Although my current marketing plan is 75% internet marketing and 25% freelancing, it still burns when I bid on a freelance or marketing project and the client declines my proposal. I just hate getting declined. Now, I don’t mind getting declined for being too high as I certainly don’t’ want to work with any cheap clients. But to be declined becaue the person doesn’t like my style, just stings. Ok, it really burns me up.

For once, I would like to write someone that declines my bid, I would really like to give them a piece of my mind. Here’s what I would say, “Hey, I just noticed that you declined me because you didn’t like my style. Well, I just wanted to let you know that you’re an idiot that doesn’t know a good thing when you see it. To be honest with you, I shouldn’t have even placed a proposal on your stupid project and if I had known what I know now, I wouldn’t have. Goodbye idiot and good luck finding someone with real talent and finesse to complete your dumb project.”

Yep, that is what I would write. But for now, I just have to chuck it up, dust myself off and hope that someone else likes my style.

I’m really beginning to feel as if most of the big gurus – you know the ones who brag about making a six figure income from internet marketing are not really making their money from traditional internet marketing. Instead, they are making their money from selling the hype of “ internet easy riches”. That is, they make their money by selling product after product after product to newbies who really don’t know the difference. Take me for instance, I spent so much over the past few years purchasing materials from self-proclaimed gurus who promised to teach me the next best way to make money online. And, all I had to do was pay a small fee for their precious information. Now, mind you some of the books were good and contained great background but none of them told the full facts about how much work was involved. Instead, these gurus only told me what I wanted to hear and encouraged me to buy more books for more information.

It was like a vicious cycle that I couldn’t get away from and I fear many newbies are experiencing the same thing. Well, now I realize that there is no “magic bullet” and no easy way to master internet marketing. Internet marketing is hard work and takes persistence, patience and a strong desire to succeed. Some days you make money (a lot) and some days you don’t (or very little). This is frustrating but it is the way the IM cookie crumbles.However, to be successful you must remain faithful even when it doesn’t seem like you’re making much or anything.

Now, back to the gurus that make their big incomes is by selling “the promise of easy riches” to unsuspecting individuals who don’t know any better. Just think about it – would someone really divulge all of their secrets for a mere $19 or $29 bucks simply because they want to help? Most marketers would not however, there are a select few that would. Instead, most of these gurus simply give their “desperate readers” a tiny bit of information and then encourage them to buy more.

But, what about those marketers who give out free information, what is their motive? Well, some of them really want to help you succeed however some just do it to build rapport with their readers so that they could hit them up later to buy more stuff – yes, sad but true. In 9 times out of 10 cases, most marketers are out for themselves when it comes to internet marketing and only a select few want you to succeed at the level that they’re at.

So, where does that leave me? I’m one of the good ones of course. My goal isn’t to become a six figure guru that sells the hype of internet marketing. Instead, I want to become a respected internet marketing teacher who makes a six figure salary by teaching others the fundamentals so that they can make a respectable salary for themselves and leave the rat race once and for all. I get no satisfaction of fooling anyone and I absolutely won’t prey on unsuspecting victims. I want you to succeed and I will tell you the truth. Internet marketing is hard but you can succeed at it!

I am a proud member of an incredible community of internet marketers at the Wealthy Affiliate and it always amaze me when one of the successful Wealthy Affiliate members posts some advice to other members to motivate and inspire them to achieve greatness too. Today, I read such a post and it really changed my mindset and gave me hope for the future. This post discussed the fact that over 95% of internet marketers will fail at internet marketing. It isn’t because they don’t have the education or knowledge to succeed in this business – it is simply because they allow their self –inflicting negative thinking to permeate their minds and they give up too soon. According to this Wealthy Affiliate member, we must be grateful for all achievements (no matter how small) and must continue to take actions that will increase those successes.

I totally agree with this member. Here’s why – for the longest time, I was stuck at $2000 a month and although this is not entirely chump change, it was not what I had hoped for. Instead of being grateful for this amount and doing more to increase this amount, I simply gave up and allowed my negative and self-limiting behavior to kick in and I totally stopped working at internet marketing for a while. I started freelancing more and put my internet marketing dreams aside. Luckily, the passion to succeed in internet marketing was too great and I honestly couldn’t give up.

Now, I realize that in order to succeed, I must be grateful for the success that I previously experienced and know the facts. My past success (be it $2,000 a month or merely $.20 a month) is PROOF that internet marketing works and that I have the knowledge and skills to make internet marketing work for me. What about you? Will you join me as one of the 95% that succeed or the 5% that don’t?

There seems to be a little debate brewing in the internet marketing community about expired domains. Some internet marketers believe that expired domains are an awesome way to get a leg up on the competition whereas others think that expired domains are not worth it. So, what is my take on this matter? Well, I believe that they can work if you “know how to work them”. The secret when purchasing an expired domain is to make sure that the previous domain owner didn’t spam the domain (when they had it), that it has some PR and/or some existing back links on them. In contrast, do not purchase expired domains that have no PR and ones that were dropped or blocked by Google at one time or another. If you do, you are most likely wasting your time.

One great site for checking out whether a site has been dropped is www.domaintools.com. This site basically allows you to easily see if the domain has been dropped and if so, how many times it has been dropped. In addition, you should also make sure that the PR is real and not fake as some unscrupulous sellers will simply redirect a higher PR to another one so that you think you’re getting a higher PR domain when in actuality, it has lower PR. One great tool for checking this is www.prchecker.info.

Instead, find a good one with backlinks and go for it. Then, you can build a site or put a WordPress blog on the expired domain. If you do it right, you may be able to avoid the dreaded Google sandbox and can start getting traffic to your new site. After all, Google trusts legitimate aged domains that pass the above tests. Now, how cool is that?

Did you realize that there are two types of backlinking? Well, I honestly didn’t realize that this was true until recently. Duhhhh. I’ve been dibbling and dabbling in internet marketing for 3 years now and I am just now realizing that. So, for those of you that aren’t aware of this important fact – let me fill you in.

The first type of backlinking is linking specifically for human readers who will visit your website and hopefully click on your website or blog via anchor text or a resource box. With this type of backlink you specifically target readers and try and push their “hot buttons” so that they will feel compelled to click on your site and take some sort of action, like purchasing an affiliate product or simply making you revenue through contextual advertising. In contrast, there is another type of backlinking that is meant to impress the search engines and get them to give you higher search engine rankings. Now, this isn’t to say that one type of backlink is better than the other or that you should create crappy content specifically to impress the search engines. It is just that each type of backlink has a specific purpose and you must use both of them if you want to succeed.

In the past, I only used backlinking with articles and then wondered why I got some traffic through article directories (like Ezines) but not through the SERPS. Keep in mind that I’m referring to my blogger blogs that were not SEOd by anyone but me here. As for my other sites, they were able to get higher search engine placement because my previous designer knew how to optimize them and did some linking too.

Well, when analyzing both types of sites, I realized that I had to use BOTH types of backlinking if I wanted my niche sites to really make me money. In essence, I had to mix it up so that I could help propel my niche sites higher and higher and higher in the search engines. That is why I have been backlinking like crazy. What I mean is that I have been writing blurbs and posting them on other sites, answering questions on Yahoo answers and also doing a bit of forum marketing. It is a bit too early to see if my strategy is working but from all that I have read and learned, I truly believe that this is the strategy that will work. Not only to help me get higher rankings but also a higher PR too and that has to be a good thing! I’ll keep you posted!