The top ten internet marketing gurus. Are they your friends? Do they have your best interests at heart? Are they there to help you like they say? The truth is, probably not. Let me tell you a little story.

A little over three years ago when I started in the internet marketing business, I was about as green as they come. I was pretty much the stereotypical “newbie”. Yeah, I knew some stuff about computers. I could surf the net, send emails, share videos, and bombard my friends’ inboxes with the latest stupid jokes. Heck, I was darn near a guru myself, right?

But ask me about html, css, php, ppc, seo, or ctr and my response would have been, “What?” I had heard about some of those things, but I didn’t have a clue to what they really were. Oh, I knew that html was what you needed to make a webpage and that php was some kind of code to get things done (I had looked them up on Google), but to try and use any of them myself, well, let’s just say that it wasn’t going to happen realistically. I mean, I did my best to help myself and didn’t do too bad a job considering. Google searches became my best friend, I read article after article about building websites, doing keyword research, and internet marketing in general. What I found though was that this stuff was either in technical jargon that I didn’t really understand or it seemed that there was always something left out.

I am new, I am stuck, and I need some help. That was my cry when I had gone as far as I could on my own. When I said that, I swear I could hear big butcher knives being sharpened and guns being loaded somewhere in the background. The gurus smelled blood and knew they had some fresh meat. I had been getting some emails that said these top ten internet marketing gurus had the answer. They could show me the “Magic Button” to push to make $16,546.97 practically overnight and all on autopilot. All I had to do was pull my credit card out of my wallet, give them $197.00, and I would have instant access to the “Secret Formula to Internet Marketing Success”.

Gosh, this was wonderful. I had some guys that had made so much money at internet marketing that they were famous and they were going to give me the keys to the golden goose. I was excited. I was thrilled and overjoyed. I couldn’t wait to pull my credit card out, pay my $197.00, get my instant access to the “Secret Formula”, and make all that money by tomorrow. Heck, I would be retired by the end of the month. So, in case you can’t tell already, I bought the program. I got my instant access and prepared to put the “Secret Formula” to work for me.

Well, there were some things in there I didn’t really understand, but hey, this was a push button program, I didn’t have to understand it all. Oh, wait, I need to build a website for it to work. Uh, what’s this? I need to buy a domain for my website? How and where do I do that? Hmmm, then I need hosting for my domain so that my website will show up on the internet. What the heck is hosting and where do I find it? Oh well, not to worry, I have Google searches and I will find out.

Google search is a wonderful thing, it even introduced me to the top ten internet marketing gurus. It also showed me where and how to buy a domain and what hosting was and where to get it. So, maybe it wouldn’t be tomorrow when I was rich, but now that I had all the preliminaries worked out, it would be the next day for sure. And sure enough, two weeks later when I finally had my rudimentary website sort of put together, online, and ready to turn my computer into an ATM machine, nothing happened.

Whoa, what was going on here? I had this $197.00 push button system that would rake in the money on autopilot. What was wrong? Was my push button malfunctioning? Maybe my autopilot was asleep at the wheel. No problem, I would just contact the gurus that I had bought it from and they would give it a jump start. Easy peasy. I was really learning my way around this internet marketing stuff. So, I sent the email off to the gurus. These were the top ten internet marketing gurus and they could fix anything, right?

Okay, now we were cooking. Three weeks later when I finally got my answer to the seventeen emails I had sent to the top ten internet marketing gurus, the problem was identified and a solution was provided. It seemed that I had somehow missed the one time never to be seen again special offer for the traffic generating program when I had made my original purchase. I wasn’t getting any traffic to my website, so therefor I wasn’t making my almost overnight $16,546.97. Now the traffic generating program had been heavily discounted for the one time never to be seen again special offer. I could have had it then for $97.00 but now it had gone back up to its regular price of $237.00. But, seeing as how I had purchased the “Secret Push Button On Autopilot” program, I could have the traffic generating program for a discounted price of only $179.00. I just wasn’t supposed to tell anyone else that they had done this for me. Hey, I knew a deal when I saw one and I wanted to be making my almost overnight $16,546.97.

I was no dummy, so out came the credit card again. Now I had my instant access to the traffic generating program, I was going to start having tons of traffic to my website. Heck, I might even make more than $16,546.97 almost overnight on autopilot with all that traffic. I put that traffic generating program to work and waited to see my computer turn into the ATM machine.

A month and a half later I was checking my traffic stats. That traffic generating program had done the trick. Why, the previous month I had had FIVE visitors to my website. And two of those were search engine bots. One visitor had even left a comment: “I like your site, you really overshadow the subject good. I will come back for more and I have subscribed to your feed” http://.com. I was hitting the big time, I had traffic and was starting to get comments. I was still waiting for my computer to turn into an ATM machine though.

I have to admit, I was starting to get a little discouraged. Then I got the phone call from someone that was associated with the top ten internet marketing gurus that I had bought the “Secret push button on autopilot” program from. They explained that since I was new to internet marketing I probably needed their personal coaching program to help me along. They told me that their program was designed to help me reach at least $150,000.00 for a year. I could sign up for only $327.00. They emailed me some information about what kind of money I could expect to be making if they helped me along and how they would hold my hand every step of the way. I hadn’t seen my computer turn into an ATM machine yet and I knew I was still a little lost so it sounded like a good deal to me.

They said that I could pay the $327.00 with my credit card and that they would email a contract for me to sign and email back. Okay, out came the credit card again. The contract arrived and I started reading it over. It all looked good until I got down to the last few pages. That is where I found that the $327.00 fee was a down payment and the contract was a finance contract that obligated me to $3,969.00 plus interest. I checked back with these people to see what was going on. They told me not to worry about it that their coaching would bring me in enough extra cash that the contract could be paid off in no time. My whole coaching program would essentially be free. I told them no deal!

If all this sounds too familiar it is because this is a mostly true story. I did embellish in some parts to make my point. The bottom line is, I did finally find a coach that helped me get my business going in the right direction. My problem had been that I had been suffering from SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome). Because I was new and didn’t really know what I was doing, thought that the top ten internet marketing gurus must have the “Secret Formula For Internet Marketing Success”, and I wasn’t getting the results I expected from one program, I was jumping from one program to another. That is not the way to make this into a successful business.

In order to be a success in this business, you have to focus on one thing and give it time to work. You need to treat this business as a business, have a plan, take action on that plan, and follow through. I hope that my experiences will help you avoid some of the same problems that I ran into. I made a vow to myself early on that if I ever made it in this business that I was going to help people new to the business so they wouldn’t fall prey to the top ten internet marketing gurus. Here is to your success.