| Dear Internet visitor,
My intention is
to help you own a profitable Internet
Home Business.
Here is
Internet Home Business course that will help and guide
you to start off your Home Business on the Internet.
Lesson #29
OVERCOMING
OBSTACLES —
WORKTHROUGHS & WORKAROUNDS
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In this lesson, we discuss overcoming the
obstacles you encounter in Internet marketing.
ARE YOU ON THE PATH TO
SUCCESS?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines
"Success" as "the attainment of something planned,
desired or attempted." Thus by definition, you cannot
have success without having first planned, desired, or
attempted something.
We all desire things—that comes naturally. From basic
needs to extravagant luxuries, we are all, as humans,
familiar with the experience of desire. Occasionally,
even without plans or directed effort on our part,
something happens along that fulfills one of our
desires. When this occurs, we consider it a successful
event—or, if we recognize that it occurred randomly
despite our lack of planning and effort, we more
accurately call it a "lucky event." Most of us, however,
are not satisfied with the random satisfaction of
occasional desires dependent upon luck. We want to take
our fate into our own hands, at least to some extent,
and thus we make plans and expend effort attempting to
obtain the things that we need and desire.
Without planning and effort there can be no real
success—only occasional luck. Thus, to be on the path to
success, you must have a plan and you must expend
effort. You must set goals and you must plan the efforts
you will invest to obtain those goals. How carefully you
plan and how faithfully you direct your efforts in
accordance with your plans determines how successful you
will be. This is as true in Internet marketing as it is
in any aspect of life.
THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN EXPECTATION AND FRUSTRATION
Frustration, in this context, is the
feeling of discouragement that we experience when our
expectations are not met. Frustration is an unhappy
feeling of helplessness when our actions are not leading
to our goals. Frustration saps our motivation. It makes
us less likely to continue our efforts to reach our
goals, whatever those goals may be.
We set our expectations when we set our goals. If we set
our expectations unreasonably high, we are setting
ourselves up for frustration. If we set our expectations
based upon what we expect others to do for us, rather
than upon what we intend to do for ourselves, we are
also setting ourselves up for frustration. While we have
no real control over what other people do or don't do,
we can control our own actions. Thus, we should set our
goals based upon reasonable expectations of what we can
expect to achieve for ourselves through our own efforts
and our own determination.
As we achieve these reasonable goals through our own
self-reliance, we gain confidence. With this confidence,
we can then set higher and higher goals. Ultimately, it
is truly astounding what can be accomplished when this
path is followed.
ENJOYING THE CHALLENGE
While it is beyond the scope of this
nuts-and-bolts course on Internet marketing to delve
much into philosophy, psychology, or spirituality; a
couple of additional points do merit brief mention here:
First and foremost, you should have fun with your
challenges! Life without challenges would be thoroughly
boring. However, we don't have to worry about that
because there will never be a time as long as you are in
this world when the challenges stop coming. Eliminating
obstacles and challenges from ever arising again is not
the secret to success—no one ever accomplishes that. If
you are waiting for the obstacles and challenges to stop
coming so that you can be successful and happy, you will
always be waiting...and will never be successful or
happy. When you learn to find success and happiness
despite constant obstacles and challenges, you have
indeed found the secret.
POSITIVE THINKING
The other "secret" to success is to
understand the power of positive thought. The first step
to successful action is thought. If you can succeed in
your mind, you can succeed in the world. If you believe
you can overcome your obstacles and challenges, you will
overcome them. If you believe there are opportunities
for you, you will find opportunities—even in the worst
of situations. The secret to success is to think
successfully. Use the power of your thoughts to plan
your success. Then, use the power of your thoughts to
fortify your belief in your plan. Anticipate obstacles
and challenges. Enjoy the efforts involved in overcoming
them. Never give up. Make it happen!
WORKING THROUGH
OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES
When an obstacle or challenge arises,
there are generally three responses from which you can
choose: 1) you can give up; 2) you can work through it;
or 3) you can work around it.
A common obstacle for new affiliates trying to set up
Doorway pages or place banner ads is the failure of a
banner (a graphic image) to show up on the page or in
the ad. At some point in every Internet marketing
career, one stares helplessly at that infamous "X"
showing up where the banner image should be.
In order to successfully place a graphic image, you have
to first download the image from its source. Then you
have to upload it to the server you are using. Then you
have to insert the "image source" code exactly right in
the HTML code where you want the image to appear. If any
single character is wrong or left out, either in the
name of the image file or in the display code, the
picture will not to show up. You must have the "path" to
the image's location on the server exactly right in the
code also.
On their first few attempts—even though they have gone
over and over it—many affiliates just can't get the
graphic image to display. It can be very frustrating!
Your response to this frustration could be to give up.
If it's going to be this complicated, why bother? You
could give into your feelings of frustration and
discouragement and quit. Or,...you could try to work
through the problem.
The first step in working through any problem is to
carefully define what the problem is. In this case, the
affiliate is either using the wrong method or is making
a typing error. There are really two problems here. One
is that the image does not work and the other is that
you are expending too much time trying to fix it. The
affiliate is unsure whether the problem arises because
the method they have been given is wrong or because,
while the method may be right, they are just being
careless with the details. It is time consuming to
painstakingly proofread every character to make sure you
are doing it accurately. You think to yourself that
since you may not be employing the right method in the
first place or since the image may be in the wrong place
on the server, why bother with all that proofreading?!
There are so many different ways you could be getting it
wrong. How do you know?
You need to remind yourself that there are only two
questions here. Am I employing the right method? Am I
employing the method accurately? To work through the
problem, you will have to allocate the time necessary to
think it through, explore, experiment, consult
experienced affiliates, and study over the training
materials on the subject. It may turn out that you were
just leaving one quotation mark out of the code. It may
turn out that you have placed the image in the wrong
directory on the server. It may turn out that the code
you were trying to use is not correct—you got it from an
uninformed source or it is intended for an entirely
different situation.
Whatever the problem is, you can ultimately find and fix
it. With persistence and patience, you can ultimately
solve the problem and get your image to show up
properly. When you do this, you will have worked through
the problem. You will have overcome the obstacle.
WORKING
AROUND OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES
If, on the other hand, you simply do not
have the time to study the problem out fully, you may
want to take the work-around approach. Instead of using
a banner ad, use a textual ad. While it may not be quite
what you had planned, it still gets the job done—a
Doorway has been created or an ad placed.
You can then continue to work on the banner image
problem as time allows, without losing your momentum in
getting your promotional campaign started.
It is not always possible to work through every problem
that may arise, but you can almost always find an
acceptable work-around. Although a work-around may be a
slight deviation from your plan, at least you are not
quitting. You still have your momentum. You are still
moving toward your goals.
For another example, let's say that you have placed some
"work-from-home opportunity" ads on some free classified
ad sites. What you expected to happen is that some
number of people would respond to your ad with an e-mail
to your posted e-mail address and that, upon further
follow up, you would persuade some of these people to
join the SFI Marketing Group in your Powerline.
You are somewhat pleased to see that you do immediately
get a large number of e-mails in response to your ad.
You begin to become frustrated, however, when you
discover that nearly all of these e-mails are trying to
get you to join various other programs. You soon realize
that not a single one of these replies is seriously
interested in joining your program—they are just
promoting their programs to you. How do you deal with
this?
Again, the first available response would be to simply
give up. You could harbor feelings of being mislead
(because you have read in the training that free
advertising can work and yet it doesn't work for you).
You could feel that you are not being treated fairly by
anyone involved and that you have no hope of making any
of this work for you...Obviously, again, that response
is not the successful one.
Alternatively, you could proceed to correspond with
these people who responded to your ad in hopes of
convincing them that your program was more worth their
efforts than the program they were promoting to you. In
this case, unless you are very creative and convincing,
you would likely have unpromising results. You soon
decide that this is a waste of effort. Thus, you have
been unable to "work through" this problem.
But, as Thomas Edison said, "Just because something
didn't do what you planned it to do in the first place,
doesn't mean it is useless." So, you look for a
"work-around" to this problem.
The first step in finding a work-around (just like the
first step in working through a problem) is to clearly
define your problem. Here, your problem is stated rather
simply. The problem is that free classified ads produce
numerous insincere responses to the posted e-mail
address (and most free classified ad sites do not allow
you to post anything other than an e-mail address). You
don't want to spend your limited time reading through
insincere responses and yet you don't want to miss that
rare response that is interested. So, the question
becomes what to do about it.
One answer would be to set up an autoresponder for the
e-mail address that you use in the ads. You could draft
a message to be sent by the autoresponder that invites
the person to join your newsletter and gives a URL
(Website address) from which they could do just that.
This way, those few who were genuinely interested could
go to your Website and join your newsletter. Then, you
would have ample opportunity to follow up with them in
your newsletter. Those who were not genuinely interested
would simply ignore your e-mail and that would end your
involvement with them.
Over time, if you seek out the right places to place
your ads, you will gain affiliates this way. Some of
these affiliates may produce commissions for you for
years to come!
AVOID FRUSTRATION
Never expect anything to work as smoothly
as you may have hoped at first. By keeping your
expectations realistic, you will be less likely to
experience frustration. Try to look forward to each new
obstacle and each new challenge that comes along. It is
in overcoming these obstacles that you will find true
success. Always believe that you can work through or at
least work around any obstacle that may come your way.
Allow yourself to enjoy the process.
LEARNING FROM YOUR
SETBACKS
Whether you work through an obstacle or
work around it, every obstacle is a learning
opportunity. If all else fails and an obstacle does
appear to defeat you, at least you have learned what
doesn't work and now know what to avoid. Just be careful
not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Define
very narrowly what you are eliminating as undoable and
continue to look for something similar that does work.
Most importantly, do not be afraid of failures. No one
succeeds without having failed a number of times first.
Einstein, one of the most renowned physicists ever,
whose name has become synonymous with the word "genius,"
spent several years of his life working on theories that
ultimately proved incorrect. To quote Thomas Edison one
more time:
"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't
failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong
attempt discarded is often a step forward...."
CONCLUSION
You cannot have success without setting
goals and developing plans to reach those goals. Rely on
your own efforts in reaching the goals that you set.
Make your goals realistic but optimistic. Expect to
encounter obstacles, challenges, and difficulties in
Internet marketing as you would expect them in any part
of life. Approach these challenges with enthusiasm and
look for ways to work through or work around the
problem. When you do encounter setbacks and failures,
learn from them. Most importantly, always think
positively and enjoy the challenge.
WHAT'S COMING NEXT
Stay tuned to upcoming lessons in the
Internet Income Course for detailed discussions of
timely and important topics in Internet marketing.
by George Little
Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for
distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may
be republished, redistributed, or sold without written
permission of the author.
For more information on the Internet Income
Course and other works and courses by George Little, see
www.profitpropulsion.com.
For Web Hosting services specially designed for
SFI affiliates, see www.profitpropulsion.com.
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