I have heard several times that a 9 to 5 office job is extremely stressful and boring. Well I do not get it. In fact, my dream workplace resembles Dundler Mifflin of “The Office.”

My employments in the retail service industry for the last 6 years have been the quintessential source of stress and time constraint. My weekend and holiday schedules have left me with absolutely no time for anything else.

Despite my constricting work hours, I just cannot keep myself from continuing my home based internet business. Because it pays, big time.

It started 9 months ago; I was in-between jobs and found myself itching to get something done. Now that is what happens to you when you have been working your bottom off for the longest time. You just cannot believe that you might actually find yourself bumming around.

So I entertained the idea of expanding my personal blog into an actual web site. I got the idea from my circle of writer friends who transformed their skills into a home based business.

Let me just say that I am not exactly the tech-savvy enthusiast, and my investments in this home based internet business are just a two-year old laptop, unlimited internet access, web host, domain name and plenty of time.

Technical obstacles hounded me while I was building my website and thanks to online guides, they were resolved within a reasonable amount of time. E-books on Idiot and Dummies’ guides were particularly useful.

The biggest obstacle to hurdle was the hits. I say, fifty percent of your output encompasses the entire effort on the creation of the website, including the write-ups, design and marketing affiliation. The other fifty percent is entirely up to fate.

The site was completely up and running after 4 months of tired internet passion. Like everything else that consumes so much of one’s energy, it began to feel heavy. It felt even heavier when the site hits crawled up at an all-time low pace. You see, it is perfectly understandable to be idealistic about a new endeavour, and I kind of bet the website traffic would be impressive.

And boy, was I wrong. I learned that even if I have marketing affiliates in my website, I need an increased visitor traffic in order to land the first page of Google’s search results. That meant I have to push for website advertising to increase awareness about this existence. Also, I need to define my market by posting articles that appeal to a certain interest.

Putting up a home based internet business drained me of my self-esteem, what with the unfortunate discovery that writing good is not enough. But I recognized its great income potential and that is what I am pushing for.

Right now, I am working on my ‘sister site’ so I can accommodate other articles and not just settle on my current line of topics. I have graduated from the learning curve and found out that I can actually be employed again (which happened a couple of months ago) and attend to my home based internet business.

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So it’s not all beer and skittles.  There, I admit it.  Since I started my career as a home based online marketer, I’ve had some great successes, and there is no doubt that this is what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.  But it hasn’t been all plain sailing.

I’ve made some mistakes, I’ve made some errors.  And these errors cost me income, and slowed me down.  You can learn from my mistakes, it’ll save you time and grief.   So without further ado, here are my 7 Biggest Marketing Blunders.

Blunder Number 1:  I Was Too Timid

When i got started in 2006, I did not get off to a fast start.  Don’t get me wrong, I made great money in my fourth week, but knowing what I know now, I would have ramped up my first campaign from day 1.

Instead I mucked about for the first couple of weeks, and this cost me income.  It also allowed my fears to get out of hand, whereas if I had hit the ground running from Day 1, I wouldn’t have had time to think about all the reasons why it would not work.

Lesson For You.  Get Off to a Fast Start

Blunder Number 2: I Was Too Easily Distracted by Noise

We deal with 2 things: message and noise.  The trick is to be able to tell the difference.  Most of the stuff we see and hear is just noise.  And that includes all of the offerings that come into your email inbox every day.

Sometimes I think I’m a kid in a candy shop.  So many temptations, so many options.  So much noise.  And that’s what it really is.  Easy for me to say now, but there was a time when I totally succumbed.  I joined all these affiliate programs and got immersed in those.  Result?  My primary online business took a dive.  So I re-focused and within a few weeks I was back on track and making money again.

By the way, I only made pocket money from those nickle and dime affiliate programs I joined.

Lesson For You.   Pick one opportunity, and focus on that till you’ve got it mastered.

Blunder Number 3:  I Didn’t Stick to the System

All good businesses have a proven system.  A system helps you reduce errors and get to the point where you’re making money quicker.  Problem is that some of us try and re-invent the wheel and do it ‘their way’.  I’ve been guilty of this.  Not in the early stages mind – ’cause I did stick to the system.

But then I got over confident and thought I could do it better than that silly old system.  So I got creative.

Down went my income, as sure as night follows day.  So I gave myself a good talking to, and presto! up went my income again.

Lesson For You.  Find a business with a great system, and work that system!

Blunder Number 4: I Didn’t Invest in Education

You know the old saying – penny wise, pound foolish.  I think it means that you are not necessarily ’saving’ money by not spending it on things that are critical for business success. Education is one of those ‘things’.  But I thought I knew better – I didn’t need to ‘waste’ money on education.  I mean I was already making good money most of the time, why did I need to skill myself?

It took 6 months before I spent a penny on education.  And when I did, I bought a book by Perry Marshall called the Definitive Guide to Google Adwords.

What finally drove me to buy this book was that although I had been using Google Adwords from the day I started, its effectiveness had dropped and I was clueless as to what to do to fix the problem.  I had to do something.

So I bought the book.  It was a revelation.  After I implemented what I had learned, my ad costs dropped and my lead flow increased.  Since then I have spent thousands of dollars on education.

Lesson For You.  Look at education as an investment – not a cost.

Blunder Number 5: I Didn’t Cultivate My Warm Market.

Most of the money I have made has been from using cold market techniques such as Google Adwords.

But when I look back I see that some of the easiest money I have made was when someone I knew or (who knew me) did business with me.  I had trust, rapport and respect from these people.  In fact as I write this I have received a Skype message from one of my guys – Nigel in Brisbane – who has just done some business, and I get $US500 residual as his team leader.  Sweet.  Nigel came from my warm market.

Does this mean you do the MLM thing and approach all your friends and family?  Heck no.  What it does mean is that you use marketing techniques to ‘get the message out’.  It means that you constantly build your warm market through social media sites such as Facebook and Linked In, as well as through traditional sources.  The point is that I was too timid in the early stages and that cost me lots of dollars.

Lesson For You.  Great entrepreneurs are great at cultivating their warm market.  Be that person.

Marketing Blunder #6: I Didn’t Build My Personal Brand

People tell me I have a great brand.  One person recently said i was ‘all over the internet’.  Well, that’s an exaggeration, but the fact is I have a profile now.  But it wasn’t always thus.  In fact for my first 12 months I hardly gave this issue of personal branding a moment’s thought.  This was mainly due to the fact I was ignorant about the value of this strategy.

Besides I was making money, so why bother with building a personal brand?  Here’s why.  In the short term this can be fine, but the reality is that if you have any desire to carve out a career for yourself as an online marketer, you will need to build your personal brand.  Of course once I embraced the idea, I put in the work to establish my brand.  Everything flowed from there.

Lesson For You.  Even if you do it in a small way to start, make sure you build your personal brand.

Marketing Blunder Number 7: I Didn’t Create Residual Income Early

When I first started I focused entirely on creating Bucket Income.  So I marketed ‘big ticket’ info products that paid big commissions.  This was the correct strategy because it put me into a cash flow positive position within my first month.  I was excited.  But amongst all the excitement I didn’t give ANY thought to the idea of creating longer term residual income (or drip income as I call it).

The reason for my negligence was largely due to ignorance.  I had no idea how to create leveraged income.  The good news is that now I do.  I just gave you an example of Nigel making a big ticket sale today.  I get a $US500 override from Nigel’s sale.  What work did I do?  Zero.  Zip. That’s leveraged income for you.

That’s one example.  Another example is to do with all of the small ticket product sales that flow through my business.  Once again, with little or no effort from me.  How?  I still focus on marketing big ticket products, but now my system automatically markets the small products to my ever growing list.

One such example is the aforementioned Definitive Guide to Google Adwords book.  That’s a small ticket product.  And people buy books like this one all the time.  So go buy it and demonstrate the truth in what I’m saying!

Lesson For You  Build Bucket AND Drip Income at the same time.  It’s a no brainer.

OK, folks.  I hope that made sense to you.  More importantly I hope you avoid the mistakes I made – so get cracking now!

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No doubt about it.  I’ve done great with Google Adwords.  I’ve been using it for the last 3 years, from the first day I got started in this industry.  I’ve generated heaps of leads, made lots of money – thanks to Google.

During that period I’ve learned a lot from different people.  One of the first resources I tapped into was the Definitive Guide to Google Adwords by industry doyen, Perry Marshall.  I found it very helpful.  In fact when I look at that book now, I see its dog eared, tattered state.  Which goes to show just how much use I got out of it. I dissected it, I obsessed over it, I got it figured.

Yes, that book has made me a lot of money.

Perry is probably the number 1 Adwords guru in the world today.  The good news is that he has recently launched a significant upgrade to the original book.  In fact he only released it last week.  So here it is the relaunched Definitive Guide to Google Adwords.

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