We are in the middle of the rainy season here in Japan right now. The Japanese word for “rainy season” is “tsuyu“, which is made up of two Chinese characters that stand for “plum” and “rain” because the rainy season is also the plum picking season.
One of my oldest students, a cheerful chap in his mid-eighties who drives down from the countryside to attend a two-hour class on Thursday mornings, had been out plum picking in his garden the day before. His forearms were covered in little scratches. I didn’t know plum picking could be such a painful business, but as I said to him,
“Itami nakushite, rieki nashi!“
It is the same with Internet marketing. The plums won’t just fall into your lap. You have to put in some work to harvest them. You have to go through the “pain” of setting up your own website, finding a market, getting together the products, writing some good copy and then getting a targeted audience.
You could compare that process to planting, watering, nurturing and finally climbing the tree and harvesting the plums. You could skip the first three jobs by having someone set up your own website fully loaded with some of the best products available in your chosen niche.
Then all you have to do is go and “get your ladder” (prepare your sales strategy), “climb up the tree” (marketing), and “start harvesting” (sales!) … You may pick up some scratches on the way, but, as I said to my student,
“No pain, no gain!”
David Hurley,
http://grasp-the-nettle.com
