The ten commandments in the Hebrew bible is something that if followed, can certainly help promote harmony in our lives and in the lives of others. It can be considered a basic road map of principles on which to live our life. Life doesn’t come with an owners manual, so often times we learn the laws of cause and effect the hard way.
Stick your finger in the fire and you get burned. Guidelines for our lives can help us avoid some of those un-pleasantries by heeding the advice given by others. The learned ones who have been down that path and have made the mistakes so you don’t have to.
Well now, I give to you the Ten Commandments of Internet Business. There was no trip to the mountain top with a burning bush. No golden tablets zapped out by a divine presence. Just something to help guide and keep you on the right hand path.
1. You Shall Take Action
Action is the key to everything. If there were ever a magic formula, it could be summed up in one word, ‘action’. Poverty is merely the visible manifestation of inaction.
2. Diversify Your Income Streams
Never depend on one source of income. Once you have a stable source of income such as from your own product, diversify into other markets. Also, add affiliate income for digital & physical products, as well as CPA to your repertoire.
3. Diversify Your Traffic Sources
Never depend solely on one source of traffic. SEO is great, but then you’re at the mercy of the Search Engines. Same with PPC (Pay Per Click). Add other strategies as well (Blogs, forums, articles, E-Zine advertising, banner ads, CPM, etc.).
4. Forsake Not Your Customers
Supporting your customers is one of the single most important elements of your business. If customer service gets to be too much of a bother for you, just start ignoring them. They’ll all go away eventually. Oh, and so will your income.
5. You Shall Not Offer Junk Content
The quality of your content directly reflects the quality of your products or service. Going that extra mile for good quality content will pay for itself forever. If your site is full of scraped, auto-rewritten content, then your visitor will immediately pick up on it and go elsewhere.
6. You Shall Not Enslave Yourself
Define your goals before you go into business. Is it more freedom that you want? If so, don’t get caught in the enslavement trap by trading your own skills for money. You’ll find yourself working 15 hour days for a paltry income. Outsource the work. Collectively, you can get thousands of hours of work accomplished in a week instead of just 60+ and killing yourself to boot. Leverage & scale = profit and more profit!
7. You Shall Not Bear False Info to Your Visitors
Never mis-lead your visitors with hyped up information, false promises and fake testimonials. This kind of stuff will catch up to you fast, and will ruin the one thing that you can’t fix… your reputation.
8. You Shall Not Spam
This one should be obvious. Not only is e-mail spamming illegal, it can get complaints filed against you that can get your domain suspended. Also, spamming the forums & blogs accomplishes little more than pissing people off.
9. Honor Your Mentor
If you have a mentor or marketing coach, listen to what they have to say and carryout their advice. You may sometimes think that they are wrong about some strategies, because they don’t fit comfortably into your perception of how your business should work. Just remember that he/she has already been to the mountain and back, and you are still the grasshopper preparing for the journey.
10. You Are Commanded To Prosper
Sometimes it seems that society has made ‘rich’ a dirty word. It’s OK to be wealthy. Don’t settle for a mediocre existence. Think big! Don’t limit your ambitions to making just enough to pay your bills with a little left over at the end of the day. Be set for life. Our cup was not meant to be empty, or simply to be filled. It is meant to be continuously running over with all the prosperity, joy and good health that the universe has to offer.
Don’t miss out on the wonderful things that surround us in life. Follow these guidelines for your Internet business, and success will be yours for the taking.
Jack,
I am glad to see that the #1 commandment is about taking action. It is by far the biggest step to take every day whether it is in an internet business and even in our personal lives.
By the way, I think the Hebrew writings talk about clay tablets rather than gold.
Cheers, Geoff
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the correction, my bad, LOL.
Glad to see that you acknowledged ‘action’ in the number one spot Geoff! To me, without action, the other commandments just seem irrelevant.
🙂
Hi there Jack,
5. You Shall Not Offer Junk Content
7. You Shall Not Bear False Info to Your Visitors
If internet marketers followed these commandments they’d never make any sales.
Have you ever seen an honest sales page? I know I haven’t.
Have you ever bought anything that does what the sales page says it will do?
No chance of that happening. LOL
I’ve got to the point that when I allow myself to be conned into buying a product I either don’t even download it or, if I do, I just save it to a folder and forget about it.
You forgot commandment #11
Thou Shalt Never Buy anything Because of the PLR or Resell Rights.
They are totally worthless as you will NEVER resell anything.
Not everybody is as gullible as you for buying the IM junk in the first place.
Hi Clive,
I love the 11th commandment! Such an obvious one too, d’oh!
Although PLR stuff can be helpful to get one’s feet wet for selling a product online, I have to agree. The stuff I’ve seen always seem to be re-hashed junk that you can find for free in any marketing forum on the net.
Obviously you’ve been burned a few times. So have I. Live & learn I suppose. I consider it cheap tuition for a valuable education, lol.
With that said, I can think of two sales pages right of the top of my head that DO offer a quality product, does support the customer, and is honest with every selling point of the product.
Those pages are located here:
http://www.amazingcloaker.com
http://www.keifersoft.com/XinglaPro
Hope you had a great holiday Clive! 8)
-Jack
W.C.Fields wrote the 12th.
‘Never give a sucker an even break.’ aka The Marketers’ Creed.
Apropos of nothing, did you know that the inscription on WC Fields’ tombstone is
“On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia”.
On the tombstone of Spike Milligan late Goon, is inscribed, in Irish,
“See, I told you I was sick”.
Love the new commandments. I specially agree with nos 5,7and 8. trust is the basis of any business.
Many good points here. Just one to mention: supporting your customers is one of the most important. After all – the customers are the most important for a business. Thanks for post.
I really like this list. I especially agree with #5 – there’s nothing worse than seeing a site written by software!
#10 is a good one too that I learned a few years ago after reading a book called “Millionaire Mind” (i think?) – I’m not a millionaire, but I have at least accepted its okay to make money and enjoy it!
This time of year with new years resolutions coming up, a list of commandments like this is good inspiration for bloggers 🙂
Chelles last blog post – Juice Recipes For Weight Loss
I think that your first commandment is in a very apt spot. I’ve seen too many people be paralyzed by information overload and never act. Once this happens, it’s impossible to ever get started.
gregs last blog post – Eye Glass Frames: Don’t Get Ripped Off
Another one should be: Do not spend too much money on web hosting. I know too many people who pay $20-$30 a month when they could be paying $5-$10 for the same service if not better. Look around for web hosting and save money to spend on web design and content. I found plans starting at $3.99. One of the web hosts is called http://www.TheBlueKingdom.com – they seem to have great prices and service.