Seven Ps you Need to Succeed

photo credit: TooFarNorth

I was outside watching birds with my cat today – actually I was watching my cat watch the birds and making sure she didn’t fly off the porch after them – when I suddenly realized that an awful lot of the characteristics you need to succeed in internet marketing, or really anything in life, start with the letter P. I started rolling them around in my head and decided I’d write an article about it. Yup, I know it’s a bit hokey, but things are hokey because they are true. No, wait, I think that’s “things are cliched because they are true.” Oh well. If you think it’s too cheesy feel free to bash me in the comments. But, without further ado, here are the seven Ps you need to be to maximize your online profits.

Be Patient

I listed this one first because it was the word that actually triggered this entire post. I was thinking about one of my Adsense sites and how just a month ago it was my most profitable and then it got sandboxed. I did everything I could to prevent it from ending up there, but it was a new domain and there was really nothing I could do. So, as Court suggests in the post I just linked, there’s nothing to do but play the waiting game.

This got me thinking that a lot of success in internet marketing is about waiting. Yes, there are things you can be doing while you wait, but certain projects will require a fair amount of patience before you really see any results. This Adsense site is just one of the many internet marketing projects I have had to wait on in some sense or another. From the very beginning, internet marketing is about waiting: you wait for launch dates, you wait for Google to give you pagerank, you wait for traffic to build as your site is indexed, you wait for… and on and on.

The key to this is mentioned in the last paragraph: there is always something else to do while you are waiting. Because profiting online is all about multiple streams of income, you should never reach a point where you are stuck waiting on one project. If you are waiting on that project, go pick up another. Patience has always been difficult for me. As a kid, I had a record called the Music Machine which I played over and over. Drove my parents nuts. But there was one song I absolutely hated, but its, of course, the one song I still know all the words too. Probably because my mom always used to sing it to me to bug me. Anyway, I found a clip online and it’s no wonder I didn’t like it as a kid. It’s just plain creepy: Herbert the Snail sings “Patience.” Yikes!

Be Persistent

Keep in mind here that I did not choose pushy or pesky, just persistent. When it comes to getting projects done, working with service providers or just getting your creativity flowing, you must be persistent. Don’t confuse this with how you should interact with prospects, readers and other internet marketers. If you want to trade a link, ask. But just once. However, if you can’t seem to get that story written, keep trying until you do.

Sometimes you feel like you have been as persistent as you can and things still aren’t moving along. When this happens to me I use a technique that I also employ when problem-solving. I put it away for awhile – maybe for just a couple of hours or maybe for a whole day. The idea here is that sometimes you are so wrapped up in a project that you become almost part of it. Once you are that into it, it can be very difficult to get the distance you sometimes need to break through a sticking point. If you give it a rest for awhile, you can come back with fresh eyes.

The key to this one is to be persistent, but trust your gut when you feel you might be going too far. If you feel like you are being pushy or just spinning your wheels, take a few steps back or switch to another project for a bit. Chances are, when you return to the original project, you will be able to power through whatever was blocking your path before.

Be Prolific

As a blogger, you have to write. A lot. The more you write, the more traffic you get, the more responses you get and the better you get at writing – which starts the whole cycle over again. This blog has a nice little stream of search engine traffic paired with a great set of regular readers, but I still notice dips in visitors on days when I don’t post. You really need to be putting out lots of fresh, interesting content.

Now, if you feel like you can’t do this, then maybe blogging isn’t for you. Or maybe you are a different kind of blogger. There are certainly successful blogs out there that are only posted to a few times a month or less, but if you are new and trying to build a name, you really need to be prolific with your content.

The key here is to strike a good balance between fresh, new content and high-quality information. If you are putting out loads of crap, there’s no point. So you need to find the level of content you can write comfortably without sacrificing quality. It can sometimes take awhile to do this, especially if you have a bunch of other projects going at the same time.

Be Preeminent

Pick your niche and become the best. I suppose saying “be preeminent” is very oversimplified. You don’t just suddenly become superior in your niche, it’s something you have to work at. Becoming preeminent takes time. You have to put out loads of great content to prove that you are the real deal and then back it up by engaging your readers in the comments.

You don’t have to be the best to be successful. There are many average bloggers that make a living in various niches. However, it is a lot easier to make money online if you are preeminent. Not only does your name proceed you in certain situations, but you can more easily pick up multiple, more lucrative streams of income. Can anybody say “conference speaker?”

The key here is to just focus on always putting out good content. This ties into both the previous points. To become preeminent in your field, you definitely need to be patient. Like I said, preeminence doesn’t happen overnight. And the more prolific you are, the more chances people have to find your content and, by extention, know who you are. If you want to be known as an expert in your niche – and, believe me, you do – don’t just post to your blog. Keep building your blog, but also submit articles to directories, network with other bloggers in complimentary niches and just do everything you can to get your name out there.

Be Productive

This seems so obvious, but it just might be the most difficult P on this list. The kicker about internet marketing is that sometimes even when you feel like you are being productive, you really aren’t. Is that really research for a blog post or are you just watching Family Ties on Joost again? You need to be honest with yourself.

There are a million and eight tools online that can help you increase, measure and compare your level of productivity. You might find one that works and you might find that you are better off just winging it and hoping to meet those deadlines. Personally, I like certain pieces of the Getting Things Done method. Some people hate it, though. When it comes to optimizing your productivity, you need to find the best method for yourself. Luckily, there are tons of resources online to help you explore different tactics.

The key to being productive, like being prolific, is to find a good balance. Not every second spent online needs to be productive, but you don’t want to lose hours to Stumble Upon or Twitter either. What I find helpful is to set a schedule. There is work time and there is play time. If I run into something I want to play with during work time, I add it to my Read it Later queue and keep on working. This can be difficult to do, but you will get better at it as time goes on. If you have been working online for awhile you probably understand what I mean, but it really does get much easier to not get lost in senseless web surfing while you should be working.

Be Positive

Come on, you didn’t think I could have a hokey post like Seven Ps to Succeed without including positivity, did you? Seriously, though. You will find that most successful internet marketers have done at least a little bit of work in the area of personal development. Maybe they don’t publicize it or write about it at all, but “the secret” isn’t just a hot niche right now – it’s also a helpful one. By focusing on the good things, the things that you want in your life – instead of spending all your time trying to get rid of the bad things – you will bring more good things into your life.

Some of you Negative Nancys out there think the law of attraction is a load of bullsh!t. That doesn’t mean working and thinking in a postive manner doesn’t bring about positive results. If you take spirituality out of the equation, you will still get more done in a day spent happily working than a day spent grumbling about how much everything sucks.

The key here is mindset. As I mentioned before, nearly every successful internet marketer – or anyone successful, really – will tell you that having the right attitude can make all the difference. I’m not saying you’ll need to work any less hard than Grumpy Gus, but you will be more likely to succeed because you are working within a mentality of positivity.

Be Preemptive

If you can guess the next big thing, you can be the next big thing. Really. How many times in the last few years have you thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?!” I can think of at least two dozen off the top of my head: YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Blogger, and the list goes on and on. Technology moves fast so in order to be ahead of it you need to – um – move really fast? Basically, yes. If you can get to know your market intimately (not in a creepy way!) enough to predict its movements a few steps ahead, you will be in a prime position to succeed. You can do this by really paying attention to what your readers tell you, staying on top of new developments and watching other successes and failures around you.

You might not care about being the first one to break the news or release a killer product, but you can’t deny that it is a great way to find success. It is not the only way, of course, but I doubt anyone would complain if they conceived and created the next multi-million dollar buy-out. Being ahead of the game is not for everyone. Personally, I’d rather develop ideas than come up with them, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had ideas. I just know where my stengths lie. I’m like the cinnamon in a snickerdoodle. It’s a subtle piece of the recipe, but the entire cookie would be useless without it.

The key here is to be proactive. Think about it. I’m sure the guys at YouTube weren’t the first or only people to think of creating a social video site. However, the difference between them and all the other guys was that the actually did it. You might think your ideas aren’t interesting or original enough, but sometimes it is the simplest of ideas that creates the biggest bang in the long run. If you have an idea, move forward with it. Don’t psyche yourself out with all the ways it could fail, just go. Do something. If you don’t then someone else will and you’ll be left with just a half-baked idea while they’re cashing their huge check.

And there you have it. The Seven Ps you Need to Succeed. I’m sure there are a dozen more Ps you could thing of. And just as many As, Bs and Cs as well. But I thought this was kind of a fun way to frame a post. I like lists and I was getting tired of numbers. Despite my jokes, I really do hope you find this article useful. These are tactics I really have used and continue to use on a regular basis as I work my way toward full-time freedom. What do you think? Did I miss a crucial P? Are Ps passe? Okay, I’m done.