Avoid Frustration, Anger, and Feeling Overwhelmed
How to avoid the most common hassles in web site design.

Starting out online can very often be a miserable experience. The learning curve is very steep for most of us. Very often, learning new software programs is an agonizing experience. And even when we buy magical instant products from Gurus we find that they don’t work and we are out of pocket another few hundred bucks. ( This is because almost every Guru I know doesn’t tell you the full story. But I’ll tell you more about that later in this post.)

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted an article for a while. This is because I have been doing an intensive investigation of one of the recent Internet marketing bombshells. This one was by Rich Schefren and I have to say it is amazing, but very very intense. It is transforming my life, and caused me to re examine and restructure a lot of things.

Now you would think that with such a life changing experience I would be telling you to head on over and sign up and buy buy buy! No.

First of all, the report is free. But unless you are willing to do an incredible amount of work, you will leave feeling even more lost. Even Rich admitted that out of 130 pages of responses to the report, only a few actually ” got it”. It took me about a week of being ruthless with myself to get near to the goal of the report.

I’m not about to put you through that amount of agony needlessly. In fact……

You are in the perfect position to avoid all the frustration, fear, and failure that many of the people in his comment section expressed. Because you have the chance to build your presence online in the proper way. The proper way to begin building a website of any kind is with clarity of purpose; adaptability; and intelligence.

Here is some translated advice to help you avoid frustration and failure:

1. Clearly understand WHY you want a website. Don’t take the first thing that comes to mind. Dig deeper. Here is an example: I got a recent email from one of my newsletter subcribers who thought he wanted a website to sell his ebooks. If he had stopped there he would have missed the opportunity of establishing an online business as a consultant, author,and online merchant. By setting up a little ebook site, he will make a few dollars. By setting up several websites in a specific intigrated pattern, he will have an international business doing the thing he loves. Keep drilling down through all the answers you toss up. Your mind loves to hold you back. (Talk to a three year old and explain your plans. Three year olds are great at asking why!)

2. Decide on what kind of website will best meet your needs. Websites come in all sorts of forms and can stand alone or be intigrated in a pattern. Once you are clear on why you want a website you can start building. The type and pattern of websites can be bewildering. So get a mentor. Find someone who specializes in your area of interest and learn ( or copy) from them. This is using leverage. You take another person’s experience and save months and years of trial and error.

3. Focus focus focus! Get the specific tools and resources you need for your specific project. Use the advice and education designed to be as close to your needs as possible. And ignore everything else for a while. The interet is a very distracting place. It is full of sparkly whizzbang stuff. But even if all these things are free, they will cost you in time and mental energy.

4. Test, adapt, and evolve. There are no instant successes online. Every success has come through that formula. There are free and easy tools to help you test. Adapting might mean letting go of some favorite or quaint and cosy feature. This is where your “Why” comes in. Did you build your site, or sites, to be cosy? If so then great. Keep the cosy and forget the other results. Perhaps you were led astray by a sudden promise of fame and fortune. Want to be ultra cosy? Consider adding new features as they are developed. How about a YouTube video of your tea party, broadcast to your friends’ iPhones? This is using tech evolution the right way.

5. Ready Fire Aim! Yes this sounds contrary to what I’ve just said, but there is a reason for it. Again, your mind can play tricks on you. It can hold you back and keep you from taking the first step to success. The best way is to jump into the pool and get wet. Or better yet, just saunter into the shallow end. As I mentioned in my post on What is the Fastest Way to get Started , everyone needs a few essential things. SO you might as well get them and start playing. Just use the first website as a toy. I suggest going to the domain registrar and registering your name as a website. This will always be usefull. Try to get a “.com” domain. I did this with my www.colinnoden.com domain. It has changed shape and has been subjected to a number of learning abuses, but that is OK for now. Because usually only my friends and family go there. Learn to experiment and get relaxed with using software. Then you can move on to more intricate ( hair pulling) stuff.

OK, if you seriously work through those points, you will be well on your way to internet success.

Now:
I’ve been getting several emails from my newsletter subcribers telling me to cut the psycho-babble and just give them a list of free and easy tools. Also there have been some asking about promotions going on by respected and successful marketers. I enjoy getting your emails because it helps me know where you are in website building and what your concerns are. And yes the tools and videos and practical advice will be coming.

One thing that changed after going through Rich’s process was that I scrapped my fastrack report. Instead, I’m building a resource area for my newsletter subscribers. This will be a place that has the best current resources available. I’m doing this so that this Toolbox will be evergreen. If certain tools, or reports or experts become obsolete, it will be easy to go in and update them and send you a notification. You will then be just one bookmark and password away from a great toolbox.

Oh yes, this brings me back to my warning about Gurus and the full story.

Often, people come into internet marketing with the best intentions, but then they get caught up in the machine. They are taught how to maximize profits and make millions in a weekend by selling themselves a certain way. Usually this means showing you their results and telling you how simple it all was.

I listen very very carefully to these people. It put my BS detector on full blast. And sure enough, most let slip ( usually in live interviews) how they really achieved their success. Usually this includes websites and software they keep hidden and that they pay out a large amount to get the income they are showing you. Also, I hear comments like ” I get my tech guy to handle that”. Well guess what, when you are starting out, you ARE the tech” guy” and the sales “guy” and the copywriting “guy” etc etc. Yes I’ve built up a good list of hidden items. But that is for another post. I don’t want to blather on and bore you. Besides….

You have some soul searching to do.

Colin

by Colin Noden - Oct, 2008

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