Are You A Big Dog – Or Just Their Chew Toy?
Posted June 14, 2009 
Comments(8) Are You A Big Dog – Or Just Their Chew Toy?
©2009 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved.
Internet marketing experts, often referred to as gurus or Big Dogs, are making a fortune online 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Thousands of Internet marketing newbies and those of the mid-levels aspire to be Internet Marketing Big Dogs, but most will never reach that level. I’m sorry to have to say that, but it’s true…
The hardest part to accept, though, is that most of the big dogs started out at the bottom of the Internet marketing heap and rose to the top – some in a matter of months, but most through a few years of intensive activity, labour and investment. Not always upfront investment, but actually re-investing a good chunk of their online profits to fuel more rapid growth.
So if, as Internet marketing Big Dogs, we’re no different than you, what makes the few rise to superstardom online and the bulk continue to be chew toys? There are a myriad of potential reasons, but here are a few of the biggest and most common reasons people fail to do well with Internet marketing…
- Being indecisive & failing to ACT NOW – Inside every big dog is a hunting dog, always sniffing the air looking for that first-mover advantage. When any opportunity presents itself, they instantly analyze it – Does it look promising? Will the product or service help my people? Is it a needed or highly desirable item? Can I make money with this? (And yes, that’s the order of importance, too.) If it meets all their criteria, they instantly formulate their marketing strategy, decide which techniques to use to promote it, then choose their tactics and attack!
- Not treating their Internet marketing as a professional business – Often people tell me they’ve been trying for years to make it in Internet marketing, buying every shiny new toy that comes along, but never achieving the success these products promise. But when I ask them how much time they spend on it, they tell me a lot – an hour or two almost every day… The reality is, marketers who are truly motivated will spend 4-6 hours a day at it AS WELL AS their doing their current full-time job – and 8-10 hours on the weekends!I know, I can already hear you say ‘but I have other stuff to do, family to spend time with, friends to bowl with or shoot pool with, girls/guys to date, movies to see, etc., etc.’ And that’s fine – only YOU can decide what your priorities are. I’m not discussing what’s right for you – this is about what it takes to build an Internet marketing business and craft your own dream lifestyle with the proceeds. Do I know Big Dogs that only work 3 or 4 hours a day? Sure – but not one who got to the upper echelons that way!
- Not being discerning in whose advice they follow - Unless you want your Internet marketing success to take a lot more time, effort and money than it needs to, you have to find, follow and heed the advice from the proper mentor or mentors. Too many newbies, and even some pros, give credibility and Big Dog status to someone just because they’ve had a successful mega-launch or two. They don’t realize that some of today’s ‘Experts’ had the product ghostwritten by someone else and then hired a joint venture broker to get the big dogs to promote the product. I can think of at least two leading ‘affiliate marketing experts’ who got there that way, and I wouldn’t pay a cent for any of their training.Look for those people who have been at the top for a while with a variety of products, great value in their e-zines and on their blogs, and others testifying to how much that person has helped them.
Their are a lot of us who meet those requirements, people like Marlon Sanders, Stephen Pierce, Ken McArthur, Jimmy D. Brown, Jim Daniels and Rosalind Gardner. All of us have been online for 10 or more years, and have been helping others as best we can for most of that time.Trying to follow the advice of too many coaches or mentors is just as deadly as picking the wrong ones. Each of us has their own style, and the track record to prove it works. But each does things differently, and trying to mix more than two or three of these styles will leave you spinning your wheels again. Sure – still read the info in their e-zines and on their blogs – learning has to be constantly ongoing in this biz. But focus your efforts mostly along the paths of the two or three mentors whose style fit you best.
- Not focusing on what makes you successful - One thing about Big Dogs – they always keep their eye on the prize. It’s too easy to get all wrapped up in the latest gizmo, site or trend and neglect important ongoing duties. As a general guideline, make sure your time breaks down pretty close to 40% on building your opt-in lists (your long term weapons); 40% on promotional efforts like branding yourself and driving traffic to your squeeze pages, sites, salespages and affiliate links (your short, medium and long term weapons) and 20% for everything else. VERY few people in Internet marketing can claim to stick to those percentages regularly, but I’ve never met one who did and wasn’t constantly building their business and their income.
- Not having set goals, or not keeping them in mind at all times - ‘I want to be rich’ is not a goal – it’s a wish. ‘I want to help others’ is not a goal – it’s a mission. ‘I want to retire early with tons of cash’ is not a goal – it’s a dream. To get your wishes, achieve your missions and live your dreams you need to plan out how to get there, and then map out the steps it will take to put you in that position. Those steps are your goals. If your dream is to help people, figure out where you need to be financially, emotionally and intellectually to be truly effective helping others – and decide how many you want to help. What steps will it take to get there?
Do a ‘fuzzy’ 10-year plan to achieve it. Then refine that to a sharper image of where you have to be in 5 years to be on track. So where do you need to be 2 years from now? Set your first round of goals to achieving the results you need a year from now to be right on track for your 2 year, 5 year and 10-year plans. Your one-year program should be positive, distinct steps with concrete goals – exact dollar figures, precise lists of accomplishments, etc. Take those 1-year goals and focus on them til each is completed, then re-examine your plan, make any changes you want to to the long-term targets, and map out year 2. This system has worked for a lot of people in every facet of life, not just for Internet marketing.
As I said at the outset, there can be a myriad of other issues in your own particular case, but these are the most common. If you’re being honest with yourself, you can probably identify right off which of these five examples is true in your own case. So now the question becomes will you do what it takes to get back on track? Put in the focused energy to achieve Internet marketing stardom – or at least enough to fulfill your own personal wishes, missions and dreams? When someone asks you a year or two from now, how will you answer that big question:
Are you a Big Dog – or just their chew toy?
About the Author:
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Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet marketing mentor, speaker
and super-affiliate who has written many e-books about online success.
Learn more from Doug by reading his Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing
and Twitter Marketing blogs regularly.
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