The Infoprenuer team

Keyword Research Blogger

Alex Whalley

One of my favourite quotes is by an unknown and goes a little something like this;

“If Man is to discover new oceans, he must first have the courage to lose sight of the shore”

What I like about this quote is that the metaphor is a perfect fit for my move to attempt to make a fulltime living online because it translates to the basic idea that if you want success then you need to step outside your comfort zone, but there is another reason this quote is a perfect fit and it relates to the endless ocean of information that is available online.

A friend and mentor once told me about the stages that every business goes through when it starts and one thing that stood out more than anything is this: The average time between the business plan being drawn up and action actually being taken is more than triple in an online business. This fact of course relates to the gamut of information and distractions that are available online. When you decide to start a bricks and mortar company there is not much to distract you from your original idea. It’s not like you are going to open an Italian Eatery, see an Ad for a tanning salon franchise and think ‘Now there’s a much better idea’. If your business is online however, then this can actually happen – as ridiculous as it may sound, so making sure you know exactly what you are getting into and having the staying power to steer the course is THE most important skill to learn if you are to succeed.

I love Greek Mythology (and digressing it seems) and one of the more popular stories is that of the Sirens. For those who are unfamiliar, the Sirens were three dangerous bird-women, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.  Over the years things have changed a lot,including the mythology of old and these three Sirens are still among us – only now in the form of millions of web pages promising to do what you are already doing online, but better, faster, shinier, newer, and of course easier.

I thought the Sirens sounded quite nice.

I build niche sites around longtail keywords, market them through various means and then generate revenue from Adsense and various affiliate streams. I have been doing this for only about 3 months now but in that time have managed to create my own little system that so far has been working quite well, at least in the sense that I am making money from the sites that I build. So I was sailing along quite smoothly really – following a set course to reach the goals that I had set myself originally and doing a good job of it too, but then I heard the Sirens, and they really did sound quite nice you know.
The Sirens in question were a PLR site that offered niche sites with prebuilt templates so you simply uploaded the theme and then away you went with whatever you would have done previously except with a theme that looks much nicer and is more appropriate to the specified niche. On the surface that looked fantastic and so I spent a few hours playing around with various themes and changing some of the sites that I had to look ‘better’ and only after this did it hit me that I had been suckered into the shiny lights and was no longer sailing my own course.

What’s the best way to avoid the Sirens’ call?

When I installed and tinkered with the themes the problems were not just those of principle that said I should not be distracted from my own course. The amount of problems I had with the backend of these new themes was insane and the changes I made not only took time, they took even more when I decided to put it all back how it was. When you have decided on a course of action it is important that you stick with it and do not get distracted by the Internet Sirens along the way. These are the questions I now ask myself before even looking at something new and shiny.

  • Does this fit with the goals I have set myself this week? (because it never does :) )
  • Is this going to fit in with what I am currently doing or will it overlap and contradict? (Am  I going to have to change things – like themes!? Or is this a tool I can try using in tandem with what I already use?)
  • Will I feel good about not seeing the current project or goal through to completion? (Because guaranteed, if I try something new it will distract me for a while)
  • Is it really worth it to take even more of my time away while I learn and implement something new (especially when I am doing that in at least three places already!)

Obviously these questions are what help me avoid the distractions of amazing claims and pretty lights and may not be the best guide for yourself, but then the idea here is not to give you a guide, it’s to remind you that your online marketing journey takes you through the biggest distraction in existence- the internet. But then you already knew that didn’t you.

Now Click Here.

No Click HERE!!

Alex Whalley is the author of Alex Whalley.com where he writes about blogging, niche site marketing, and keyword research techniques. Alex recently quit his fulltime job to tackle niche marketing fulltime and uses his blog to catalogue and document his experiences with making money with niche sites and search engine marketing. If you’d like to see how easy it is to build, market and monetize niche sites check out his blog. You can also Follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his RSS Feed.

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