Our heart craves shortcuts even though our head tells us that they lead to disappointments. We want to believe the guy on the phone that his company can get us on page one in Google for any keyword. We want to believe him that getting on top of the search engines is only a few thousand dollars and a few months away. We want to believe that all we have to do is sit back and wait for all the web traffic to take our business to the next level when we know deep down that the secret is working hard creating great content and promoting it.

Taking shortcuts means avoiding the necessary steps to achieve a set goal. You can’t build a multi million visits website before you get your first one hundred visitors. It is much sexier to try to dream up a business idea, throwing up a half ass website created by someone cheap, and expecting to make the news as the the latest business hero that changed the world.

In reality, there is nothing sexy about getting the first one hundred visitors. It requires one of the greatest characteristics of successful people, perseverance. When you start out no one cares about your business or your website for that matter. Most people either don’t care or think you will fail. The few that care can’t really help you. It is up to you to fail or succeed.

When you focus on getting a million visitors to your website you will fail. You are comparing your beginning to someone’s middle or end. You are in shortcut hell. What happens when you focus on the end instead of what your next step should be is you open a major can of frustration and you will most likely give up.

People that succeed in business focus on getting through that first step focusing less on how much money they make while focusing on making that first all important customer happy. Once you have made that first website visitor happy, you can focus on getting the second and third visitor. Once you have the first few visitors you can focus on replicating your success and driving more visitors to your site.

Respect what it takes to succeed. Focus less on what may happen and more on what’s happening now.

Taking shortcuts is not the easy way out. It is the easy way to fail. I would love to be able to build a website for one of our clients getting them a 1000 visitors the first month. Most people think that the work is done when their website is online. In reality, that is when most of the work begins. Realistically, driving traffic to a website is a time consuming and challenging task. Many people refuse to accept the facts because taking shortcuts is more appealing to them.

Taking shortcuts is like gambling. Most people know that it is idiotic but they are willing to ignore reason because of the potential payoff. What is the real cost of taking shortcuts? You lose on multiple levels. First, you will almost never reach your goal. Second, you have ended up wasting valuable time.

Taking shortcuts destroys your journey. It robs you from the experience of getting there, of living through some of the greatest experiences and memories you could have. Think of some of the most successful websites or businesses. What short cuts did they take to get there, or did they work their butts off? Did Beethoven take short cuts? Did the Beatles take shortcuts, or did they play together for peanuts for years before making it? Taking shortcuts is like asking the receptionist at a Fortune 500 company what it takes to be the CEO. You will get an answer, but will it get you there?

Don’t cheat yourself out of succeeding with your website marketing efforts. Refuse to take shortcuts and dedicate yourself to doing the work necessary. Treat every page of your website as an opportunity to differentiate yourself. Every time you post to your blog is an opportunity to tell the world that you are an expert. Every time you post to facebook or twitter you are potentially driving more traffic to your website. You can do it. You will succeed. Just go and create great content, promote it, and beat all of those that are taking shortcuts.