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It's A BIG, BIG, BIG, World Out There....

by John Taylor
20 replies
I've seen several threads lately asking "What
makes a successful WSO?". I've seen other
threads suggesting how to make money from
a WSO.

At one time I had over 3,000 sites making a
few dollars every day. Then Google moved the
goalposts and my income plummeted from a lot
to the square root of zero. Lesson... diversify
your income streams, don't rely on another
person or organisation for all your income.

If you are currently relying on the WSO Forum
for more than 80% of your income, you need
to step back and find ways to diversify.

I'm not saying it will happen.... BUT, what if Allen
decided to close the WSO Forum? Or, what if he
decided to disallow the type of products or services
that you are currently selling? (It has happened!)

The WSO Forum is a great place to get started. It's
a great place to test the market. It's a great place
to pre-launch your product to iron out the creases
before you launch your product in the worldwide
marketplace.

John
#big #world
  • Profile picture of the author Richard Tunnah
    Nice post John. Those of us that have been 'around' a while online have seen that it is always dangerous to build a business that relies on someone else whether it's the warrior forum, facebook, twitter, hub pages or google. It's funny as last week I had this exact conversation with 2 businesses. One is doing well with Adsense and one has built a great facebook following but if they disappeared tomorrow both businesses would be in real trouble as these are their only income source.

    Rich
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  • Profile picture of the author steven90210
    Great post, Sir. The WSO is a great place to test an upcoming launch on a smaller scale. That way, we can judge which way conversions are going to go on launch day itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Karan Goel
    Well said John.

    I myself was caught in this kind of a problem
    a few months back.

    I wanted to start a service like Angela's backlinks.
    But as soon as I came up with the first few packets,
    BAAMMM!

    WF was not allowing any such types of WSO's. I was
    broken from the inside. All my hard work in vain.

    Karan
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by Kukelka View Post

      nice post, very interesting
      Really? What part did you find most interesting, besides inching one post closer to 50?

      John, your example should hit home with a lot of people here. Many think that "diversify your income streams" means building more sites with different keywords but the exact same method and model.
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      • Profile picture of the author Richard Van
        Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

        Really? What part did you find most interesting, besides inching one post closer to 50?
        You should see some of the others.

        But anyway John, thanks for sharing! :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author lgibbon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          Really? What part did you find most interesting, besides inching one post closer to 50?
          Originally Posted by Richard Van View Post

          You should see some of the others.

          But anyway John, thanks for sharing! :rolleyes:
          Hope you guys are reporting trolls like this.
          With a bit of help we can rid the forum of this type of garbage.
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          • Profile picture of the author Richard Van
            Originally Posted by lgibbon View Post

            Hope you guys are reporting trolls like this.
            With a bit of help we can rid the forum of this type of garbage.
            Les, I'll have worn out the report button at this rate today.
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            Wibble, bark, my old man's a mushroom etc...

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  • Profile picture of the author RichardF
    Good post. Relying on launching WSO's as your only source of income is no better than relying on just search engine traffic, or any other traffic source for that matter. Diversification is extremely important, and I speak from experience. I've had it happen several times that an affiliate offer or traffic source dried up, and I was left with no income at all. It's extremely stressful, but I like to think I've learned my lesson now... at least I'm working on it
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  • Profile picture of the author brobdingnagian
    Thanks for the splash of cold reality! Mucho appreciado!
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  • Profile picture of the author ganesh
    On the dot. Thanks a lot John. WSO is surely a very good place to get started. Test products etc. None of the income sources are 100% safe. I had mentioned that in many of my posts. Not only WSO’s, now a days I am seeing a lot of marketers going full time with Facebook marketing. I personally feel that it is quite dangerous. You opinion Sir.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    John,

    I would take it a step further and suggest that people start looking at places like Google, Twitter, Facebook, forums...as lead generators rather than income streams.

    Most of us have heard the old "the money is in the list" more than a few times but it's just as important to control the database the list is on.

    Having a million Twitter or Facebook followers does you no good if they ever pull the plug on the space they are lending to you.
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    • Profile picture of the author hikerguy777
      It's a very good point. Using Google, FB, Twitter, WSO, etc is an opportunity for you to begin developing a relationship with a potential customer. Thanks for the reminder.
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      • Profile picture of the author Coast2Coast
        Originally Posted by Matt Maiden View Post


        I would take it a step further and suggest that people start looking at places like Google, Twitter, Facebook, forums...as lead generators rather than income streams.

        Most of us have heard the old "the money is in the list" more than a few times but it's just as important to control the database the list is on.

        Having a million Twitter or Facebook followers does you no good if they ever pull the plug on the space they are lending to you.
        I'd sure appreciate hearing a tad more on what that means.

        My background is primarily in the offline world and as I've been trying to get a handle on this IM stuff it's helped to look at how certain themes cross over in specific ways, so the note in Mr. McCabe's post about diversifying makes clear sense to me, but what would be an example of "controlling the database" one's list (ie customer base) is on in terms of the internet, if not, say, Google?
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        • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
          Originally Posted by Coast2Coast View Post

          I'd sure appreciate hearing a tad more on what that means.

          My background is primarily in the offline world and as I've been trying to get a handle on this IM stuff it's helped to look at how certain themes cross over in specific ways, so the note in Mr. McCabe's post about diversifying makes clear sense to me, but what would be an example of "controlling the database" one's list (ie customer base) is on in terms of the internet, if not, say, Google?
          By controlling the database, I meant if you were using a mailing list service like Aweber, the leads that you collect and store are yours and nobody can come along and take those leads from you.

          I know lots of people that never try to get their Twitter or Facebook followers on to their email list. They just try to sell from Twitter.

          As long as Twitter lets you keep your profile page there, you can continue to do that but if Twitter ever revokes your account for any reason, you lose access to all of those followers.

          So I guess the real message for both John's thread and what I was adding is don't let a third party control your access to your prospect and customer base.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
      Matt,

      Originally Posted by Matt Maiden View Post

      I would take it a step further and suggest that people start looking at places like Google, Twitter, Facebook, forums...as lead generators rather than income streams.
      I agree. Just as I recommend that we look for
      diverse income streams, I would also suggest
      that it's important to look for diverse sources
      of traffic and leads.

      It's all about spreading the risk so that we are
      not over-reliant upon any third party. That
      should also be true when selecting suppliers.

      John
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      • Profile picture of the author Nick the Genius
        I myself don't make money from WSOs (as you can see, I just use the forums to keep myself updated on Internet marketing), but I understand what you said completely.

        When Google changed their algorithm again, SERPS dropped one of my niche sites and my reliance in the traffic it gave made me think twice about putting all my eggs in one basket the next time around. I'm working on two income streams right now, thinking of a 3rd one. They're not as big as the past but they're reasonable for my weekend marketing.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alfred Shelver
    John,

    I think this is a mindset issue, Its difficult to diversify if something works, but history has shown that only companies and people that adapt to change will survive.

    I needed the lesson today as I feel I am stuck in a rut only focusing on my personal tried and tested, and your post gave me a wake up call
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Ogbin
    Don't put your golden eggs in one basket!!

    OK let me explain what I mean by that.

    If you focusing in just SEO Google be sure that you will probably getting a fatal slap from it; because Google always change the algorithm, maybe your site will be away that could your mamma never never see your site again after rank in the first page for a long time.

    Adsense could shut down your account without notice.
    clickbank could disable your account; it doesn't matter how much money you have even 8 figures.
    Facebook could delete your fan page, or twitter could block your account, youtube could delete video that have millions of viewers or shut down your account indefinitely.
    If you think that you can safe yourself by building a list as I hear that a lot of people say " the money is in the list", so I say to them this "What could be your situation when aweber or getresponder or any email marketing service decide suddenly to completely disable your account so what the answer" your golden egg (email list) will be useless.

    I am always working in several streams of income; Creating Ebooks about how to get targeted traffic, SEO (google, yahoo, bing), adsense, email list, facebook, twitter, youtube, affiliate marketing with clickbank and others, website designer, having my own affiliate website, article writing, squidoo, hubpages, blog and wordpress.com.

    I outsource almost all of them.

    I hope this will help you take care of your business much more
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  • Profile picture of the author xMarkPro
    Nice post, and 100% agreed. When it comes to online income streams, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulie888
    John, I couldn't agree more. It's risky to concentrate too much of your resources and time on just one method/form of traffic, and it's especially imperative that we diversify our sources of traffic.

    I can see the appeal of focusing on WSOs since the traffic aspect is pretty much automatic once you launch your product, but it's best to diversify and have at least several income streams just in case something happens to WSO traffic, or even the forum!

    Paul
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