Internet marketing is a numbers game, we all know that. Or is it not? Maybe we are all mistaken and chasing a white elephant. Internet marketing is a highly competitive market. If you ever used a pay-per-click search engine you know what I mean. Internet marketing is a tough market. You deal with all kind of people. Just skim your inbox. I’m sometimes amazed with the emails I’m getting. “need money now help make money fast” this is an evergreen from my collection of email responses to my newsletter.

Does this sound familiar? Well, I think it’s sad and embarrassing. We are doing everything a so called internet marketing guru told us to do and the responses are mostly from confused and poor people who have no clue what we are actually talking about. Now ask yourself again, is it really a numbers game or should you completely change directions.

One of the marketing systems I’m part of recently issued a statement that most of the new subscribers are from non English speaking countries. Keep in mind that the site is completely in English are geared towards English speaking audience. Just a few words of English won’t do it either. They are selling the service with the slogan “find 3 and it’s free”. This definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Ok, now what? How can you make a living or even more than living with an online business? Ask 10 internet marketing gurus and you get 11 different answers. The only thing I can say is to approach an online business the same way as you do with a traditional business. With traditional businesses nobody expects a profit in the first year of a brand new business. But on the internet everybody gets frustrated if they don’t make money in the first three days.

If everything would work like all the gurus make us believe there would be no more employment. The economy as we know it would seize to exist. Home businesses are by definition meant to be an income supplement. In some cases they become a full time income. On very rare occasions a home business can turn into a money maker. I heard of them, but I never actually met anybody that made it.

After reading all this you can understand that internet marketing is not always a pleasure. This is especially true if you are building a business with internet marketing. So, should you completely avoid internet marketing and focus on other business ventures? Well, it depends. If you can’t handle the competition and the negative image of this market segment, don’t do it.

On the other hand, if you are able to manage a small success in a highly competitive market, keep doing what you’re doing. Chances are that some of your competitors are giving up and you can fill the void in no time. Make no mistake it’s a dog eat dog environment and never ever expect a helping hand from a fellow marketer. Unless you made it into the “chosen few league”. The big guns are joining forces all the time to increase their market shares and profits. Hmm, this sounds like good old corporate America, doesn’t it?

As I said, treat your online business the same way you would treat a traditional brick and mortar business. Because the same principals apply to both types of businesses. Anybody who thinks they could push their business into profitable returns by maxing out their credit cards are missing the boat big time. Yes I admit it; in the beginning I spend way too much money on useless stuff because a guru told me so. Then I turned around and tried to convince others to spend too much money on useless stuff. Again a guru told me to do so.

Luckily I was able to break out of this death spiral and forced myself to analyze the situation. First, do I really want to continue with this internet thing? Second, do I really want to spend hours after hours everyday to chase something that might not exist? Yes I really want this internet thing to work and No I don’t want to chase wild goose. I needed to be smarter with my business decisions and more creative in my approaches. Ever since I changed the way I’m doing things my business is doing better every day. Like the real world businesses, it takes time to develop.

The bottom line of this little story is; never trust anybody’s advices blindly; don’t do exactly what you’ve told to do without researching the consequences. Although the consequences are most likely an empty bank account and maxed out credit cards. It will devastate your financial future. Remember, be smart, play smart and play the internet marketing numbers right.