What the Internet is NOT

Q.  "Can anybody get incredibly rich online, Stan?"
A.  Of course! This is the Internet.

Q.  "How long will it take me to get incredibly rich?"
A.  Generally no more than three days.

Q.  "Does it take hard work or long hours to get incredibly rich?"
A.  Of course not! This is the Internet.

Q.  "How do I get started to become incredibly rich?"
A.  Just surf around until you see a banner or a link that says something like, "Make Fourteen Million Dollars by Thursday." Then just click on the link to get started.

Q.  "It won’t really take that long though, will it?"
A.  Of course not; This is the Internet. They just say that so you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Q.  "Are there any other headlines I should be on the watch for?"
A.  Certainly! Any ads with the phrase "free to join," "guaranteed results", or "no work involved" are always sure bets. If you see an ad that has all THREE of those phrases in it, you can start shopping for your Lamborghini.

Q.  "But, Stan!  I’ve already joined 212 of these free programs. It’s been almost a whole week now, and I’m still not incredibly rich. Now what should I do?"
A.  Simply consult one of the Internet "gurus" who has already gotten incredibly rich on HIS Internet earnings.

Q.  "What if I never heard of anyone becoming incredibly rich from his Internet earnings?"
A.  

---

Now if you haven’t gotten it yet, the above question and answer session is NOT to be taken seriously.

Surprisingly, though, many people start out their Internet marketing careers with just such a naïve attitude. The purpose of "Secrets of the Big Dogs" is to cut through the maze of hype and lies and show you the TRUTH about what it takes to be an online success.

But you need to be warned!

There are those of you who will read some of the information outlined here, and say to yourself, "Hey, what a rip-off! This stuff is just common sense!"  Well, you would be right – some of it IS just common sense.  But you see, my friend...

"...common sense is a commodity that is in very short supply on the Internet!"

Even well-meaning, ordinarily intelligent people, lured by the hailstorm of gross exaggeration and falsehoods, get on the Internet and are pulled into that mentality that the established rules of business no longer apply.

Well, the established rules of business DO apply, and we Internet marketers must be continuously reminded of that!

Would you like an “easy button” to success?

Would you like an easy button that you only have to press ONE time, never do a thing the rest of your life and have tens-of-thousands dollars pour into your bank account every month?

Sorry.

Ain't gonna happen!

The easy button to success is a LIE.  There is no "easy button" on your computer!

It was designed by unscrupulous “gurus” who just want to take your money and keep you broke.  That way you’ll keep buying their “easy button” promises.

Here's the slap-to-the-head that you need:

NOTHING will make you vast amounts of money overnight.  NOTHING!

No software.
No formula.
No glitch.
No "hacked code"
No "accidentally discovered" computer loophole
No dotcom millionaire who is going to give you his "confidential blueprint" just because he "wants to give back"

It's all BS...

(And incidentally, a Nigerian prince is not going to split 20 million dollars with you!)

Now, as you read this chapter you may get the feeling that it’s almost a "put down" of Internet marketing. It certainly is not meant to be.

What it IS, however, is an attempt to force you to look at
Internet marketing in REALISTIC terms.

If you are reading this book at all, it means that you have aspirations of being a "netpreneur," - someone who makes a part-time (or even full-time!) living by marketing on the Internet. In order to do that successfully, you must be able to separate the incredible amount of Internet HYPE (not to mention the out-and-out LIES) from the Internet TRUTH.

And the very first TRUTH you need to be aware of is that the Internet is NOT, by any means, the easy road to guaranteed and instant wealth.

Remember THIS:

"The same rules of good business OFFline apply with equal validity to the ONline world."

Of course there ARE tools and techniques that make marketing ON the Internet much easier than working OFF the Internet - and a whole lot less expensive.  You really CAN achieve that "bathrobe and bunny slipper" work environment. and eliminate the drudgery of that daily back-and-forth commute to work.  Just remember:

"On the Internet you don't have to work HARD, if you work SMART...
...but you DO have to WORK!!!"

Yet so many well-meaning people are deceived into believing they can log onto the Internet, hit "enter" once (or at the most TWICE!), and wake up the next day as dot-com millionaires.  So let’s take a look at:

"The Four Big Lies of the Internet"

 

BIG LIE NUMBER 1:

"THE INTERNET (AND COMPUTERS) ARE ALWAYS RELIABLE."

The previous chapter is sort of the "glitz and glamour" story of the development of the Internet. It makes it sound as though the Internet is this flawless, ultra-perfect, totally reliable, almost God-like creation.

Well, the very first thing the Internet (and computers in general) are NOT, is 100% RELIABLE. (Sometimes, I think I would even settle for just 51% reliability!)

In a recent national scientific symposium a group of renowned scientists and engineers were asked to rate the reliability of all modern forms of technology. Would it surprise you to know that they rated computer technology at the BOTTOM of the list? Any of you who have wrestled for hours or days with a new piece of software that was SUPPOSED to be "user-friendly," or put up with the countless "glitches" that computers are prone to, or had that ultimate of computer snafus happen – the dreaded "crash" – know what I mean.

To illustrate my point with some humor, I’d like to offer the little joke below.  Now if you DON’T chuckle a little at this, it means the closest you've ever gotten to a computer is driving past a Best Buys store.

At a past computer expo, to highlight the superiority of computer technology, Bill Gates is supposed to have made the following comment:

"If General Motors had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to a gallon of gas."

Not to be outdone, General Motors then issued the following press release:

"If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:"

1.  For no reason whatsoever, every so often your car would crash.

2.  Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3.  When your car has a mechanical problem and you call your mechanic (i.e. "tech support"), a non-human voice gives you 87 different menu options. After you choose one, you are put on hold and forced to listen to George Gershwin’s Greatest Hits. After a wait of 45 minutes, the line mysteriously disconnects, and you have to start the whole process all over again.

4.  Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

5.  To shut off the engine, you’d press the start button.

6.  When driving into a gas station that you have been going to twice a week for years, you will suddenly find that it has disappeared. In the now vacant lot will be a sign that states "404 error – Gas Station Not Found." However, if you wait five minutes, and drive around the block, you will find that the gas station has magically reappeared.

7.  Your owner's manual would contain 1,300 pages and weigh three pounds.

What I refer to as the "Cult of the Internet" would have you believe that the Internet in particular and computers in general are the ultimate in "user-friendly," reliable technological developments.  My opinion?  Anyone who uses the terms "user-friendly" and "computers" in the same sentence should be taken out and flogged!  In fact I think it’s safe to say that as a professional "netpreneur," one of your more precious commodities is going to have to be p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e.

You are going to have to develop a Zen-like patience and calmness that
will make a Buddhist monk seem like an excited four-year-old on
a sugar high the night before Christmas!

  

BIG LIE NUMBER 2:

"YOUR WEBSITE IS A ‘BILLBOARD ON THE 
INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!’"

Fortunately, we don’t see THIS idiotic statement that much anymore!

The statement implies that there really IS an Information Superhighway;  this is simply not the case. It gives the impression that all you have to do to get YOUR share of Internet wealth, is to put up a website, and the world will beat a path to your door. If you’ll remember in Chapter 1, we told you the Internet was designed specifically so it did NOT have one central hub so an enemy could not knock out the whole system by striking one or two key points.

But when you and I hear the term "superhighway" we automatically get a subconscious picture of a typical "dirt world" superhighway – a fairly straight path from point A to point B that, obviously, EVERYONE travels who wants to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Well that’s not the case with the Internet, now, is it? On the Internet there are a near infinite number of ways to get from point A to point B, and they’re ALL just as fast!

Look at your "billboard" (your website) this way:

Let’s assume for a moment that EVERY series of roads in the United States that can conceivably get you from New York to Los Angeles gets you there in EXACTLY the same time – whether you drive straight across the country or from New York to Florida to Texas and THEN to California – it doesn’t matter. Through some magical means, all routes between those two points are the same length. Now let’s say you put your billboard up on route 95, right outside of Altoona, Pennsylvania. What are the chances that someone going to Los Angeles from New York is going to see your billboard? Not very darn likely, is it!? Not when every road in the country can take them across the nation with the same ease!

Your website - your "billboard" - is more like a message written on a grain of sand – turned upside down – and thrown on the largest beach in the world.

The Internet may very well be the first form of marketing in history where you have to advertise your advertisement!

Think of it this way.

Your website, regardless of how simple or how complex, is really just a full-page advertisement, isn’t it? Now if you were to purchase a full-page ad in a typical "dirt world" magazine you have a REAL good chance of a whole lot of people seeing it, don’t you? After all, there is just one "path" from the front of the magazine to the back of the magazine.  (Page 23 always follows page 22, and so on.)  The chances are pretty good that if someone is taking their time going through the magazine, they will at least glance at your ad.

But there is no one "path," no Super Highway, on the Internet.

Now picture the Internet as one big magazine. But THIS magazine has BILLIONS of full-page ads in it. Not only that, but the pages are not bound together, or in any kind of sequence – they are just scattered over a hundred acre field in no obvious order at all. Once again, what are the chances of ANYONE seeing YOUR "full page ad" (your website)?

Are you starting to see my point?

This same type of comparison can be drawn with virtually ANY of the off-line, dirt world forms of advertising. If you purchase a 30 second spot on a certain radio program, EVERYBODY that is listening to that radio station at that particular time is going to hear your commercial because they want to hear what comes before and after your commercial – the radio show (or the music) itself. If you are running a 60-second commercial on the six o’clock news, the same thing applies. There is a "front" and "back" (beginning and ending) to a TV show and your advertisement is somewhere in between.

But there IS no "front" or "back" to the Internet!

It is VERY important you understand that just because you have a website on the Internet, that fact is TOTALLY irrelevant to your financial success.

Unlike that now-famous line from the Kevin Costner movie, "If you build it, they will come," your website (your "billboard") must be advertised!  

The best, most professionally designed website, featuring the best product or service in the world, if not promoted effectively, will fail miserably.

You could have a website that sells hundred dollar bills for 5 bucks, but if nobody knows about it, you'll go broke fast.  On the other hand.....

.....a mediocre website and a mediocre product can achieve astounding success if it receives enough traffic;  you could successfully sell the proverbial "ice cubes to eskimoes."

"If there is just one key ingredient to  SUCCESSFUL
Internet marketing success, it lies in effective advertising -
in getting traffic to your website!"

   

BIG LIE NUMBER 3:

"THE INTERNET IS THE ULTIMATE MARKETING MEDIUM!"

Let's talk a little about some "ancient" history

The years 1999 and 2000 marked the high-water mark of what is called the "dot-com bubble." Those were the years when virtually ANYTHING connected with the web was looked upon as a surefire road to wealth. I remember a friend of mine trying desperately to get me involved in an online venture (it was an online mall, by the way – remember them?). He honestly and sincerely believed that in five years brick-and-mortar stores would be a thing of the past, and everyone would be buying everything online!

Good thing my friend never talked to Sam Walton, huh!?

It was a time when youngsters not old enough to go into a bar were dropping out of big name colleges to start their own Internet companies. They were asking for (and getting!) millions of dollars of venture capital from investors who assumed any scheme, no matter how scatter brained, so long as it had SOMETHING to do with the Internet, would make everyone concerned a fortune.

Need I tell you that the stock market soared, riding the crest of this Internet madness?

During this period of time I was still totally involved in OFF-line business activities, and there were times when, quite frankly, I felt like a dinosaur. I just could not understand what all the hubbub was about.

The pinnacle of this absurdity (in my opinion) was Amazon.com.
Ever hear of ‘em? 

 Internet fever was at such a pitch  in the early 21st century that in one of their quarterly reports to the stockholders, when Amazon.com declared that it would lose LESS money than it had projected, it’s stock actually went UP!  (You heard right!  Even though the company was going to lose MILLIONS, just because it was going to lose FEWER millions than was thought, the price of it's stock STILL went up!)

In December of 1999 I picked up a copy of Time magazine;  whose picture was on the cover as Man of the Year? You guessed it! Jeff Bezos, the head honcho of Amazon.com. Here was a guy whose company up to that point had, not only NEVER shown a profit, but had LOST over three billion dollars since it’s inception, and HE WAS BEING APPLAUDED AS TIME MAGAZINE’S MAN OF THE YEAR!

Hmmm...

By the Spring of 2001, there were even rumblings that Amazon.com was going to formally declare bankruptcy and the value of it’s stock plummeted an astounding 80%. (Geez, I wish I had bought Amazon stock THEN!)

Today, however, Amazon is a thriving, profitable enterprise - the second largest company in the world, in fact, but it did not show a penny's profit for it's first six years of operation.

But, unlike Amazon, most dotcom companies (approximately 96%) did NOT
weather the storm.  Later in 2001, the bubble burst.....

2001 was the year of the so-called "dotcom collapse," resulting in huge losses for legions of investors. Hundreds of companies closed, some of which had never turned a profit for their investors. The NASDAQ, which listed a large number of tech companies affected by the bubble, peaked at over 5,000, then lost 10% of its value in a single day, and finally hit bottom in October of 2002.

The stock of Priceline.com, the "name your own price for airline tickets" people, fell from over $104.00 to less than $11.00 per share. At $178.00 a share, the stock of Internet Capital Group was flying high, but by the end of the year it was trading at a paltry $3.15. By the Summer of 2001, the NASDAQ stood at less than 50% of it’s value of the previous year, and for the first time in their histories, even the solid hi-tech giants like Cisco and Dell were actually laying people off!

On a more personal note, a very close friend of mine invested $42,000 in a portfolio of "can't miss" Internet stocks of the time.  In less than four months the value of his portfolio had more than TRIPLED!  Think he was happy?  But by the Spring of 2001, the total value of his portfolio had nose-dived to a value of less than $8,000!  Think he was STILL happy?

 

Yes, the business world has come back to it’s senses. Sanity has again returned to Wall Street, and investors are actually investing in stocks that display a logical business plan, rather than just because they have "dotcom" in their name.

Does all this mean that the "days of wine and roses" are over for the Internet and the computer industry? Not by a long shot. The best is yet to come! The temporary downturn that we experienced in 2001 was merely a correction that was in the opinion of most analysts, LONG overdue. It was necessary to bring people back to their senses and to once again use LOGIC in their business decisions.

Now why am I telling you all this?
Does this little side trip down memory lane have anything to do with making
YOU a dot-com success?

What does the stock market of so long ago have to do with your life or mine as a netpreneur? Simply this. Although sanity, a long time coming, finally returned to Wall Street and the rest of the business world, there is just as much hype and over-inflation of potential as ever before floating around on the Internet. You need to be aware that the Internet is NOT magic. Just because you do business, or want to do business on the Internet, doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed of success.

If you get NOTHING else out of this book but this one bit of advice, remember this:

"The Internet is not the ULTIMATE form of marketing. It is nothing more than an ALTERNATIVE form of marketing. And just like any other form of marketing, although it has it’s strengths, it also has many weaknesses."

 

BIG LIE NUMBER 4:

"BECAUSE OF IT’S LOW COST, THE INTERNET ‘LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD’ AND PERMITS EVERYONE TO HAVE A SHOT AT MAKING BIG MONEY!"

It is much, MUCH less expensive to run an Internet business than a comparable offline business. This is, without doubt, the biggest "plus" of doing business on the Internet.  To repeat what I said earlier, my last full year of doing business OFF the Internet, these were just a few of my ongoing expenses:

Office Rental:            $1,200 per month
Telephone:               $   450 per month
Postage:                  $   900 per month
Printing:                   $1,500 per month
Employee Wages:    $4,500 per month
Advertising:              $8,000 per month

Pretty typical for any like-sized business in the OFFLINE world.

But, now, doing business exclusively on the net, I work from my study, so I have no office rent to pay – what I used to have to pay employees to do, I can now perform myself in one tenth the time using various software applications – my printing costs, of course, are zero, and my postage costs are a thing of the past – my business-related expenses currently run at a small percentage of my expenses in the OFF line business world - mere pennies on the dollar!.

But is this necessarily a GOOD thing?

Folks, I hate to tell you this, but business is NOT about "democracy," or "leveling the playing field," or giving everyone an "equal chance at success." REAL business is about dog-eat-dog. It’s about the law of the jungle – only the strong survive. To survive and thrive in the offline business world, it’s necessary to have a whole lot of positive attributes. You need to be committed, hard working, intelligent, and last but certainly not least.....

.....you need CAPITAL!  (i.e. "m-o-n-e-y!)

Money makes the world go ‘round, my friends, and this is especially true in the traditional, OFF-line business world. Oh, sure, you can start a small, part-time business in your home offline for maybe a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand dollars if you need a more traditional office type operation.

But on the Internet, you can start a business for virtually NOTHING!

And I repeat, "IS THIS A GOOD THING!?" So many well-meaning, hard-working people enter the world of Internet marketing expecting that they are going to be dealing with fellow "comrades in arms" – folks who, like themselves, are possessed with drive, desire, and determination. And this is not the case by a long shot!

I’m going to make a statement now and I DON’T want you to think that I’m cruel, or unfeeling. But neither do I want you to be mislead into believing that EVERYONE you encounter on the Internet is, like yourself, an intelligent, hard-driving individual determined to make a better life for his or her family…..

"Because of the incredible hype, and because of it’s absurdly low cost, the Internet has become a haven for the lazy, the stupid.....and the broke."

Want a computer, but your rent’s two months behind? No problem! Just go down to one of the many "We don’t care how broke you are, we’ll rent anything to anybody" places and rent yourself a spiffy new laptop!

Want a website but can’t afford a conventional web hosting company? No problem! There are a number sites on the Net that allow you to design and put up a website for FREE!

Want to promote your product to hundreds of thousands of prospects but don’t have two nickels in your pocket to advertise? No problem!  There are (supposedly!) thousands of places on the Internet where you can advertise for FREE!

Again, I’m not trying to put down people who fall for this sort of thing. In fact I think it’s a tragedy that such folks, who could make far more profitable use of their time, are lured by outrageous dreams of easy money to the Internet.

I think you’ll agree with me that McDonald’s has a great concept. What do you think would happen, though, if the McDonald’s Home Office GAVE away their franchises to anyone, regardless of their qualifications? Let's pretend that they would give you a franchise, put up your building, and give you all the supplies you need – all for nothing. How many of these franchises would succeed? Not very many. Let's face facts – not everybody is born with the many qualities it takes to be a successful business person.

Ah, but it’s different on the Internet.

Let me ask you this: Have you ever received a sales flyer from a major department store or local grocery store in your home’s mailbox? Of course you have. We all have. This is the sort of mail that is commonly referred to as  "junk mail." Does junk mail work? Of COURSE it does, or huge corporations would not spend billions a year in ink, paper, and postage sending it out.

But, now…let’s say that ink was free, paper was free, and there was no such thing as postage. What do you think would happen? Yeah, that’s right. We would all be swamped with tons of junk mail, and you’d have to replace your mailbox with a dump truck. But here’s the point – with that kind of massive amount of sales fliers coming to you everyday, nobody would read any of it, and it wouldn’t work for ANYBODY!

As we shall see in a later chapter, this is one of the things has killed many forms of promotion that used to work so very well on the Internet. The "playing field" has been "leveled" to the point where a fourteen year old kid operating out of his bedroom can have as big a "web presence" as a Fortune 500 company. What this does, in effect, is make it more difficult for folks like us – sincere, hard-working, honest folks - who plan on making a career of Internet marketing.

What does all this have to do with successful Internet marketing?

Simply this. You need to be prepared for the fact that not EVERYONE you’ll run into on the Internet is as dedicated, trustworthy, competent, and financially prepared as YOU are to "do what it takes" to achieve real financial success.

Knowing this will save you a whole LOT of frustration later on!

---

"OK, Stan.  I gotcha.  The Internet is NOT a guaranteed, sure-fire, overnight road to wealth, success, and glory.  So just what IS the future for Internet marketing?  Are you saying that it's too late to make money on the Internet?"

My answer in a nutshell?.....

THE FUTURE OF INTERNET MARKETING COULDN'T BE BETTER!!!

Although we've tried to be just a little negative in our discussion up to this point in order to get you to view the Internet in realistic terms, the flip side of that coin is that we have barely scratched the surface of the money-making potential of the Internet!

Currently there is a world population of a little approximately 8,000,000,000 (8 billion).  Of that number there are roughly 2,500,000,000 (2 billion, 500 million) people with Internet access.  That means that almost 2/3 of the world population do NOT have Internet access... YET!  Would YOU like to have invested in television technology when only one person in three had a TV?  Talk about getting in at the ground floor!

And as the chart below indicates, North America (the United States and Canada) has the world's highest Internet Penetration as a Percent of Population but even here, the percentage of the population with Internet access is just 78.6%.  That means that 20% (1 in 5) North Americans have not yet hopped on board the "Internet bandwagon"  That's HUGE!

WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS (Source: InternetWorldStats.com)
World Regions	World Population	Internet Users Population	"Penetration" (% Population)	Users % of Table
Africa	1,073,380,925	167,335,676	15.6 %	7.0 %
Asia	3,922,066,987	1,076,681,059	27.5 %	44.8 %
Europe	820,918,446	518,512,109	63.2 %	21.5 %
Middle East	223,608,203	90,000,455	40.2 %	3.7 %
North America	348,280,154	273,785,413	78.6 %	11.4 %
Latin America / Caribbean	593,688,638	254,915,745	42.9 %	10.6 %
Oceania / Australia	35,903,569	24,287,919	67.6 %	1.0 %
WORLD TOTAL	7,017,846,922	2,405,518,376	34.3 %	100.0 %

Now, I know what your thinkin'.  North America constitutes less than 5% of the total world population.  But that statistic doesn't tell the whole story.....

.....because, y'see, English is STILL the language of international commerce.  For example, why do you think that commercial airline pilots who fly internationally are REQUIRED to speak English.  And, yes, English is UNDOUBTEDLY the "language of the Internet!"  We who grew up with English as our native language are indeed fortunate when it comes to Internet marketing.

Last year worldwide ecommerce sales grew 21.1% to top $1 trillion for the first time.  This year, ecommerce sales will skyrocket to $1.298 trillion.  That's a growth rate of 18.3% per year!  How's THAT for an industry with incredible potential!?  Just five years ago, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.  Last year, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $36.57 billion, an astounding 15.2% increase over the previous year's $31.74 billion!

THIS IS THE CURRENT STATE OF THE INTERNET MARKETING INDUSTRY:
NEAR VIRGIN TERRITORY WITH SPECTACULAR, AND PRACTICALLY UNLIMITED POTENTIAL!

Ponder these stats, if you will.....

• Every second 8 new people log on to the Internet for the first time!

• That's 480 new folks every minute, or

• 28,800 people per hour, or

• 691,200 new "sets of eyes" per day!

• So that's over 20 MILLION new prospects for you every month!  And, thanks to the magic of the Internet, you have access to 'em ALL, no matter where they live!

And it gets better.....

• 140,000 new websites are built.....DAILY!!

• 18,000 people start a home-based business.....DAILY!

• 33% of all new millionaires achieve it through a home-based business!

I make a very, VERY good living on the Net, friends, and I love it!  And, following the principals in this book, you can too!

Wanna make a lotta money in your "bathrobe and bunny slippers?"
We'll show you how!

But first, you need to be REALISTIC about Internet marketing. Only by being realistic will you be ready for…

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