An internship is on the job training – it used to be called work experience when I was younger.
The logic behind being an intern is that you get the necessary experience in whatever (usually white collar) job you’ve got the internship in and can then use that experience to get a paid job in the future.
Some internships are paid but a lot aren’t.
If you’re paying out more for your internet marketing than you’re bringing in. Or if you’re getting paid well below the minimum wage for your internet marketing endeavours then, at best, you’re an intern in your own business.
What can you do if that’s the case?
The first thing is to recognise that your position in your own company is unpaid.
It’s easy to fool yourself and tell yourself that the money and time you’re spending is an investment in the future.
That may be true.
Or it may not.
Only you really know – but only if you step back for long enough to evaluate what you’re spending in terms of money and time and what – if any – income you’re getting back.
A back of the envelope calculation is probably good enough for this.
Jot down all the direct overheads that you incur whether or not you make any money:
- Domain name
- Hosting
- Autoresponder
- etc.
Then all the indirect expenses:
- Paid subscriptions
- PDFs, videos and other instructional material that you buy on a regular or irregular basis
- Fiverr gigs to get content or help promote your website
- Articles and other content that you have created for you
- Solo ads
- Google and Facebook ads
- etc.
Then put your income down in a separate column:
- Affiliate sales
- Advertising commission
- Your own product sales
- etc.
When you do this excercise you may find that you remember extras over the following hours.
Expenditure and income in internet marketing is often fragmented and intermittent: domain costs are usually annual, some hosting deals are paid for annually or even less often, affiliate sales fluctuate, that kind of thing.
I usually find that I remember about 80% of the regular income and expenses but forget some of the intermittent figures until I delve through my bank account or Paypal and credit card records.
Selective amnesia can happen with buying products – it’s way too easy to buy “just one more” offer that’s promising the world.
But so long as you’ve got most of the income and expenditure on your list, that’s good enough.
The next thing to do is evaluate how much time you’re spending on your internet marketing business.
That’s not necessarily to calculate as easy as the income and expenditure.
Even if your aim is to spend an hour a day on your internet marketing or whatever other time you can devote to it, that doesn’t mean you’re actually spending the time you intended on your internet marketing.
It may be more, it may be less.
Time spent on internet marketing can be awkward to account for.
It’s easy to delude yourself into thinking you’ve spent more (or less) time than you actually have.
How do you account for the time you spent watching the progress bar whilst your video renders? You know you could be doing something else but it won’t take long, honest!
Or how do you account for the 2 hours you spent watching the latest product you just bought?
Or – at least as likely – the 2 hours where you “watched” it in the background but did some other tasks at the same time. Especially if those other tasks weren’t completely related to your internet marketing (browsing Facebook, checking emails, pressing refresh on your stats, that kind of thing).
You’ll have to take a view on this but do your best to be as honest as possible with yourself.
At the end of this exercise, you’ll know where you stand.
When you’re first starting out, this can be a really scary exercise.
You look at the figures and you’re earning a lot less than minimum wage and with a lot more stress.
Sometimes it can be scary when things change – Google is good at dropping bombshells and the income you thought was going to have you set for life vanishes when their algorithm thinks it knows a better result than yours to display on the first page.
That’s not a fun place to be.
And it means that you need more than one income stream so that when (not if) it happens, you’re not left high and dry.
But you won’t know you’re vulnerable unless you’ve taken the time to work out your income and expenditure and hours worked in the first place.
Once you know where you stand – whether you’ve intentionally or unintentionally given yourself an unpaid internship or whether you’re making some nice money with your internet marketing – then it’s time to look ahead.
Because, once you’ve done this exercise, it’s time to make a few decisions.
Chances are those will be based around the 80/20 rule – that operates almost everywhere.
Consciously decide to spend more time on the things that are either making you money or showing every sign of earning some income in the not too distant future.
And also consciously decide to spend less time on the things that are beyond hope.
Then set aside some experimental time for things that might pan out nicely. They shouldn’t be your main focus but it’s well worth going outside your area of experience or comfort zone every now and then.
For instance, a few years ago I’d never have spoken on a video. Now it’s one of the ways I create products and promote my websites.
If I hadn’t taken the plunge and tentatively recorded my first video, my internet business would have taken me in a different direction completely.
Whether video is the best direction or not depends on your viewpoint. There are certainly successful marketers who use it and equally successful marketers who don’t.
Only you will know what’s right for you.
And if you don’t know, it’s worth getting an outside opinion.
Coaching or consulting is often perceived as an expense but there are lots of success stories on the web about people who took the plunge and paid for coaching – even though at the time they could barely afford it – who then went from strength to strength in their business.
And in the longer run it’s probably cheaper than buying product after product after product.
If you’d like to know more, use the form at the end of this page and we can have an exploratory chat. No hard sell, no obligation. But probably some useful ideas regardless by the end of the chat.
And if you’ve got any thoughts or comments about whether you’re an intern in your own internet marketing business, feel free to use the comments box below.