There are three stages of Internet marketing consciousness. Outlined below.

1. It’s All Bullshit
This is the stage where you don’t believe that anyone makes money online, and every “guru” is a scam-artist.

2. It’s Not For Me, But I Wish I Could Do It
This is the stage where you finally realize that not every “guru” is a scam-artist, and that they do in fact make a ton of money and help people. This is also the stage where you wish you could do what they do, but you can’t bring yourself to do it.

3. Let’s Just Make Some Money
This is the stage where you say to yourself… “My ego is stopping me from being successful.” You finally realize that most of your “organic” efforts to monetize have failed completely and you need to make some cash. So you start buying into the system. You create products, you start teaching, you put ads on your blog, etc… You “sell out” per say, and you realize it’s not a big deal because you’re helping people AND making money at the same time.

Sound familiar? Which stage are you in? And how long did it take you to get through each stage?

It’s interesting that this post from Copyblogger came out today about the ‘3 fatal diseases that kill good blogs‘. Why? Because I’m currently writing a book right now called ‘Attention!’ and one of the themes I’m working on in the book is…

This is a business, not a hobby.

Social media, blogging, email marketing, affiliate marketing, online PR, you name it… This is a business. We’re doing this to make money, or leads, or get publicity. Not for fun. Not for “friends”. Until you flip that switch in your head where you understand this, you’re going to continue to find it very hard to find success on the Internet.

From the Copyblogger post…

If you are serious about blogging, you need to treat your blog like a business. You are the CEO of You Inc., and you’ve got to weigh every single decision as if there were millions of dollars on the line. Yeah, it would be great to blog in your underwear and sleep in every morning, but the reality is that most of us can’t afford to do that.

Measure the day’s work in results, not in hours spent typing on Facebook or Twitter. Absolutely, fostering relationships is important, but every action needs to be treated as an investment of your time.

This is especially important if you are a solo blogger, as there is only so much work that you can get done in a day. You’ve got to be efficient with your time. This means measured action and measured results — not just going with the flow.

I wrote the first eBook about how to make money from blogging back in 2004 called Blogs To Riches. When I wrote it and released it, I was getting hate mail from people saying things like “You shouldn’t use blogs to make money you jerk” and “You’re ruining the Internet, F#$% you”. These people didn’t believe that blogging was a business, or could be.

Of course, a few years later people like Problogger came on the scene and proved that you could buy a house with the money you make blogging. Now, today, we all realize that blogging is in fact a great way to do business. Yet, still so many of us treat it as a hobby still.

Here’s why. Because “regular people” are the people who start blogs. They’re not marketers. They’re not entrepreneurs. They are people who have a passion about something and they want to share that passion with the rest of the world without having a gatekeeper tell them they can’t.

But things are changing, yes they are. We’re no longer bloggers anymore, we’re “publishers”. The majority of people don’t start blogs anymore just to waste time. They want something out of it. It may not be money they want. It may be fame. Whatever it is, they want something for their effort, and that makes them a publisher.

What happened to me in 2004 is the same thing that is happening now to social media. We’re all being told we shouldn’t try to make money with social media. It’s pure, they say. Leave it alone, you’ll ruin it.

This is ALL a business, not a hobby.

In my presentation called “Beyond the Website” I cover my mantra of “Why We Use the Internet”. It’s one of the main things that we all need to understand before we can be successful online.

You MUST understand why people come online. If you dont, how can you sell to them? How can you create products and services and tools that they want? You can’t.

Here’s quick little snippet of me talking about why we use the Web. Do you think simple like this? Do you solve problems? You should.

I love talking about future stuff. Especially when it comes to Internet marketing, which is near and dear to my heart. So I’m very pleased, and proud, to say that I’ll be joining some of the Web’s heaviest hitters this Thursday on a free teleseminar called What’s Next in Internet Marketing.

The internet has become the essential hub for all business and personal communications. Join Internet Marketing Experts Jay Berkowitz, Rohit Bhargava, Maria Harrison, Jim Kukral, Joe Laratro, David McInnis, Mari Smith and Richard Stanton, to find out what is coming next in marketing online.

The All-Star Panel will include the following Internet Marketing Gurus:
- Jay Berkowitz, Keynote Speaker and Author of the Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing
- Rohit Bhargava, Marketing Blogger and Author of “Personality Not Included”
- Maria Harrison, Interactive Marketing Genius
- Jim Kukral, The Biz Web Coach
- Search expert Joe Laratro
- Multi-Million dollar internet entrepreneur David McInnis Founder of PRWeb and People Pond
- Facebook Goddess Mari Smith
- Web Semantics expert Richard Stanton, CEO of Bintro.com

Look at that lineup! I hope you’ll join us for the call. I hope to learn a lot from the others. I’ll be covering some issues on mobile as well as something new that everyone will be doing in the next few years that will create an entire new revenue stream for regular (that means non-Internet geek) people.

You don’t want to miss this. Sign up for free now.

Nina Frye had an idea one day to create an ecommerce store (LTDChix.com).

The problem was, she was a mom who had never done it before and had zero idea how to get it done. Fast forward now to years later and now Nina has a fully-functional, successful store. So, how did she get there? What lessons did she learn along the way?

If you’ve ever thought about starting up your own online store, you MUST listen to this podcast of me talking to LTDChix.com. Nina gives all of her lessons and advice on how she got started, as well as mistakes made and tips. She dishes it all. GREAT interview and you will learn a lot. Please leave feedback in the comments.

Here are the show notes:

The story of how we got started. Moms overwhelmed!
Target a niche!
How did you start the site? Steep learning curve.
Worked with Score. Did a test market first. Found local place to print, spent $2500. Took to a local fair and test marketed to moms. Sold out!
Sent out press release to local newspaper. Simple news release.
Signed up to mom blogs and pitched them. Giveaways work! 2 or 3 or month.
It’s expensive to run a website. Find a good local web guy/gal who you can trust.
Startupnation.com helped a lot. Gave me media lists, help me find a pr person. Got on MSN.com through contest.
Go to retail stores. Promote that on your site. Cold call them. Looked to see where your competitors are, and called the stores they are at one by one.
Setup a wholesale price. Setup a sales sheet, not your website, an order sheet they can fill out and send back.
Use coupon codes. Make shopping cart easy to buy. Use authorize.net for merchant account.
Google Adwords and converting at 60% sometimes.
Learned how to be an ecommerce expert by reading.
Cafepress.com is a great place to try out custom artwork sales.
Going to license artwork for overseas sales. Mom humor on all kinds of products.
We went to show in NYC and found licensing companies to approach. Pitched them. Got a lot of no’s.
What would you do differently now two years later? Spent too much doing website the wrong way first time.
We copyrighted the images using us trademark government.

Just got back from vacation in the sun and surf! Wow, look at my non-tan. Hey, I used 50 spf. I don’t like getting burned. Anyway, while I was on vacation I grabbed the USA Today every day and well, it got me thinking about a theory that’s called consistency of quality.

Watch the video for my full explanation, but you get the point already? Brands like the USA Today continue to produce high-quality content, over, and over, and over, and over…

It makes you trust them, and crave them. It makes you comfortable with them. And most importantly, it keeps you buying them. $$$

Look, not all online “gurus” are scammers. Many will have you believe that they are, but let me tell you from 10+ years in this space… not all of them are out to steal your money by selling you junk. The big issue is determining which ones are legit and which ones are not. It’s harder than it seems. Hence, the confusion we all have.

How do I know? Well, I’ve seen them all, and I’ve met with and become friends with many of them, as well as looked at their products. So I have inside information, which is the point of this video. Don’t just write all “gurus” off as thieves.

Another point… don’t buy info products and think they “just work” and make you millions by pressing a button. That’s why, I believe, that most people call these things scams… because they get them and realize that it’s still hard work. In other words, don’t be stupid.

A bit of a rant today on the Daily Flip. Going all Feldman on ya. Basically, your marketing sucks, and your sales team too. Especially ad networks. Watch the video below to get my entire case.

I’m nicer in the video I think. Honestly though, I have to call you all out for bad marketing and even worse sales. Who in the ad network space besides one or two is actually doing anything innovative and attention-getting (booth babes do not count). Just a handful of you. The rest of you guys. Nada. Zip. Uninspiring marketing and sales teams that don’t know how to really sell.

Actually, I don’t really blame sales as much. I’ve been doing sales support as a marketer for years and years (yes, for an ad network once), and I can tell you that I consider it my job as the marketer to give the sales team the right things to say and show. This isn’t happening now/today.

You marketing sucks. Agree? Or disagree, leave a comment. Watch for challenge at end of video.

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I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2001. I’ve written thousands and thousands of blog posts in text form, and while I enjoyed doing it all those years, it’s, well, boring now. This will be the last text blog entry I will post here at JimKukral.com in 2008. Instead, I’m committing to only creating video or audio content. and I’m not looking back. Who will join me?

There are several reasons why I’m doing this…

Reason #1: Stop Being Lazy
Steve Rubel’s post about “the lazysphere” really hit home with me, then kicked me in the arse and left a mark. He’s right. I’ve become too lazy in my blogging efforts as of late (well, for years actually), and moving to video will force me to break that mold.

I’m taking your challenge Steve. By committing to video and audio posts ONLY, there’s no possible way for me to be lazy. It’s just too darn hard to create high-quality video content, so I either will be forced to make good content, or I won’t have content all.

Reason #2: Video Rules For Marketing
Hey, I’m an online marketer. It’s only natural for me to use a marketing method such as online video to improve my game for myself and my clients. If you’ve been following my blog at all for the past year or more, you’ll know that I’m neck-deep into the world of online video, especially for marketing purposes.

From producing, to directing, to acting, etc… I’m doing it all. Why? Because video is VERY effective from a marketing standpoint. I’ve used videos to close 80% of my consulting gigs in the last year, and at the moment, 90% of all my income comes directly from work in online video.

Reason #3: Online Video Is About To Rock The World
According to Pew online video traffic doubled in 2007 (more at Techmeme). Let’s face it, the eyeballs are starting to move to the web, and writer’s strike or not, it’s going to continue.

On top of that, when Google finally releases universal search, the flood gates are going to open and everyone and their mother will be scrambling to produce videos. Internet video marketing through the search engines is going to rock the seo world soon enough. My plan is to be right there, in the forefront, with as many videos as possible to take advantage of it.

Reason #4: I’m Bored With Text
I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2001. I’ve written thousands and thousands of blog posts in text form, and while I enjoyed doing it all those years, it’s, well, boring now. Producing online videos is hard darn work, yet, for me I’m finding that the work is very, very satisfying and entertaining, and fun.

Reason #5: Video Is A Challenge
There is no challenge left for me in writing text blogs anymore. Been there, done that for years. I could either keep doing it forever, or, challenge myself to take it to the next level, which is video/audio. Look, everyone should challenge themselves from time-to-time. That’s what I’m going to do.

Reason #6: I Like To Entertain
One of the things I’ve learned about myself over the past year of playing around in video is that I like entertaining. I like being in front of the camera. I like producing “live” content. It’s a lot of fun for me. I do not get the same satisfaction from writing text, not even close.

I’ve found that once I got over the “I look silly on camera” or “My voice sounds weird” fears, I began to have a lot of fun. And frankly, if it ain’t fun, why do it?

Reason #7: Nobody Else Is Doing It
Ok, some are leading the way, but if you look at the grand scheme of things, nobody, and I mean nobody, is out there producing videos like I want to make. Sure, there are millions of kids falling of their skateboards and YouTube stuff like that, but if you look around, video content, good video content in the form of professional “shows”, is hard to find.

Summary
This is it. Finito! This is the last few paragraphs of text you’ll read in blog form on this blog in 2008. Thank you for the years of readership, and hopefully I can count on your future viewer ship. :)

Please take a moment to subscribe to my rss feed to be updated on new video shows. There will be a podcast feed available soon as well.

The next post you see from will be in video form, coming next week. It will be the first of my new Daily Flip shows which I hope you will enjoy as much as I am enjoying creating them.

Lights, camera… Action!

fin.

It’s finally ready for eyeballs. In case you are new to my blog, you’ve heard me talk about my new online system called ScratchBack.com for months and months. Well, it’s finally open and ready for you to try it. Register for free and give it a run.

You can see a live TopSpot widget in action on the left of this page under my logo. Go ahead and tip me $1.00 for a place in my top spots!

I’ll be blogging about SB mostly over at the ScratchBack blog, so rather than me writing a giant blog post about it here, I’d much rather let you listen to what others have been saying about it.

Here’s a video that Shawn Collins did about it. He’s running the TopSpot widget over at the Affiliate Tip blog.