1) Learn your strengths, use your strengths, f*&k the rest.

As much as I’ve tried to embrace the whole social marketing scene, I just can’t get into tweeting and whatnunt.

My cousin lives on Facebook, and she doesn’t even do business online. It boggles my brain cells to the n’th degree. I’m like a dreadlocked hippie in a world of suits and ties.

But you know what… screw it. I do article/content marketing because I’m really good at it. I make money from it. It pays the bills.

Sometimes you gotta do what you’re good at, and not try to be all fancy pants magnifico with everything that pops up.

2) Sometimes you need time.

AngryManWithAlarmClock

What’s the one thing experienced and newbie infoproduct creators have in common?

Impatience.

I’ve had readers e-mail me after 48 hours, terrified that they weren’t going to generate any sales. I mean like insane, oh crap, my career as an infoproduct creator is OVER, crazy talk. They’ve got like three AdWords ads up and one article up somewhere.

Oh gosh, I’m the same way. I get super squirreled up if I don’t get a sale within the first hour.

My kid can always tell when I did a product launch because I’m like an exposed electrical wire for three days, tweaking ads and writing content and hitting refresh on Gmail like 2,964 times, even though I damn well know that it refreshes itself.

Unfortunately this feeling of anticipation hasn’t gone away after all this time.

But I do fully acknowledge that you almost always need some time before you start seeing your labor pay off.

I don’t know ahead of time which ads are going to pan out. I don’t know which articles are going to rock. I don’t know which blog comment is going to send hoards of customers to a site. Though once you get that floodgate open, you forget all the nervous, sweaty drama.

3) See the magic in the seemingly un-magical.

My daughter can pick up an acorn off the sidewalk and have two good hours of playtime with it, a stick and piece of gum wrapper from the bottom of my purse. I’m amazed by her ability to McGuyver ordinary sidewalk paraphernalia into toys.

(On the McGuyver television show, he used to make bombs from shoelaces, a few eyelashes, some old beer and a toenail clipping. You remember that?)

Well I had to discover that good things do exist in very ordinary marketing tools.

4) Failure is okay.

Failure

Every time I create a new product, I intend for it to be a winner. But that’s not always the case.

My problem? Clarity in the wrong way.

It’s like wrapping a tissue around a car key and using it to clean your ears out. Sure you can clean your ears out that way. But it’s far more efficient to do it with a cotton swab.

I used to despise failure. Each time I thought I was losing my mojo.

Then I sat and had lunch one afternoon next to a guy who was a seasoned online marketer. Actually his wife and I were having major girl talk before he arrived, and she told me all about his failed projects. (Gotta love those three Martini lunches with complete strangers!)

He had a bunch of bad deals go down. And yet, he was still very successful.

From there on, I changed. I stopped feeling so bad about failure and just accepted it as a part of the process.

Now I talk about my failed projects in Desperate Buyers Only, and it helps people. Failure is only bad when you don’t learn from it and move on.

5) Good grammar is a necessary evil.

I never got an “A” in English. I dropped out of English Literature 101 as soon as they assigned Frankenstein. (No lie!)

So I’ve always felt a secretive sense of smugness about making a living with my words, despite having rather atrocious grammatical skills. It got so bad that I used to get e-mails from editors and proofreaders whose retinas were searing after reading my work. (That still makes me chuckle when I think about it!)

Then I started writing content for a big-wig client and I realized that (oh crap!) I needed to improve my grammar skills. They were judging me on my (gasp) dangling participles. I suddenly became prey to the dreaded red pencil.

My grammatical education is still a day-by-day learning experience. I’m currently working through Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.

And yes – to all of you who have damaged their retinas on my grammatically incorrect writing – you win. I do see the value in being a good communicator on all fronts.

(P.S.- The kings English may occasionally become butchered on this blog. I’m still learning!)

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