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Launch Your Own Website – Part 12: Going Pro

Written by kevin

This is Part Twelve and the final part of my article series entitled “Launch Your Own Website”.

The series is based on my practical experience in launching my own site.

Part Twelve looks at becoming a professional in Internet Marketing.

Once you’ve set up your own website catering for a specific niche market that has the potential to generate a revenue stream, the question that then arises is: Where do you go from here?

There are two main ways of approaching Internet Marketing…

You can be an amateur or you can be a professional.

If you want to build revenue beyond the pocket money level in Internet Marketing then you have to change your approach from an amateur to that of a professional with a proper online business.

Internet Marketing Requires Dedication

Internet Marketing involves learning new concepts about what is a relatively new marketing medium.

It means investing time, effort and also money upfront in learning and researching. It also means taking continual action to actually implement what you’ve learned. All this takes time – and there are no short cuts.

An Internet Marketing business is never “completed”. I don’t believe the talk you hear in some quarters about “passive income”. OK, there’s a certain amount of automation and systematization possible with an online business.

But an Internet business – like any business, has to be maintained, monitored, modified and developed further. Those who just expect to to sit back and watch the revenue roll in without doing much will lose momentum over time.

Small wonder then, that it’s only those who are dedicated and truly interested in Internet Marketing who tend to stay the course. The rest drop out in the early stages.

Of those who remain, only a small number will go on to be professionally successful. The rest will stay at the amateur hobby level.

Ed Dale’s Views on Going Pro

Ed Dale, the founder of the Challenge Course, discussed precisely this issue in a webinar he held a little while back. In it he talked about the difference between amateur approaches and what he also calls “Going Pro”.

In other words, moving on to take a fully professional attitude to Internet Marketing as a business.

Ed mentioned three key aspects that he regards as crucial if you are to go professional with your online business and I’m going to repeat them here.

They are: Focus, Process, and Measurement.

Focus

By “focus” Ed means concentrating on the task at hand, without distractions. Getting on with the job, getting the tasks that make up the project completed. It involves efficient use of time.

By the way, it’s not necessarily about going “full time” in Internet Marketing as against “part-time”. The total amount of time involved has very little to do with it.

It’s more about effective use of your time. Too many people frit away their time when they are sitting in front of their computer.

It’s not difficult to see why. A computer, particularly with the Internet, offers ample opportunity for time wasting, for putting off, for distraction, entertainment and diversion. You can “Google” endlessly – and tell yourself that you are researching. You can read other people’s blogs, you can visit and comment on forums.

Remember you can use a computer with an Internet connection in two ways:

to consume media – or to produce media.

If you’re running a professional online business, then you must concentrate primarily on being a producer of media – your own media – and not a consumer of other people’s media.

Secondly, you need to employ what Ed calls “CFT” units – Critical Focus Time. This is just a way of dividing up your available time into short periods of intense activity in which you allow yourself to “get into the zone” or “get into the flow” and concentrating on one particular task.

The key point is to always time yourself and allow yourself a break at the end of the period. And make sure you get away from the computer in the break. Preferably get some fresh air, have a drink, take some exercise, go to the bathroom, whatever. But always always take a break.

Always time yourself. Use a kitchen timer, your watch timer, your mobile phone timer, a website timer, whatever. Always set a timer for each CFT.

Also, you define in advance exactly what you are going to achieve in that CFT. Know which task you are going to tackle.

I do this by defining my projects and the associated tasks in a Google Docs spreadsheet. I estimate how many CFTs I’ll need to complete each task. I then carry out the CFTs to complete the task.

When the task is completed, I switch the background colour of the task line in the spreadsheet to green. That way I can see at a glance what I’ve completed.

Process

Ed calls it “process”. You may call it process. Or you may refer to it as procedure, system, systematization, work-flow, method, work routine. Whatever you call it, you need to have processes or procedures in place for dealing with the tasks that occur regularly. This is something all businesses must have.

It starts with project management. Google Docs and spreadsheets are ideal for this.

Whiteboarding

You also need a “process tree” or logical flow chart for each project. Internet Marketing is made of of projects and sub-projects of different extent and duration. I find it helps enormously to set things out on a whiteboard.

I go on to define the projects that are involved in reaching the goal. From there I detail the exact tasks that need to be carried out for each project. I then enter the details into my project management spreadsheet.

So for me, the method I use is: Goal -> Projects -> Tasks.

You might prefer to use something like: Goal -> Projects -> Sub-Projects ->Tasks. Or maybe: Goal -> Projects -> Actions -> Tasks.

But however you divide up the work flow and whatever you call the component parts, it’s basically the same idea: employing a process and sub-dividing your work flow.

Measurement

This is essential to all businesses – no matter whether online or offline. Yet Ed said he’s constantly amazed by the number of people who don’t measure in their online business.

With an online business, measuring means measuring traffic first and foremost.

It means measuring the clicks you get for your product links.

And then measuring the sales or responses you get. This data enables you to work out your conversion rates.

It also means financial accountability.

Do you know how much you are spending, investing, in a particular project? A particular website? And how much revenue – and from where – which products, which affiliate networks, your sites and projects are generating?

It’s basically about measuring your inputs against your outputs.

All businesses that aren’t hobby pocket-money outfits have to know this. If you don’t know these details, then you aren’t running a professional online business.

I would add a couple more aspects to the definition of “Going Pro”…

Learning

Internet Marketing is a new discipline. It’s basically about good old sales and marketing techniques that are relevant to all business, whether online or offline – and applying these techniques to a new form of media: the Internet.

So there’s a lot that we have to learn and stay on top of.

Also, the sector is developing and evolving continually – and we have to keep abreast of all this. The pace of technological and methodological change in this sector is breathtaking – and there’s going to be no let up in this in the future either. I don’t think we’ll ever reach a point where we can say “the Internet is now as developed as it will ever be – it can’t go any further”.

If you’re aiming to be a professional Internet Marketer, it’s essential to keep up, to be informed and to keep learning. You can’t afford not to.

Remember the old saying: “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

There’s also another saying – the one about dog years. You could extend it to the Internet.

One Internet year, like one dog year, is the equivalent of at least seven ordinary years – in fact probably more. Take a year or two out, let your Internet business run “passively”, like some people recommend – and then try coming back to Internet Marketing. You’ll see straight away what I mean.

Training and learning are always going to be ongoing for professional Internet Marketers. You’ll never reach a point where you are “fully trained” and know everything.

In Part 11 of Launch Your Own Website, we looked at three professional standard, quality Internet Marketing training courses.

I’d strongly recommend that you consider taking one of these courses to put your Internet Marketing career onto a sound professional footing for the future.

Implementation

There’s also implementation. All the training, process, measurement and New Year’s Resolutions aren’t going to be any help unless you implement.

In other words – Take Action.

It’s too easy to get stuck in the planning and research stage, to catch “analysis paralysis”. The problem is that this inhibits us from taking action.

It’s those who take action who have a chance – not those who are still sitting there planning and researching and sniffing the air.

We have to carry out research, we have to plan. But we have to keep this in perspective and not get bogged down by it.

Accept the fact that what you produce may initially be “crap”. We can always improve on what we produce. But we have to produce before we have anything to improve on.

Implementation also comes from focus. If you have focus, if you plan your time and your projects professionally, in the ways I outlined above, or some version of this, then you’ll be on your way to implementing, to taking continual action.

A professional Internet business is about always taking action.

There’s always something to implement, always something new, something different, some modification in methods.

If you’re seeking to “Go Pro”, then you need to keep all these factors in mind and practice them every day in your business activity.

Here they are again:

Be focussed
Implement processes
Practice measurement of inputs and outputs
Always be learning
Always be implementing

Some Practical Tips For Your Online Business

Finally, here are some useful practical tips to help you with your new online business:

● Carry a notebook with you wherever you go – the low-tech pen and paper variety rather than a laptop. It’s invaluable for writing down ideas and the flashes of inspiration that will suddenly strike.

You’ll find ideas occurring to you more and more as you continue in online marketing, so you need to have a quick and easy way to record them.

Alternatively you can use methods like a smartphone and software such as Evernote, but I find the old school notebook and pen simpler, quicker and easier in practice.

● Get a whiteboard. It’s invaluable for planning out your business strategy, projects and tasks.

● Backup your site regularly – at least once a week. You can do this easily using the WordPress DB Backup or the WordPress Time Machine Plugins.

Also invest in a couple of good quality USB memory sticks. Backing up a new website is something too many people fail to do.

● Always use the latest versions of WordPress and all your Plugins. Check your WordPress Dashboard for this. Sites that fail to upgrade to the latest versions can easily get hacked.

● Monitor your subject area continually. Know what’s going on in your field and market segment.

Make sure you know what’s going on with the affiliate products you are promoting. And don’t forget to always keep an eye on your competition.

● Post regularly to your blog. Don’t overdo it, just keep steadily generating quality content that is worth reading. Be persistent and be patient and you will reap dividends.

● Engage with your readers. Encourage them to comment and respond to the comments they leave on your blog.

● And last but not least: Always know where you are going next. Have a goal – and an action plan to get you there!

A Few Last Words

Finally, a few last words as we come to the end of Launch Your Own Website.

Actually, these aren’t really “last words” but more like opening words.

There’s a great deal more that can be said about blogging and online business. It’s a vast field with enormous potential.

You will realise that your new site is just the start of a great adventure. It can open up a new way of life, a new interest and a whole new business and career for you if you want it to.

It’s up to you how far you want to take it.

How little or how much of your time, energy and creativity you want to invest and how you develop your site and your business in future.

With online business, the sky is the limit.

Here’s Wishing You Success in Your Online Career!

Kevin Wells

PS. Below is the video of the Webinar by Ed Dale on the subject of “Going Pro”…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7wW_gnoPNA&hd=1