You wanna make a boatload of money selling information products?

Go to aspiring, not-quite-graduated-from-kindergarten wanna-be business people. Then sell them a big, bright-red “Easy” button. Some turn-key opportunity where someone’s figured everything out for you. Tell ’em they just need to work the system.

That sells.

Trouble is, it hardly ever works.

Why? Because if it was really turn-key, they’d just hire a bunch of drones to do it for $10 per hour. You’d never even hear about it.

(Oh, and by the way, Dr. Speedselling sez: Anytime they tell you there’s no selling involved, it means the only person who’s buying is YOU.)

What kind of business DOES work?

Building a sidewalk where there’s already a dirt path. And getting it paved without blowing a ton of cash.

Real entrepreneurs accept the fact that they have to create new and original value in the world, otherwise you’re just a parasite. Leonardo DaVinci said, “He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.”

So long as I held onto the Big Red Easy button fantasy, I was an easy mark for the flim flam man. When I finally accepted that I had to create something, I stopped getting ripped off. Plus I could find all kinds of people who would help me pave that dirt path and there were a lot of shortcuts.

Not only that, it’s easy to find dirt paths that need to be paved. You just gotta look in some non-obvious places.

That’s pitfall #1.

Pitfall #2 is:

Doing all the creative work – heavy lifting, investment, manufacturing and everything – and building something that nobody will walk across the street for. Even if there’s a paved sidewalk with free brownies on the other side.

The day you figured out that just happened is not a happy day.

On this morning’s Facebook Firestorm training, I told ’em that every single marketing genius I know has done that more than once. “If I build it, they will come!!!”

We’ve all done it. But you can’t make that mistake many times and survive.

So there you have it, the two biggest ditches people fall into. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Don’t fall for the Big Red Easy button, and don’t press that Big Red HARD button until you’ve done your friggin’ research.

Just saved somebody half a million bucks. All in a day’s work. . .

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.