On the surface, internet marketing just works.

On the surface, you just do a few things and everything else just “happens”.

A bit like all most people see of an iceberg is the small part showing above the ocean surface.

Of course, there’s more to both. And since I’m not a marine biologist, I’m going to concentrate on internet marketing for the rest of this article…

If you’re like most people, you’ll look at something, maybe buy a “how to” product relating to it to fill in any gaps in your knowledge (that’s why the Dummies series of books sells so well) and then try it.

It’s at the “try it” stage that the underbelly of the internet starts to loom.

Let’s look at something fairly simple – an autoresponder.

You could do everything it does – keep a list of email names and addresses (near enough every email program offers to help you organise contacts) and send them messages. Either regular messages or mass ones when there’s special news.

In practice, my autoresponder account has three pages just for the basic settings. So the “simple” task has 3 complete screens just so their system knows what information to put in to outgoing emails and how to handle requests to join a list.

Sending messages has 4 options: regular messages, broadcasts, blog broadcasts (different from regular broadcasts) and a template if I want to use one.

The message screen has a further 4 options depending on how I want to construct the message – plain text but with extra help, type in my own HTML code (yikes), drag and drop or the old message creator, which is the one that I use because I’m a creature of habit and can’t be bothered to learn a new interface.

And so it goes on.

Lots more screens and options.

Just to send an email!

The same goes for anything else you encounter on the internet.

Simple stuff is rarely simple.

This means that you can’t hope to know everything about everything.

Which means you need to enlist the help of others.

Hosting companies, domain name registrars, software creators (you’re unlikely to want to recreate WordPress from scratch), maybe graphics creators, maybe copywriters, maybe product creators (that’s why PLR products are popular), payment processors, quite likely affiliates to help you sell your products.

The list goes on.

You’ve got a few choices at this stage:

• Give up – it’s all too daunting
• Wait until you know everything – which could take forever
• Start and catch up on the things you don’t know as you encounter them

The third choice is the one I hope you’re going to take.

If it does seem daunting, start relatively small and work your way up to bigger things.

Ideally, get the help of a friend or mentor.

They’ll help guide you through all the small and seemingly unimportant details that can make or break your internet marketing career.

It’s also useful to get a second pair of eyes to examine what you’re doing. That can speed things up and help spot anything too obvious.

So long as the person you choose is up to date in their knowledge – not a given – and so long as you’re dealing with them, not someone in their outgoing telephone department who’s learning alongside you, there’s a good chance they’ll help you go further, faster. With less mistakes than if you go it alone or use books as your help.

The best way I think is to work a bit like writing a book. This is a good way to create an outline for your internet marketing:

• Choose an area or niche. This is the umbrella for the rest of your internet marketing.
• Choose several sub-areas or sub-niches to cover within that.
• Choose several sub-topics for each of the sub-areas.
• Sketch out anything that needs to happen to make your internet marketing dream turn into reality.

This has a lot of advantages.

For a start, it helps reduce the feeling of overwhelm.

The small steps involved are relatively easy to carry out.

This kind of thinking applies to almost everything we encounter.

Everything from burgers to cars to phones has lots of component parts. Many of those parts are relatively simple but have subtle twists that make them complicated. Safety glass in cars for instance. Or even the special sauce on a burger!

But you won’t know what you don’t know until you start.

If I’d known all the things I didn’t know when I started internet marketing in 1995, I’d never have started.

I had to learn HTML (WordPress didn’t exist, nor did any other site building programs).

I had to learn scary bits of Unix so that file permissions were set correctly – nowadays, that’s automatic almost every time you upload a file as the software takes care of it.

And so on.

But when I started, I didn’t know what was in store for me.

And, actually, I still don’t know.

Just like you, I can guess what’s in store over the next 12 months or whatever.

But until that time has elapsed, I don’t know for sure what will happen.

With experience, I can get it right more often but that’s it.

The same goes for you – you can go with your instincts. And you’ll improve over time.

And keep notes – there’s way too much to remember without a checklist, so keep notes of what you’ve done, what worked and what didn’t work.

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments box below.