The next time you hear some “guru” tell you “anyone can do it” or they recite the Nike theme Just-Do-It, take note. You are about to be “conned”.

If you think you can quickly become an internet marketer, or make fast money on the internet you are exactly what the “gurus” are looking for — an easy sale. There are a number of “experts” who have the gift of gab and no remorse about selling you the ball glove, bat and promise of a skyrocketing major league career. They don’t care if you’re blind or in a wheel chair or have never played the game before. They know, without doubt, that their product will make you a champion! You may be dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to business, but you’ll be slugging out new products and joint venture deals like a pro!

It’s the on-line version of the snake-oil salesman. Be wary and stay vigilant or you’ll be parting with more money than you would ever admit to.

Before you jump head-first into the “internet marketing opportunity” you need to understand that the internet and its forms of marketing ADD layers of complexity to operating a business. Income creation is NOT less complicated, it is MORE complicated.

On top of understanding marketing, advertising, pricing, customer service and financing, you also have to deal with technologies that change on a monthly basis. Most of those technologies are not under your control, so you also have to develop the ability to roll with the “punches” and learn to adapt on the fly.

I read an article on another blog (John Chow) titled “Get Out of Your Own Way.” In that article, John Chow suggested that the most common problem that prevents someone from making a living online is the person’s own beliefs.

Here’s a quote from the meat of the article:

The Biggest Problem Standing In Your Way Is…

You. When it all comes down to it, you are the only thing that is stopping you from achieving whatever it is your heart desires. Success is a attitude. It is not money, wealth or power. Take away the money of a successful person and he’ll have it all back and more in a few years. Give an unsuccessful person a million dollars (lottery winner) and chances are he’ll lose it all within a few years. The difference is their attitude.

Let’s get something straight. I believe what John said is true … to a point.

But, you’d better have more than just “attitude” or you’ll starve!

It’s not attitude or positive thinking that puts food on the table, it is action! People don’t buy “attitude”, they buy what they think are solutions! And that’s where the marketing “gurus” ply their wares! They offer “solutions” guaranteed to “put money in your pocket”!

Like the man says … get out of your own way! But, before you jog down that path, read about a couple of friends I knew.

They were contract house painters and good workers. One of them read a book about success in business and came to believe that their only drawback was their attitude. They knew they had skill they just needed to change their approach.

These fellas always showed up on time and had the right equipment. They were always courteous and neat about their work. (You could tell they knew that their income was directly related to their “production” by their hurried pace and the spring in their step.) It was easy to see that they were willing to work hard to make their business succeed.

Eager to expand, they agreed to paint a large house in a neighborhood adjacent to the area they normally serviced. This house was more than three times the size of anything they had worked on in the past. Their task was to treat and paint all the siding and trim on the additions of the home. Being a big project, they agreed on a price and a firm start date (including bad weather clauses) with the owner. They ordered, mixed and purchased the required paint and supplies and had everything ready to go well ahead of their scheduled start date. True to form, they arrived at the project on the scheduled date and began what they had figured would be a five day job.

The job went smoothly the first three days and they were happy with their progress until they spotted some paint pulling away from the siding. Upon inspection, they found that the paint did not adhere well to the surface of the old siding, even though the siding had been scraped and primed. Frantic for a solution, they called their paint store representative.

The representative arrived at their job site, looked at the siding, checked their brushes and spray equipment and asked to see one of the un-opened cans of paint. He assumed there was a problem with the paint itself. To his dismay, the painters pulled a couple of un-opened cans of paint from under the back porch. The representative immediately saw the problem. The paint had been stored outdoors and had been allowed to freeze and thaw. The paint had to be stored above 45 degrees to maintain its properties (and warranty.) This left the painters with no recourse. They would have to repair the damaged areas and purchase more paint since they didn’t want the job to look unfinished.

They scraped and re-painted all areas of the home that looked suspicious, and made sure the final product looked first-rate. They were losing a little money on the job, but they figured they were breaking into a new neighborhood and had already acquired another customer.

At the end of the job, they picked up their gear, checked the entire building and left their completion certificate and invoice.

The painters received a phone call from a very angry homeowner a couple of days later. The homeowner demanded to know who authorized the work on his house and explained that he had been out of the country for the past month. The homeowner told the painters that who ever signed their contract was NOT the real owner and had no right to order the work. He said he gave his brother-in-law access to the home and security system to pick up mail and newspapers and had briefly mentioned that he was considering painting the addition. But, he made NO commitments and had not requested any work be performed.

The homeowner reminded the painters that they didn’t have a signed contract by the legal property owner and didn’t require a down payment. He also mentioned that they hadn’t bothered with the other legal formalities of a high-ticket job (UCC-1, right of rescission letter, job scope description, insurance forms, and positive ID through a driver’s license or state ID card.) Worst of all, the homeowner didn’t like the color, and had planned on painting the siding a much lighter shade. In short, the homeowner was not going to pay for the job and was considering a law suite to force the painters to restore the siding to its original color.

The painters realized the jam they were in. Initially they figured the job would be “money in the bank.” What they did not do, was compare the signature on the contract with the owner’s property records or looked at the address labels on the US mail that had accumulated near the front door of the house. Because they felt secure with a signed contract, they didn’t bother with a UCC1 form, and had not obtained a customer signature on a “right of rescission” form. Legally, their only recourse was to go after the brother in law which would be a neat trick since they didn’t have any contact information, phone numbers or any other form of identification.

To sum up — they got out of their own way … and headed straight to bankruptcy court.

Since they didn’t get paid for the job and lost more than five working days of income, they didn’t have the cash to pay for their paint and equipment rental. Once they were on COD with their vendors, it became hard to competitively bid work since they always needed a down payment to purchase material. This put them at a disadvantage when their competitors would accept signature-only contracts with no down payment and were set-up to handle financing with the appropriate credit and security forms.

Eventually, their referral business dried up, cash-flow stopped and they were forced to liquidate their business and go to work for a competitor.

What’s the morale of the story?

All this stuff about “positive attitude” and determination and getting out of your way is a bunch of baloney.

If you don’t know how to conduct business, you need to learn. And it would be wise to learn before committing large blocks of time and money. If someone hands you a “blueprint” and says this is exactly the way to make money … you’ve got two choices. Either believe them and blindly follow that blueprint religiously, or don’t believe them and move on. If you’re lucky, the blueprint will be accurate. If you’re not lucky (like most of us) then you’ll be heading to the poor house.

Forget the “blueprint”, stop looking for the short-cuts and get an education on operating some form of internet business. That means you need to learn all the ugly things; the technical stuff like building web sites, copywriting, graphics manipulation, marketing and traffic generation, accounting and insurance. Yeah, I know, you can “sub it out” and pay someone else to do it. That’s great as long as you have “deep pockets”, can afford the mistakes and understand what your chosen market niche requires. There’s nothing so “fulfilling” as finding out the custom upgrades (you just paid $2,500 for) to your shopping cart software aren’t working correctly, and the last 14 days of advertising expense is wasted because you’re NOT recording the orders!

I laugh every time I hear some “guru” say, “Yep, I made four gazillion dollars last year and I don’t even know how to work my computer! I couldn’t do a web site if my life depended on it. I hire it all out. And that guy in Guiana knows exactly what I want.”

There are a lot of people throwing a lot of BS against the wall looking for suckers like the rest of us (me included) to bite and cough up some cash for the “next big secret.”

If attitude and determination were the only requirements for being a successful blogger or internet marketer or business person, everyone would be on easy street cashing the big checks.

Whether you want to believe it or not — all the “mental gymnastics” in the world won’t earn you a dime if you can’t or don’t provide some kind of value to the marketplace. For every blogger with a big check, there are 50,000 who can’t make a dime, and another 100,000 who haven’t really tried. For every testimonial on a “gurus” website exclaiming how this widget saved his bacon and changed his life, there are a thousand “regular joes” getting fried and living the same old life.

There is no magic bullet. There are no potions, no programs, no methods that will take you from 0 to $100,000.00 without some serious hard work and at least a little smarts.