Adventures in Internet Marketing

Archive for the ‘Mindset’ Category

It’s been a very interesting couple of weeks for me in the world of online marketing. I’ve stumbled across and discovered a whole host of amazing people in internet business that are achieving the results that I want, in many cases, from the same methods I want to use. I will of course be sharing these with you over the coming weeks and months.

I also had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine and that is the reason for this post. She’s an actor/actress (I never know which one it’s supposed to be) and I’ve been fortunate enough to appear in plays with her. She’s very talented and has appeared on TV. She’s also recently been asked to audition for one of my favourite TV shows.

However, like most actors, she spends most of her time working for someone else in order to have the money she needs to live.

‘That’s great Matt, but so what?’ you might be thinking…

Well, during our discussion, she said to me that she thought I was using my internet business to put off doing what I really love (acting). She asked how long it would take to set up my business and get it to the stage where I was happy with it. She was (and probably still is) concerned that I wouldn’t allow myself to reach my goals because I was too busy focussing on the money and the business.

This made me stop and think and I want to know if this has ever happened to you. Has a friend said something about your pursuit of internet marketing that has made you reconsider your goals. How did you deal with it?

In my case, I know deep inside my being that I can have the life I want. I can have Read the rest of this entry »

I recently discovered a wonderful organisation that allows people like you and me to lend money to entrepreneurs in the developing world.

http://www.kiva.org

Rather than simply donating money to a charity where you don’t necessarily see the project you’ve helped, you lend your money to a specific business person in the form of a start-up or development loan. These people then repay the loan once they’ve got their business to the stage of being profitable. They currently receive funds at a rate of 1 loan every 12 seconds!

There is no interest charged on the loan. Once the money is returned to you, you have the option of distributing it to other causes or taking it back to use yourself. This gives you the option of only donating when you have the funds available.

Better still, for those of you who have read books like The One Minute Millionaire and The Secret, you’ll know that there’s a lot to be said for giving money away. The act of giving attracts
Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, that’s right folks!

My blog and I are jumping on the World Cup bandwagon of extrapolating tenuous points from current events in the hope of sounding relevant and (God forbid) ‘cutting edge’.

Except this one is actually relevant and a good point. And I think it will help you.

I was casually watching the football a few nights ago. The match was being shown on ITV here in England, a commercial channel which broadcasts ad breaks. In this case, the breaks happened twice during half-time of the match.

An ad came on for one of the sponsors. I can tell you now that I don’t remember who or what the ad was for, so it wasn’t effective. What was effective was the message it came with.

It showed a man holding a football, a solitary figure walking towards the penalty spot to take a penalty. The voiceover simply said:

Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to share something a little different with you today, marketing fans. I’ve recently been reading the story of a guy called Chris Gardner. For those of you that don’t recognise the name, he’s the lead character (and real person) in the film ‘The Pursuit of Happyness‘ starring Will and Jaden Smith as father and son. The movie is based on his life and his rise from homeless to millionaire.

The film itself only covers a small part of his life and I wanted to learn more about his rise and see what lessons it might teach me about my own life and quest for wealth. As a result, I picked up a copy of the amazing book that the film is based on, also entitled ‘The Pursuit of Happyness‘.

There are several amazing stories in the book, which (naturally) goes into far more depth than the movie can. It’s one of those books that within every chapter, shows you a way forward with a line or phrase that resonates deeply in your mind.

The most powerful thing about it is Read the rest of this entry »

I was listening to Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad audio book earlier on and something struck me that I thought might help you lovely folk.

It was around the section where he starts talking about his definition of wealth that it hit me. For those of you who are yet to read it, he takes his definition from R. Buckminster Fuller’s definition, which basically states that your wealth is the number of days forward that you can survive without having to work. For example, if you had to stop working tomorrow, how long could you survive?

If you have enough money to cover 15 days worth of expenses, then that is the extent of your wealth.

To that end, if you have an asset (like an online business) that covers your monthly expenses and then gives you a little more, then you are truly wealthy as you don’t need to work any more to maintain your current standard of living.

Now this is not what struck me as amazing. I’ve read and listened to this book many times.

The thing that amazed me was Read the rest of this entry »

Having been in internet marketing a little over 6 months now, I’ve been taking stock of where I’ve got to and learning as much as I can from the experience.

I wanted to share one particular thing with you that struck me as important. I even came up with a little name for it: ‘Magpie Syndrome’.

You see, put simply, this is the tendency that we all have (including the internet ‘gurus’) of wanting the next shiny book/course/piece of software that promises to improve our business. Of course, assuming they’re good products, then the chances are good that they will improve our business… Until we see the next shiny object and forget about the first one…

Here’s the problem: We’re all looking for ways to make money online and we want it sooner rather than later. As a result, if we’re convinced that a product will help us accomplish that, then we’ll want to buy it to get that ‘secret formula’. Marketers capitalise on this to sell you their product. However, every marketer is doing this, and so we can easily become blinded by the new information and not actually do anything with it.

Having studied many of the marketers who are wildly successful, I’ve realised that their approach is somewhat different. Read the rest of this entry »