Another Village

A month ago, I journeyed down the path to start an online business. This is the second (or third?) time I set my sight in this direction. The last time I tried, I gave up quickly. This time around I have a stronger determination to proceed. Different circumstances call for different strategies.

I quit my day time job a short while back. I wanted to take a break. When the break was over, I found out it was hard to find another job. Maybe the competition for vacancies was too strong, maybe I was not trying hard enough, lots of maybes.

Then I saw a newspaper advertisement about how you can make a living doing business online. The ad said that you do not need capital (not much anyway), no skills (just need to be able to point your mouse) etc. Sounds good enough for a fool, and I am no fool. So I signed up for the 'free' seminar. I learned later it was not a seminar, not a presentation, but a live marketing event.

There were two very polished speakers from the USA at the event. Before coming to Perth, these speakers had shuttled through the major cities of Australia, promoting the same message: 'You can be next'. A packed room of about 400 people attended in Perth. The organiser had to put in extra rows of chairs to accommodate people who had turned up without prior registration. The theme 'Wanna make money?' sells. 'Wanna make money with minimum skills and capital?' sells even more.

The speakers gave out lots of informative ideas about online business. Some I had heard before, mostly were new ideas to me. They were really good at 'rallying the troops'. It is funny, on hindsight, that I did not pick up much of the very obvious contradictions from their presentation, such as,

• Online business is not a 'get rich quick' scheme. If you are thinking of getting rich quick, then you are in the wrong place. In another flash, we were shown examples of internet successes like 'Single mum with minimum pc skills makes $33,000 in 5 weeks', 'Retiree holidays in Bahamas with $100,000 of annual income in autopilot mode', 'We believe (short of a guarantee) that you can earn an income of $15,000 per month after 3 months' and so on. What? This is not a get rich quick scheme?
• A day job is bad compared to online business. Oh why so? It is because in your day job, you had to work too hard, and you should not need to work too hard to earn your money. To make that promised money doing online business, you should not be working long hours like you do in your day job. (Gosh, I was putting in 12 hours a day in the last 1 month, and not getting too far ahead).
• Anyone with basic 'mouse pointing' skill can be successful. I am not trying to insult people without 'mouse pointing skill' here. In the last month I struggled through the concepts of picking the right product, web traffic generation, paid advertising etc. Compared to a successful simpleton whose only skill is mouse pointing, I must begin to seriously doubt my own mental capability.
  

In summary, the message from the event was that 'This is a business where you do not need too much skill, minimum investments and you do not want to work too hard (remember work is bad). You can earn about $120,000 per year, but it is not a get rich quick scheme. As a first step in that right direction, you just have to get your butt off that couch'.

I was motivated enough to sign up as a premium member at the end of the event, for a few hefty thousands, just so that I don't have to work hard. I was not thinking about getting rich quickly, no, but who would not forgive me for expecting a 'reasonable' 50% of what was made by that single mum whose only skill appears to be 'moving the mouse'? (Not trying to belittle any single mum here).

I learned the easy stuffs of moving the mouse around and was able to create a few glossy looking websites, and put my products up for sale. It was quite exciting to see all those pages appearing on the web, they looked every way as good as the Amazon site. Ok, I exaggerated. Next I started promoting traffic to my sites. The first method I experimented with was Google Adwords. This was mentioned as something easy to do with quick results. So the ads went out. I got a couple of clicks, but these did not convert to sale. I then do a search, and discovered that more than a dozen sites were selling the same products as me. Their sites were all indexed by Google whereas my sites, being new, did not show up in any search engines.

A week ago, I cancelled the membership and cashed back for a refund. In three weeks, the only people I see making good money without much work (remember, work is bad) are the event organisers. I was not even fractionally close to the $33,000 in 5 weeks made by the housewife who had no previous computer knowledge. It was a revelation.

Not withstanding the bad start, I still believe legitimate online business is a good direction to follow. So it is back to the drawing board for me. I stumbled upon one after another great stories told by internet marketers. Many of them have a good package to sell to newbies like myself. I will talk about these in the future. For now I am just trying to absorb the huge volume of information that is hitting me with the speed and force of a hailstorm.

I am like a sojourner in a forest. All I see are trees, shrubs and bushes. There are no signs to point a direction out for me. I am lost. I am looking for a light in this dark world.

There is a Chinese saying. Lost in a thick dark forest, another village could be just behind the trees, hidden from your view. If you persist, you will find that village.

I hope another village is indeed just in front of me, as I journey through this thick forest now.