Internet Business, not Internet Marketing

Yesterday evening my friend Jolly Tan and my mentor Shi Heng Cheong, organized a gathering for some of TIMM and Shi’s SEO workshop past participants. TIMM stands for The Internet Money Machine, and SEO means Search Engine Optimization. The turnout was quite encouraging. Everyone was sharing their insights, lessons learned, and tips and tricks in the meeting.

I was given an opportunity to share with the participants what I had learned from Armand Morin’s Big Seminar 8, held in Atlanta, Georgia, October this year. I guess I was the only person from Singapore who attended the Big Seminar. This seminar featured a faculty of many well-known gurus : Matt Bacak, Alex Mandossian, Dr Mike Ming-Woo, Stephen Pierce, Ryan Deiss, Rich Schefren, Stu Mcleran, Sylvie and Michele Fortins, Jim Edwards and last but not least, Armand Morin, the organizer himself.

It was an amazing event. Three dyas of solid learning, excitement, and networking. Amongst the students were Joel Comm, Tom Kulzer, Rick Raddazt and many experienced internet marketers. Indeed this is a seminar for marketers, not so much for techies. It is also a pre-sales platform for the speakers. All speakers had something to sell, physical product, books, Internet training or boot camps.

Amongst the topics addressed were Internet Strategies and Mind Set (which benefits me the most), Affiliate Marketing, Lead Generation, Outsourcing, Teleseminar, Video technology etc..etc. All in all it was loaded with cutting edge information.

Something subtle actually happened to me for the three days I was there. It was the change of mind set as the result of attending the Big Seminar 8. Whereas before I was looking at Internet marketing from a very opportunistic angle, now I look at Internet as a serious business. I now call my Internet venture Internet Business, not Internet Marketing. Of course, marketing still remain an important part in Internet business. Nevertheless, I now look at all my Internet ventures from point of view of an investor. Meaning, it no longer as simple as register a domain name, put on some websites, set up Ad-sense account, then wait for the windfall. (which hasn’t happen to me yet).

I now evaluate every internet venture as an investor, and asking questions like:

What is the business model? What is the ROI? How long before break even? What are the strategies in place? What is the niche aimed at? What about competitors? What are strengths and weaknesses of the business model? …and so on.

This was part of what I shared with the TIMM and SEO group last night. Stay tune for more………