Ok, so I recognize that from an IM standpoint, it would appear that I have crashed and burned. I’ve been silent on this blog for over 4 months. I have been doing a lot of soul-searching in those 4 months…and a lot of working in my offline “real” job. (We have opened 3 restaurants in those 4 months…realizing that is a little staggering!)
First of all, from a soul-searching standpoint, I’ve been re-examining my purposes and intentions regarding Internet Marketing. What is my motivation in wanting to become some kind of internet marketer? My biggest motivator, I think, is my time. The problem is I am having trouble investing time now so that I can have my time later for the things that I “really” want.
I think that poses an interesting question, though. What do I “really” want? I came to a realization at work this week. That realization is that I REALLY enjoy teaching other people what I know. Not such that I might want to be a teacher, as much as I realized I like training people to do what they need to do if I know how to do it. Wow, that sounded circular. In “real life” I work for (what’s referred in the industry as) a Quick Service Restaurant Franchisee (read “Fast Food Chain”). I have worked in the capacity of the restaurants, and I have worked in the capacity of accounting, payroll, and IT. So…I have very rounded experience in the industry. I have realized that I am most content with what I do at work when I am sharing my knowledge and experience with people in order to help them grow.
I think that’s one of the appealing things to me about Internet Marketing. Besides the possibility that I could one day be financially independent so that I could invest my time into other more fullfilling activities, there’s also the prospect that I could impart knowledge to someone who is seeking. I think that may also be a reason that I find blogging about Internet Marketing to be such a challenge…because I don’t have the knowledge and I don’t want to mislead the others who are starting out like I am.
Moreover, I am not sure what I want to “sell” if anything. It’s those “sales” that add up to the financial independence.
I went back and re-read all 12 of my previous posts before writing this one, mainly because I wanted to avoid redundant posting. But there was an interesting side-effect. I realized another couple of things:
a) I have grown in the last 4 months
b) I still have not IM goals
In the months of silence, I have been working really hard at my job. I have taken the time to read (listen to the audiobook) “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. I haven’t made “all” the progress I want in being organized, but I have taken some good steps forward.
So, I’ve made a decision. I am going to continue to move forward in Internet Marketing and continue with this blog…but for now, I’m not setting any “money-making” goals. I want to start viewing Internet Marketing from the perspective of “what can I do to fulfill myself by helping/encouraging others?”
So, there you have it. A rather lengthy post after 4 solid months of silence. Hope I haven’t bored you to tears.
On a side note – anyone have some good advice on spam avoidance in the comments? Spam is one of the things that has deterred me from “coming back”. I have deleted literally THOUSANDS of spam comments over the last 4 months. Over 1400 just this morning. I have blacklisted 20 IP addresses that seem to be the main source of the spam, but I was thinking that some kind of Captcha block might help. I don’t want to require membership to this blog to be able to comment (I don’t think), but I want to make it harder for mechanical spambots to post thousands of spam comments that leave me searching for legitimate comments that need “approving”.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Hi Dustin! So glad I followed my intuition to check out your blog tonight…for here you are.
Three thoughts came to mind after reading your entry:
1. Write articles and publish to HubPages
2. Write articles and save them to create your own E-book to sell
3. Create a website filled with content written about that which you like to teach
When reading your post it struck me that you have knowledge about a specific field. You seem to really enjoy teaching/sharing this knowledge. If, for some reason, what you know would not be such that you feel would warrant a full websie, perhaps artricle writing could offer you an avenue for your IM experience to grow from.
HubPages is where I have published my articles…mainly due to the excellent AdSense opportunity, plus affiliate links with Amazon. In fact, I’ve made 3 commissions from Amazon from clicks on one of my articles…(no, not rich, but still-I have “proof” that I can write to encourage my reader to want to find out more about what I was writing about!)
Anyway, it never hurts to throw out the old brainstorming ideas! Good luck, and welcome back to the surface!
Until next time..Annie
Annie T. Baxter´s last blog post..Make Your Content Pre-Sell from SBI
March 30th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Hi Dustin – I am glad to see that you are posting again. I know how hard it can get sometimes – I myself have a few blogs that are so neglected, I almost turn bright red every time I think about them. But the important thing is, you did come back and manage to get it going again
Regarding the spammers, there has been a BIG increase in this lately. It looks like someone has come out with some new spambot. I have several blogs and they routinely all get the same spam comments at the same time. So I open my email and have 15 post notifications all say that this or that blog got the exact same comment from the same person. What a co-incidence!
What I have been doing is keeping a list of all the spam email addresses and URLs and inputting them into the “block” area of discussions in my blogs. Every time I log into a blog for whatever reason, I try to remember to input the latest most updated list. It is a bit ridiculous that I have to do that, but I am getting less and less since then. Lets hope they eventually realize they are going nowhere, and look for something else to do.
April 5th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Yeah man! You gotta do what you gotta do man, thing is, no matter what you’re trying to do, the most success comes from the service you can offer to others. Coaching, help, mentoring, products, service, whatever it is…it’s ALWAYS about what you can DO for others, not what you can GET from others.
As for the spam, man, they’ve picked up over the past few months, askimet has been pretty decent, but if not, I just mark them as spam and move on.
Normal Joe´s last blog post..Take a look inside T3leads.com with Normal Joe as your guide
May 26th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Annie – Sorry it took so long to get your comment approved! I haven’t been paying much attention to this blog, but I sure have been thinking about it a lot…more to come on that later. I appreciate the input you had for me. It’s certainly something to consider, although I think I may have a direction I want to head in mind (finally!)
Anna – I have started keeping an IP blacklist. It has helped a LOT. I still had quite a bit of spam to filter out when I came back to this yesterday, but not the thousands that I had before!
Joe – It’s interesting what you said at the end of your first paragraph in your comment…I have always believed that to be true…and part of what I have in mind has to do with just that. As for Akismet, it might sound stupid, but I didn’t have that enabled! But you can bet your favorite sammich I turned it on yesterday (on this blog AND my personal blog!)
Thanks IM peeps!