The mindset of making money with IM. Key ideas...
Excited, maybe overwhelmed with information, uncertain of what to do, who to follow or listen to and what their next step is going to be.
A best guess judged on the last 20 years is that most come UNDERFUNDED to actually begin a business. Which is why IM is so attractive in the first place, one doesn't need much.
But in the 20+ year archives here they will find a central theme, which goes: if you don't have money to invest in your IM, then you must invest TIME.
And, all too often, they don't have that either. They NEED to start making money, like yesterday. They lack the time to learn. And so their journey begins.
Some may be here 5 years, or even 10 and will still post up about this, that or the other thing they SHOULD do, having never earned anything but pennies during their time here.
Could be sad for those who care.
So, hopefully, this new thread on MINDSET as it relates to WF and making money will serve as a GO spot or a starting point on their personal monopoly game board.
As your piece sits on GO, before you roll your dice, try to understand the following:
You don't get paid for doing nothing.
Write that down. Only say, "I won't get paid for doing nothing." Write it out and put in on your computer or on the back of your cell. It is a fact of IM.
So, if it is true, and if you doubt it, let us know why you think it is a false premise, OK?
IF you don't get paid for doing nothing, then look at what you can DO to get paid.
Start with the idea of being PAID. A payment is made in exchange for goods or services provided and when both parties agree on a value.
All business is based on transactions. A simple one would be having your bike for sale in your front yard, with a sign with price, and someone stopping and buying it giving you what you have asked.
That is a simple transaction, a one off. Now if you have a basement full of bikes, then maybe you just put the next one in the yard and wait for it to sell.
A TRANSACTION is when VALUE (most often money or currency) is exchanged, but money is not the only means of making the exchange. Maybe instead of cash they offer you a game for your bike and if it is something you want and feel it is a fair exchange, you send the bike down the road and go play your new game.
OK. So, you have to DO something to get paid.
You have to offer either a product or a service. That actually is the easy part, you may have a basement full of bikes, but you live in the country where only a few cars a day pass by.
What can you do to sell those bikes?
Well, maybe you can take them to town, distribute them to a few retail places, and offer a COMMISSION for selling the bikes, in the real world this is known as CONSIGNMENT, online in IM it is mostly seen via AFFILIATE marketing, and eCom has exploded under this concept. Getting other people to sell your goods and services for you. It is a HOT IM concept. And often it is one of the very first that a new Warrior will look at. It appears easy because:
You don't have to find a product or service to sell. That is the good news about affiliate marketing. The bad news is, like your bikes in different retail locations on consignment, they are only one of thousands of other products these merchants may be offering. Your bike could sit in a consignment shop for months, and maybe it would have sold quicker out in the country.
But maybe you want to REPAIR bikes which are given to you or you buy dirt cheap, they have a lot more VALUE if you fix them and then sell them. You want to provide the service of fixing bikes.
You want to DO something. In IM there are many sites, including the WF sister site, Freelancer dot com. This site is like Fiverr and Upwork, Guru, and 99designs and other places where you can offer your services on a contract basis.
Graphics, web site design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), copywriting, content, video, audio are a few of the many choices you have to be a service provider. And this may suit your talents better, but the catch or problem with service providers, you have to have SOMEONE (a prospect) who will become your customer and exchange value with you.
Getting customers is the HARD part, and with a dozen or more sites offering service providers, you may find yourself competing against thousands of others, many of them with portfolios of past work, so it may sound easier to provide a service rather than get into selling products, but the challenges are mostly the same...FINDING A BUYER.
Many new Warriors are like the guy in the country with his bike in the front yard, and only a few cars a day pass by to see it. And it doesn't take long for this new to IM person to start to look for alternatives.
So what is a good beginning MINDSET for the New Warrior and for any seasoned Warrior who hasn't yet achieved some form of independence with their IM?
ONE way of THINKING, other than how can I quickly and easily make some fast cash, is to ask yourself what you bring to the party? What skills, knowledge, experience do you have BEFORE you even begin your IM? And probably more important, what do you like or love to do?
We see it a lot, FOLLOW YOUR PASSION, the money will follow. Sounds good. Great advice, but it doesn't help the majority who need to start making money as soon as is possible.
So the mind becomes conflicted, and a conflicted, confused or overwhelmed MIND may be the very first piece of work you have to do.
And before one even gets into how his thoughts got there, and the belief she has, a reckoning or a settling of your thoughts and a focus on first, getting your thinking under your control...BEFORE you act on any given IM venture.
Your thoughts?
GordonJ
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Lightin' fuses is for blowin' stuff togethah.