Is The Advice You're Taking On Target For You?

By Bonnie Boots

The web excels at delivering information, always fast and often free. Ask any question you can think of and the answer is instantly available through a simple search.

Or, more likely, thousands of answers are available, all claiming they are the solution you need.

The problem, then, when you have a question, is not how to find an answer but how to find the answer that's right for YOU.

You intuitively know how important it is to choose the answer that's right for you when the question you're asking is about health. If you have arthritis, for example, you'll naturally feel more confident taking advice and information from a doctor specializing in arthritis or from someone with the same health challenge as you.

It's human nature–we generally assume that what works for someone in our condition will work for us.

But for some reason, most of us forget this when the question is not about health, but about business.

I'm often dismayed when I work with a client and find them slavishly following advice from some expert or guru, even though that advice does not suit their business. When I point this out to clients, they'll say, “But this is what Expert X teaches, and he's made millions.”

Making millions is commendable, but it's no guarantee that every bit of advice that comes from that expert applies to you. The question you have to ask in the face of expert advice is “Does this apply to me, to the type of business I have and the stage it's in right now?”

Let me give you an example. Last year a woman I'd met in a forum asked me to look at her site and give her some advice.” I've been paying Expert X for training and I've done everything he says,” she told me. “But I've been at it full time for a whole year, and all I've earned is $1.50.”

Imagine…one dollar and fifty cents for a year's work.

Something was clearly wrong.

When I looked at the site, it was easy to see why this woman wasn't making money. The site had only one means of generating revenue–Google AdSense. There was no original content. The site's many articles were all Private Label Rights material, duplicated on countless sites across the internet. And the design was so confusing that it took me three long visits before I figured out the navigation scheme.

The site owner claimed she was painstakingly following a certain expert, but I was dubious. No one with any credibility would have advised these costly mistakes. I asked to see the reports she'd been buying, and after reading them, quickly found her problem

The woman I met in the forum came from a family that was deeply involved in dog care and training, They'd trained the winners of many important dog shows and had run their own school for many years. This woman hoped to put her family experience to work by writing and selling an ebook and also by offering phone consultations to people with problem pets.

She needed a web site that would position her as an expert in her field and promote the sale of the book and consulting service.

She had done what so many experts advise. She's picked out a successful internet marketer and modeled herself after his success. The problem was, the man she'd picked to model was very successful at earning money with Google AdSense.

He taught people to put up numerous sites that were designed for one single purpose–to get people to click on Google's ad links.

This type of site doesn't expect people to stay around and visit. It doesn't even want them to stay around. Instead, it wants them to leave, and fast, by clicking on one of the many AdSense links. The site then earns anywhere from five cents to several dollars for what's called a “click-through.”

The design and content of these sites is purposely poor. If you only make money when people leave your site, then offering them poor content and design is a good way to encourage them to click away.

But remember, this woman's ultimate purpose was NOT to drive people away. She wanted to build name recognition, position herself as an expert and start selling the family's valuable information.

I asked the dog trainer why she'd chosen a role model for her web site that was so vastly different from the type of business she was trying to build. “This guy says he makes ten thousand dollars every month on AdSense, “ she told me. “So I figured I'd get a couple thousand coming in from AdSense and then get to work on my book.”

With this in mind, she'd turned away fro the most valuable thing she owned--her family's expert information. And to make matters worse, she hadn't paid careful attention to the AdSense advice she was buying.

Her AdSense expert was teaching people to pick topics that pay a high click-through rate and to then put up numerous web sites on those topics. He then advised all sorts of ways to drive traffic to the sites. This expert said he had 500 sites, some of which paid $25 for each click-through. That's how he made thousands.

But imagine that his average click-through was not dollars, but a measly 25 cents. Imagine each site attracted only one visitor a day. With 500 sites, he'd still make $125 a day.

Why was the dog trainer failing to make money with a system that earned even when it wasn't working well?

Because she hadn't followed the expert's advice. 

She hadn't put up many sites. She'd put up one. She hadn't picked a subject with a high click rate. She'd picked the subject she was expert in, dog care, which had a click-through rate of five cents. And she'd done almost nothing to attract traffic to her single web site.

A year later, there she was, with $1.50 to her name and still very far away from her goal of becoming established as an author and expert.

In essence, she was like a man who wants to build a boat and sail to Jamaica. But he goes not to a boatman, but to a shoemaker for advice. So our adventurer ends up building a shoe, but because he doesn't really follow instructions, his shoes have no heel or laces. And in the end, all our adventurer does is trip over his own feet in shoes he can't sail to Jamaica.

Though our adventurer and our dog trainer both had specific goals, each chose to take advice from someone that was not an expert in achieving those particular goals. And both adventurer and dog trainer failed to meticulously follow what advice they did get. No wonder they failed!

How do smart people end up making such stupid mistakes? Simply because they get lost in an avalanche of information and forget to ask themselves–every step of the way–these 2 critical questions:

1.Does this expert advice relate to my specific business?

An expert on making goat cheese may be word famous in their field, but their expertise will be of little help to your shoe repair business. Any business needs some common generalities like a business plan, a product, a target market and more. But the devil, as they say, is in the details! Be sure the details of the expert advice you follow apply to your specific business.

2. Does it apply to the stage my business is in right now?

A business in the start-up stage has very different needs then a business that's been around for 5 years. An established business has resources like income, a client base and systems in place for things like bookkeeping, outsourcing and sales. A start-up has to build these resources. When an expert says, “I outsource every bit of my business,” the start-up has to say “He has built relationships with people he uses for outsourcing. He's built up the income to pay for outsourcing. These are things I can aspire to, but they don't suit the state of my business today.”

 Information and advice are not one-size-fits-all. It's up to you to determine whether or not it's appropriate to you.

 
About the Author

Bonnie Boots is the publisher/editor of The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to create their own products and market on the internet. Register for your free 1-year subscription at http://www.theinternetwizards.com