’m here for! Always be sure and comment with questions and input so I can continue to assist in your journey. Take care.
as i told you before that i have started not to long ago… can you tell me what kind of stuffs can i or should i do with my website ???http://everysolutiononline.com/
Don’t be offended because I’m going to let it rip here. No point sugar coating this, as I want to help your site get better. Biggest thing that stands out, is that nothing stands out. You need more focus. This line reads “Its a website where you can find online solutions to some of your problems.”
Have you ever searched for help on “some of your problems” People think about specific things. Also the image takes up most of the top portion of the site and has nothing to do with anything. You’d do just as well to have nothing there but good quality text. The name is a stretch too. I doubt that the site actually has the resources to provide “every solution online” I think that just restates that it’s not targeted for anything specific. Also, it’s keyword loaded for that name which gets almost zero searches a month.
I would suggest re-evaluating to decide who are you really trying to reach, and start answering some of their very specific problems.
The main lesson is that in marketing, going after everything is just as good as going after nothing.
Ross u have just blasted my mind
realized me that i am no where right now …
Thanks for this and I think that i have to start all over again
I am really impressed by you … you are helping struggling people like me for nothing , and the other internet marketers charging thousands for this …
i don’t think that you’ll need me for anything but still please let me know if i can do something or anything for you….
Thank you….
Better to learn now. You should be very proud of taking action and trying, as that’s how you’ll learn and progress. Even if it takes a few tough lessons. Happy to help.
You are really on fire, Ross! It would be hard to find anyone in this business who’s not become a cropper from at least one of the above mentioned. Point 8 on the list very much registers with me and I aim to do something about it. Thanks for the bone-crunching reality check.
Yeah, that one is really important. We all get the same amount of time per day, and if you spend it all on learning you’ll never get to the doing. Much cheaper and profitable in the long run to practice finding good support and managing talent. You could focus on that skill alone and get a lot farther than trying to do everything else yourself one skill at a time.
“I can promote a product I know almost nothing about, if and only if the one thing I do know is that it works.”
A good quote of yours
Thanks. Sales and marketing is a skill. Once you learn it you can sell anything. And the easiest things to sell are those that do what they say, or are very closely matched with what a market wants. They give the customer the most satisfaction, and it’s a win for everyone involved.
Thanks for that great article Ross.
When I just started to research Internet Marketing I started checking out those click button products but realised shortly afterwards that they just did not work. I decided that I would abandon that method and get a mentor. I have started about a month now and I am still in the learning process of Internet Marketing.
I did my research but I was flooded with information overload and I just decided that I would start all over. I will continue to learn from you tips.
Voilet
Yeah, it happens to us all. You’re better off focusing on smaller parts at a time rather than trying to find some generic push button product. Understanding traffic is a good place to start. I also think that learning what people actually want is important. A lot of people just list any product, and say anything they think might make it sell without ever really knowing what actually gets people motivated to make a purchase.