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What was your tipping point?

by ShayB
22 replies
Hello, Warriors!

I have written and rewritten this post 7 times. I wanted a meaningful post for my 1000th post that was worthy of a Pulitzer Prize and would have people naming their kids after me.

Instead it came out like I was doing a "Rah Rah" for myself and that isn't what I wanted.

So here is the 8.0 version.

What was your "tipping point?"

I came here from another forum, and I was thrilled with the info here! I was amazed! I am so thankful for each and every person on here.

I started making money from writing and blogging, and then it happened: my tipping point.

To me, a tipping point is like a point of no return - it is when the big picture is clear and there is no turning back.

My tipping point was my first $300 day.

That was more than I had ever made in a week. I was so shocked. I was literally crying.

I knew then what my potential was. That making 6 figures (and more) was not just a fantasy - it was possible and (dare I say it?) probable(!) - if I just stayed on track.

So I would love to hear from the rest of you.

What was your tipping point?

When did you realize that the next step was possible and you could not turn back without reaching for it?

What is your next step/level?

I look forward to hearing from everyone.
#point #tipping
  • Profile picture of the author doylesoft
    My tipping point was when I had my first payment come through the mail in 1997 for my $5.95 report. (I didn't take credit cards in those days.) I realized something. I realized I could make a living with just: a computer, an Internet connection, and my mind.

    I guess my second tipping point came around 2001 when I realized that I had a talent for creating software programs that could run on any computer running Windows.

    Present day, I am only scratching the surface of what is really possible.
    The future has endless possibilities.
    Life is grand!

    Congratulations on your 1K post!
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    Brandon Doyle
    http://doylesoft.com Simple, effective, and affordable software. Knowledge Base software.

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    • Profile picture of the author SeanyG
      Mine came when I set up a 3 page test site to test to see if there was any interest in a product for a specific niche. The first page had all of the info, the second page had the pricing and all of the ordering fields and the third page had a message that said "Thanks for your order but your book is on back order. We will let you know when your book is ready. Your information has not been stored or charged." I would watch analytics to see how many "sales" I made.

      The sales copy on the first page was rough. The bonus offers were brutal (not that desirable) and the whole offer wasn't congruent: in some parts of the copy we talked about ebooks, in others we referred to it as lessons, the name that I chose was way off of what would generate the most interest and sales....

      On top of this I was just starting to learn adwords (two months ago) and I was paying way too much with ads with a low CTR. Since then things have improved a lot but I paid a ton at the beginning.

      All of this taken into account, I got my first sale on the first day and made a number of sales after that (I think 8 to this date). I pretty much broke even with my fake-real "sales" and thats saying a lot since I blew through a lot of money in the first few weeks. This has been the tipping point for me because I just started and am already breaking even. It can only get better from here!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author freudianslip27
    Neat post!

    I have an offline job as a therapist and am very use to providing a service for a specific amount of time for money. So matter how successful my practice is, I am basically limited because I can only work so many hours a day.

    My tipping point was when I discovered affiliate marketing, and realized I could make X amount of money on a sale and not have to provide a service! I couldn't believe my first trip inside clickbank. It is so crazy that we can sell something and keep 75% of the sale.

    Once you have something that works for you, you can scale. Once I saw that potential, that was when I said to myself "wow, I need to be doing this!"

    Matt
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  • Profile picture of the author RedSynergy
    My first tipping point was going from nothing to 5 clickbank sales in a week with no effort whatsoever.

    My second tipping point was a week of $300 days. That was one hell of an emotional rollercoaster! No going back after that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Shannon Tani
    Great post!

    Mine's a little different cuz it doesn't have to do with IM directly...hope that's OK.

    Growing up, I was never an athletic child. I always prefered reading. Back in high school, I couldn't even run around the track once when we would do the presidential fitness test. After high school and college, I got even worse. I *never* exercised.

    Anyway, round about 5 years ago (probably about 10 years after high school), I started doing the couch to 5k running program. If you haven't heard of it, it helps teach you to run. I remember the first day that I ran for 20 minutes straight. I started crying right there because I knew that it was over a mile (which I could previously never run for that test).

    That was my tipping point because it was there that I realized that I could literally do ANYTHING that I set my mind to. For me, that was even more poignant than IM stuff, because IM stuff is intellectual. I already excel at intellectual things. Challenging myself physically was a big difference.



    This year, after having a difficult pregnancy last year (where I could barely even walk), I'm going to get back into the swing of things and run my first marathon.

    Love,
    Shannon
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  • Profile picture of the author Desmon G
    Congrats Shay! Even if you have to give yourself a "rah rah" once in a while - you deserve it!
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexandre Valois
    I'm feeling my next tipping point very, very near.

    Crunching numbers this morning I realized that with the money I spent outsourcing this month, I could as well afford having my own in-house fulltime employees.

    This means, of course, getting even more done in less time, I just have to find suitable prospects and setup a good system to ensure the transition to in-house goes without a glitch.

    Alex.
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  • Profile picture of the author polleo
    Good for you Alex, hope it comes soon........ feeling mines pretty close too, am coming to the end of a long setup in a cpa method I started over a month ago, should start bringing in a couple k a week..... am getting pretty excited as pay day draws nearer
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Long
    Like Alex, I feel my tipping point fast approaching.

    Which is a very odd thing to say for a guy who has made his living online since 2004....

    You know how so may people say that you can't just "stumble" into online income?

    Well, I did.....4 different times.

    As ashamed as I am to admit it, I never had to learn proper IM work habits because, from 2003 until mid-2008, everything came very easy for me. Almost everything I touched turned to gold.

    So when I finally lost the Midas Touch about 5 months ago, I was totally lost.

    What happened to the dream?

    Huh?

    You mean I might have to put in 12-14 hour days for awhile?

    For months?

    Really?

    No way!!!

    That's been my mindset since late last summer. I've just never had to "work hard" at IM until now.

    It's been both a blessing and a curse.

    But seeing how long and how hard so many people are working to make their dreams reality, I'm beginning to realize that I must now do the same if I want to return to the income numbers I've had in previous years.

    So my tipping point is near. I'm beginning to understand what it will take for me to build anew. 2009 is going to be a fun year.

    Thanks for the post Shay, and congrats on #1000!!!

    (I really should have the mods merge my original account from 2005 into this one, so my post count doesn't look so puny.)

    ~Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author 52.ct
    This is a excellent question. Unfortunately, I have not reached my tipping point yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasdon
    Well, I'm new to marketing - been domaining for a few years.

    I've got a double tipping point; first stage was realising that domain parking in it's current form, is dying. The second stage was taking a name that previously made about $1 a week from parking revenue - finding a useful product on Clickbank and making $105 (less $24 for traffic) from it in less than a week. One domain name, one product, small advertising expense - 80 x more profit - and more fun to boot!

    Maybe I just got lucky with this example, maybe not, but having some traffic in various sectors will help.

    It goes to show the truth in the saying that 'every cloud has a silver lining'.
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    Shay

    Congratulations on your 1,000th post.

    My tipping point came in 2001 when I launched the first version of AutoResponse Plus.

    I was selling through ClickBank at the time and my first check for sales was around $450. I had plans to put it in a frame on the wall but I banked it instead

    This told me that if you create a product that has real value then you will sell it. At the start, you just don't know how much - that comes later. The same thought got my wife and me through a whole year of development with no income before the launch.

    I'm planning another major tipping point by the end of 2009 and a few smaller but no less important ones in between.

    Cheers,

    Neil
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    • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
      My tipping point came round about 3 years ago when my online activities were making as much as my full time job.

      2 months later I packed my job in and went full time.
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  • Profile picture of the author Vince Runza Online
    My tipping point came in May, 2007, when I got paid for writing. In fact, I got an unexpected bonus for my writing.

    Thanks to a business plan that was vetted by Bev Clement and her suggestion that I consider doing ghostwriting, I moved beyond my previous limitations of being an employee to being self employed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Dixon
    Congrats Shay on your 1000th post. Mine is fast approaching too so I'd better think of something worthwhile to post......

    Seems to be becoming a tradition around here to mark a significant post count with a really worthwhile post, I think Nick Brighton did a really good one not so long ago.

    It's a good question you have posed and one that I had to sit and ponder for a while.

    I guess my tipping point came a few years ago around the time the Bum Marketing craze took off.

    I ran a very successful WSO for an ebook I had written on bum/article marketing as I had been doing that sort of thing for a while.

    That was the tipping point for me that made me realise this (as in run my own IM business) is what I want to do and gave me the determination to succeed.

    Everything I have now has grown from that point really.

    Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author derekwong28
    My tipping pt was when I bought a series of sites listed on eBay for $35,000 in Feb 2005. By all accounts, the listing looked like a scam but I took the chance anyway. I handed in my notice for my full-time job on 1st Aug that year.

    At that I was already running a successful e-commerce business already but I was worried that I was not diversified enought. That purchase allowed me to diversify into webpublishing and gave me the confidence needed to resign.

    Derek
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  • Profile picture of the author Kim Standerline
    My tipping point came in Oct 2005 when I set up my first membership site and the money came pouring in. (It was a blinding revelation)

    Had a few more since then, but that was the best one for me

    Kim
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  • Profile picture of the author dudemeister
    My first tipping point was having setup 20 blogs and spent the week writing articles and promoting it to come back and check my adsense account and affiliate account and found that I had made £450.
    I havent been back to work since.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Shay, congratulations on #1,000...

      My own tipping point had nothing to do with a dollar figure.

      We hit a rough patch financially, and I took what I thought was going to be a short-term, holiday job doing inbound telemarketing for a big catalog company. What was supposed to be a two or three month job stretched to over three years.

      The tipping point came when they sat me down and offered me a full-time job, with benefits. I thought about it. I really wanted to say yes.

      And I turned it down.

      After that, it was just a matter of time. Driving to work, I found myself repeating over and over, "I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this..." Despite my best intentions, my performance slipped.

      The end came when they sat me down, read me my list of offenses - listening to customers, upselling them, making recommendations when asked, grave offenses all - and asked if I really wanted the job. I realized I did not, and I told them so.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mangozoom
    My tipping point is still on it's way to be honest.

    I make a good living in my professional life as a Marcoms guy. However I cannot stand companies politics and the corporate life.

    The challenge I face is to match my fulltime salary. My online earnings are growing rapidly so the game plan is to say goodbye boss by the end of 09

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author Sylvia Meier
    Congrats Shay on 1k (didn't mean that to rythme lol) When I read your title I thought you were talking about a certain book and I havent read it yet, just reading another one right now by the same author and his Tipping Point is how little things can make a big difference and I think it actually fits quite well, because it is all the little things that built up to the big difference in our lives, to our own tipping points.

    My tipping point isn't so much an IM one. But it was the day I realized I could do anything I put my mind to and I still hold to it today. And that day was when I graduated high school a single mom, entering into university. Across a packed auditorium my little girl came running down the aisle screaming "That's my mommy" and that was my tipping point. I made it through high school a way most would consider impossible and it made me realize anything is possible. IM wise, it would be my first sale. Really that simple. The first time someone bought something I had created I knew I could do this.

    Congrats again,
    Sylvia
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