Internet marketing is very much like one of those almost impossible jigsaws of an ocean scene.

You get a big picture but it all looks almost the same – complicated and confusing.

And you get a few clues (the corners if we keep using the jigsaw analogy) that give you a start and some hope.

The other complication is that, much like the ocean itself, the picture itself is constantly moving.

So how can you make sense of it all?

Part of the trick with internet marketing is to not worry too much about the whole thing making sense.

And definitely not to worry about knowing everything there is to know.

You just need to know enough to go forward without making too many costly blunders.

• Will you make mistakes? Yes.
• Will some of them cost you time or money or both? Yes,
• Will it be the end of the world? Almost certainly not!

It’s all part of the learning curve.

You just need to know enough about what you’re doing to get started.

That usually means something like this:

• Know which niche you want to market to
• Have a domain name, some hosting and WordPress installed on it
• Start creating some content on it and weave in some affiliate links
• Keep creating some content – on your own website and elsewhere on places like YouTube
• Occasionally monitor what’s happening and adjust what you’re doing if necessary, keeping in mind that the internet sometimes moves fast but often moves slowly and checking too often is like watching paint dry

The rest of the 1,001 pieces of the jigsaw can often happily stay in that messy pile on the table, waiting until you put them back in the box ready for your next attempt next Christmas.

Because finishing the internet marketing jigsaw is something that’s not going to happen.

You might get it started – hopefully that’s the case for you.

But it will never truly be finished because there are always new things coming along that will affect it.

Some are like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane.

Others are ripples you’ll barely notice.

Change is always happening and your website will always be affected by that change.

New sites are always appearing, old sites can disappear or change focus or strategy. Existing sites can do more promotion or can be left to rot or may just stay roughly the same.

Fads – by definition – come and go.

The way people search changes – we used to type in one or two words, now it’s more or the search could even be spoken into your phone which is often closer to a real question.

Keeping on top of the changes is something best left to the experts. Let them pore over the data, try to make sense of it and give you the executive summary that’s still probably too long to read right the way through!

Keep to the basics

The basics don’t really change:

• Written content – well written, in your own voice (not the voice of someone anonymous from somewhere across the globe), created regularly
• Video content – maybe your written content transformed into a slide show and read out loud by you, maybe something fancier
• Possibly forums or Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn – that depends on your market and your time availability and your self discipline. If you can just hop in and out of those sites, post something and then almost instantly get back onto other things, that’s good, If you get drawn in and suddenly an hour or two has vanished, that’s bad
• Remember you’re dealing with real people!

Do that with your internet marketing and you’ve cracked the 80/20 rule.

You’ll be spending 80% upwards of your time on the 20% (or more likely 2%) that actually counts.

And if you’d like help with that, take a look here.