Part 14:  Beware the Newbie Trap.

In the old TV cop series, Hill Street Blues, the briefing sargent started each shift by telling everyone: “Let’s be careful out there.” I sometimes think that newbies to Internet marketing should have the same message flash up on their screens every day because it is so easy to fall for the hype and part with huge chunks of cash.

The most-often heard plea for help I hear is from people who have spent out big money for some kind of instant site building scheme, or ready-made niche site package. Sometimes it may be for one of the many ‘store front’ type of sites that look so appealing.

They say to me – I spent [insert however many thousands of dollars you are uncomfortable with here] on xyz site builder – or on so-and-so’s site templates, or the latest instant niche store product – but I don’t know what to do with it. Have I been conned?

The answer is usually no – these types of Internet marketing products aren’t really a con or a scam. They are legitimate products that usually have great potential in the right hands. But newbies are rarely the right hands. They simply don’t know the questions to ask themselves before they rush to flash their credit cards.  The products are hyped, for sure, and make wild promises that reality usually falls short of, but they are not completely dishonest. What they ARE is sold to the wrong people.

Unfortunately for newbies, they are usually the easiest people to sell stuff to because they’re keen, filled with enthusiasm and are desperate to break free of whatever it is that they see Internet marketing as the answer to.

Newbies are ripe pickings. And they fall into the newbie trap every single day.

What, then, is the problem? If the products are only guilty of a bit of hype and are not, strictly speaking, telling lies about their profit potential, why do almost all newbies who buy them fail?

The answer is simple – and yet, one of the most complex things that you’ll have to learn as your Internet marketing business grows – if it will grow.

It is that however good your niche website is, however packed with saleable products your storefront is, however many other people are claiming thousands of dollars in sales, nothing will happen for YOU unless you can master the art of bringing traffic to your site.

That’s the problem. I can sell you the best looking storefront right now and fill it with dozens of hot, in-demand products. All you’d have to do is sign up and upload it to your computer. Easy. A child of five could do it. But unless you can get a steady stream of people to visit your site – and more, a steady stream of people who are pre-motivated to buy whatever it is you’re selling – then you’re wasting your time. You’ve been sold a pup.

Think of it like this… Look at any High Street. Some shops there will succeed and some will fail. But if someone were to open a store in a narrow side street, a couple of blocks away from the main shopping area, how long do you think they’d survive? Not long – unless they can find some way to make people know they are there and want what they are selling enough to make the detour.

That is the newbie trap: the promise of potential returns from a usually large initial investment (and often an ongoing monthly fee) that can only be realized by people with enough experience to understand how to generate hot, hungry traffic. And that’s something 99% of newbies just don’t know yet.

There is, of course, a degree of caveat emptor (buyer beware) in all these things. But the excitement of the promise and the hype of the sales letter often manage to turn the most conservative of spenders into rabid, mouth-frothing hopefuls. ‘This one MUST work for me!’

Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you read and understand what I’m saying here, you’ll save a lot of money. More importantly, I hope you’ll stay in the game long enough to learn the skills you need to make such investments worthwhile.

I see too many people crash and burn – disillusioned because their thousand dollar investment doesn’t work for them.  Getting traffic can be complicated when you are starting out and getting buyers to visit your sites is doubly so. But once you’ve learned the principles you’ll have a skill that will ensure you’ll never starve.

We’ll look at some basic traffic-generation principles next time.

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