Hi everyone. To put things simply, I’ve been hiding from my potential, lurking, and just generally not giving the world my best effort. It all started many years ago with a lot of scholastic achievement. More recently, I’ve fixed up a LOT of social discomfort and acquired a LOT more social grace.

Maybe 12 months ago I was probably capable of what I will do this month. But I was uncertain. And it was a lot easier to keep “sucking in paychecks”, more or less, and NOT build a web property of my own.

Tim Junck = Web Property Developer

So here’s my first real declaration of this fact: I’m a web property developer. I am developing THIS web property. It will provide assistance to other people, and it will begin to provide me a full-time income. (Yes, it is going to work. Check back with me in 6 or 8 weeks. Trust me!)

I will also help other people to develop THEIR web properties. I’ve had a few clients, and I have contributed to maybe 15 different businesses on the Internet so far. I’ll be making much stronger contributions, and to many more businesses in the coming months.

But I’ll also say that I am more likely to assist people talking on the phone than working on their web server or autoresponders. I was always a technical guy. Recently I’m becoming more of a business person, I must say.

Did you know that I can sell things just fine “from” a website without any “buy now” buttons? Just 4 months ago I wouldn’t have been happy doing that. Today I realize that making myself prepare a sales page is just creating silly, arbitrary rules. If I can provide services, either coaching or technical or marketing services, it doesn’t matter if any bit of that is automated and tied to a web page and a “buy now” button.

What matters is that I can perform technical and marketing and coaching services that will be of service to another business. And that other business will be happy to pay me for those services. And I might draw up my proposal on a napkin, in a powerpoint, or I might just describe my proposal with my gift for the English (or Spanish) language.

At the end of the day, business is business. Value is exchanged for value. And my approach to business is to provide more value than I charge because that will make for happy clients, and that will lead to clients happily referring their friends to me.

That makes for solid business with good revenue streams. I’m going to build that type of business, here on this patch of virtual Internet property. If you’re a step or two or twenty behind where I am, I advise you to keep an eye on what I am doing. You may be on the receiving end of some VERY nice value propositions soon.

Be especially vigilant near the end of August, 2010. And sign up for my email list – give me your email address on the form on the top right of my website now. Do it before you forget. You’ll be sorry if you miss out later this month.

For those learning to run a business using the Internet, there are a few HUGE hurdles to overcome. Here’s a quick list of the highlights. These apply whether you are handling everything yourself from a home office, or if you have a company and are delegating a bit of social marketing to your staff.

Get Some Focus

This one is tough, but remind yourself of it constantly. If you try to work 3 jigsaw puzzles at one time, it will take 10 times as long to finish them. Go ahead and mix all those pieces together and watch your timeline expand 50 times larger than just working one puzzle.

That will happen to your Internet efforts as well. Work on 5 approaches, especially if they are a mishmash of advice from 5 different sources, and you should not expect to see any results. It’s that simple.

Being Overwhelmed

Again, get started using the Internet for marketing purposes and there are literally thousands of people offering advice. They don’t know you. What they do know is that they can probably convince you that you don’t know enough. That you really need another expert how-to guide. They can knock you off-kilter. They can convince you that you are not enough, by yourself, to work all this out. And you should invest in their course, their membership, or their whiz-bang tool.

The solution here is to get some focus, decide on a course of action, pick a mentor or marketing outsourcer or techie outsourcer, and go get some results. Getting a sales process set up, with a lead capture front-end and some automated follow-up emails going out to those leads is a great place to start. Dedicate yourself to this process. Get it to work. You’ll get signups, and if you build some trust and develop a bit of familiarity and relationship with those people, you should achieve some sales.

And at that point you reassess. You can improve what you have, or declare it a good learning exercise and start over with greater insight at your disposal.

In a nutshell, pick ONE approach, hopefully break open an ebook off your hard disk detailing a workable lead generation system – or hire someone to work with you – and get (um…Build!) yourself a targeted list that wants what you have got.

Whiz-Bang Learning Offers: Not Quite So Critical

One other piece of this puzzle is this fact: If you start to learn internet marketing or social marketing using YouTube and twitter and facebook, you WILL get marketed to. People who are at the top of their game, world-class marketers, will be in YOUR mailbox offering you all sorts of offers. Some offers will be good for you. Many or most offers will actually be a distraction. If in doubt, assume you’re looking at a distraction.

I believe it was Marlon Sanders, one of the very good “big guys” in my book, that had this advice for his staff:

If some tool is required, get it. They all had access to plenty of funds to purchase tools and training as needed. But to further define required, he said this: If you need something in the next hour, then it is required.

Practice “just in time” learning versus “just in case” learning. Spend more time deciding WHAT to learn, and less time applying more new charges to your credit card. Think. Make a decision. And not just the easy ones – start flexing your decision muscles on some, “This path, or THAT path?” questions. It gets easier with time, because you’ll get better at doing it.

Join A Crowd

Ok, this one is something I’ve been meaning to tell everyone for a while. Recently I started seriously checking out Lee McIntyre and Alex Jeffreys. Today I logged in here to write some scary posts, and DECLARE some things.

Guess what – Alex Jeffreys tells his students to huddle together, strength in numbers stuff. Hooray!! I had a comment from an Alex Jeffreys student waiting in my dashboard, waiting for me to moderate it. Boy, does THAT feel good!

Yeah, join a crowd. I’m going to build a crowd here on my site. There are lots of places to flock. Find some folks that genuinely seem to be going the same direction as you. Spend some time with them. Invest in some relationships. Don’t go about this stuff in a vacuum with a couple textbooks (or digital dust knowledge collections called ebooks). Find some people to talk to, get encouragement from, and when you’ve built up a bit of a friendship – get some HONEST feedback as well.

Myself – I’m enrolling this week in the “crowd of Alex Jeffreys students”. It’s a successful crowd. Time to make my contribution to the flock. Time to toss my hat in the ring, add to the published info talking up Mr. Jeffreys methods. And don’t bother getting it right – Just Get It Going.

Cheers,
Tim “Get-It-Going” Junck

P.S. This has been a draft in my blog since March 18th. Ouch. I added a bit, and clicked publish. How About You?

It seems that I have been ignoring a clamoring right outside my front door. While I’ve been locked in my house working in my upstairs office, many businesses have been suffering. And I can help. It’s just that I didn’t know that this suffering was happening.

Reaching new customers, and taking better care of existing customers – as well as being better informed of our customer base – these are all benefits we can get from using the Internet. But I can assure you – if you have not suffered some of the disappointments that come with this exciting marketing tool, then I expect that you have not given it a try.

As with everything, there’s a learning curve. Or there is a huge investment on the front end having experts set us up right.

And now I realize that I can apply my experience and expertise in getting local businesses in touch with local people that are searching for them via Google, in YouTube and via Twitter. Even just making sure that Google understands your website and that you do indeed have fresh flowers, or French pastries or quality legal services is not nearly as simple a task as we’d like.

It’s easy to be unsure which ideas are truly helpful. Unfortunately, I expect that the sheer confusion we all face with the Internet is not going to magically get better.

But I have found a simple way to get things rolling for my clients. I think it all starts with having a roadmap. And the wonderful thing is that I’ve got a good deal of insight about what does lead to success getting local customers to find you on the Internet, to follow up and remind those people about your business, and to increase sales.

That is where I’m going to start for now. I’m going to share a roadmap for success on the Internet with local businesses. But since this blog is on the Internet, Rome, Buenos Aires, Adelaide, Beijing and Barcelona are all “local” for me. But I want to encourage you to think local. Are you winning or losing in the fight to attract local customers? How does having a best practices roadmap customized for your situation sound as a place to start? You can even replace some of your more expensive advertising efforts.

Let me make a bold statement.

Newbies on the Internet do NOT need the same assistance as an established business with Internet operations.

Wouldn’t you agree?

I have some services geared at both of these distinct groups of businesses.

Established Businesses

An established business will tend to have good plans in place, and the work they do on the Internet will fit into a revenue-producing department. Goals will be defined. And, when I send them an invoice for $1000, this type of business can be expected to recoup that expense quickly. In fact, there normally are solid plans for doing that before they even contact me.

For this type of business, I provide outsourced expertise for a variety of tasks. I call my service a “Techie Retainer”. Based on the amount of service the business retains me for, they can secure very favorable rates to have me work for them.

Newbies and Businesses New To The Internet

The new entrepreneur, or the business with no experience working with the Internet, will find a different situation confronting them. Besides all the technical, positioning and marketing challenges that confront every website in the world, “newbies” also have additional challenges. They need to get started, and quite often have inadequate expertise in one or more areas.

There is a need to either hit a steep learning curve, which likely will eat up months of time, or to outsource or partner with experienced marketing and technical experts.

And for this segment of the market, I have come up with what seems to be a novel idea. While I am perfectly happy to accept purely outsourced work requests, I have come up with a much more helpful approach.

Using screen sharing and remote control tools, I can work interactively with you. Many people don’t simply want a blog built, or a sales process set up. They also want to understand what it takes to get that work done.

Some will want to learn to handle the task themselves in the future, while others just want the awareness of the steps and process. For both these situations, an interactive “work together” approach gets the work done, and also imparts a good amount of knowledge transfer from me to my less experienced client.

And that is not all! I also record these sessions, both what is on my screen as well as the audio conversation. These videos are then provided as well.

So if we do spend 3 hours getting a blog set up, customizing the About Me page, installing a theme and a handful of plugins – you can review all that was done at a later time.

Imagine the power of personalized teamwork, getting YOUR tasks accomplished, and getting some guidance at the same time from someone with greater experience than you have. And add to that the power of reviewing the entire work / learning session on video after the fact.

This is what I call “Tech Time Jobs”. If all you want at this point is access to the videos of some of these jobs, then you are looking for “Tech Time Job Videos“.

Ok, let me start by saying – hindsight is so much better than crystal ball guessing. Agreed? And man – have I got some insights now that I did not have 2 years ago!

When I first signed up for a course about Internet Marketing, I did a few things wrong. For one, the course itself was all wrong for me. It was about doing email marketing partnerships. Might have been fine if I could do a couple simple things – like market via email, and form partnerships.

Then I struggled with hosting, getting squeeze pages going, and using traffic exchanges, Google Adwords advertising and other ways to grow my lists. And after all that, and when I had a couple lists of 100 people, I discovered that I truly didn’t know what to do with those lists. To be honest, I expect that this is a point that truly does stop a lot of people from making progress.

Technical Problems

So, here’s a good one. Have you had any trouble getting a domain name registered, a hosting account sorted out, FTP working and a page or two or three created? Oh, and you have to upload that page. Do you know all the magical incantations for it to appear on your hosting? Any issues with email, maybe?

Here’s a better question for you: Should *YOU* be worrying about that?

Even I probably should have said no to that question when I was getting started. I’ll be outsourcing a bunch of that type of thing here real soon. That work is not going to make you or me any money! That’s not business; that is infrastructure. If you had a restaurant, would you clean the toilets and do the accounting? mmm…So why are you doing your own “Internet plumbing”?

Peeling the Onion – Other Things Can Still Go Wrong

Here’s what I really want you to think about. What if you get that sexy minisite you purchased from Guru Guy or Guru Gal all installed on your domain, on your hosting? What will the NEXT problem be?

You will need to have payment buttons and autoresponders ready. You need to get buttons and forms ONTO your web pages. (Should you learn, or should you practice the success skill called ‘delegation’?)

Hey, so if that is done, have you checked to make sure your pages appear decently in the major browsers: Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 *and* 8; Firefox; Opera; Safari? Google Chrome?

Great. Now, how is your traffic? Is your traffic living up to your plan? (Doh! Did you actually have a traffic plan?) You did get a blog or some other traffic-sucking content site going about 3 months ago, right?

My Advice – Get Some Guidance & Get Some Help

You know why colleges do so well at training people? It is because knowledgeable, smart, wise people set up training programs for the uninitiated to follow. While the new person attending the college may not understand the need for various areas of study, the wise experienced people organizing the training DO. The new person does not NEED to understand; they just get to focus on the subjects in front of them.

Do you need a millionaire to show you how to make your first $3000? Nope. Can a guy or gal who has made $3000 off the Internet teach you a thing or two? Yep. And I can literally save you 6 months in the process.

By following a leader who has accomplished a few key things, like building a list and making a couple grand online, you can discover the mysteries behind some of this onion you are trying to peel.

It is entirely possible that you might progress and outgrow your first leader. Great! Then move on, and find a more experienced teacher to follow. But to START with that type of teacher can be much more expensive and you might not be able to keep up with their teachings.

You should take some time to consider how you learn, how fast you learn, and how well your background has prepared you to run a business, market a business, and compete on the Internet. If you truly will need some basics, and the interaction of a coach would be helpful, then don’t cheat yourself out of the huge benefits a coach can provide!

So what do you think? I’d love to read YOUR comments! Go ahead and add some comments here. I promise I will be reading every comment, and don’t be surprised if you hear back from me.

Dear Fellow Internet Marketing Victim,

That might sound a wee bit strong, but I sure feel that I’ve been a sucker and a victim long enough.

Do you ever wonder if you’ll survive the next 5 days if you don’t buy those 17 Must-Have products that 12 people and their pet wallabies are all talking about in your mailbox?

What Is Your Plan?

To be honest, it took me quite a while to realize that the time I spent studying Adwords, and paying for Adwords training, and building a list of 100 people from my Adwords ads – that was all wasted time. That activity didn’t fit in with the rest of what I was doing. It didn’t fit my plan.

And because of my rather geeky background, I felt drawn to promoting blogs as the saviour of the netpreneur race. I took some courses, installed a few WordPress blogs, got a couple clients, played with themes, etc. etc. But I never really got any momentum going.

And then I finally realized that I didn’t actually have a plan. I had a picture in my mind’s eye of what I wanted to have as a website. About 18 months back, and many thousands of dollars ago, what I wanted was a site where I had a few products for sale – and the sales would come in on a daily basis.

But I didn’t truly have a plan. Nor did I know how to get that website built. There were a LOT of things that I tried. And boy, was I busy! But I didn’t have focus. I didn’t really have any real business message to share with my clients, and I had no direction. There was no skyscraper or duplex or anything that I was building. I didn’t know how to get where I wanted to go from where I was starting.

Can you relate?

If you can relate to that, and if this describes your current reality, then you need to realize something simple.

Success will often come from the one thing that you finally decide is going to work. Now, it is complex. You have to believe in it enough to put your heart into it. But this is much more about you and your attitude than it is about that new wonder drug product all them “big guys” are shouting about in your email inbox.

Greetings! Welcome to the beginnings of another blog and website on the awesome Internet!

I’m going to be putting some serious energy into this particular project, and working to help YOU get YOUR Internet Marketing going, or get it going better. Better might mean increasing revenues, or reducing the time required.

But I expect I’ll find a number of people where better will be identifying a focus area, and the overwhelming relief of knowing that you no longer have to do 996 of the 1001 things you think you have to do now.

Now, lucky for you and for me, there are many, many ways I can help with your Internet marketing. As a simple example, here are two product ideas that I truly believe will be helpful for many, many people.

A Web Business Package

First, let’s say you are interested in:

• Having some of the best folks on the Internet and in ebiz providing your Internet training;
• Doing this training without charging you anything beyond your program fees;
• Building a business with the potential to make you thousands a week in a short time frame;
• Have a prospecting system provided for you that finds interested parties on the Internet;
• Your “job” in building a web business is defined, and many things are handled “in the background” for you, allowing you to better focus, and to succeed without a deep understanding of business, marketing or the Internet.

Yes, there are lots of promises of this type of offer. I’m here to tell you that this one is special. Take a few minutes to check out this amazing business growth vehicle. This single link might be the answer to a lot of your questions, but you might need some specific help evaluating how it would assist you. Just let me know that!

A Huge Expert Advice Package

Another things that I know many people will need is some overall guidance to marketing information. There are LOTS of possible approaches! There are lots of possible reasons for looking to the Internet, and for wanting to build a business. One suggestion I have is – Learn from a collection of the big money earners. What’s going to happen with this field? What makes it tough to get moving? What advice should anyone entering this field follow to accelerate their success path?

Take a look over here for The Future of Information Marketing. You can get a good summary of that advice free of charge, and downloaded in minutes. If you’d like the full details from 73 top Information Marketers, you’ll be shown how to get the full package.

Save Some Steps; Avoid Some Headaches

The name of the game is to learn from someone who’s a bit farther down the path than you are. I’ve got a technical computer background, and I’m quite comfortable on Linux machines playing with the guts of PHP scripts. Many things on the Internet today involve PHP and MySQL databases. If you need something installed, follow the advice of a LOT of experts (see the free Tips and Prediction Audio).

At the same time, advice about the paths to take and to avoid can be amazingly valuable. With a combination of coaching and technical assistance, I can help you take a program you’ve purchased and have much more success with it, in less time than you’d need to get it going on your own. In that sense, I can be your virtual Internet business assistant.

Improve Your Plan

My biggest advice is this: Make sure you have a decent plan for how to invest your time and money. Many people do not. In fact, many people spend months and years jumping from plan to plan, often due to the latest “You Gotta Do THIS!” email to hit their mailbox.

Do you KNOW that you are working on a project that will be profitable? Do you know what your role is, and what value you will provide your customers?

Let’s get together, build you a plan that suits your needs, abilities and interests. And then let’s get some things done so you can get past “setting up” a web business, and get into the running and profiting phases of your business.

You can study forever, learning to do it all yourself. Or you can take the route of guided education, similar to a vocational school approach. If you choose the latter, then let’s explore what I can help you accomplish.