There is one excuse nobody will ever be able to seriously use to justify not being able to generate a significant amount of money, be it online or offline, and that’s lack of serious information on how to accomplish this goal.

The web provides the full spectrum, from disinformation to top quality educating material. But information being the number one type of product sold online, within one minute researching a couple of internet marketing big names on google, you’ll find yourself in position to purchase training material from these people. For online marketers, providing good educating material is key to any long term strategy. Therefore, the odds are you’ll learn valuable lessons from them, and any kind of money spent on products sold by such individuals would be a good investment.

Even better yet, researching the web a little more deeply will allow you to access valuable information for free. Internet marketing forums are a good place to start looking for free stuff. Depending on what you need, you can also look for more specialized forums. For example, if you are looking to educate yourself on search engine optimization, type in “seo forum” on google and you’ll be a few clicks away from becoming more knowledgeable at no cost.

The bottom line is it’s very easy to learn whatever it is you wish to learn on the internet. Nowadays, people who are new to doing business online have to face another problem: what to do with the information that they are constantly bombarded with?

First, why are we all submerged with information? Simple: the best marketing technique known to date is giving away free valuable products in exchange for a name and an email address, which is why just about any serious online marketer does so, most of the time in the form of educational material (ebooks, audios, videos).

How is the average network marketing newbie reacting to this? Typically, this phenomenon triggers a primal reflex shared by many living creatures that find themselves in a situation where they have more vital elements than they need: we store. Psychologically, we feel comforted as we associate such “wealth” with a feeling of security. The trouble is we tend to think that possessing this kind of material is enough when in fact we are in the exact same situation we were before getting our hands on it as long as we don’t study it. Some of us even tend to store indefinitely, and then, the very fact that we have so much to catch up on discourages us to even start looking at what we have in store.

As incredible as it may seem, easy access to information can produce very counter productive results if you are not organized.

The answer to this problem is simple. Use some of the time it usually takes you to collect free information, and search the web for what are considered the best pits of knowledge, ebooks, etc. Then, once you are confident enough that a resource is worth your time and/or money, get it and STUDY IT EXTENSIVELY. This might sound silly but understanding what you are being told is not enough. Underline important parts if you are reading an ebook (I strongly suggest you print it), take notes if you are listening to an audio or viewing a video. Go through it again if you feel some aspects aren’t cristal clear. And once you are done, read your notes until you know everything there is to know. Again, it’s NOT enough that what you read or heard makes sense. It has to be known in order to be applied.

It’s always better to master one resource perfectly than to vaguely study several of them. If you are new to internet marketing, there will be times when what you hear seems obscure. Take the time to research some terms if you don’t know them. Try to put yourself in the mind of a marketer to understand the logic of selling. This is where you need to take your time, because building your system the wrong way will always disserve you. Try to make this learning curve an occasion to stay offline. You will be much more productive, creative and receptive while away from your computer or TV screen.

There is another pitfall you need to not avoid: there is a natural safisfactory feeling that anyone who starts mastering a particular subject experiences, which makes them want to know even more. There is nothing wrong with being a perfectionist and constantly wanting to improve, but unless it is absolutely necessary, stop studying for a while and take concrete action. There are (at least) three reasons for doing this:

- nothing can be achieved if you don’t apply what you learn, regardless of the quality of your information. Sounds obvious, but failure to take action equals complete failure even if you are the smartest most knowledgeable network marketer out there.

- some aspects of marketing online can only be learned through taking concrete action. Nothing replaces experience. Some things simply can’t be taugh in books or any kind of training resource.

- I already said it, and I’ll say it again, making mistakes is the most powerful way to improve, and making mistakes can only happen to those who take action and take risks. Knowing how to deal with failure and use it as a way to constantly get better is one of the few real secrets behind any success story.

A few words of conclusion about my personal experience. I spent a lot of time trying to list all the ways through which one can make money online, all the different ways to generate traffic, etc. I figured I needed to know a lot in order to make an informed decision. I have this tendency to want to learn, know and understand something fully before taking action. The truth of the matter is: you can only know so much, and hanging on to the idea that you can reach any kind of perfection by mastering one subject absolutely is not only an illusion, it is also a very dangerous and destructive mindset. In my case, everything changed when I made the conscious decision to narrow my centers of interest and take daily action. Ironically, I’m learning much more this way than I ever did before!

Cheers,

Damien