Internet Marketers, and Bringing Something to the Table

If you plan to show up to the party, bring something. I'm sure that's a rule of etiquette that most of us are familiar with. It's also a good tactic if you'd like to make strong and profitable connections in the world of online marketing.

I know that it's really difficult to make the full transition from the working person's mindset to the free-wheeling online business mentality. It has taken me probably 14 years to come to a full understanding of just how different these two worlds are.

I started thinking about this again recently when I posed a question to some of my writer friends. I threw it out there that if any writers out there don't have a website yet, they might send me some PLR packs to sell on Wordfeeder.

My idea was that maybe I could handle all of the administrative details, plus the marketing and promoting. Then I could take a piece of the profit by setting them up as an affiliate right in our membership area. They write and sell, I promote and sell. Everybody makes money. Win-win.

Of course, I don't have all the details of this worked out. I don't even know if it would be worth the risk. What if the writing that they gave me wasn't up to my standards? What if they didn't care for the way I handled the selling of their products?

But I thought it interesting that most of the writers who showed interest in this idea had questions but not really anything for me to look at.

I recently approached a few marketing experts who have things to teach me about earning money on the web. As I've mentioned many times before, I'm a seasoned copywriter and I've served many, many clients via this website. But now that I'm selling PLR, it's a different scene. So I'm in a learning and growth phase.

sI'm not going to pretend to be an expert at selling PLR. I'm an expert at writing, yes. But online selling and affiliate income - no, I've only just begun.

So anyway, I was trying to figure out what I should do to show these experts that there's value in associating with me, and that I appreciate the things I'm learning from them and I want to give back.

I figured that I'd better be prepared. So, I approached a couple of PLR pros with some content packs that I'd already written up and created sales pages for.

My feeling on all this is that it's such a different scene from the corporate world from whence I came. Sure, you want your employer to know that you will add value to the team. But you also want to know what you'll be getting from working for them. Will it be a fat salary? A nice 401K package, or some cushy benefits?

You can't go into online marketing with this kind of mindset. For years and years, I've heard the phrase "You have to give to get" but it sounded so cliche that the meaning escaped me. So now I have a better understanding of this.

It means that if you plan to show up to the party, bring something of value. The "thing" that you bring could be a referral of someone who's helped you. That adds value to both parties - the person who's looking for business, and the one who needs a service provider.

The thing that you bring could be a free or low-priced course that you're teaching. Maybe you end up volunteering to share the course at a group teaching event. Perhaps if you're in the PLR selling world, you show up with pre-written content to give away, or an offer for someone else to promote, where all your i's are already dotted and all your t's are already crossed.

If you want to be successful in online marketing, you have to make it a pleasure for other people to do business with you. That means getting your ducks all in a row. I'm working hard on doing this for my people. Are you?