What to Look For in an Internet Marketing Mentor

The term mentor used to mean someone who took you under their wing and taught you the 'ropes', often for little to no compensation. With the explosion of Web businesses, internet marketing and the social media tools, mentors have sprung up like May flowers after April showers. Except most of these mentors charge a considerable sum. Often, people don't take the time to distinguish what they require in the form of help and they end up hiring a person who offers little help or is a bad fit for one reason or another.

In my experience, you can easily spend up to $25,000 for an 'expert' mentor, even one who only specializes in article writing, or web content or AdWords. Some of the top internet mentors charge more, especially if they can help you from A to Z. And if you are like me, you will need help in ALL areas. The first question you need to settle is exactly how much help you need and how much hand-holding you will need AFTER you get started. This is important because mentors usually have many mentees and can offer substantial individual help on many fronts, but they cannot allow themselves to be dominated by a person who cannot or will not do very much detail work themselves. In the end, you may end up wasting time and money if you hire the wrong fit for your needs. It is important to be honest in the initial interview process you will have with potential mentors as it does neither of you much good to tell them you can handle technology when you can't even sign on to a discussion forum without help.

The best mentors, in my view, are the ones who charge lower fees because they themselves hire other mentors and are still gaining more skills as they progress. The advantage for you is that this is the same as you hiring the higher charging mentor, since you will immediately benefit from what they teach your mentor. Another advantage is that you may gain access to other training classes for free, since mentors usually only charge a one time fee. If you hire a mentor on a monthly basis, you could conceivably end up paying much more than you need to, unless you are a quick learner and have multiple skills.

The most important aspect of hiring a mentor is to be honest with where you are at and your capability in the areas you are learning in. I myself used to write HTML code and built web sites in the 90's by code but using one of todays web page building software products almost completely floored me. I also was used to writing papers and term projects but found e-book writing and marketing to be a whole different matter. No matter how much you think you know, technology changes so rapidly that what you think you know may be very different from what you need to know. Most mentors are NOT going to have the time to bring you along slowly, since they need to serve other (perhaps more experienced) mentees also. It's Ok to ask seemingly 'stupid' questions (I've done that a time or two) but you can't afford to ask the same things over and over. So be honest with yourself and your needs, interview different mentors, get recommendations, check credentials and reputations and choose a mentor that fits your specific needs. You'll find you progress faster and save much aggravation and time as well as money.