Sebastian Ashear

Learning to filter out the noise in Internet marketing is the key to success. “Noise” in IM can come in number of forms, but what they all have in common is that they hold you back from getting real work done. They distract you from taking action and action is where money is made.

One of the worst ways to waste your time is to participate in forums. This might sound quite different from what gurus tell you, but here is my reasoning… Most forums consist of a lot of different conversations all taking place at once, but fundamentally in IM you see:

• Buzz or trends – This talk is usually focused on “what if” scenarios that 99% of the people talking about have not even tested.  For example, when Google updated in May, everybody came out of the woodwork on a variety of forums and started crying for help.  A month has passed and most of that conversation has died down.  However, the people that got very worried and lost sleep over the update didn’t get very much real work done.
• How do I {insert broad term here} – IM forums are notorious for these questions being asked.  The most common question is “how do I make money online?” and it is followed by many negative replies on most forums.  I’d like to say that it is the forum’s fault for not making their information easy to find (sometimes that is the case).  However, more often than not, the people asking these questions are basically afraid of risk.  And that is the topic of a new post entirely.
• A lot of other discussions that I see are just variations of these risk avoidance topic starters.

What we all need to realize is that these conversations are usually a big waste of our time.  If you want to start making more money online, then you need to approach these forums with a goal in mind.

A good goal when you log into a forum would be to solve a specific problem such as, “How do I install wordpress”.

A bad goal would be going to a forum to find a money making method.  A goal like this is going to leave you with less money in your wallet and also in a different direction than when you first logged in.

I’m not trying to get too off topic here, but what I’m trying to point out is that when you start mixing things like forums into your business, you need to learn how to filter out the pointless information.  When you sit down at your computer to work, you need to look at your time and actions in relation to how much money you make from them.