I have so struggled with trying to understand why 95% of
Internet marketers can’t make a dime online. I have actually
sat up nights trying to understand this. Personally, I know
that once I finally got enough information to put my
business together, it has taken me 6 months but I am finally
starting to see a profit.
So what’s wrong? Why do so many people have so much
trouble?
I then took a look at all the so called “guru” books out there.
I bought them all. I read them all. Knowing what I already
knew about Internet marketing, I wanted to see if what they
were telling people to do was really going to help them or if
it was just more BS. Son of a gun, the books I read, for the
most part, were EXCELLENT! I kept saying to myself at each
part of instruction, “I do that!” and “I do that too!”
This made me scratch my head even more. I know these
books are selling. They’re constantly at the top of
Clickbank’s best seller list. So why aren’t new marketers
having success with these books?
What’s missing?
So what I did was sit down and make a checklist of what’s in
these guru books and then made my own list of the things
that I do and looked to see if there was something I was
doing that the gurus were NOT teaching. That had to be it.
And that’s when it hit me.
It had NOTHING to do with anything I was doing or not
doing. It had EVERYTHING to do with my approach to the
situation.
That’s what gurus don’t teach. They tell you to “do this, do
this and do that” but they don’t really explain the why. They
don’t REALLY make you understand WHY you’re doing the
things you’re doing. They don’t explain it in a way where you
read it and say, “Ah, okay. Now I understand why I’m
supposed to do this.”
If you do something like a robot, without understanding the
reason why, you’re going to end up missing a fine point that
may make the difference between success and failure.
I’m going to give you an example right now so you
understand EXACTLY what I am talking about.
Many ebooks suggest writing articles and submitting them to
directories in order to get people to come to your site. Hey,
great. I’ll write an article, submit it to a directory like Ezine
Articles and put my site link in the resource box and I’ll get
people to come to my site. Right?
Wrong!
And this is where we get to the parts that the books don’t
teach you because they expect you to use some common
sense. Unfortunately, not all of us have common sense. We
are creatures of following directions and we can only follow
the directions that we’re given.
Well, here’s the bad news.
I can’t teach you how to think. Honestly, I can’t do much
more than the gurus do. I can give you some basic
instruction and hope that you understand it enough to apply
it. But if you’re only going to take the basic step by steps
and not put your own thought into them to improve on
them, you’re only going to get so far. In many cases, it
won’t be far enough to build an income.
In the case of the articles, if you don’t write articles a certain
way, if you don’t write articles that people will want to read,
if you don’t write articles that are relevant, all the instruction
in the world is not going to turn you into a successful article
writer.
And therein lies the rub of having success online. It’s the
reason why I can take a recipe for baking a cake and turn it
into a masterpiece and I can take the same recipe and turn
it into a disaster.
Why?
Because when I get to the part of the instructions that say
something like, “Stir until creamy”, I understand what
“creamy” is a lot better than others do. I have a feel for
what the consistency should be.
If cooking was only a matter of following a recipe, we’d all
be master chefs. But we’re not. It takes an intangible skill to
cook well.
That doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to cook or market
online. You CAN develop that skill. You can learn to get that
“feel” for what needs to be done.
For example, when I write an article, I know the exact spin
to put on it depending on who I am trying to reach. This is
something that comes over time. It won’t happen overnight.
But you do need some direction.
And that direction has to start with a business plan, because
that is where all marketers meet their doom right from the
start. If you don’t have a solid foundation for your business,
everything you build on top of it will eventually crumble. So,
this brief report will be explicitly for the purpose of giving
you a foundation that will give you the BEST chance of
having success online.
Will it maybe require you to take everything you’ve done,
chuck it and start all over? Possibly. I don’t know. I have no
idea what you’ve done to this point so I can’t answer that.
But I can tell you this; if you follow this business plan to the
letter, you will have an EXCELLENT chance of building a
foundation that whatever you put on top of it, stands a good
chance of being there a year, or even 10 years from today.
Okay? So now that you know where we’re going, let’s get
down to the actual building of our foundation.
Make A Decision
So many marketers dive into this business with absolutely
NO direction whatsoever. They do what I call, “winging it”
and it shows. They drift from one program or game plan to
another and never stick with anything long enough to even
see if it’s going to work.
So let me get this first rant off my chest right away.
No business is going to make you money on day 1
If you can’t accept this fact, then you are doomed right from
the start. If you’re expecting to set up your business on
January 1 and see your first sale come in on January 2, you
are going to be in for a great disappointment. Offline
businesses take over a year to see a profit. Why should
online be any different? It is that mindset that dooms people
right from the start.
So, your first step is to make a decision. What do you want
to do to earn a living online? Write it down. Look at it
everyday if you have to. Anything else that has nothing to
do with your plan is NOT to be bothered with. So, if you
decide that you want to earn a living online by becoming a
copywriter then don’t start looking at the Clickbank
marketplace to see what affiliate products you can sell.
You’re going to be a copywriter. So the first step is to look to
see where you can get good instruction on how to become a
copywriter. Learn what you can and become the best
copywriter you can be.
Afterwards, when you’re making gobs of money as a
copywriter and you get bored and you want to earn money
doing something else, fine. Then you can write down
another goal. But until you’ve completed your first goal, you
are not to bother with anything else. And trust me, there are
plenty of distractions online, so this will be harder to do than
you know.
Why?
Here’s why. As you are studying to become a copywriter,
you are noticing one very important thing.
You’re not making any money doing it yet. Therefore, you
are beginning to become impatient, especially if you have
bills to pay. It’s taking too long. You can’t wait for your first
paying client. So you start working on something else in the
meantime.
Guess what happens?
You never really put the time into the copywriting that you
should and ultimately, it falls apart on you.
And then, to make matters worse, the thing that you
dropped copywriting for also falls through because it didn’t
provide results immediately.
So, step 1 is very simple and it needs to be followed if
you’re going to have any chance of success.
Make a decision and stick to it, no matter how much it
kills you to do it!
Okay, but what if you don’t know enough to make that
decision? Let’s face it, if you’re first starting out, you may
not even know what’s available for you to do when it comes
to making a living online.
What then?
While I would love to cover every possible way there is to
earn a living on the Internet, I just can’t. There are so many
different ways to do this that this report would be about 300
pages long and nobody would read it.
So, I’m going to do the next best thing. I am going to give
you a list along with a brief explanation for each item. This
list will comprise the most common and popular ways of
making a living online. I will also try to give you an idea of
what is involved with doing each item so you’ll know if the
amount of work involved is something you want to do.
This is probably the most critical part of this whole process
because what you choose is going to be stuck with you for a
long time, IF you follow the rules that I’ve laid out.
Okay, let’s get to our abbreviated list.
Disclaimer: I am in no way endorsing all these
options. I am simply pointing them out.
1. Affiliate Marketing – This is where you decide that
you’re going to promote other people’s products.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of products
online in hundreds of different niches. The possibilities
are virtually unlimited. To be successful in affiliate
marketing, you will need to learn a variety of skills
such as advertising methods, writing sales copy, how
to use marketing tools like autoresponders and so on.
Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative. It can also be
very frustrating because of all the pieces that need to
be fit together.
2. Product Creation – This is very loosely tied to
affiliate marketing, except instead of promoting
somebody else’s product, you’re going to promote
your own. So, in addition to learning all the skills
required for affiliate marketing, you’re also going to
need to learn things like web design, content writing
and so on. I don’t personally recommend that people
dive right into product creation as the first thing they
do. But it is an option, albeit the most difficult of the
list.
3. Service Creation – This is very similar to product
creation except in this case you’re creating an ongoing
service for people. An example of this is Aweber,
which is a service for people who are looking for a
solid autoresponder. As you can guess, creating your
own service is a massive amount of work. Aweber is
not run by one person. They have a whole team over
there. So this is also something I don’t recommend
doing as your first thing out of the gate.
4. Freelancing – This is where you learn a skill such as
copywriting or programming and offer your skills to
others. A good copywriter can make as much as
$2,500 for a sales page even if he’s just starting out.
Of course, to do anything like this, you need to get a
solid education on whatever it is you want to do. If it’s
copywriting, you’ll need to take courses, read books
and practice a lot. You’ll need to start out, when you
feel you’re ready, by most likely offering your services
for free in exchange for testimonials if the copy
converts well. If you’re looking to become a
programmer, you’ll need to learn a language and also
practice a lot with creating applications. Again, you
may need to offer your services for free at the start.
