The First Rule: Invest in Yourself
There is one rule in the Internet marketing arena that you must never over look and that one rule is; “INVEST IN YOURSELF”!
This saying gets repeated over and over again by a great many people and yet it is possibly one of the least acted upon rules out there. Chances are you don’t really know what it even means. Let me explain.
An internet business is a virtual object. There are no bricks, no offices (in the traditional sense) and no transport costs, etc. In other words it exists only in the intangible ether that is the internet, and in the heart and mind of its owner.
In short: YOU are your internet business. You are all that your internet business really consists of.
If you had a bricks and mortar business you could make physical changes to the look of the outside of your building, the decor inside etc, and people would notice and be drawn to take a look on the inside to see what other changes had been made and see what products lines you may now be offering compared to the past.
But with an internet business there is no physical building that can be improved. The only improvements that you can make are to yourself. That is what ‘Invest in Yourself’ means. You have to improve yourself in order to improve your internet business.
How do you invest in yourself? It’s simple. You educate yourself about new marketing methods, new technologies that could benefit your business, etc. In short, you need more knowledge. The more knowledge you gain, the more your business will grow in response.
If you devote only one single hour a day to reading newsletters or articles that pertain to your business, it will add up to a lot of hours every month and you will be investing in yourself.
Enrol in a couple of courses, listen to teleseminars and webinars. These are the kinds of things that allow you to invest in yourself most effectively. This is the most important thing in online marketing.
Following on from investing in yourself is the principle of “Abundance Thinking”.
What in the world is ‘Abundance Thinking’, you might ask? Well, there are really two ways to look at the world of internet marketing. One way is that that there is only so much business out there and I should get what is mine without regard for anybody else. I call this ‘Limited-supply Thinking’.
This type of thinking might allow you to make a reasonable income, but it doesn’t allow you to maximize your income. It is the opposite of Abundance Thinking.
Abundance thinking is the belief that there is enough business to go around and that we can all make a good living by giving away referrals, ideas and assistance to help others…including to our competitors.
Abundance thinking is the belief that we are all stronger together than we are separately and that by helping one another we each become stronger individually. This principle when applied to internet marketing is usually the more productive of the two schools of thought.
Limited Supply thinking is characterized by holding on firmly to what is yours, and refusing to share anything with anyone. A great deal of decisions are made according to what your competitors are doing. It is a very defensive method of thinking and very rarely are the customers welfare taken into account.
Abundance thinking is a proactive, offensive method. It concentrates on building good relationships with customers, suppliers, even competitors. It is the mark of a well adjusted, mature, competent and successful person.
Abundance Thinking allows you to share effectively with others whilst enabling you to make the most of the opportunities you have.
Interestingly, when people see this principle working successfully, they are inclined to try it themselves, and are also more inclined to do business with you since they consider you more trustworthy.
Joint ventures won’t be a problem to put together. There is more success in abundance thinking than there is in limited-supply thinking.
Filed under: Internet Marketing