I believe that one of the reasons it took me so long to gain a footing in the Internet Marketing world was because I did not find it fun. I would read guru after guru talking about how much fun it was to make money on line. I would think, “well if I was making a gazillion dollars a day, I’m sure I would think it was fun too!” But I found the whole concept overwhelming. Writing articles, setting up a blog, squidoo, autoresponder, PPC, affiliate marketing, social networking, forum posting, creating a list, creating emails….and on and on and on….Are You Kidding Me????

It wasn’t until I started the coaching program with Alex Jeffreys that it dawned on me one day that I Was Having Fun! The reason I was having fun wasn’t related to making money, as I hadn’t made any money yet, it had to do with the networking that was occurring as a result of the coaching program. Through forums and blogs I was learning more and more about Internet Marketing and these wonderful people that I was meeting along the way were making what had been overwhelming for years, doable. I had heard many times that Internet Marketing was simple but it was not easy. And I let that thought really paralyze me. What I found was that once I started networking with other internet marketers, all that I thought I could never do, really was easy. One step at a time.

Reading other people’s blogs, you really get a sense of the person’s personality and strengths. I came across so many really good, helpful, instructive, motivating posts and I wanted to share some with you. Today I will share some of my favorite blogs that were written in the areas of Blogging, Traffic, and Motivation/Attitude/Goal Setting.

I hope you find them helpful as well.

Blogging
If you are having trouble blogging or want to improve your blog, Matt Wolfe is truly one of the most knowledgeable bloggers that I know. One of his blogs that really shortened the learning curve for me was his blog post about plugins called The Best Plugins for Wordpress. He also has numerous short posts that are extremely valuable to the both the new and advanced blogger, making everyone who visits feel comfortable and competent due to how easy to understand his posts are. One such post was about scheduling blog posts in the future called How to Schedule Posts for Later. This was a simple post, but it gave me immediate information that I hadn’t known previously. Matt’s blog is just a wealth of information and he has a free course called WordPress Classroom that is outstanding.

Another blog post that I found really helpful was Lee Berlemann’s pinging post, Follow Up to My Additional Pinging Post. In this post he lists tons of sites that will ping your site bringing in more traffic. I would have never found and compiled this list on my own and I’m very grateful to him.

Traffic
Getting a constant stream of traffic is critical to an internet marketer’s success. The following blog posts were extremely useful to me.

Rob Willis lists 13 different tips for getting traffic to your website or blog. His list is detailed with how to set up these traffic generators easily.

Kim Roach lists 21 ways to get traffic in her blog post titled, 21 Untapped Traffic Sources. I have written more extensively about Kim and her traffic generation strategies in a previous blog post.

Another very extensive description of ways to increase blog traffic can be found on the problogger.net website. Additional information on what might be causing a decline of traffic to your blog can also be found on the problogger blog.

Motivation/Attitude/Goal Setting
One of the most important part of an internet marketing business is to maintain a positive attitude and to keep motivated. I found several excellent posts about this topic.

One of the best posts I have read about goal setting I have mentioned before. It is Paul Norwine’s blog post titled, Goal Setting for Dummies. In this post he explores being specific about your goals and how to whittle down your goals to one main goal to focus on.

Another excellent post is Rob Willis‘ blog post titled, Simplify – Prioritize. Rob lists 5 action steps to help prioritize to make attaining your goals achievable.

A fun blog post was created by Huddson Lee titled What I Learned From My Dog about Online Marketing. It is a post about setting priorities and living in the moment. Well worth the read!

Heine Wentzel writes about his method for always staying positive in his post SOTOFOT.

Finally, a huge part of goal setting and moving your business forward is to remember the importance of continuing to learn. Many people, especially those who are comfortably successful, slow down or even stop learning new ways to use the internet. This attitude can quickly leave you behind. Daniel Scocco talks about this in more detail in his post, Always Be Learning New Skills.

The internet is a big place. Learning from others, networking with like-minded folks, this is what makes this business fun!

What are some of your favorite blog posts about Blogging, Traffic and Goal Setting/Motivation/Attitude?

I read recently that 99% of internet marketers fail to make any money online. So I began to explore why this might be the case. With literally millions of people looking online every day for products and services, why do people fail at promoting these exact products and services that others are searching for?

What I discovered was that oftentimes people lack focus in their business. They read a little, apply a little, fail and then give up. They do not treat their internet business like a business.

Early on in creating my business, as I was learning more about blogging, Darren Rowse of problogger.net stated in his ebook, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, that the first thing a person needs to do is to create an ‘elevator pitch’ for their business. An elevator pitch is one to two sentences that state clearly what your business is all about. Short and to the point — what you might say to someone on an elevator. If it is a catchy phrase, all the better. This does not simply apply to blogging — it applies to your entire business. You need a focus and your elevator pitch makes that focus clear to yourself and to your clients.

The benefit of creating an elevator pitch is that it focuses your potential clients and it focuses you and your business. Your clients know exactly what your business is all about. It focuses you because everything you do should revolve around the intention of your business. If your business is about teaching others how to drive traffic and your elevator pitch is directly linked to this goal, then you will not be distracted by products that deviate from this goal. It allows you to stay focused and staying focused is what will propel your business forward.

After much thought, I created my elevator pitch for my blog. Norene Broyton’s Blog ~ Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies: what have you learned today to increase your productivity, paydays and play?

Taking the time to create an elevator pitch helped me to determine in detail the direction I want to take my business. Since creating it several week ago, I have noticed a shift in my energy, motivation, creativity and productivity. It is helping me to keep my focus on what I want my business to be about.

I’m curious. How many of you have an elevator pitch for your business? Have you found it helpful as well?

Until next time,

~Norene

Like most entrepreneurs I am thinking about my business almost all of the time. I have ideas while sleeping, eating, showering, and driving so I always have a notebook close by to jot the ideas down as the come to me. I work on my business every day, but weekends I reserve for reflecting on what has worked and what hasn’t worked, as well as planning and goal setting, or as is often the case, goal re-setting.

Has this ever happened to you? You plan, you set goals, you feel all pumped up and you start working toward your goals and then you are sidetracked. Before you know it, you are somewhere, but not where you had planned. And often not in a good place at all.

When this happens to me, it is often because I did not have my goals planted firmly in my mind to remind me of where I was going. Or I kept hammering away a goal that no longer suited my purpose. I didn’t take time to re-evaluate the plans and the goals periodically as I was moving forward. When this happens I often become derailed or overwhelmed or stuck.

This is why I have begun to re-evaluate on a weekly basis. The benefit of this is that if things begin to go off-track you can get back on track fairly quickly. It also allows you to relish, if only for a moment, all that you have accomplished that week and celebrate any and all successes you have had.

I recently read an excellent blog post by Paul Norwine called, “Goal Setting for Dummies Part Two — Honing in on the Target.” In this post Paul talks about the importance of “whittling all the numerous (and sometimes overlapping) goals you may have down to the ONE main goal that will most improve the quality of your life,” an epiphany that he had after reading a post on ZenHabits.

What happens when you get stuck? Overwhelmed? Tired and confused? How do you refocus and get back on track?

I found this great, short video from the GoalGuru on youtube that talks about just moving forward. If you get confused or overwhelmed, just take action, even if it is just a small step toward your goals.

The only way you can truly fail is if you just stop trying. By moving forward, even a little, you will get the momentum to keep going. Taking the time, weekly, monthly or whatever best suits you, is critical to keeping on track and monitoring and adjusting to what is working for you and what is not. It also gives you a great perspective on where you have been to recharge you to move forward.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did.

Let me know — what you do when you feel that your are stuck or your goals are not materializing fast enough?

In a recent webinar from Alex Jeffrey’s coaching class, Rich Schefren made the comment that one should buy “just in time” and not “just in case.” The point being that while building you internet marketing business you will discover what you don’t know or what you need and you can seek out the specific information that would benefit your business at the time.

If you buy ‘just in case’ you might need it someday, then you probably will never use it. Even if you do need it someday, by that time the information will most likely be out of date.

Since hearing him put product launches in that prospective, I have cut down considerably on what products I purchase. This has also helped me to focus on what it is that I am doing to grow my business and spend my time planning and implementing instead of getting into the loop of buying, reading, buying and reading and then buying some more.

What I discovered that I needed at this moment in time was a good understanding of how to drive traffic. To that end, I purchased Kim Roach’s Ultimate Blogging Challenge video series. I have spoken about Kim before — I consider her one of my mentors. In this series, Kim showed how she started a blog in a brand new niche and drove 1200+ visitors to her site in 7 days. I was going to blog about what I had learned from applying her methods, but in the meantime, she, herself, blogged about her tactics. The blog entry is called 21 Untapped Traffic Sources. Her course was amazing, and the information was timely for me.

So instead of blogging about her specific tactics, I will tell you how putting them into practice worked for me.

I put to use her information on article marketing and finding hidden forums to become members of. She stresses the importance of submitting content articles to high-profile content syndication sites — ie, sites that cater to that specific niche, instead of (or in addition to) the broader sites like ezinearticles. Likewise one should focus on very specific niche-related forums, instead of the broader category forums. Not just talking theory, she discussed specific article directories and forums for given niches, and how to find these obscure sites for whatever niche you are in.

Within a week of doing just these two strategies the traffic to my site tripled and my alexa score dropped by more than 130,000. It was pretty high to begin with — in the 2 million range, but I thought that drop, happening so quickly, and having done nothing different than implement what I was already doing, but with her twist, was pretty impressive.

One strategy that she mentioned that I had not thought about in the past was guest blogging and the power that it has to drive traffic. That is a strategy that I hope to begin to implement next week.

One cannot deny the generosity of the information that she shares. For all of the information I have gathered on driving traffic over the past six months, many of her strategies and sources were new to me, and now she is sharing them with the world.

If you want to see the details of her tactics yourself, read her blog. It will be your best read of the day.

Recently on the Marketing With Alex forum, a fabulous discussion has ensued regarding feeling overwhelmed and tired with internet marketing. There is so much to learn, so many little steps, so much to do. Where do we begin? How long will it take to see even modest success? Why does nothing seem to be working? What do I do next?

As evident by how wonderful the people on this forum are, many, many stepped up to the plate to offer encouragement and sound advice on how to move through this discouragement and keep moving forward.

Some of my favorite suggestions were as follows:

1. Don’t try to do things perfectly, just do SOMETHING. Take action. I loved this comment because truly that is what it is all about. If you wait until you know everything, have perfected everything, well, that time will never happen and you will never produce anything. Take action, see what the results are and then take more action based on those results. You learn best by DOING.

2. Get Clear about WHY what you are doing is important to you! Are you treating Internet Marketing like a hobby? If so you will get results that are similar. Take time to write down WHY you are engaged in Internet Marketing. So many successful internet marketers have said that they did not become successful until their backs were against the wall and they had to be successful. Write WHY you want to be successful at internet marketing. Carry that paper around with you everywhere. Post it where you can see it. Make your WHY your passion and it will help to drive you to your success. If you are not hungry for success at this moment in time, surround yourself with people who are. Their desire will be infectious and help to fuel yours.

3. Do One Productive Thing A Day. Reading email doesn’t count. Create a to-do list at the beginning of the week, and make sure that you tackle at least one thing on that to-do list each day. Something as small as blogging on someone else’s blog, adding a comment of value to a forum, writing a blog post, submitting an article, over time adds up to increased traffic, increased opt-ins, increased revenue. Doing at least one productive activity a day also makes you feel good, accomplished, moving forward. This in itself, will propel you the next step.

4. Take time away from the computer to do a “brain dump“. Write down everything you know, everything you have done, everything you want to do. Take a couple of days. Read through it and organize. Get a clear picture of what you have done (and you will be amazed at what you have done so far!), and where you are heading. You will feel rejuvenated and will be able to develop a plan. A great free ebook to help you do this brain dump can be found on Gary Simpson’s blog. The ebook is called “Time In Motion.”

5. Buy Internet Marketing products as you need them, not just to have them. As Rich Schefren says, buy products ‘just in time,’ not ‘just in case.’ If you buy products because you ‘may’ need them at ’some point’ you are wasting your time and your money and it derails you from your goals as well as frustrates and overwhelms you with information that you don’t need. If, a year from now, you DO need that information, the product will still be around, and if not, that means it has been replaced with something more current and/or better. Knowing where you are headed, and determining as you go what information you lack, you are better able to buy with discernment only those products that will truly help you.

6. BELIEVE that you will be successful. Even if you have never been. Even if you have been trying to achieve the internet marketing dream for months or years. BELIEVE that your success is a certainty. Visualize daily what it will be like when you are successful. Feel it, see it. As a good friend used to tell me, “See it in your Mind, Get it in your Life.”

If you are feeling the newbie blues, watch this video where Tony Robbins interviews John Reese and Frank Kerns. It is packed with useful information and it is quite uplifting. It will be worth your time to view.

Take a minute to comment below. What have you done to beat the Newbie Blues?