A few years ago, I wanted to write a guide to internet marketing that would answer the question "what's next?" for anyone, no matter how experienced. Ah well, you don't always get what you want!

After a few failed attempts to figure out how to structure such a thing, it became clear that it was impossible. There's simply no correct answer that's right for everybody.

First of all, not everybody wants to do the same things, and that's fine. I believe there are certain things that virtually all internet marketers should do if they're serious about making money online, but beyond that, you've got a lot of options.

Second of all, even if two people want to end up running their businesses the same way, their paths to that end won't always be the same -- either because they started from different places (eg. one started as a blogger and one started with an offline business), or because they just don't want to build their businesses in the same order.

What I came up with was a different approach that I call the Great Big Picture of Internet Marketing (click to download the PDF). I realized that a good way to look at internet marketing is to divide it into three main parts:

  1. The Building Blocks: the tools you need to have in place to run an online business
  2. Activities: the things you'll spend your time doing
  3. Revenue Sources: all the different kinds of products and services you can sell.

With that idea in mind, I started to create a document listing a bunch of the options for each of those areas, and showing how they were all connected. Plus I started building a section on this website that used the same structure to explain each item in more detail.

And then I set it all aside for a few years to work on other things.

A week or so ago, I decide to finish it up. The PDF is "done" (of course, things like this are always evolving, so it's really only done for now), and the online internet marketing guide is mostly "done" -- there are still a few holes to fill in, but it's in pretty good shape.

Reader Comment:
Gail said:
Oh wow, I downloaded the "Great Big Picture of Internet Marketing" .pdf (thank you, by the way) and my eyes popped out at the "picture"! But really, it's an excellent way of looking at IM -- chaotic, but with an underlying order to it. I also lik...
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Download the PDF, and you'll see the chart plus two pages of text discussing how to get the big picture and put it to work for your business. Then click around in the online guide for more detail on each part.