“What on earth?!” I hear you say after reading the title of this article. But bear with me a moment.
The thought occurred to me a while ago when my wife and I were driving home after staying with her family for a few days. We had stopped by a river for lunch, and I wondered out loud if there were any fish in the river.
This got me thinking.
Anyone can go to a river or a wharf, put a hook on the end of a line and throw it in the water. And who knows, you might catch something if you do that. But more than likely, you won’t even get a bite.
But say you are determined to fish. You want to fish – you have to fish. So you start learning. You find out all the different ways there are to fish (bait, lure, fly, etc). You learn how to tell the likely places where fish will be, what method of fishing works best when, etc etc.
In short, you get information overload!
(Starting to sound familiar yet?)
When you start trying to put the information into practice, initially you find you’re not sure what bit applies when. So you stumble around.
You may catch a few fish, or you may not. If you do, it wasn’t really due to any great skill – more chance.
Finally, after lots of trial and error, you slowly start to catch fish. And as you gain practical experience (as opposed to ‘book knowledge’) catching fish becomes easier and easier. Fishing trips will never be a ‘sure thing’, but in the end you will catch fish more often than not.
Of course, you could short-cut the trial and error by finding a local fishing expert who knows all about fishing where you want to fish, and will take you out to show you how.
You’re still not guaranteed to catch anything, but you have a MUCH better chance than trying on your own.
It isn’t too hard to see how Internet marketing is the same. You can stumble around, learning what you need to know by trial and error. Or you can find an expert to learn from, and reduce the time it takes to learn everything you need to know.
The key here is learning from ONE expert. One source. Everyone has a different method or opinion, and many of them are conflicting. This conflict is what causes the information overload that we’re all familiar with.
By choosing just ONE person and ONE method you cut down your risk of information overload, and can focus on what’s really important – your online success!
Jason is the editor of Achieve Net Profits, where he interviews successful Internet marketers each week. Save yourself time and money by learning marketing directly from the pros! –> http://www.AchieveNetProfits.com/