What has internet marketing taught me in last 5 years.
Whew, it has been 5 years and right now I am looking back at the lessons Internet marketing taught me over the years. Of course I am not discussing marketing tactics and techniques here otherwise this blog post will probably turn in a huge book.
First lesson :- Strike and Grab the Opportunity fast whenever it presents
This is the first and most important lesson that you’ll learn while doing Internet Marketing.
It all comes down to speed of implementation. If you are slow, time will move on and chances of your profiting from the opportunity has left you by.
If you compare internet time line to offline line real world time line, then time is moving at least 4 times faster on internet (that’s due to advancement in Internet technologies). The cause and effect can be seen almost immediately of internet technology and time.
People who sit on the side line and wait and check are often late and broke.
That’s why I said speed of implementation is important.
Second Lesson : Ideas are dime a dozen, Action is rarer.
Too many people have way too many ideas… but people who take action are rarer. And thats true in harshest of terms for people on internet. With the access to ever changing technologies, people can exchange ideas in a blink. But People who take action on those ideas are rare and those who do, often succeeds.
Again complimented with first lesson of speed of implementation, this will help you tremendously.
Third lesson : Sell whenever the damn you can
Someone told me, “Every attempt at communication is an attempt of persuasion. Either you are persuading someone or being persuaded by someone”. When I am writing as “Sell whenever the damn you can”, it sounds like a sleazy salesman or slick opportunist.
But that’s not my intent at all.
In internet, the method of communication changes a LOT and if you have a business, you have to learn, adapt and implement different communication methods. If you are selling online you have to utilize every opportunity to communicate efficiently otherwise you’ll not sell at all.
Fourth Lesson : Learn to communicate with written word.
Now as you can guess, learning to write is going to be one of the most important way to communicate online. If you can’t write, you can’t communicate. Oh yes there are videos, audios too but let me say it again, written communication is a HUGE part of Online communities. You just cannot ignore it.
Fifth Lesson : It only takes one silly mistake to get crushed in the time
Doing business ethically is important. With internet and the ease of communication methods, you can be easily crushed. If you are a good businessman, then people won’t be able to slander you even with internet. Why ? because your evangelists(customers) will help you fight against them.
You are nothing but a speck of dirt in the time line and trust me, it’s going to be important to do your business ethically and grow and succeed.
There are many other things I can write here but I think the long laundry list is unnecessary. 5 lessons will suffice for now.
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
When you can walk on water, take a boat
I was going through my bookshelf looking for something while dusting off the dirt. Frankly, I have no idea why I was looking for it. For some reason, I just stopped writing, got up from my chair and went to look for something.
I have hundreds of books, manuals, binders and printouts on the bookshelf. I felt myself pulling towards this book I read few years ago. It’s called “When you can walk on water, take a boat (Download FREE)” by John Harricharan. The title of the book is not only a beautiful metaphor about life but also something to think about.
When you can walk on water, take a boat.
It’s very much presented in a biographical story where you’ll think about “if it’s true”, “I wonder if all of this happened to John”.
This book will mean different things to different people. It can be true, it can also be a metaphor. When I first read the title of this book, I was like “Whoa, now that’s heavy duty”.
This book is not about religion, or just mindless babble on spirituality. You’ll read a story about how author goes through the process called “LIFE”. In a metaphorical way, he meets god in many shapes and forms (from Krishna to jesus to Buddha).
If spirituality is not your thing, then well and good, I will just like to talk to you about this metaphor about the book title.
Like I talked about how people goes through their life in motions. In the motions of life, even though we might be looking for shortcuts, we are doing it wrong. Life is not a go through process. Instead its a journey. And we are taking every step with out eyes closed and making it harder.
That’s what metaphor is saying “If you can walk on water, don’t waste your energy, take the damn boat”. When I first read the title, it hit me like tons of bricks. I was like “funny, how things can be so simple and we make it so damn complicated”, there’s no need to.
Personally I don’t know what this will mean to you as you are different from me. I do suggest you to take time out and read this book and it’s sequels “Morning has all night coming” and “Journey in the fields of forever”.
Covert Persuasion Or NOT!
Couple of days ago, I was chatting with someone who is studying some persuasion techniques. He was talking about matching, mirroring and “swear to god” techniques that work 
.
I told him, “You cannot persuade anyone who doesn’t want to be persuaded”.
His response was, “No, that’s the beauty of these techniques, you can persuade someone like that”.
Yup, I can see, he is enthusiastic about what he’s learning right now and everything these persuasion experts are saying to him works.
His enthusiasm right now reminded me of the time I spend learning persuasion, NLP and hypnosis. I wasn’t much different from him at that time. Ah, it’s a process everyone goes through.
Young kids (age 4–7) can be great example of the the kind of people who are hard to persuade.
Have you ever faced a kid who has puffed up his cheeks, arms closed and looks away from you when you are telling him why he’ll not get THIS toy?
So far, I’ve not seen any scenario where kids were ever persuaded. They are dead set on getting what they want, and who cares about others…
In persuasion everything comes down to one simple thing, Does the subject want to be persuaded or not?
You cannot make up mind for others. You cannot force your will on others.
In hypnosis, the subject who says “I can’t be hypnotized”, often goes into trance faster. Their refusal is token refusal, it’s like a cry for them “oh yes, pick me, pick me, I want to be hypnotized”.
Now, I can hear people who are into sales grumbling about how often they get rejection and they have to overcome these rejections with ‘persuasive techniques’. So what’s happening there?
Again, the resistance is just a token resistance. Not real at all. If you are in setting with someone trying to sell, the person is interested in one way or another. You just have to over the barriers he/she produce to your sales pitch. People these days have automatic shields against selling. Yet, they are getting sold over things they have interest in.
So how do you go about people who don’t want to be persuaded?
You don’t. There can be many reasons they don’t want to be persuaded, yet.
Notice I said, “YET”. Persuasion changes with Every situation, every person. If they are not ready yet, then you have to wait for them to be open enough to get persuaded.
Like I said earlier, You cannot make decision for others. And it’s true in every walk of life. You don’t have to “attempt” to persuade someone. You just have to be good at Listening, Articulating and Understanding their problem. And the above 3 skills take time to master.
Varun
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
Why You Don’t need to be Self Confident?
I’ve been working on the concept of self image for quite a few years now. One of my earliest discovery lead me to believe it’s more important to have a good self image than self confidence.
It doesn’t matter what kind of situation you are in, you can always work on your self image and improve results you are getting.
About 3 years ago, I found a book by Dr Maxwell Maltz called, “Psycho Cybernetics”. He also puts a lot of importance on the self image rather than confidence. The more I studied, the more I was convinced the power of self image.
If you look at peoples lives (or yours own life), you’ll see, you are a product of habit. If you change any habit, you change as a byproduct of that change. Everything depends on your mental image of yourself that you carry with you always.
Mental image like “I am a failure”, “I am just damn unlucky” or “Damn, I am good” or “I am better marketer than a seller”. Anything that’s your story becomes a mental image.
Your mind starts confirming the image you have in mind by changing your habits. I wonder if you noticed this phenomenon, let’s say you wanted to buy a new car with a special color and suddenly you start seeing this car a LOT more than you used to.
Why? Because your mind creates an abstraction around your sight to make you see things you want to.
Why? because it makes it easier for mind to process the details around you. Otherwise, you’ll end up remembering SOOOOOOOOOOO many things that you’ll go crazy.
So taking the above in consideration, If you think you are unlucky, you’ll start procrastinating every single time and always ending up losing. If you think you are better marketer, you’ll find yourself getting lots of ideas but not being able to close the deals. And so on.
So the process becomes
Mental Image -> Mind confirmation –> Habit change -> Live Results.
You see, the concept of self confidence never even comes up. In fact this concept is so damn flawed that the only one who teaches it are the self development teachers who teaches but does not do it. You know, like they say “Those who can’t do it becomes teacher” is pretty darn true.
Again if you are not confident about selling or may be you can remember anything you read. All you need to do is start changing the image.
I have developed a very sharp memory since my teenage years. About 4 yrs ago, I somehow developed a habit of saying “Ah damn, I just can’t remember people’s name”. And suddenly I found myself forgetting a heck a lot of people’s name. It was like my mind was confirming what I was saying. At that time I was working on the concept of self image so I didn’t have technology like that to create instant change but What I did was started working on my memory and start getting results in 8–10 days.
That’s how powerful this stuff can be. Your self image, your mind is Powerful tool that hasn’t been utilized 100%. Heck I doubt anyone can utilize his mind (may be I need to change image on this idea too).
Change your self image, change your mind, changes your habits and Life.
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
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