Here are 14 lessons from 14 years online – I have learnt many more lessons but hopefully these will be helpful to you dear reader.
Lesson 1:
You have got to have a ‘WHY’. Why are you trying to make money online? You can’t make it about the money. Each person is different but you have to know your WHY. (Example: You want to be free from your job. You want to be able to make enough money to pay for a new car. You want to go on more vacations. You want to pay for your kids private education…etc etc) Having a strong ‘why’ will carry you through the failure and set-backs that are part of the process of becoming successful.
Lesson 2:
Once you know your ‘why’, you then have to start working on YOU. You can’t come from a job mentality and become an overnight success story online. Before you do anything, you have to work on your mental attitude. You do that by reading motivational books DAILY and listening to audio. (This has to become a DAILY habit of yours). People will only give you money when you improve their life in some way – how exactly will you improve the lives of your customers?
Lesson 3:
You should have your own website for product reviews or just an opt in page (although you can set up your optin page on your autoresponder!) You want to have your own domain name and a self-hosted website – I recommend using the WordPress.org script.
Update:
Since posting this advice, page/funnel builders like Groove and Convertri make having your own website an optional item. The key is to simply get subscribers onto your list and market to them via email.
Lesson 4:
You have to build a list and get new daily leads. Building a list gives you a source of warm traffic that will convert better than any other type of traffic if you build a valuable relationship with the people on your list. Do something every day to build your list. You want to build your OWN list of subscribers. You want to capture the leads on YOUR LIST FIRST rather than linking directly to an affiliate offer. If you then don’t follow up with your list, using email marketing and re-targeting ads, when promoting your offers, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
Lesson 5:
Don’t just work with any affiliate program. Preferably you want to work with a program that lets you earn residual income and an income from the upsells that are in their funnel. Be an advocate for those products that you use and like and explain both the pros and the cons in order to be authentic.
Lesson 6:
Don’t strive for perfection – take massive imperfect action and tweak your business as you get feedback from the results of taking action. Try to create systems out of successful actions that yield results and then help others by sharing your results. Taking action is key because your quantifiable results tell you what you should be doing more or less of!
Lesson 7:
For faster results with getting leads and sales, you want to look into paid ads. IT TAKES MONEY TO MAKE MONEY. You have to be willing to invest money into advertising. As an internet marketer you are really in the ‘advertising’ business and all the content you create should be to promote someone to take a desirable action e.g. join your list, buy a product you recommend or to build a stronger relationship by giving away free advice and content in order for that person to act on your advice.
Lesson 8:
This ties to lesson 7. Anytime you are doing paid ads, you must track how many leads you generated, how many sales you made and your return on investment. You have to be willing to test different places to find the winners and the losers. Specifically you need to track these 3 things:
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all of your ads, promotions, or other sources of traffic.
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your “Action” and Sales Conversion Rates.
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your ROI for each individual source of traffic.
Regarding free marketing, some are doing really well but you have to know that free ads are slow and painful and it may not work. ‘Free’ traffic is not free because it takes time, skill and resources to generate. You can’t sit here for months to see if the free ads that you place all over the internet will work or not. If you want fast results that you can scale, paid ads are the way to go.
Plus, never look at other marketers and their results. You have to test things for yourself to see what works for YOU and for you only.
Lesson 9:
Never sit during the day and think what you should do to move your business forward. You have to plan the night before and set yourself a strategy for the next day. Think about the most important income producing activity and write it down. Ask yourself this question: What’s the ONE thing I can do tomorrow to to move my business forward to my income goals. When the morning comes, you will know what to do instead of sitting there for hours and surfing useless websites and getting nowhere. Constantly ask yourself ‘Is what I’m doing now the best use of my time?’
Lesson 10:
Preferably own the product that you are promoting. This gives you more belief about recommending the product to others. Take other peoples product, take action and then create a product from your results and give your own spin on how to improve the results. Many new products are created by improving on what went before!
Lesson 11:
Believe in yourself and never let anyone tell you that you can’t succeed. The only thing that can hold you back is yourself – success or failure is therefore within your control!
Lesson 12:
Most of the times when you are starting out, things are not going to happen for you as you want them to. You will face many challenges all the time but you have to keep at it till you succeed. Some people have failed for weeks and some months but they are now doing really well. Again, success is a process that includes failure as part of the process. As your business grows you will still have problems – just a higher quality of problems – problems are good because it means you are growing!
Lesson 13:
While there are many “mentors” online, some are NO GOOD. Select your mentor(s) carefully.
Lesson 14:
I kept this for last because this is the most important lesson I have learned. That lesson is the ability to NEVER GIVE UP no matter what happens. You have to stick with it no matter what happens. Things are probably not going to work your way initially. You will not have enough money to invest. Your creditors will call you. People you know will laugh at you. People will think you are crazy. People will tell you that you should stick to the 40 years JOB career path.
No matter what happens, never give up and never quit. Take little steps forward each day.
