Have you ever felt frustrated and overwhelmed by the shear volume of thing you need to learn and do to run your e-Marketing business? How do people find the time?
One of the biggest hurdles we all face when starting in e-Marketing is the sense of overwhelm we get due to information overload. It paralyzes many of us, and causes some to stop trying altogether.
Know that you are not alone! Everyone experiences this. You have to push through it in order to succeed, and you can do so.
We're hit with this sense of overwhelm in the beginning because, for most of us, e-Marketing represents a whole new way of life.
Most people work at a job of some sort. Maybe this was you until recently. Or maybe you are still in a job which you don't plan to leave until you make e-Marketing work for you.
When working a job, the basic arrangement is that you do something that you like or something that you are good at, or something that you are capable of, and you get paid for it. You essentially exchange your time and labor for a paycheck. Jobs do usually require a certain amount of knowledge, skill, and talent. You gain experience and expertise as you proceed, which makes you a more valued employee over time.
When you switch to working for yourself, you do not get paid for putting in the time, as you would in a job. In order to make money when working for yourself, you actually need to do two things: offer great products or services, and drum up business. If you aren't doing both of these effectively, you are not making money.
The problem is that most people are stronger on one side of this equation than the other.
For most of us, the side we are strong at is providing the product or service. Marketing is something we aren't usually very familiar with. (For some of us, this works the other way around: They understand marketing, but aren't as familiar with offering a product or service.)
e-Marketing is a set of tools you can use to promote your products or services. There are many great and inexpensive tools, techniques and strategies at our disposal. Anyone can learn to do it.
But there is a lot to learn, and it can at times seem overwhelming. Here's a partial list... how many of these can you claim to understand and have some level of mastery with?
- SEO, PPC, CPA, back links, quality score, LSI, article marketing, copywriting, sales funnels, one click upsells, continuity programs, joint ventures, lists, analytics, split testing, calls to action, keywords, Ad Words.
Then you've got people pitching all sorts of systems and techniques, some of which are in the same area of expertise and contradict each other! How are we supposed to figure all of this out?
So much to learn, and the path to learning it isn't clear. Yes, this is information overload!
Unfortunately, most people who get to this point feel like they've hit a wall and just stop. It is interesting... When I speak with people who are struggling to make money with e-Marketing, I usually ask them to tell me what they are doing. Very often, the answer is, "well, not much at the moment." If you aren't doing much, it is no wonder that you aren't succeeding much, right?
And when I ask what has them stuck, why aren't they taking action, the most common answer is that they have a sense of helplessness and overwhelm.
Now, if you could dedicate yourself to this for, say, 20 years... if you didn't need to make any money over that time, and you could just test everything, you eventually would solve the riddle for yourself.
But no one gets into running their own business with the idea of not making money for 20 years! So what are we to do?
The first thing you need to know about information overload is that it is not unique to you as an individual. Everyone goes through it, including the most successful e-Marketers out there.
The next important thing to know is that information overload is not something only novices and newbies experience. It actually never goes away!
No matter how successful you get at e-Marketing, you are still going to have to deal with overwhelm and information overload. So learning how to overcome it in the early goings of your business is actually a great advantage for you. If you can figure out how to handle it early, you will be in a better position to keep dealing with it consistently whenever it pops up for you.
It is a good idea to approach the things you want to learn and accomplish in your e-Marketing business the same way you would teach a young child how to do something new. A child needs to have a sense that the thing you are teaching them is actually achievable. They may need to see someone else do it first, or have you help them do it a few times before they get up the nerve to try it on their own.
But the things you are teaching them also need to be at least a bit of a challenge for them, otherwise, they wouldn't be learning anything new.
You need to target this same sort of sweet spot for your tasks. Choose something that is a challenge for you, but which you can see as possible for you to accomplish. Too little of a challenge, and you won't be motivated to do it. Too much of a challenge, and you will feel overwhelmed by it. Keep your motivation up and avoid that sense of overwhelm by setting targets in the "sweet spot".
What do you think?
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