I recently surveyed a few hundred of my subscribers, with some very interesting results…
The survey asked about where people are at with their Internet marketing business, what business models and traffic methods they are interested in, and what they are struggling with.
It was sent to a list comprised of 90% buyers (people who purchased The Lost Blueprint) and 10% free subscribers, and was completely anonymous.
In a moment I’ll share my biggest takeaway from the data, but first check out some of the results:
Internet Marketing Survey Results: (Click an image to see it full-size.)
Not surprisingly there are a lot of new people in the market, with 27% having only 6 months experience or less. And it’s great to see almost 30% have been at it for 3 years or more.
There’s a slight drop-off at the 7-12 month mark, which makes sense — that’s right about the time where people have been putting in a lot of time and effort and still have only marginal results to show for it… and unfortunately many give up at this point. (Often just before a breakthrough!)
I’d say this is a pretty accurate breakdown of the market as a whole. Most people are yet to make their first $1 online, and the majority (83%) are making less than $1000 per month.
9% are making a full-time living online (assuming they can live on $3000 per month) with half of those doing 6-figures or better.
Notice no one fell into the $3000 – $5000 bracket — this is inline with the breakthroughs I’ve seen people make once they are making enough to live on and can start investing money back into the business.
E.g. Once you hit $3000, the next stop is often $10,000+
“Free” traffic is still hot — with 71% of respondents wanting to learn more about how to drive traffic without investing money up-front.
My Biggest Takeaway
As usual, the most important (and fascinating) data came from the free-form answers people gave.
I asked the question “What are your two biggest struggles with Internet marketing?” — and apart from a few outliers people fell very neatly into tight categories.
People in the same income group have almost the exact same struggles, and there is very little overlap between groups.
(Without looking I could guess what someone was making just by what they were struggling with and be right 90% of the time.)
Here’s how it broke down…
Internet Marketing Income and Struggles:
$0
- Getting started
- Information overload
- Technical difficulties
$1 – $1000
- Finding a niche
- Focus
- Work overload
$1000 – $3000
- Content creation (quality and quantity)
- Email list marketing (follow up)
$3000+
- Motivation
- Managing daily tasks while trying to create BIG new projects
- Outsourcing / Staff
I hope you’ve found this informative, if nothing else this data should tell you that you’re not alone — there are literally hundreds of people out there with the exact same struggles as you.
And if you’re marketing to the Internet marketing niche this should give you some great insight into exactly who the market is and how you can create better products for them.
Thanks to everyone who participated, you can bet I’ll be using this info to provide you better content and training right here on the website, and in the Four Hour Entrepreneur newsletter.
I’d love to hear what you make of the data, hit me up with a comment and let me know what you think.
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Those results from your survey are right on,
and its good to know that im not the only
one struggling with making a successful home business!
The survey results were definitely an eye opener!
Kyle, amazing results!! The survey results provides a good insight into product creation! Well done.
Awesome survey results Kyle.
Great point about people giving up too early. IM is harder than some marketers will tell you!
Once you get it going though…. well worth it.
The survey also highlights how people focus so much on FREE when in most businesses very little is free.
Thanks Kyle, great survey and thanks for sharing the results. I’ve just opted-in to your list too
Thanks for the feedback, Kyle!
Great stuff, as always!
great survey….and very interesting for a new person
I was most shocked by the large amount of people who have been doin it a while and still many arn’t making money
Thanks for all the comments — glad you liked it!
(I was a little wary about sharing the results but am glad I did.)
James I agree about the free/making no money link.
If people would look at things from an investment & return point of
view they’d see that “paid” stuff is often the cheapest (and fastest,
easiest, laziest) route to success.
And Nathan, there is definitely a learning curve involved in IM — just like if you were starting a new job… except in our case you don’t have one boss telling you what to do, instead you’ve got a million people telling you to do different things.
That’s why it’s so important to pick ONE thing and stick with it till it’s profitable.
Great info as always Kyle!
Very interesting results and certainly matches my experience of talking to folks across all levels of IM from newbies to more seasoned pros.
Be very interesting to correlate these figures against “How much are you INVESTING in your business each month?” and “How much are you INVESTING in your IM education each month?” and “How much TIME do you spend on IM per week?”.
My personal experience is that paying for tools / outsourcing is smart and you can shortcut your education by investing in training and workshops (providing of sufficient quality).
And you’re right – you do seem to magically go from ~$1K-$2K per month to $10K very suddenly. It’s like everything starts to fall in to place.
The biggest breakthroughs come when you start treating this as a serious business – that exists to serve others (at a profit of course) – rather than as a hobby to serve your own desire for more money.
That’s my experience anyway!
Hey Steve, great feedback — I’ve added two of those questions to the survey. (It’s now part of my autoresponder sequence and will gather data over time for every new subscriber.)
Great survey Kyle. It helps to know you’re not alone, particularly when it comes to plowing more money back into the business.
That’s about how I feel the survey would turn out. It feels like I’m in the 12 month bracket and am just starting to see some major breakthroughs.
Spot on about a million people telling you what to do.
I feel the biggest hurdle is learning everything, then digesting it, then realizing what’s important, what’s minor and what’s actionable.
Basically learning how to set priorities.
Great to hear from you, Kyle…
Nice share, mang.
Enjoyed the correlation between earnings and frustration points.
Good stuff!
Best,
Brian
Something I’d like to know is if these figures reflect profit. I assume that they don’t in some cases. I realise that getting into the upper levels means you’ll recoup your investment but at the lower levels many people aren’t breaking even. That said, I agree that sticking with it for a good while is best to have a shot at a decent income.
Lillea I would suspect most of those are gross figures. Virtually all the numbers people throw around in this market are gross
There is definitely a delicate little juggling act you need to play when you’re just getting started — how much to invest in the business VS how much you’re getting in return.
From what I’ve seen most people don’t invest enough money into the things that matter — stuff like content, copywriting, outsourcing, tools and services — instead they “invest” all their money in the latest whiz-bang info product and play pretend business.
Thanks Kyle. I agree. I try to invest in things that will really help my business, not just offer me promises. I think that most people try to go the free/cheap route for far too long and they end up losing so much time and never have a shot at a good income.
What I love about IM is that the costs to start up in a solid way are usually a LOT lower than they are to start an offline business. The hours can be so much better too.
Thanks heaps Kyle. Re Steve’s comment ‘you do seem to magically go from ~$1K-$2K per month to $10K very suddenly. It’s like everything starts to fall in to place’ – if that’s true, yay, can’t wait!
Hey Kylle,
I’m one of the newbies in the lower end of the $1 – $1000. I’ve made $106 in one year thru affiliate marketing.
Ironically, one year ago just before I bought my first domain and redirected it to my affiliate link for a product I’m selling, I realized I needed to pick ONE niche, pick ONE product and implement ONE marketing/traffic strategy. In a word, FOCUS…
If I hadn’t done that I’d still be in the $0 zone.
Now the challenge is hitting the $1000 mark.
Looking forward to seeing how you plan to use the data you’ve collected.
All the best,
Tuli
So your income and struggle list is spot on
Kyle:
Great survey and generous of you to share the results with us. Thanks!
What I find most interesting is the overall percentage of folks really not making $5k/mo. or more apparently.
Fact is, without my personal services (copywriting, web-design, coaching, etc.) I’d likely not be there either… at least not consistently. Its challenging, both online and offline, to get passed ‘being the business’ and move into the ‘owning the business’ model.
One thing these numbers you’ve so kindly shared hint at is a strong confirmation that many of the gurus aren’t telling us the truth about how many of their students are actually making real life-style incomes after buying their $2000 BIG product launch products.
What I find is missing most, are two things: Execution and Implementation. Not due to a lack of desire on the part of entrepreneurs trying to make it online – not due to a lack of information (for sure), but due to a serious gap in the ‘here it is now go read it, watch it, listen to it, and do it’ products out there and real help and resources getting things done.
It would be like telling one of your brick and mortar clients ‘hey, go add an optin box to your website, set up your autoresponder, load it with quality messages, and automatically follow up with your clients!’ — then, charging them $500 for the advice and leaving them scratching their heads wondering what to do next or where to start (or even trying to figure out what you just told them!).
Figure out how to close this gap for your target audience… and you will see the numbers in your survey change… for the better.
Just my $.02.
Keep up the great work Kyle… always a pleasure to read your material and learn from you.
Hey Steve good to hear from you mate.
You know, when it comes to peoples success it’s the old 80/20 rule… short of doing the work for them it almost doesn’t matter what your product is or how it works, 80% (or more) of people are still going to fail for whatever reason.
I’ve written copy for people and they NEVER got around to getting it up on their website. I’ve seen people pay $97 a month for a service-based membership and never use it. I know people who own every $2000 course that has been released in the past 3 years and they still haven’t got a single website online.
Outside of “done-for-you” services and small group or 1-on-1 coaching programs I doubt there are any products that were sold in any significant quantities that have success rates above 20%.
But I think you’re spot on about the implementation gap, I don’t think many product creators in the IM niche have any idea just how much help their customers really need to get a project off the ground.
Once you’ve been in the business for a few years you take for granted all the little skills you’ve learned — even simple things like setting up a domain/hosting and uploading files via FTP — that can completely halt a newbies progress… not to mention all the high level marketing and strategic skills that take years to master.
There is a HUGE need for products that combine high-level strategies with bare-bones, step-by-step walk-through’s showing how to execute.
Cheers
Kyle
Hey Kyle
This is really helpful information because it confirms what I’ve been seeing with my own list.
I also get emails (from my subscribers) telling me that they spend too much time learning and opening emails, plus many people seem to buy resell products then have no idea how to get them up on a website and get traffic to them. This further confirms the majority (no income online group) is having these same issues.
Thanks for sharing your results!
Thanks Kyle,
This is a serious eye-opener for me. The survey results speak volumes. I can actually identify where I am at and why. That can only be a positive thing!
I agree with Steve that the big issues are “Execution and Implementation” and any process that would help make this easy for willing implementers would be a life-line for the majority of struggling Internet Marketers.
Thanks again Kyle for yet another great piece.
Hi Kyle,
I must say that the survey and its results are very interesting, and motivational.
First of all the idea of making such survey to the people from the list is awesome! Also, especially for those who begin in internet marketing it can be a great motivator to know that it really needs time, effort, investments to build on online business and it’s not just a quick way to be rich overnight:).
On the other hand, for those who stick with it, it’s only the matter of the time to be rewarded and it can be read from your survey results as well.
Here is to perseverance, optimism and great value in everything we do!!!!
Greetings
Justyna