Assuming you’ve been interested in online marketing for more than about 5 minutes, you’ll doubtless have heard the statistics that are quoted ad infinitum about why online businesses fail. I’m assuming they’re mostly talking financially, in that these people don’t manage to reach profitability or if they do, they don’t generate enough income.

Perhaps the most oft-quoted statistic is that 95% of people who ‘try’ to make it online, don’t.

I don’t know where that stat comes from and I don’t much care. I desire you to have the kind of success that you want, which is the point of this blog post… The failure rate is not where our focus must be if we’re to achieve success.

So, here goes…

There are 3 key reasons why online businesses fail:

1. People create jobs for themselves on the internet to replace their offline job. They don’t create businesses.
2. They are overwhelmed by all the information and potential directions they could possibly take.
3. Their focus is on themselves and earning money, not on how they can provide a solution for those that need and/or want it.

That last one is a biggie, and I’ll deal with it in more depth shortly, but let me briefly explain each of the above in order so you can achieve what you desire.

People create jobs, not businesses

This is one of those things that many people don’t realise they’re doing until it’s too late.

They set out with the best intentions, selling services online. Many great marketers started out this way, but crucially, they didn’t stay there for very long. There’s a good reason for this:

If you can’t step away from what you’ve created online and still earn money, then you don’t have a business, you have a job.

Selling your services is a great way to earn money online and with the power of the internet, you can find clients far more easily than you would if you were cold calling or going ‘door-to-door’.

It’s a wonderful way to get started, as it means you can use skills you already have and simply transfer them onto the internet, in places like The Warrior Forum.

But it isn’t the key to a successful business because Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few months, I’ve been seeing far greater results in my business and in my personal life, thanks to various changes I’ve made in my mindset. One of them is changing the process I use to ‘get motivated’.

You see, the idea of getting motivated never really made sense to me. Either you’re motivated or you’re not. ‘Getting motivated’ implies that there’s a need to obtain motivation from outside yourself, and if you need that, you’re not doing the right thing (in my opinion). What you’re doing should be inspiration enough, right?

One of the key things that has helped me to change my mindset is the wisdom of my friend Andy and his brilliant book A Bug Free Mind. You can get the first 5 chapters here for FREE.

The following video explains exactly why motivation doesn’t work and what you require instead if you want to be successful. Enjoy!

I recently sent a survey to my subscribers, asking them what they struggle with online.

One thing came out again and again, so much so that I decided to create a special video tutorial that would help them to achieve what they wanted…

That thing that came up, both with those that are new to online marketing to those that are established was how to do keyword research in order to find the hot niches online.

In the video, I expose my exact method for researching keywords in order to find niches and micro-niches that have plenty of searches and only low to moderate competition. Knowing these skills is absolutely vital in order to be successful online.

Resources

The tool I use in the video can be found here – Google Keyword Tool

The best keyword research and competition analysis tool I know – Get a FREE Trial Here

A great free tool to use to qualify what you find on Google’s Keyword Tool – The Keyword Questions Tool

Method Overview

Here’s a quick overview of the method I use to research keywords that have good amounts of traffic (visitors) and low organic competition in the search engines: Read the rest of this entry »

Something I learned a while ago (at least theoretically) has really been brought home to me in the past few months and I wanted to tell you about it in the hope that you can start to use it to your advantage.

Of all the ‘internet marketing secrets‘ that various bloggers and marketers talk about, this may be the most crucial (and the most real, considering most of the so-called secrets aren’t actually a secret at all).

I should say that this blog post was inspired by another blogger and friend of mine, Carly Taylor from Social Diva Marketing. Following an event that Carly, many other great marketers and I attended, she wrote How to Network The Right Way on her blog.

At the time, I read Carly’s post and even commented on it, but I hadn’t really experienced the benefits of what she was talking about…

You see, the secret I want to share with you today is that, in the world of internet marketing, perhaps more than any other industry, what you know is not as important as who you know. You may even have already heard the phrase ‘Your Network creates your Net Worth’. Never a truer word spoken.

Surrounding yourself with successful people has a massive effect on your business and therefore on your life. You see, by being around these people, many of their habits and viewpoints start to rub off on you. Their points of view can be quite challenging when you first start out, particularly if you have previously held limiting beliefs about yourself or your potential. It can be frustrating as you may look at them and think ‘It’s ok for them, they’ve got X amount of money or this contact or that background’, but this comes from a mentality of lack and ‘not enough’.

Once you realise that they’re abundant thanks largely to who they’re connected to it makes things far clearer.

Don’t get me wrong: I know that some people are born with certain privileges or grow up to have certain skills that you and I may not possess, but that doesn’t mean their network is any less important. If anything, if they’re a specialist, then they need their network even more to do all the things they didn’t learn while specialising!

It’s not just the habits and views of the successful that can be cultivated by networking. If you go into a networking situation with a mentality of creating wealth with all those you meet, then you’re bound to get better outcomes than those people who go in thinking ‘What’s in it for me?’ As a result, you can actually start to Read the rest of this entry »

Well, what’s your answer?

The reason I ask is that I recently experienced a rather embarassing moment. I wanted to let you know about it as I think it’ll help you to get a clearer vision of your own online endeavours.

You may even think slightly less of me once I tell you it, but I’m prepared to risk it…

In fact, the embarassing moment is actually a series of moments that have struck me or occured in the last few weeks.

It started with a colleague of mine simply asking me ‘What are you working on at the moment?’

I couldn’t answer. Or at least, I couldn’t answer in any clear, structured way. I couldn’t pinpoint what my business was, and therefore what its goals and aims were. I felt stupid as I had a very blunt realisation:

I hadn’t defined my business and the service I want to provide. I had no definite, clear goal to aim for.

I think I mumbled something about blogging and building a list and doing affiliate marketing… Whatever I said, it made me want to crawl into a ditch.

Up until that point I’d seen my business as a means of making money for myself in order to improve my life and that of the people around me. But this, as you can perhaps already see, is the wrong perspective. Looking at it that way, I’m seeing it as a vehicle for myself and myself only.

Instead, I realised that I need to consider it from the point-of-view of Read the rest of this entry »

A slightly different post from me today, after seeing the below video.

Click play and watch to the end, then check out the text below:

www.GoldforLife.com

Naturally, (as you’ll know if you’ve spent more than a couple of minutes reading this blog) my main method for creating wealth in my own life is to use the internet to help people get what they want.

Now, as many of you will be all too aware, the U.S. government has just managed to save itself from a serious problem with its debt ceiling. Basically, as I understand it, the U.S.A. appears to be heading towards defaulting on its debt, which would have caused huge problems for anyone who uses the U.S. dollar… which is pretty much the entire planet in one way or another.

Most of the internet trades in dollars, and the dollar is fundamentally flawed as a currency, as you’ll see if you watch the above video.

So, making money online (or indeed via any other method) begs an interesting question in the current economic climate:

How do you secure your wealth once you’ve started to accumulate it? What’s the best way to invest money? Read the rest of this entry »