Strawberries and Cream, Fluffy Yellow Balls, and Internet Marketing.

I’ve just returned from a trip to Wimbledon and all in all I had an absolutely wonderful time

Getting tickets for tennis’s most famous tournament is not easy and we had to camp out overnight to secure our seats on Centre Court.

It’s well worth it though because whilst it’s great to watch it on TV there’s definitely nothing quite like being there.

The only not so enjoyable moment was waking up at 3am to a rather soggy pillow and water dripping on my head.

It was bucketing it down outside and the tent was leaking. Great!

My niece, who was in a separate tent next to us, had no such problems of course.

It’s all good fun though because once we were into the grounds and sat in our seats we could really sit back and enjoy the electric atmosphere generated by the thousands of fans.

It’s not just about the tennis though. Wimbledon is as famous for it’s strawberries and cream, jugs of Pimms and the rather unpredictable British weather, as it is for fluffy yellow balls being walloped over a net at circa 100mph.

If you ever get the chance to go, I would highly recommend it. We normally camp each year for tickets and it’s great fun.

So you might be wondering what this has got to do with internet marketing?

Well when you think about it we can learn a lot from the world’s top tennis players.

Anyone who steps onto that Centre Court hasn’t got there by chance. They have worked hard for years, training day in and day out in the gym and on the practice court. They have had to spend years playing tiny tournaments with no facilities (and being watched by the proverbial one man and his dog) before they step anywhere near the big tournaments like Wimbledon or the French Open.

It’s the same in internet marketing. Despite what some of the more ‘hypey’ sales pages out there might have you believe, making lots of money online doesn’t just happen overnight. There’s no push button solution or instant cash machine where you press a button and money falls out. You’ve got to work hard at it and put in the work to consistently make money online.

But that’s not the only thing we can learn from tennis.

You’ve probably heard the expression ‘the ball’s in your court’ and that definitely applies when you work online. As internet marketers we must make decisions each and every day. We must try things out. Experiment with different style squeeze pages, products and autoresponder sequences.

It’s what I love about internet marketing and it’s why I feel motivated every day when I get up in the morning.

It’s also a little scary, especially when you’re not used to it.

Just as tennis is an individual sport, internet marketing is pretty much all down to you. Nobody’s going to do it for you. You must decide what shot you’re next going to play and where within the court you’re going to aim.

Making decisions is hard but if you want to succeed online you must get used to doing it each and every day.

There’s also a fine line between success and failure online. Even professional tennis players make mistakes and have days when it seems like they can hardly hit the ball into the court. The best players however seem to have the knack of ‘finding a way to win’, even when they aren’t playing especially well or their back is to the wall. It’s the ability to be two sets to Love down, face a match point and somehow come back to win in five sets which separates the great from merely the very good.

As marketers we make mistakes all the time. Things don’t always go as well as you expect them to and some days you sit there and think ‘I’m never going to succeed online.’ You need to learn from your mistakes, fight back and have the drive to carry on. If you send out a promo to your list one day and it absolutely bombs – don’t get too downhearted. Just put it down to experience, learn from it and carry on.

I’ve also always believed that as an internet marketer you’ve got to aim for above the net. The best marketers do things just that little bit better and aim that bit higher than marketers who fail online. If you provide fantastic value to your customers and market in such a way that you are always providing great content to people – content which is better than other marketers offerings – then you will succeed.

Finally, in order to succeed online you need to have the right equipment. It took me quite a while to realise this myself but you need to have the correct tools in order to build a solid business. You need to have a quality autoresponder account from a company such as Aweber and you need to have graphics on your websites which make you look like a professional and not just a dodgy amateur. You need to have decent web hosting and not some freebie account which will make your website crash on the day of your product launch. Tennis rackets used by the top players are pretty expensive and are customized to the needs of the player. You wouldn’t see Federer, Nadal or Murray walking out onto court with a $20 racket and strings which break every few games – so don’t make the same mistake yourself in your online business.

So there you go. Quiet please – ready – play. Go and build your online business!

Comments welcome, as always…