StealthMoonlighter: The Online Marketer

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There are several things that make online marketing difficult. Given a sensible system, Internet marketing is incredibly easy to do.  But when you’re faced with first one “great idea” and a slew of requests to review and promote the latest and greatest joint venture, it’s easy to lose focus and hope for the best as you spread yourself too thin on desperate promotions.

The hardest thing about online marketing can be deciding where to start. There are so many programs, products, and services to promote. Sure you can do some research to gauge the profit/loss potential of just about anything. And then there’s that element of chance that you have to take into account – the “worse case scenario”.

But the root of the word “decide” is decir which is Late for “to cut off”. By definition (as well as by common sense) that means you need to pick something above all else and make it your focus. You can’t ride more than one horse in more than one direction at a time if you’re starting in Sacramento and expect to get to Manhattan in thirty days.

Pity the poor horse!

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The Moonlighter Exposed:

Momentum got lost during the six weeks after Hurricane Ike. Galveston Island experienced some of what New Orleans went through after Hurricane Katrina – including the lingering small weeks after waters from Galveston Bay lobbed up to 15 feet of water over some areas. Lucky for us, though, there were no corpses on the streets. Now I realize how silly it was for me to envy my friends who took the time to visit and pay their respects in the Big Easy back in the final months of 2004.

Now that the place that I used to work my 9-5 gig has gone through yet another round of layoffs, I am a StealthMoonlighter with no place to moonlight from. And being as some of the sound and musical equipment my band used “went underwater” during the storm surge, my band director/leader has been turning down gigs… at least until some time in February 2009.

If I intended to live up to my definition, I had to find something to “moonlight” from. So I spent eight weeks studying for the CompTIA A+ certification exam.  (Oh, and, YES, I did pass the exam to become Comptia A+ certified, I might add!) It was sort of job-like, at least it seemed so to me. I even set myself up with a rigid study and review schedule to make it seem like a regular job. This really helped me work on my project management skills as well.

But studying is like being in school. School kids (including adults in the midst of career retooling) do not bring in money, per se, while getting smart. It’s a delayed gratification thing – do the time with the potential of getting a pay off. The rent and utilities still have to be paid, though. Plus, you’ve got to have a coffee budget!

Internet marketing to the rescue! Here’s how it happened…

Remember Niche Rockets, a membership site I dissed some time ago? Well, things have changed and now it’s more affordable. You only pay for basic membership, which gives you access to the helpful people in their forum and loads of useful downloads.  They still offer a monthly “business-in-a-box” but leave it up to you whether or not you want to buy it. Essentially, you only pay for what you want to promote.

Well, one thing led to another and suddenly I’m back in the Internet Marketing Game again with the help of an ebook by Soren Jordansen: The Internet Marketing Success Formula. Lucky for me it’s a free book. Check it out here.