Open An Internet Café In Your Local Area

and even those that do may go on vacation and need to check their emails for some reason.

All of which opens up the possibility of providing that service for them in an internet café. This is a business idea that obviously requires quite a large injection of cash to get it going

Internet Marketing Mistakes I Made When I First Started Online.

Advertise Here Free ABC's Secret Millionaire
James Malinchak debuts his episode this Sunday. Join Him LIVE HERE!  $5 Into $99,640 Spillover
I am Blessed to be a member of onex, Let's tell the world about onex.  

I’ve been thinking of what to write in our blog to welcome 2011. Finally I decided to talk about some of the internet marketing mistakes that I’ve made in the past, not last year, but since I started venturing out online.

I hope my experience can help you avoid some pitfalls and hence smoothen your online journey in 2011.

Without further ado, here are the internet marketing mistakes I’ve made.

Mistake #1. Not believing that internet marketing is for me

This has to be the TOP mistake that I’ve made.

Back in early 2000, I was already learning about internet marketing and trying a few things without any success. My mentality was “let’s see if I can make some money online”.

I was never serious about internet marketing because I had so many other options of making money at that time.

After a few years, I failed in ALL my brick-and-mortar businesses and I was $50k in debt with the bank. At that time, online business was my last chance, as the initial investment was minimal. It was a case where I either made it online or I would have to shelve my dream and get a job.

Now it seems to be a blessing that I failed in all my offline businesses.

Mistake #2. Lacking marketing plans

Whenever I have a good idea, I’ll act on it. But there were not one, but two occasions where I spent months preparing and building a new website and when everything was ready, I realized that I had no idea how to market that website!

Of course, those websites are now sitting there collecting virtual dust, while serving as a reminder for me that I must have a foolproof marketing strategy for a new website even before I register the domain name!

Mistake #3. Hoping that there is a holy grail

There was one time when I bought a 100,000 email list from a renowned internet marketing guru, naively thinking that even if just 1% buy from me, I will be rich!

I prepared a good opt-in offer, since I knew I needed to convert it from a cold list to a warm list, and I also prepared a series of autoresponder to convert the opt-ins to buyers. Everything seemed ready, but when I massed mail to the list, I hardly got any click through, not to mention opt-in or sales.

I knew that things can’t be that simple. But sometimes you just want to prove yourself right and give up that hope!

Mistake #4. Being a cheapskate

When I first started online, I was really behaving like a cheapskate. I signed up lots of newsletters and spent time reading all the free articles I could find.

But when I started to make some money and gathered enough courage to invest in ebooks and video courses, that was when my internet marketing skills really took off.

Mistake #5. Using encrypted script

If you want to run a dynamic website such as a membership site, a forum or perhaps your own traffic exchange site, you’ll need to use a server-side script.

A big mistake that I made when I ran my first dynamic site is I bought an encrypted script, which means I can’t modify or even see the script as the developer is trying to protect its copyright.

It is very bad because whenever I experience a bug, I need to feedback to the developer and worse still, if I don’t like any function or want to add any new feature, there is nothing I can do. I even offered to buy the source-code from the developer, but was turned down.

One person’s mistake is another’s lesson. I hope you’ll find these lessons useful.

Though I’ve made some mistakes, I have also done something right during my early days. In my next post, I’ll write about things that I did right when I first started online. Stay tuned!