The Hopping Frog Approach to Internet Marketing

Just as a frog hops from one lily pad to another in case there's something better on the next one, so the newbie Internet Marketer jumps from one tactic to another to try and get instant results.

The Hopping Frog syndrome is very common and comes about for one very good reason. The simple fact is you want to succeed and as you're new and short on experience, you're prepared to accept what you're told by others who appear to know more than you do. And very soon you'll have the world queuing at your door to tell you they've got the secret that will make you rich and you're ready to believe them.

To succeed in any online business you have to get traffic coming to your site - without it you'll do absolutely zero business. So the Holy Grail is finding the way to generate that traffic and here's where those rear legs start limbering up.

What do you do You buy traffic as that's what it's all about isn't it The offer of having 1,000s of people visiting your site is just too tempting and can't possibly fail. Yes, the traffic might come but there's no guarantee that they'll buy what you're selling.

Then you hop to the next lily pad and buy ads, as you're told this is the most effective way to attract targeted buyers. OK, they might buy but possibly not in the numbers you were expecting and you might not even have covered the cost of your ads. The rear legs flex once more and hop onto the next tempting offer as this will be the one that does it - and so on and so on and before you know it, you've done a lot of meaningless hopping and blown a lot of cash with little to show for it.

Don't get me wrong, the options mentioned above are genuine ways to attract traffic to your site along with countless others but it's not guaranteed. As with most things in life, you have to know what you're doing to make it work well.

So, what can you do to avoid the hopping frog approach

First and foremost you must be clear on what your objectives are.

Then you must determine your budget and stick to it regardless. It still might be that you're paying to learn but if your budget is set right and you stick to it, you won't get into trouble.

Measure everything that you do. There are plenty of programs out there to enable you to keep track of the results of your efforts. Knowing what works and what doesn't is extremely vaulable information.

Do research. Picking other people's brains is a good idea and there are plenty of resources available online. There are internet marketing forums where you can find out what others do (and don't do) to achieve their success and it's available to you free of charge.

Look for free or low cost ways to get traffic. Getting links from sites with a lot of traffic is one way. Writing and giving away free articles with a link back to your site is another. Be creative and look for other ways that will cost you next to nothing. It just takes a little research.

Nothing happens overnight. So when you've decided on your traffic generating approach that's reasonable and within your budget, have patience and give it a fair trial. Only if it becomes obvious that it's not working as expected, do you consider abandoning it for something else.

Internet Marketing can be a low cost way to creating a succesful business, with a little research and patience. But who knows, you might find the Holy Grail straight away.