I am a firm believer in continued education. This includes the Internet Marketing field BUT do you really need a coach or a mentor?

Before I answer that question let me first tell you that I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on coaching from people like Michael Cheney, Mark Hendricks, Sterling Valentine, Mike Filsaime, Alan Bechtold and a few others. So, I am speaking from experience.

In my case it was money well spent because I have earned a lot more back then I spent.

That doesn’t mean that coaching would be right for you. How much you get out of coaching will depend a lot on YOU!

• It depends on what your expectations are.
• What level of marketing you are at.
• How well you relate to your coach.
• How much you work at it.
• And believe it or not how much you BELIEVE in the program will make a big difference.

Your Expectations – Your expectations must match your level of knowledge. You can’t go into an advanced coaching program, not knowing anything, and expect to be profiting next week. Your coaching program needs to reflect your level of experience and move you on to the next level.

If you are a true beginner you need to find coaching that will take you by the hand and get you going. It isn’t going to do you any good to learn advance strategies until you know how to take the actions to implement them.

If you are just starting out I would recommend for coaching that you find a coaching program with a low price point that lasts 3 to 6 months. This will be long enough for you to learn a ton of information, but more importantly, to put it into action while you are still in the coaching program. By taking this action if you have any problems you should be able to ask your coach and by all means if you have a problem ask your coach, that is what they are there for.

Relating to Your Coach - Before you join any coaching program check out the person or people running it, sign up to their list(s), read their blog(s) and review their products and sites. Make sure that your prospective coach is some one that you can relate to, by this is should be someone that you respect, admire, has the same ethical view point as you and is further along in the process then you are.

Remember your coach doesn’t need to be a “Guru” but they do need to know enough to move you up to the next level.

How Much You Work At It – That’s right I said that dirty four letter word, “Work” there is no magic button that will take you from nothing to rich, you have to put in the time and effort to succeed at anything.

In your coaching program you will be given assignments or at least you should be given assignments and if you don’t do the assignments you will never learn. If you are given an assignment do just do it, over do it! If you are asked to create a squeeze page create 3 squeeze pages and decide which one fulfills the requirements of the assignment the best. Just like with most things in life the more you put into it the more you get back.

Believe – Your mental approach to coaching is more important than any other aspect. You must believe you are going to get the results that you set up in your expectations.

If you think you will earn $5,000 by the end of the coaching program then you need to BELIEVE that you will have $5,000 by the end of the coaching program and take all the steps to achieve it. If you don’t truly believe then you are better off not spending the money on that coaching.

This also applies to the hype that you hear from the coach when you are signing up. If the coach tells you that you will have a five figure income per month at the end of the coaching then you need to believe that. If you don’t believe what they are telling you, and I mean believe 100% of what they say, think twice before you spend the money on coaching.

It also helps if you understand what type of student you are.

The Natural
The naturals are people that can just read the book and have it all down pat and know everything in the book with just one reading. The naturals are usually self motivators and don’t need a lot of supervision or hand holding as long as the information is available. This is a very rare category but if you are in this category then a home study course is good for you and you don’t need the hand holding you get with a coach.

The Repeater
Repeaters are people that read the book but won’t absorb the information until they read the book again. If the repeaters are self motivated they will read the information again but a lot of them won’t do so unless they are motivated by some outside force, such as a coach or a teacher. If you are some one that needs to go over the material multiple times (like me) but won’t do it on your own then a coach is a good thing. If you will review the information until you understand it without any outside forces urging you to, then again a good home study course should get you started.

The Almost There
These are people that will read the book and understand most of the concept that is being presented but will need some kind of one on one interaction to get them to comprehend the entire process. The almost theres are trying to grasp the information to the best of their ability but either the way the information is presented or written leaves them missing one dot in the connect the dot drawing of success. By simply asking a question they have find that extra dot and comprehend the entire process. If you are an almost there you want to have a coach that you have access to.

The Know It All
Know it alls won’t read the book because they think they know it all already. They are either already wealthy people or they are going no where. This is where a very high price coaching program might, I will repeat might, get them motivated enough to study and take action. But a vast majority of them will say they already knew that and it doesn’t work. And they do this without ever learning the information or taking action on it. If you are a know it all don’t spend your money on coaching, but then you already knew that ?

The Co-Dependant
Co-dependant people won’t read the book until they have to. These are people that must have a structured system with a coach or teacher that will hold them accountable for learning the material.

There are a lot of people like this and it is actually fine if you realize that you fall into this category. If you do fall into this category and have a tendency to put everything off until the last minute you need to be in a program that will get you going. You could also get set up with an accountability partner as I described in the Make Money Online By Staying Focused post.

Now let’s talk about the possible coaching program.

Beginner Marketers
If you are a beginner I suggest a low cost coaching program that is mostly a home study course. One I can recommend is Mark Hendricks internet success system. It is low cost to get the course and it covers everything you need to know to get started. It is twelve courses that cover everything from mindset, copywriting, website mechanics, upsells, joint ventures and more. It comes in both pdf and audio formats for a one time price. If you have questions you can get them answered on the teleconference calls lunch with Mark Hendricks this is a great place to start if you are serious about learning what you need to know.

Intermediate Marketers
If you are an intermediate marketer you probably don’t need a high end coaching program yet. Let me give you my definition of an intermediate marketer. This is a person that has a website up and is making some money but not enough to live on.

In this situation you want to find a coach that can take you the next step and show you how to maximize your online income. In my case I was lucky enough to get in to a coaching program with Michael Cheney and Sterling Valentine but there are a lot of marketers out there that can help you get ahead by looking at what you know and giving you the one key element that you are missing.

The best place to find coaches like this is at events like JV Alert Live, Big Seminar and many, many more. These types of group coaching programs will usually be for a set period of time like three months and will usually cost you from $1500 to $5000 for the program or they might have a monthly program with a price range from $100 to $500 per month.

Advanced Marketers
Advanced marketers are marketers that are making enough money online to live comfortably. In this case you have a good grasp on the internet marketing systems but you might be able to use some help in expanding or applying advance techniques. This is where the high end coaching programs come in to play. These programs can cost you up to $10,000 per month but if you are in the right position you can definitely profit from this cost.

I, myself, have never been part of one of these programs, yet, but I do personally know a number of people who have gone through the programs and I have seen their income soar.

I have also seen beginner marketers fork over the bucks for this type of coaching and the only thing they got back from it was an emptier wallet. I not saying they didn’t learn anything but you have to progress in steps.

I seriously doubt there is anybody that thinks you can go from pedestrian to world class grand prix race driver in one step. The same is true for internet marketing, you have to take the steps and you have to be ready to take the next step instead of trying to leap to the end.

Always keep the end in sight but make sure you know the steps it takes to reach that goal and take those steps and only those steps that move you toward your goal.

This is my first post in response to a request from the Tell Me What You Want Post.

The request was to provide help that would keep people on track.

The answer to that is focus!

Let’s start with your to do list. You don’t have a to do list?

Well that is a problem right there. I recommend you create a daily, a weekly and a monthly to do list.

Create the monthly list first and put everything you can think of on this list. If you create the monthly list like I do it will be daunting. I have never finished a monthly to do list in one month. But it is more to remind me what I need to do.

Next break down the monthly list to a week list, the stuff you plan to do in one week. The week list should be what you actually think you can get done in one week plus one or two other items. This list should be put in order of what you think is the most important. This list should be one that challenges you but doesn’t give you that feeling of despair when you look at the size of it.

Next break down the week list into your daily list. Put the most important items first, you should already have these sorted. Now you do the items on your list. Make sure you do one item at a time and only one item at a time and this should be the first item (the most important one) on your list. DO NOT go to any other items on your list until you finish the first one.

Your daily list should be enough to challenge you but not enough to give you a reason to avoid the list. You might know what I am talking about, sometimes you work so hard to get the things done that need to be done that you get “burnt out” and you start looking for excuses to avoid the work. You know like, “I will do it right after I watch my favorite TV show.” Or “I am not in the mood to do this now.”

If you are having those types of thoughts you are probably working too hard and you are probably working in burst.
I know I have done this is the past, work a 20 hour day building a website and get it 90% done but then when it comes time to go back to it I remember all the aggravation from the 20 hour day and I tended to avoid it. I use to have tons of unfinished projects because of this.

Now I make my daily list smaller instead of having the one item building a website I break it down to things like:

• Get Graphics
• Install script
• Upload Products
• Start Sales Copy

Then I set my time limits by deciding how long I am going to work that day. Some days it is only one hour other days I will actually schedule a 10 hour day (that is because I like what I do and I take pride in the fact that I answer almost all the emails that come to me but I limit my responses to 2 hours per day. You add that 2 hours to 8 hours of work and you will get my 10 hour day)

Start with the first item on your list and don’t do anything else until that is done. Then go on to the next item. When your time is up, stop working, and whatever you didn’t finish will go to the top of the next day’s list.

If you are almost done with one item on your list it is OK to work past your time limit a little. Please note the little part. Don’t put in an extra 2 or 3 hours or you might end up in the “burnt out” category and dread going back to work on it. But an extra 15 or 20 minutes won’t hurt.

Tell people what you are doing and when you expect to be done.

By declaring to other people what you are doing you are making yourself responsible for achieving what you say. No one likes to be taunted with, “You said you were going to do this and all you did was sit on the couch and watch TV”

You would be surprised at how effective this is to keep you on track.

Get an accountability partner!

An accountability partner is just finding someone, preferably someone that is doing a similar project, and getting in touch with them every day or every other day. This can be a short phone call or email all you do is ask what are you doing, what do you plan to achieve and what did you do.

I would go something like this:

(Jerry) Hi Randy, time to be accountable, the last time we spoke you said you were going to get the script set up on your site. How are you doing?

(Randy) Hi Jerry, the script is installed but I haven’t tested it yet.

(Jerry) Ok, so I will assume you will be testing the script before our next call. What is your next step toward reaching your goals?

(Randy) Besides testing the script, I need to start rounding up JV partners.

(Jerry) OK that sounds good. How many people do you plan to contact before the next call?

(Randy) I will contact 5 people.

After this Randy would ask Jerry similar questions. The next call would follow up on the script testing and the contacting people.

As you can see the question asker doesn’t set the goals, you set your own goals, but they are there to remind you that you have these goals and that you need to take the steps to reach your goals. Again when you are accountable to another person it has a tendency to create a greater desire in you to achieve.

Remember: Desire + Action = Success

I swear with every new product that launches that is guaranteed to make you a millionaire over night I receive 20 or 30 emails about the product. They all say the same thing, “Give Joe Blow your money so I can get some of it!”

The worse part is that all the emails say the exact same thing with a different name on it. I mean literally this time not metaphorically, they all use the sample email sent out by the creator of the product.

I don’t know about you but the way I see it is if the person sending me the email doesn’t have the time or willingness to write an email that tells me how they feel about the latest and greatest money grabber then how did they find the time to look at the product?

If they haven’t looked at the product how can they recommend it to me?

People actually believe the hype sent out in the email and purchase the new money grabber that will make them rich. The fact that they buy it isn’t the bad part, the bad part is a vast majority of the money givers never use the product they just look at it quickly and put it in the shelf help section of their lives and then complain about it not working.

When you purchase a product USE IT, if it doesn’t deliver on all the hype either contact the creator and ask them what is wrong or request a refund. I am amazed at how many people I have seen buy a $1,000 product and complain, complain, complain but never request a refund. Worse yet, quite often, they are complaining about their own lack of action with the product and their complaint would be solved if they read page 37 or did step 12.

Yes, I am an Internet Marketer.

Yes, I want you to give me your money but I want to earn it.

Do I promote everything that I am asked to promote? No!

Do I promote products that I haven’t tried yet? No!

Am I a minority among Internet Marketers? I think I am but I wish I wasn’t.

I am in the position where I get the joint venture invite most of the time but I don’t always get the product. This means they want me to email my list about something I don’t know anything about. If their sales page convinces me to buy they might get lucky and I might send out an email for them after I have tried their product but definitely not before I try it.

But this is getting off the track, we were talking about giving away your money.

It all boils down to the consumer. As long as there are people that buy the, “Make $5,000 In The Next 24 Hours” products there are going to be these types of products that don’t work.

As long as there are people that purchase a product because of the hype on the sales page there will be hyped up products.

As long as there are people that don’t request refunds for a product that doesn’t live up to the hype of the sales page there will be products that don’t live up to the hype.

Now comes a key for everybody that is starting out.

QUIT BUYING AND START PRODUCING!

This was told to me by Sterling Valentine when I got into his coaching program and is probably the best advice I ever received from a coaching program.

What he meant by this was that I was at a point where I needed to stop spending money and apply what I had already learned.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t buy anything but you should focus on what your goals are and your path to getting there. In other words if your plan is related to adsense you can purchase programs on adsense and apply what you learn (remember if the product doesn’t live up to the hype of the sales letter ask for a refund) and you keep on working with adsense until you start making some money. Then once you have figured out how to make money with adsense on a consistent basis then you can think about getting into something else.

Don’t read this wrong and think you have to start with adsense before you go to something else. You can start in any area you like. The key thing is to keep learning until you figure it out.

This means learning from your mistakes. Everybody fails, all the top marketers have had products and sites that didn’t work. But they didn’t give up, they learned from their failures and moved on.

There is enough good information on the internet right now for free to get you started in almost any niche. Unfortunately there is three or four times as much bad information. The only way to tell the difference is to try it. Sorry, but that is the only way I know, until you try you won’t know what works and what doesn’t

To summarize this wordy post:

Don’t buy any product unless it is moving you toward your goals.

If you buy a product and it doesn’t live up to the hype request a refund.

If you buy a product USE IT. How can you tell if it works or not if you don’t use it.

Never buy a product you don’t plan on using right away. If you say you will get to it next week or next month you will probably end up with two more products you never open.