How to learn internet marketing

Let me take you back to the year 2009… I was struggeling to put my life back together after a car accident and I was reading tons of personal development and success books at the local library.

Thats when I came acros “The 4-hour work week” by Tim Ferris and my life changed forever… That book is responsible for me spending the last 10 years figuring out this work from home and online marketing stuff that should help me get total time and money freedom.

OMG it has been a bumpy ride. So here is my advice to you if you are looking to learn this field. I promise you there is a lot of work envolved but the journey and the results are worth it!

I think we can all agree that learning anything takes time and effort. Some things take longer to learn than others.

But how do you learn internet marketing and is it really so hard to master?

In learning theory there are 4 Stages Of Learning…

Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence

“I Don’t Know that I Don’t Know”

At this stage I am in a state of blissful ignorance. Like a baby 🙂 You have a complete lack of knowledge and skills in the subject in question.

Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence

“I Know that I Don’t Know”

Stage 2 is a very difficult stage. Here you find that there are new skills you need to learn, and is is very frustrating comparing yourself to others who master what you are trying to learn. It can be a serious confidence killer unless you have a lot of experience learning new things and know it is just a stage.

Stage 3 – Conscious Competence

“I Know that I Know”

Finally you got this! You put your learning into practice and you feel good doing the actions and tasks involved. You still need to concentrate on the performance of these activities, but as you gain more practice and experience, these skills becomes increasingly automatic.

Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence

“I Don’t Know that I Know – I am functioning ‘auto-pilot‘”

At this stage your new skills are now habits, and you perform the task and exercise your  skills without conscious effort – You are functioning “on-auto-pilot” in “Flow” and soon you go look for new things to learn 🙂

You have probably heard of the “10,000-Hour Rule”, based on a study by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson? Ericsson states that great achievement (based on great competence) requires an enormous time, 10,000 hours to be precise.

So lets say you put in 5 hours per day it will take you 2000 hours to become a master. That is almost 5,5 years!

So, the first step to learning internet marketing (and anything else) requires you to understand that to master the skills involved, you are looking at a long process.

I don’t mean to discurrage you. I am just pointing out that you CAN learn this even if you seem to be stuck at stage 2 right now. It is all about consistent baby steps.

And you will get results along the way, you don’t have to wait 5 years to start to see the fruit of your efforts. And also, you could cut off years of learning if you reach out and find a mentor to show you the ropes. Mentoring is still the most proven way to really learn anything.

If you feel you could use a marketing mentor right about now, don’t hesitate to reach out. I would love to shave of a couple of years of your learning curve. just PM me on Facebook or send an email to marlene (at) marlenekristensen.com

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And subscribe to the blog, because I will be posting a blog series on how to learn internet marketing from scratch, it is going to be epic!