Issac G's Blog

Dear Diary (er, Blog),

It’s been a LONG time since I checked in.  I’ve been busy.  My day job.  The family.  Stuff.  You know how life is…

But I’m in a writing mood.  I just wrote two long letters to some of my SuccessQUIK prospects and downline members, and even if I don’t manage to inspire them, I’ve already inspired ME.

I wrote about how sad it is that people aren’t willing to invest $10 is signing up because they’re saving up to waste $100 when (IF) they do sign up later to “position themselves better”.  Come on…  Where’s the sense in that.  The whole point of the program is to be able to sign up for $10 and earn money through the program to “position yourself better”.

I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but every time I hear about how someone’s jumping through hoops to pull together $10 to join in 2 weeks, I hear bullshit.

I hear how someone “gets it”.  Really has interest (the nice thing about online marketing is that people don’t need to make excuses like that if they really are afraid to join because they think it won’t work; in online marketing, people like that just don’t respond, so EVERY RESPONSE YOU DO GET is a GENUINELY INTERESTED PROSPECT.  I wish offline marketing made it so easy to differentiate between the two…  But I’m getting off topic).

They really do want it.  But they’re afraid.  Afraid of failure.  Afraid of self-inflicted failure.  Afraid of self-inflicted failure because they know in their deepest hearts up front, that they have no intention of putting effort into it.  But they’re willing to save up 100 dollars so they can dump it in later and say “Well, look how hard I tried.  I invested a LOT of money!  Of course I put in effort, because who would throw away so much money!”

I’ve quoted him before, and I’ll quote him again and again:  Randy “It’s Self Sabotage, Baby!” Gage.  Self sabotage is how you waste your money, ruin your financial situation, and excuse your self from the blame.  It’s premeditated blame of a third party for a problem you make for yourself.  And the online marketing business is full of people who love to do it to themselves.

I know I’m getting off topic a bit, but let me rant a little bit more about the people who love to suffer in our little industry.

Traffic Exchanges.  Safelists.  Social Marketing.

90% of people who use 2 or more of the above, will swear up and down that they’re sincerely trying to make significant money.  I don’t mean 7-figure money.  I mean 3 or 4 figure money, would REALLY make these folks happy.

So what do they do.  They click, click, click. Click.  Click  Click Click.  Spend hours surfing.  Spend hours clicking on safelist credit pages.  Spend hours reading what every one else has to say on facebook and twitter.

Then their payday comes.  They’ve saved up 10,000 page impressions.  They’ve saved up 2,500 email blasts.  They’ve really, honestly earned their hard-worked free advertising resources, and they’ve done it the right way.  Really – no cynicism (yet).

And then what do they do?  They see 10 new programs.  They salivate over them.  They might join for free.  They might pay a little money.  They might pay a lot of money.  And then, they get to work.  They copy and paste some emails together, and slap them into the safelists without even glancing at what’s in the email.   They don’t want to waste their hard earned credits, so they’ll take 10 of these cookie cutter emails and send each out to 100 or 200 people.  Then, they’ll do the same and give 10 landing pages 100 credits each at the 10 different exchanges.  And it’s ok that they’re using these cookie cutter pages and emails and tweets and stuff…  Because they’re saving valuable time to really work on the important part of their business: the endless click, click, click.

And they swear to themselves that they’re honestly, by G-d surprised, that the programs just don’t work out for them.  The landing pages must suck.  The emails must suck (only in hindsight, of course – NOW maybe they’ll read what they sent).  The program must not convert.  I mean, it’s not their fault.  They put in the effort, right?  And surely, they didn’t – couldn’t possibly have – premeditated this failure!

Yep, we sure do pity those people.

But guess what?  They’re the minority.

The more clever marketers are much better at the game.  They know that you need to do your own thing.  So these enlightened folks make their own little landing page.  They write their own email.  They mix THAT in with the cookie-cutter stuff (because deep down inside, we all know that program owners put SO much effort into writing emails and pages that will work for YOUR audience, right?  Those pages got so much effort, and look so nice, it would be a shame to not use them at all).  And they surf LOTS of exchanges.  LOTS of safelists.  So they’ll send to 300 people across 40 safelists, and they’ll even do that 4 times based on the assumption (sorry, but it’s wrong) that they’ve hit critical mass of 12,000 recipients (even the gurus send the same email to massive lists of tens of thousands lots of times, because it takes a LOT to do the numbers game), and they’ll promote it for a whole WEEK on their 4 favorite traffic exchanges.

And then…  then… then…

“I put in the effort.  It’s not my fault!  Really!”

Self Sabotauge.

I’ll say it again: SELF SABOTAUGE.

Honestly, you can have the suckiest page in the world (look at mine) and it will convert if you keep pushing, month in and month out, week in and week out.  You don’t have to change it every day, but you DO have to keep going at it.  Keep adding MORE pages.  Keep writing new copy.  Keep sending new emails.  But keep going at it.  Don’t assume that because it didn’t work in the one or two week period that you’re hyped about it, it’s not going to work.

Because, while an initial blast is a critical and proven way of making money in marketing, the majority of success comes from the continual ACTION you take over time.  And when I say time, I mean over a YEAR.

Take a program.  ANY program.  Use the most generic and crappiest cookie cutter materials that you can find for it.  And promote that, and ONLY that for 12 months.  I promise you’ll have a downline (or whatever) at the end of it.

Are you one of those people?  Honestly?

Then you have the elite cream (and I include myself in this bunch).  We know how to play the numbers game.  We might have more money to spend.  We understand the branding value of keeping the same opportunity focused over a long period of time.  We do everything right.  And in 20 years, we might hit 5 figures at the rate we’re going (IF we keep putting the same effort over that 20 year period and the program doesn’t dissappear by then).  But deep down, we also know that the same things grow boring eventually.  How often do we really put in the time to write a NEW email.  Make a NEW splash page.  Make a RENEWED marketing surge for ourselves?  I know I personally do it few enough times a year that I can count it on both hands – on a good year maybe I can add my toes in to the count, but surely no more than that.

Because it’s hard.  And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m personally lazy.  Very, very lazy.

So My 2011 resolution starts now, in 2010.  TAKE ACTION!  And STOP the self sabotage.

I’m going to hit the next level in 2011.  Will you join me?

Happy 2011,

Issac