My Rant About 5 Big Mistakes Internet Marketing Newbies Make

five mistakes made by internet marketers By Andrea Wilson

These mistakes are not in order of seriousness. But they're all things that have seriously impacted other newbie marketers. And I must admit to falling prey to a couple of them myself. Not telling you which ones, though!

Don't make these newbie mistakes:

Mistake #1. Allow your Web designer (or anyone else!) to register your domain name(s).

Why? Because they will now legally own it.

One of my clients lost the domain name for their actual business when their Web designer vanished to Singapore and was never heard from again. He also had the password to their hosting account. If someone else owns your domain name and changes the account password, you can't change the name servers when you want to change hosting accounts. You have to buy a new domain name!

If this happens to you, maybe you can grab your domain name back when it expires. But, if someone else buys it first (and there are companies who pounce on expired domain names the instant they expire), you may have to buy it from them for a lot of money. If you can even afford it!

It's also horrible if you've built up traffic to a respectable site and the owner of your domain name (who is now nowhere to be found) decides to put up a porn site and point your domain name to it. Nothing you can do about it!

Mistake #2. Buy your hosting from your neighbour/brother/drinking buddy who has a server in his garage/basement/tool shed.

Let's see, where to start, where to start... Email down? "Too bad, can't help ya, dude, I'm at work." Site down? "Too bad, bro', I'm just heading out the door. I'll be on a fish boat for the next week." Can't get Word Press installed? "Sorry, buddy, I don't know how to do that either."

Mistake #3. Quit your day job.

Oh, please don't quit your day job. Not for a long, long time. Not until you are absolutely sure your base Internet income is safe from Google slaps, recession, affiliate program cancellation (oh yes, they do this!), obsolescence (remember Tickle Me Elmo?), software abandonment (MS FrontPage no longer exists).

(Yes, I create templates for XSitePro owners, so that makes me vulnerable if XSitePro goes away. But as a Web designer, I'm not tied to one software package to make a living. I know Dreamweaver very well and use it every day.)

Mistake #4. Buy into the hype and hysteria.

Many Internet marketers are masters of the sales letter. They could get you to buy used diapers or dirty, smelly gym socks. They don't really want to help you; they want to make themselves rich. If you've ever been behind the scenes at an Internet Marketing conference, you'd understand that it's a numbers game to these guys. Remember that and read every single sales letter with total skepticism.

And for goodness sake don't get sucked into the product launch hysteria. It's a rare product indeed that's as good as its advertising. Many products are only launched after the owner has exhausted their usefulness in their own marketing business. Six months after these launches, no one can even remember the products, let alone find anyone using them.

You might be wondering what you should buy, since I've pretty much shot down everything you had already decided to haul out your credit card for. Buy the tried and true marketers' products. I don't mean the loudest, most obnoxious marketers' products, but the ones your colleagues swear by. And by colleagues, I don't mean affiliates selling these products, I mean people you can really trust. People who have nothing to gain except your respect!

Mistake #5. Spend all your savings on crappy ebooks.

You'll be sorry when the time comes to buy some real help and hire a mentor. You won't have any money left. All you'll have is a hard drive littered with useless ebooks... and most of them you won't even have resale rights to. Not that most of them will be worth reselling anyway!

If I sound a little cynical, it's because I've been there, done that, lost the money and regretted it. I've made some of these mistakes and I've learned the hard way to be sensible, circumspect and suspicious. But at least no one has hijacked my domain name and pointed it at some porn site!

Andrea Wilson of Able Webs is a Web designer who specializes in custom XSitePro templates. You can find her at http://www.xsiteprodesigns.com Follow Andrea on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/ablewebs

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