What Was Your Aha Moment?

What was your AHA moment and what did you do differently afterward?

An "aha" moment is that point in your IM endeavors where all the pieces fall into place. A moment of clarity that enlightens and actually changes you?

I remember roughly two and a half years ago when I was working two jobs and trying to get my feet wet in IM. I was doing all I could in my spare time getting very frustrated. Then, out of the blue, I went from working two jobs to being unemployed.

I was spending every spare penny I had trying to find the secret to IM. Obviously the time to devote factor was not an issue any longer, now it was financial.

I went from tinkering around trying to figure this all out to outright panic and desperation. I had six mouths to feed, a mortgage and two car payments. All of this on a $400 a week unemployment check.

I sat down one evening and started going through everything that I had purchased about IM. There had to be a secret that I was missing. There had to be a way to start making money!

I logged on to one of my hosting accounts and realized that I had over 20 domains registered on that account and just as many unfinished projects. While I had been tinkering around with IM, I had been jumping from one persons method or program to the next. I had never really followed through with a single project. If I didn't see results instantly, like I had been promissed in soooo many books, I would give up and move on.

Than it hit me. If I took some of the projects that were making a little bit of money and worked on them untill they were making decent money I might be OK.

I went through all of my projects one by one and laid out a game plan for each. Once I had that done I started with the one that was making the most money and I worked on it till it either started making money or I realized it was going nowhere.

I did this with everything I had going. Working my way down my list. Some of them were huge failures, while some started to show great promise. I made methotical notes about what was working and what was not.

I started to duplicate the projects that showed the most promise within different markets and niches. I soon had a large portfolio of successful campaigns and was soon making more money than I had between both of my jobs.

So, my AHA moment was when I realized that I had not been taking this seriously enough. I was treating it as a hoby. I stopped looking at each project as if it was a piece of me and that it had to work and started treating the projects as tests. If it worked, I would tweak it and make it better. If if flopped, no big deal. I would note why i thought it failed and move on to the next.

IM is a numbers game. The more you try, the more experience you will gain. The more you fail, you are that much closer to success. We can never know for sure if a project will succeed or flop until we try it.

I learned that if something fails, you must quickly learn why and move on. If it is successful, learn why and tweak it to make it better. I no longer get discouraged if a project sucks because I know that I am just around the corner from finding another winner!

In my experience, you need to try 5 - 10 different markets or niches to find the 1 or 2 very successful projects.

So, my advice to everybody new to IM, do not take your projects personally. They are nothing special until they are making you money. Do not be affraid to learn from a project and run away as fast as you can.

Never put all your eggs in the same basket. You must always be testing 5 - 10 projects at a time. If you do this, you will find the winners and you will truly start learning.

Doug