Turns out, a lot of the content I’ve been writing lately has been on the topic of marketing instead of actually marketing. Maybe they are the same thing. Maybe this blog has moved its direction towards being an information center for aspiring marketers, or veteran marketers that want to be entertained by the rantings of a colleague. Who knows.
When I Started Doing Digital Marketing
I thought it was just another gimmicky business opportunity that you can “join”.
You know, you learn about a trend, and you learn to take an angle so that you can profit on the trend. I took a course by Seth Jared called, InDemandCareers. This course is about learning how to use Google Adwords, and then leveraging that skill so that you may become valuable to businesses.
This is an amazing course that I recommend, and Seth still hasn’t given me my affiliate link (probably because I don’t get a lot of traffic just yet. Oh well), so if you do take this course make sure you give him a little heads-up on where you heard about it from 😉
Well, upon finishing that course, I started to really explore this world of digital marketing. I watched YouTube videos, listened to podcast, read articles, and had the most epic case of shiny object syndrome.
Turns out, there is a lot of skills to learn in this industry, and also, to match, a ton of educational resources to learn from.
So how do we choose?
What I Wish I Did From The Beginning
This is a great opportunity for you to learn from my own trial and tribulations.
Focus on making money with one way of making money, then proceed to add tools to your toolbox, so to speak, and expand your business.
This way, you’ll be mastering a skill set and then adding more skill sets instead of being a jack-of-all-trades and not making any money.
Another reason why this is a good idea, and a good way to approach your digital marketing career, is that the money you’ll be making with the skill that you’re learning can be reinvested back into learning more skills.
I’ll be completely honest, I spent a lot of my hard-earned cash on course after course. Before I even started to see results from one of these skill sets.
You Live and You Learn
Nowadays, I’m back to where I started. I’m consistently blogging, I’m consistently networking, and I’m consistently working on providing my marketing services.
Although I dabbled in many forms of digital marketing, and I have a few courses just sitting there, I am going to leave them on the side until I start making money from what I’m already doing.
This means that I’m overcoming the obstacles that keep me from making money with my business, instead of just looking for another opportunity to go into.
This is a trap that gets a lot of people. A lot of new marketers will dabble in a lot of subjects and skill sets, which has its positive elements because it develops a general knowledge of the industry, but as far as profit goes this is a horrible way to approach a business.
The internet is full of information, and that is where the temptation lies, and where your very own self-descipline will be vital to your success. Unlike an educational institution like a university, there are no outlined curriculum for you to follow, and then apply at a job and start making money with.
In a sense, you are your own teacher and boss. This is something that needs to be learned.
Instead of a grade, you will be scored by how much money you’re actually making, or how many subscribers your’re accumulating.
It is important to get a mentor that you can bounce ideas off of, and usually when you buy a course, you will have Skype and email access to the instructor, so this will be a great opportunity to pick at the minds of someone who has the career that you are looking at.
Another great way to receive feedback is to plug into a community of marketers that are also on the same path as you, whether they are starting out, so that you can give some advice, or they are far along the path, so that you can learn something. A great community like this is Wealthy Affiliate.
You know how I said that there isn’t a real curriculum when it comes to digital marketing? Well, if you sign up for a free account and get plugged into a university-like course that will teach you the very basics of affiliate marketing.
Of course, if you are getting a lot of value from the course and want to go deeper into your knowledge of affiliate marketing you’ll have to sign up for a premium membership. Worth every penny, in my opinion.
In Summary
Digital marketing and affiliate marketing is a skill, and like any other skill, you only capitalize on it when you have mastered it.
Whereas a gimmick is something that you capitalize on because you were in the right time and the right place. You got in when things were going great, and therefore you made a lot of money. Like a fad, it comes and it goes and it is not sustainable.
I don’t know about you, but when I started this journey of digital marketing, I wanted to acquire a life-long skill that I can apply to real world and make lots of money doing it. A skill set that will continually be developed and one day come to fruition, in the form of profit, in the real world.
Make sure you check out Wealthy Affiliate, where my own journey started, and get started in your own journey. It is a great place to network with those who are in the same place you are in your business and also learn from those who are ahead.
I wish you luck on your adventure!
PS. If you liked this article, let me know in the comment section. I reply to all comments.