You nailed it with “…or provided something my niches wanted.”

You’re probably pretty close to success. Keep after it man!

The successful internet marketers are marketers first, and internet second. If there was no internet, they would still be successful marketers.

Here’s a few other things to keep in mind:

* all marketing of any product anywhere is essentially a pyramid scheme of who can get in first and either lock up the market, leaving the crumbs for everyone else, or commoditising the money completely out of it. You can see this in IM with stupendously valuable products now being given away for the cost of monthly memberships. But it works the same way with laundry detergent, etc. (Think about starting a new laundry detergent company)

* Related to the previous comment is that there is an implicit MLM — multi-level-marketing scheme — built into all of this. The first person that gets ahead, stays ahead, everyone else falls into line behind them, getting a radically smaller share of the market at each step.

* The rich get richer. The internet is just exposing this at a much more rapid pace.

* Quitters never succeed. If you’ve only been doing this 2 years, you need to listen to Brad Fallon on one of Eben’s videos: “We’ve been working on this almost 20 years… it’s nice to finally see a payoff.” (After a $13M launch IIRC).

* EVERYTHING is difficult to master. If it wasn’t difficult, anyone could do it.

Ok, these analogies are a little strained I know, best I can do for now.

Looks like I said more than I intended… I’m cleaning up these comments to post on tinobox in a bit.

I signed up for Mass Control in Jan. 2008, launched two products last year and both flopped. I’ve probably invested close to $30K in internet marketing between Google Adwords, site development costs, product development, Guru courses and eBooks, etc. I’m on my last leg at this (literally) and this is really my only hope to avoid bankruptcy. Combined with my terrible real estate deal two years ago, I’m looking to Internet Marketing to absolve my debts first and then provide a way for me to replace my 9-to-5 income. I don’t even want the millions the gurus talk about right now, my goal is just to make enough to replace my 9-to-5 income, and even that is extremely difficult to do.

And I assure you, I’ve not been one to read the steps and put them down. I read the steps, do them, and then scratch my head, “why didn’t that work?” I’m definitely missing something here, but its not another course. Perhaps I just haven’t chosen the right niche or provided something my niches wanted.

In any case, I’ve taken what I’ve learned from internet marketing, and turned it into a consultancy for small businesses who want to dominate local search. If I can earn a measly $6K/month from this, then maybe I can start to get back up on my feet. But its easy in principle, and extremely difficult in execution.

I read a book when I was 18 (I’m 52 now) called “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz. In his book, he told me that 99% of my success in life has to do with the people that I associate with. When I was 18, I consciously started to ONLY hang out with people that made me feel better about myself after they left. I got rid of those that didn’t.

It worked!!

I’m happy to say that I make my full-time living generated from the internet. And I have to say, you are one of the shining stars in this arena.

Best,
http://www.DryCleaningMarketing.com

P.S. So get rid of all your negative friends and get some new positive ones. It will take some time, but your life will be the better for it.

Most Sincerely,
http://www.twitter.com/TanyaChadwick

I have seen many friends fall into the failure mind trap in the last few years online. I can see how easy it can be to stay there too. Staying positive and moving forward with a great support group are some of the keys to success.

@Jeanne: We should definitely connect! Glad you’re here.

@Dave Doolin: One thing I find that helps is meeting and hanging out with other successful entrepreneurs. It’s definitely a mindset difference. If all your friends are employees, it’s hard to connect with them and be motivated to kick butt in your business. But if many of your friends are also entrepreneurs (true entrepreneurs — not just people who created jobs for themselves), it really helps.

@Mike Swanson: Very true…it can be difficult because many who approach you are just looking to milk you for free advice (when you are the authority.) Tough to separate out the good ones. I go by gut instinct, but even then it’s hard.

-Erica

I was in line to register and was talking with you and some fella that was from South America selling learning language material. I got the impression he was doing pretty well.

He asked would it be hard to get into the internet marketing niche and then said he thought it would be, because it looked like an old boys club. Not sure if this is the same conversation you are talking about here, as that is something someone could say again later.

I politely agreed with him and then you disagreed. You said something like the IM people are really approachable and then some other stuff. AFter you talked I agreed with you.

When I agreed with him my thinking was that they obviously know each other and work together. There is a network of them promoting each others launches etc.

However, one thing about the show from many of the people I talked with my impression is that probably 25% of the people attending are actually doing something – making money and applying the material they are learning while most people aren’t doing anything. One guy I talked with told me he had been buying courses for ten years and never did anything.

Kern’s first talk was all geared towards getting these type of peopel to take action.

I always knew there was a good amount of people like this in this IM stuff, but I had never been to an IM conference before so to see it first hand kidna surprised me.

So I think it would be hard to break into it because they are probably getting approached all of the time by people who are pretty much going to waste their time. You have to show that you can do something first I would think and that is where I would say it is hard to break into that circle. But if you are sucessful in the IM niche it wouldn’t be hard to do at all, and probably shouldn’t look to get successful in that niche by trying to latch on to them and get them to help you anyway. HAve some successs first before you try to be a big player or something. This is what I’ve thought after reading your post.

If it is the same guy that made the comment about the boys club I’m not sure if he meant it was a white male thing, at least that didn’t cross my mind when he was talking, but I’m a white male so that stuff normally doesn’t. But looking back guess it was said in a way of reservation of it being almost impossible to get in the IM niche.

Anyway, was nice chatting with you in the line and you have a good blog that is well written with thought provoking stuff on it.

It was really a lot of fun talking about server and hosting limitations, S3 and EC2, real estate, blogging and just about everything else

Stay in touch!

Brent