3 Years and I'm on My Way
I wanted to talk today about making money online. Just like you I fell in love with the dream of quick easy money and how it would turn my life around. That was three years ago and I am still struggling. There are two reasons for this:
1. I didn't stick to one thing
2. I believed all the B.S. that was pushed my way.
I first started IM with Google Adwords, and it worked, but not for me. It worked that I saw 900 click throughs in three months. That wasn't bad for someone with extremely limited knowledge of the IM whole thing. However, I didn't get a single conversion and Google gobbled up over $100 of my own money.
Now I know that the product was good, but I didn't learn enough about it. I rushed straight in and got burnt. So Adwords was given the flick and I moved to Adsence. The only difference between Adwords and Adsence was the fact that I didn't lose any money. Actually Adsence wasn't to bad but it only made me a few cents.
I then tried my own web page and my own product and still ended up with zip. I moved to Twitter to get customers. That had minor results but nothing outstanding.
Not to be disheartened I tried article marketing, video marketing, all manner of social networking and got the same results every time. Nothing.
The biggest problems I found was I didn't know enough and kept swapping to something else too soon. I now know that If I had stuck at the one thing I would have done a lot better.
So first piece of advice, stick to one thing, and get to know it really well, and then work it hard.
The second problem I found was that I kept on buying the latest product or video course and trying to learn to much. I learnt about how to design your web page, how to social network, how to create squeeze pages and how to put them altogether to ensure that you had a great flow of traffic.
What I did learn in the end was that one man cannot do all of it alone. Yes all those systems work, but it would take a beginner years to get it all working properly. And It's just not worth busting yourself over.
The other problem with most of the courses was they were either out of date or just full of hype. Some did have some good information, and were really well done, but there was a lot of rubbish to wade through.
Second piece of advice, don't buy courses or programs that sound too good to be true, and only buy courses that are going to give you extra ideas on what you are already doing. If your blogging and want to improve that, then don't worry about the email marketing course. You will just get over whelmed.
Finally I sat down about June and said enough is enough. I was going nowhere, spending hours creating products that weren't selling and trying to design web pages with no idea about good web page design. I decided that I needed to change my tactic and moved back to two things I had seen mild results with, Twitter and blogging for Adsence. I also gave myself a 6 month deadline. I would have to be making decent money by the end of the year or I would quit. I wasn't going to waste the rest of my life hoping.
So with the new focus in mind I found a course that was promoting how to make money through Twitter, Blogs and Adsence. I bought the course and it confirmed what I was doing was right. I had come up with my own idea of RSS feeds for blogs and Twitter, however it was a clumsy system that relied on Outlook to do everything. This course showed me how to do it better, easier and make the entire system automated.
For the last 5 months I have been working 10 blog and twitter pages and have seen great results. No I am not earning enough to retire, but I have seen the amount I am earning go up each month, and it was for far less work than I was doing before.
But how did I go from earning nothing to earning something, consistency and focus. They are the two things that have allowed me to succeed. Every day I work for an hour on the business before I have to go to work. I make sure that I stick to only blogs, twitter and Adsence and try to get it working to best way possible. I don't worry about other areas of IM and I don't let the hype get to me.
I collect various video every now and again that show me how to bring people to my blogs through other methods. However, I'll watch them later when I know everything is running fine with the system that I have now. I will not allow myself to be distracted again.
It can be boring, but I can play music while I'm working so it's not that bad. Plus I do get a buzz everyday when I see my Adsence account got up.
So for anybody starting I offer this advice:
1. Choose one area to work, and make sure it is something that you like
2. Choose one niche and focus on it
3. Work it every day
4. Set you goals and work to them
5. Have a daily list of what you MUST do in order for the business to run properly
6. Run it as a business. Just because you are at home doesn't mean you can skive off and come back to it later.
7. Set time limits and work to them
8. Stop looking at unimportant things on the net that have nothing to do with the business.
9. Stop checking emails/Facebook/twitter/porn. Unless they are you traffic sites, they can wait until later.
10. Avoid programs, webinars, videos and the like that are not directly related to you area
11. Stop watching any of the above that don't start telling you how to improve what you are doing within the first 5 minutes. You will find they are only full of hype and most likely a sales pitch.
12. Stop looking for the quick buck and build a long term business.
13. Celebrate every success regardless of how large or small it may be
14. Don't give up to soon
15. Avoid spamming people
16. Seek help and advice for those who have been here for a while
17. Avoid Gurus.
This is a great industry to be in. It's always changing and it keeps you on your toes. It's not easy but it is easier and cheaper to start than a traditional bricks and mortar business.
Oh and one final thing, don't try and use this to build yourself as a brand. You can become a "guru" and you can become famous, but it's far easier just to make money.
Terry Shadwell
P.S. for those that are interested, the most I will make this month will probably be $12. That is $4 more than the month before and $4 for the month before that. By Christmas I want to be over $50 per month. I have a few more plans to work, but they are all within the Blog/Twitter/Adsence system.
"professional writing priced right "
Coming soon!
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