Ok, this is probably going to sound dumb, but I figured I just had to share.

First let me preface this post with my reaction to an article I read on Lifehacker.com – The article is titled “Goal Setting for Skeptics: Why ‘Goal Setting’ Makes you Cringe”. In this article, they talked about why some of us (ME!) have a hard time setting goals. They explain the paradox of choice, fear of failure, and procrastination. Worth a read if your interested. My reaction to reading this article was, “HEY! How’d they get in my head like that???”

I have never been much of a goal oriented person. I hated when they were trying to force me to do goal setting in middle school, never did much goal setting in high school, never needed to set goals in the Army (except to pass the physical fitness tests!) and have skated by without doing much goal setting since. Awful, I know.

As a part of this IM Journey of mine, I decided that it was high time to set some goals. After all, if I don’t set some goals, what am I really working toward? I don’t have those goals set just yet, but I’m pretty seriously considering posting them here for the whole world to see when I finally set them. If I post them here, perhaps I’ll be more likely to strive to achieve them. Perhaps I’ll set all the wrong goals and get a bunch of help from those of you reading in re-focusing my goals. Who knows. What I do know is that I need to have some goals in this business if I want to be successful.

So after all that build up, now for the “this might sound dumb” part. I had mentally set a goal when I got started on this blog. It might sound corny, but what I really wanted to have happen the most was to have four specific people check in on the blog and leave me a comment or two. I really wanted to do that without ASKING them to read it. I wanted them to come to my blog of their own free will because I was posting on their blogs or whatever.

Today, that goal was finished! After only three days, all four people have commented on my blog (which would lead me to believe that they have visited it!)

I know you are probably my only four readers right now, but if all goes well, in the future there will be a whole lot more, so I feel that I ought to at least name the four of you.

You are (in order of appearance), Anna Williams, Normal Joe, Davin Ogden, and Holly Mann!

For the benefit of any future readers who may come across this post, I met all four of these GREAT people on Holly’s blog. As I began to inch toward making my first steps as an Internet Marketer, I decided that these four people were people to know. The fact that each of them has already been a part of my blog makes me feel incredibly blessed! There is an alliance forming there, if you will, called the Honest Marketing Movement and I hope to one day be a proud member myself!

My next goal is to finish Holly’s e-book “Honest Riches” and start implementing her methods. So I’ll let you all know when the next phase begins!

I find myself standing on a precipice. Ok, maybe that’s a little dramatic. But really, I’ve got this “nagging” thought at the back of my mind and the only way I can think to word it is “Do I want everyone to know who I am trying to become?”

By everyone I’m referring to all my friends who know me as just Dustin. Not Dustin the Internet Marketer.

You see, so far I have not really shared this blog with anyone that has known me for a great deal of time. A part of that, I think, comes from back when I very first got into sales. I always enjoyed working in sales because I got to work with people…but I HATED trying to sell anybody anything. The worst part was when you had to get your momentum by starting with your friends and your family. Not that what I was selling wasn’t something they could make good use of, but I just hated being the sales-guy to my friends and family.

In my time of working in direct sales, I have sold Cutco Knives, Kirby Vacuum Cleaners, Herbalife, and came real close to joining Quixtar. Not that there’s anything wrong with selling any of that stuff, but in each scenario it was always “practice on your friends and family” – ugh!

Well, as a budding internet marketer, I’m not trying to sell anything yet. In fact, I’m not even to the part where I find a niche and go for it yet. So far I’m just doing some reading, some learning, and jotting my thoughts and experiences as I go. Yet there is a part of me that wants to keep this separate from my “real life” and that actually bugs me.

What just prompted this was finding myself on facebook and seeing that I have friends who are just friends I’ve known since high school and then friends who are in the IM world. I was thinking, “I could post a status update letting everyone know that I’ve started a new blog” and then thinking “oh, but then all my friends would see that.” I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of! I’m not trying to do anything dishonest or illegal. Heck, I’m not trying to sell anyone anything! And yet I find myself overly concerned about what they’ll think if they see that I am getting involved in internet marketing.

From an experienced internet marketer’s standpoint – is there anything that can be said about this? Perhaps it’s some kind of fear of failure that’s doing this to me. Perhaps I’m afraid that people will think I’ll fail. Perhaps I’m afraid of what people will think if I do fail. I do know this – I do not intend to fail!

There is a certain irony in all of this. I want to do this so I have the time to be who I really want to be. Yet, I find myself concerned about what the people who know me in “real life” will think about Dustin the Internet Marketer.

“Just Dustin” and “Dustin the Internet Marketer” are really the same person! So what gives? Any thoughts?

You know, when I first posted about beginning this IM Journey, I mentioned that Anna Williams had to explain to me why to choose Wordpress over Blogger. When she told me the things she told me, I parroted them back to her in my “simple nutshell.”

“If you can afford to purchase a domain name and internet hosting, then Wordpress.org is the way to go because it’s rich in features that Blogger doesn’t have, it’s highly customizable, and has options and features you can use to get more traffic.”

And thought all was good. I thought I understood. I was SO VERY WRONG.

You see, in a comment on my personal blog, Anna said “after a couple of years, I think we start to take for granted that everybody knows this or that. But to be honest, I still run into people who don’t know what a blog is – let alone a comment!”

You may not have known it, Anna, but you were talking about me!

Ok, so I know what blogs and comments are, but only on a very basic level. No wonder people were saying that you should start with Wordpress! In my blogger blog, I had learned kinda the basics about blogging. Post this here, use a widget there, find a new theme…etc. My wife’s blog really impressed me with the way she figured out the themes and stuff and even that’s on blogger. But there was (AND IS) so much more that I didn’t know.

I think one of the main things I learned so far about Wordpress – it’s all about the plugins! THAT’S why Wordpress is so much more highly customizable and has so many features! When I first set up this blog, I was like “ok…so where’s all this functionality? Where are all the features?” I figured I was going to eventually have to learn to do coding in order to be able to take advantage of it all. NEWBIE MISTAKE! I assumed that what I saw was what I got. That couldn’t have been further from the truth!

It’s much like learning to use the FireFox browser, you start with the basic tools that will get the job done, but when you’re ready to start doing the cool stuff, you gotta look into the plugins!

This is real-time people. With the exception of the fact that I actually learned this yesterday, you’re reading about my revelations as they come! So in the interest of sharing my journey, and in the interest of helping any future newbie internet marketers, take note! I am just now (after blogging for the last few months on blogger) learning how to blog!

Know, also, I am having fun learning!

Ok, so having been blogging on my personal blog over the past several months, I have found that the WYSIWYG editors built in to these blog thingamajigs are fairly straight forward and easy to use. I have seen several people recommend blog editors though. These are people who are (as far as I can tell) successful Internet Marketers so I have to believe there’s a reason why they would recommend something like that.

My first thought was that maybe they wanted to sell me the blog editor, but as far as I can recall, the editors I’ve seen recommended have been free.

So what’s the deal? Is there some advantage to using an editor that I am missing?

I have been dabbling in the idea of Internet Marketing for some time now. I have never really taken the plunge to actually REALLY do anything about it, but I think it’s about time. One of the things that has prompted me to start this particular blog is that on my personal “regular-life” blog someone (Anna Williams) responded to my request for blogging ideas with “I would like to know what questions or troubles people run into when they are first learning Internet Marketing or blogging.”

This intrigued me. Why? Well, for one thing, I am essentially new to Internet Marketing. I am pretty new to blogging as well (having only started in February of this year), but I am ’sorta’ getting the hang of it. That’s actually a little “difficult” for me to admit because I am an IT Manager for the company I work for. I am SUPPOSED to know all this technical garbage, right? I’m not new to the concept of internet marketing, but new to the practice. So new, in fact, that when I hear the term “IM” I still think “instant message” not “internet marketing”. How’s that for green?

Anyway, I thought I’d meet Anna’s request and post the complications I am coming across as a budding Internet Marketer and blogger. The plan is to record my progress and troubles as an internet marketer who is just beginning. That way people can go back and, who knows, maybe even learn from my fumblings!

One thing that I just learned from Anna right before I started this blog is that Wordpress.org is “the” way to blog. I asked her about this. I had heard this from other people. Heck, I had even heard my wife mention that she wishes she’d stated with Wordpress. My personal blog is on blogger, and it seems pretty straightforward. So – for those who want a seedling’s understanding of the “why” on this…

If you can afford to purchase a domain name and internet hosting, then Wordpress.org is the way to go because it’s rich in features that Blogger doesn’t have, it’s highly customizable, and has options and features you can use to get more traffic. If you can’t afford it, that’s ok, but you need to know that you can’t just move a blog later on. All the backlinks, all the work you’ve done to build search engine ranking, everything will essentially be lost if you try to move your blog over from Blogger to Wordpress. So – I think I understand that now. Thanks, Anna!

So if you happen to find yourself interested in my pursuit of online success or just have some thoughts you’d like to share, let me know! I officially declare this the beginning of my Internet Marketing Journey. I don’t know where I’m headed with it yet, but hopefully we’ll soon find out!

Stay tuned for more thoughts!