After my initial success with eBay, I was convinced that the internet was the way to go. With what other vehicle can you make serious, income-replacing money with so little initial investment?
Think about it - for the price of a domain name ($8 a year), and a hosting account ($8 a month), you can be in business on the internet. Regardless of whether you’re selling software, an infoproduct that someone else created (and of which you are an affiliate), an infoproduct that you created, or the excess junk lying around your house, the initial investment in your storefront is extremely minimal.
Because Alicia and I were stretched thin financially, due to the recent arrival of the twins (and the huge debt we had incurred over a couple years of marriage), there was no way we invest much in getting our internet business off the ground.
With my first software/infoproduct under my belt, and some decent profits in the Paypal account, Alicia and I sat down and discussed where this was going. We’d proven that we could do it, but we also knew that our initial success was more attributable to dumb luck than anything else. I knew nothing of marketing at this point, and very little about the internet, HTML, hosting accounts, domain names, and the like. I was a half-decent programmer, and pretty technically proficient, but I knew I didn’t have the skills or knowledge needed to take it to the next level.
Even with the bills piling up on the kitchen table (and playing the borrow from Mastercard to pay the Visa bill game), we decided to devote a good chunk of our initial profits to education. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard time and time again, to “Invest in your business”, and that “Knowledge is power”. These things are not just catchy slogans - they are exactly what you MUST do if you are to achieve any measurable level of internet marketing success. I set aside my dreams of internet business riches, and instead bought books - lots of books. Books about HTML, CSS, Javascript, web hosting… all the base technologies upon which the internet runs.
When you are just starting out, the single most important thing for you to invest your initial profits in is not hosting accounts, domain names, cool software that automates tasks for you, or anything like that - it is your own personal knowledge of the internet, how it works, and how to make it work for you that is of the utmost importance.
Too many people trying to make money online today don’t even have a basic understanding of HTML - the language that drives the entire World Wide Web. In order to be successful online, you’ve got to be able to speak the language. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got some high school whiz kid doing HTML for you, and it doesn’t matter if you’re only planning on buying pre-made templates for your websites. If you ever want to make a change to your website, you’re completely dependent upon other people to perform even the most basic tasks for you. And, once you’ve created a dependency between yourself and someone else, you are no longer in control of your own business.
I really think dependency on others is why so many people fail online. Yes, the big buzzword in internet marketing circles right now is “outsource! outsource! outsource!”, but you should only consider outsourcing once you have reached the point where you could do it all yourself if you had to!
You know, if you wanted to buy a McDonald’s franchise, you have to go to their Hamburger University first - where you learn about the McDonald’s business system. You, as the owner of the store, are expected to know how to do everything. McDonald’s passes the knowledge to you, and then you can pass that knowledge to your managers, and your managers pass it on to your employees. A similar training system is in place for EVERY successful franchise in existance.
If you were going to open a non-franchise store of your own, say “Joe-Bob’s Burger Joint”, you’d need to know things like
These are not things that you’d decide to “pick up as you go along”, not when you’ve invested tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting the restaruant set up and running. These are things that you’d make darn well sure you knew before you even signed the lease or started interviewing employees.
What’s more, if you completely depended upon your employees to figure out and handle these things for you, then you’ve created that dependency - you can’t check up on your accountant because you don’t understand accounting, so how will you know if she’s skimming off the top? If you don’t know how to make a tasty burger, but your grill cook does, that’s great until your grill cook decides to demand double his salary, or decides to just quit altogether. If you are unable to jump in and perform day-to-day tasks in the absence of your employees, and if you are completely dependent upon the people who work for you, then it’s not really your business at all.
So, it seems to me that the lack of a significant financial barrier to starting an internet business creates the impression that one can “jump right in and learn as you go along”. But if you want your internet efforts to be a business, you’ve got to treat it like a business! Just because the initial expenses are low doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of understanding and being able to run your own business.
So, what is it that you need to know in order to build a prosperous internet business? You need to understand the technology that you are using as your business vehicle - the internet. No, you don’t need to know when it was invented, or where, or by whom. You need to be able to read and write HTML at a basic level. Nothing fancy, mind you - if there is an error on one of your webpages, you need to understand how HTML works, so you can locate the problem, and fix it if necessary.
You should understand what javascript is and what it is for. You should have some basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL, and what they would be used for. You don’t need to become a programmer - but you should at least know what those things are used for.
Email, blacklists, spam filters and autoresponders are all things you’ll deal with on a daily basis. You’ll receive numerous emails from customers about “I didn’t get a download email for the ebook I bought from you - you’re a scammer!”, and you’ll need to be able to figure out why they didn’t receive their download email (am I blacklisted somewhere? Is there something in the download email you sent out that trips off spam filters?).
You need to understand how web hosting works - how to get your files to your web host, and back down again. What the “document root” in your hosting account is. What is the DNS system, and how does it relate to your hosting account.
Some of you are reading this and thinking to yourselves “What a riot! These things are so basic and simple!” Try to imagine running your web business without this knowledge… imagine how confusing and frustrating it would be. Yet this is exactly where I was when I started my internet business.
So, if you’re already in business, and you’re already making some money, and so far you’ve avoided your basic education, invest your profits in that education. Buy a selection of internet basics books, read them, and work out the examples these books give. The best way to learn technical things is by actually doing them, I’ve found.
If you’re not yet in business, or you don’t have the money to buy a bunch of internet basics books, scour your house for junk to sell on eBay. Hit garage sales for more stuff to sell on eBay. Make a little money, and then use that money to bootstrap your internet business with a couple of books on internet basics.
Learn about the things that make the internet work, and you’ll be able to avoid becoming dependent upon other people for your business to succeed. Master the basics, and you’ll have an excellent foundation upon which to build your online business empire!
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