A Plethora of Experts

I do so like that word! Plethora. It has a sort of ring to it don’t you think? So what does it mean?

Actually I love that.

“Excess. A plethora of advice and a paucity of assistance”

It seems the Greeks were thinking of the internet marketing world when this was penned. So what is this post about then? It’s about the fact that there appears to be a plethora of Digital Marketing agency’s and SEO experts springing up daily, especially on Facebook.

I guess you have noticed 🙂

The thing is you might think this feels new and or annoying! I can tell you it was no different when I started in 1998 although back then we didn’t have Facebook so you didn’t have adverts promising you the world appearing in your feed daily. We had Google Adwords and email, lots of emails and then some and we had Corey Rudl God bless him. I bought everything Corey sold.

Hundreds and I do mean hundreds of the marketers that were all the rage back then are just now around anymore, website long gone. I often go back through my bookmarks to see who is still around and even I am surprised by this. I wonder what they are doing now. I remember a guy called Graham Hamer. He did a few pieces of software. Some of his old sites are still up although the payment links don’t work on any of them now and they look very 90s in design terms.

http://ecomsft.design-zeit.com/trafjm/TrafficJam_cust/index4.htm

He even has a book still up with Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/traffic-jam-formula-graham-hamer/1030250991?type=eBook

I bought some of his stuff at the time. It was during my phase of buy anything and everything especially software BEFORE I even had a product of my own to sell and market for FOMO. Fear of Missing Out! That stage of my life was all about that. I bought everything from everyone. I had a thirst for as much knowledge as I could acquire and I always felt that I can’t be an internet marketer until I know everything otherwise I am just a fraud. It was this single reason that kept me buying and stopped me launching anything.

So moving to today and nothing has changed. The world is full of internet marketers and they are all doing better than you! They all know everything and you know nothing. They write amazing email sequences and have killer sales letters. Don’t they just. They especially love Facebook.

And they all have a “Secret”

However you should keep these things in mind to keep you sane. There are a few things you can do to check someones veracity.

Do a quick whois on their main domain. You can do that here

https://www.whois.com/whois/

Try it with 15dn.com and you will see this:

So what does this tell you. It tells you that I’m a dinosaur in internet marketing terms. It tells you that I registered 15dn.com way back in 2003, 15 years ago now. I actually registered it in 1998 but back then it was FifteenDegreesNorth.com and that WAS a pain writing out emails so I dumped it in favor of 15dn.com in 2003. I liked how short it was 🙂

A quick whois can tell you how long your so called expert has actually been in business. Now I don’t want to sound harsh as of course you could super specialize in something internet related, have tons of natural talent, read for an hour each night when you go to bed (like me) and have quite a lot of knowledge after 12 months. However it does give you an idea and also a steer of who you’re dealing with for sure.

Much research has gone into how long it takes you to become an expert in a chosen field and 10,000 hours pops up a lot after the paper written by Malcolm Gladwell

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26384712

10000 hours is 250 40 hour weeks by the way to give you an idea! 4.8 years to be exact of 40 hour weeks. To give you an idea of how much there is to learn in the Digital Marketing field here is a small list of topics. Some, most of these I could break out into sub category’s but I wont.

SEO
Local SEO
Local map pack SEO
Google Adwords
Facebook advertising
Instagram advertising
Pinterest
Tumbler
Twitter
Web hosting
LAMP or Windows
PHP or ASP
WordPress
Divi
Shopping carts
CRM systems
LMS systems
Software testing
Outsourcing
Email marketing
Funnel creation
Page copy
Sales copy
Blog posting
Website speed optimization

I could go on and on and on but you get the idea. Now the good new is that you don’t need to cover all areas re your marketing. Pick one and master it. You may find that it delivers all the clients you need so then why would you bother adding in Facebook ads? This is a common mistake I see many people make. They think, mistakenly that you have to do all of them to be a success, you don’t.

We have a client and all he cares about is SEO and keywords. Why? Because he gets 250000 visitors a month for his chosen keywords and that is a LOT of traffic and all he cares about. There are another 300000 on the table that go to his competitors sites, he wants them! He could not care less about Facebook adverts or Twitter for that matter.

So the next time you’re reading a sales letter or a Facebook Ad do a bit of research before you buy into it. Ask yourself do I really need this at this time?

To your success

Mark.