Are you spending too much time studying and reading about Internet marketing or freelancing ? and not enough time actually doing it and getting your business off the ground? Then apply the 25-25-50 rule.

The 25-25-50 rule says that to master a skill or process, and put what you learn into practical action, you must divide your time as follows:

>> No more than 25% of your time is spent studying ? i.e., reading books, going to boot camps, attending workshops, listening to tapes in your car.

>> No more than 25% of your time is spent observing ? watching what successful people in your field are already doing; e.g., if you want to become a direct mail copywriter, this means reading and analyzing the direct mail you get in your mail box each day.

>> At least 50% of your time is spent actually DOING the thing you are studying and observing ? e.g., if you want to sell information products on the Internet, you are creating your first product ? designing your Web site ? or building your list.

I have been giving presentations for decades, and most of my seminar attendees say I’m pretty good at it.

In all that time I’ve had only a couple that were so-so, and only one that was an absolute bomb: a webinar I gave only a few weeks ago.

In this instance, I made the apparent error of showing some offline marketing in a webinar about online marketing.

I was making the point that most of what worked in offline direct response (DR) works spectacularly well online.

But today’s new breed of young marketers don’t believe that.

Several audience members were offended that I showed them direct mail letters in an online marketing presentation, and said it indicated I was old fashioned and out of date.

So if you give seminars or webinars, my advice is as follows: If you are talking about online marketing, show nothing from the offline world, as relevant and powerful as it may be.

Telling the audience that it’s relevant doesn’t work. They are wearing blinders that won’t come off.

The webinar sponsor said I was lazy because I had obviously repurposed slides from another talk.

DUH!

Those slides are treasures — perfect examples of important principles. Why on Earth would I not use them?

Now I know why: my audience cannot make the mental leap to transfer great ideas from one medium or industry to another medium or industry.

And speaker beware: yours probably can’t either.