One of my favorite speeches from any film is Jack Nicholson’s from A Few Good Men

Kaffee: I want the truth
Col Jessop: You Can’t Handle The truth

So as a warning I am going to brutally honest in this post and if you don’t want the truth or can’t handle the truth then please go and watch some funny clips on You Tube and continue dreaming about your bright future in Internet marketing, because that is what it will be a dream.

Truth #1

You can’t go straight from $0 to $10,000 a month.

Despite what many people will have you believe it’s just not going to happen. You can however go from $0 to $1 then $1 to $10 then $10 to $100 then $100 to …. etc

Truth #2

You have to learn the basics, actually not just learn them you need to master them. It doesn’t matter what you are doing to earn your money online there are a few skills you need to master

You need to be able to pick a good niche

You need to be able to get traffic

You need to be able to connect with people through your words or videos.

Or you need to be able to pay people who can do it for you.

Truth #3

You need to stop being big on thoughts and empty on deeds. In the words of Nike: Just Do IT. Put aside a certain amount of time a day and spend that time developing your business it doesn’t matter if you work full time you can still find time to work at IM. If you can’t then admit defeat and walk away IM is not for you. I’ve talked to several friends who make money full time doing internet marketing and it seems we all have one thing in common we don’t watch that much TV. Personally I watch less than 5 hours a week. Turn off your TV and Take action.

Truth #4

Internet Marketing is fun. It really is, learn it, master it and you’ll go to work with a smile on your face and look forward to what the day will bring. Internet Marketing is a new business with so many possibilities that if you are open to new opportunities you can generate income from out of no where at least thats what it seems to outsiders

Truth #5

This stuff is easy so long as you take action.

Take Action – Find a Niche
Take Action – Build a site
Take Action – Promote the site
Take Action – Pay the money you earned into your bank
Take Action – Rinse and Repeat

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Yesterday I was having a really bad day…well bad is probably a wrong choice of words compared to some peoples trouble it was nothing,so annoying is probably more appropriate. I’d been promised a delivery, it didn’t turn up, I’d had to deal with a “client from hell” who after downloading all the downloads in the forum , asking me for a downloadable copy of all the videos and then asking me indepth essay length questions almost everyday for a month..did a charge back of 6 months subscriptions. So as you can imagine I was in a pretty foul mood. This last person really had me questioning my choice of career!

I then went into the Wordpress Goldmine forum and checked the days posts.. The first I read was from one of our long term members and revealed how she had just had her first $100 day. The second was from a newer member who had made her $100 for the month target 2 days earlier this month than last month. Funny how my foul mood soon disapeared.

So what do these 2 members have in common, well apart from being women they both work at their businesses almost everyday. They set themselves a plan and targets and stick to them. They know that internet marketing is not a get rich quick business model, but they also know that the more you work at it the more money you earn.

What can you learn from them?…everything! You can read my book and watch my videos and you’ll know how to make money online but it’s members like these two and hundreds more that will keep you motivated and focussed on a daily basis.

You learn from them and the other successful members that if you focus and set realistic targets then you will achieve success. The simplest way is one we use a target we regularly in the forum, to try to earn $100 1 day earlier every month. If you stick to that simple target you’ll be suprised at how quickly the date comes down and before long you’ll be adjusting your target to $1000.

So congratulations to Heather and Rachel and also a special congratulations to Niurka who had a baby last week…and posted in the foum from the hospital (I did mention the members were dedicated didn’t I!). We have a few more forum babies due this month or next so it looks like we’ll be installing a creche.

As you can probably see from this post the Wordpress Goldmine forum is like a big family, we support and encourage each other. If you think this is the type of environment in which you’ll be able to build your online business then why not give us a try, you can still get in on a $1 trial.

Finally if you want to read a great blog with good common sense and no hype check out Heathers blog at http://myworkathomeblog.net/

If you really want to get to $100 a day and you are prepared to work and have realistic targets come and pay us a visit, I guarantee you a warm welcome and as much help and advice as you’ll need.

3 weeks in to the year have you actually made progress towards your targets? You have set target haven’t you? If you have well done , if you haven’t come on get with the program!

Internet marketing is a business if you want to make money online then you need to think like a businessman (or business woman!). Take responsibility for your actions, get a business plan together, play to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. By doing this you will maximise your chances of succeeding. If you fail there is no one else to blame but yourself. However there is no reason why you should fail if you take a systematic approach to things and don’t expect to be buying that yacht in a few months time.

While you are doing this don’t lose site of the big picture… you’ve developed a very valuable talent. A talent that you can use to make money from areas you wouldn’t normally expect.

If you’ve been in internet marketing for more than a month you should know how to build a site that will sell. You also know how to promote it what it takes to get it to the top of the rankings. You now know more than 95% of the people you meet every day!. Use this to your advantage, I regularly get asked if i can help people with their websites, one thing that is abundantly clear is that these people know nothing and i mean absolutely zero about website promotion. If they do any promotion what so ever it’s throwing a few dollars a day at an Adwords campaign.

I’ve mention this before but one of the members of Wordpress Goldmine has become very successful by applying what he has learned to the “Real World”, and has so much business he has to turn work down. Several other members have followed his advice and are also making money from this area.. I was talking to one today who is currently working on a deal that could bring in seriously big bucks.

If you want to create a real business from what you already know then I seriously recommend that you check out Chris’s Crossroads Methodology. If you are a forum member check out the thread where you’ll get a big discount.

Anyway I sort of went a bit off track there a bit but If you read his book I am sure you’ll thank me!! Right back to business….

Here are a few simple rules that will help you to become more successful this year…

1. Concentrate on what you do well.

We all have things we are good at and things we hate doing, I love keyword research and writing but hate the promotion side of things.. so i outsource my promotion for a few dollars and hour and concentrate on the bits I like.

If you are just starting out and you feel you can’t afford to hire outsourced staff, then why not do what you like doing, writing 2 articles will probably pay for 5 hours of outsourced backlink building.

2. The 80/20 Rule (Thanks Heather!)

You should spend 20% of your time researching and building your business and 80% promoting it. This is a bit of a pain if like me you hate promotion but it’s got to be done. This way you drastically increase your chances of success.

3. Spread the Load

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. try to give yourself 3 or 4 streams of income then if one dies you have others that can be built up to fill in the gap. I would always recommend starting with AdSense as your first stream, it’s easy and you learn a hell of a lot that will be useful when you start to build up your other income streams.

Finally, 2 bits of information for you…

Firstly if you got the Leverage Your Articles report I did a few months back (it’s included as a bonus if you sign up to my mailing list using the form in the sidebar) then you really should check out Jonathan ledgers The Best Spinner. I tested this a few months back and thought it was one of the worst spinners I had ever tried. But I now hapilly take all that back. He worked on it and developed it into a really awesome tool. It’s currently free while it’s in beta so you can see if it’s something you would use before it becomes a paid tool on February 1st.

Secondly I am going to be offering a limited Wordpress Goldmine Special Offer You can get in on a $1 Trial so if you want to check out the forum now is the time. Affiliate Promotion is only open to current members so if you are a member grab your links from the members area and check out the videos I’ll be adding to the forum giving you ideas how to promote the offer.

This time every year I sit down and put together a list of things I want to achieve the following year. The at the end of the year I look back and see how much i actually achieved. Looking back now at last years list it looks like I managed to achieve most of them.

Some I surpassed , some I didn’t quite achieve and some I never really started. But none of that matters what matters is that I have a plan to work to. This give me structure and stops me wandering aimlessly in circles darting from one project to another.

The key is to try to think longterm, I get constantly reminded that it doesn’t really matter what happens next month as long as the results are achieved in the long term. Recently sites I have built 3 or 4 months ago have started to earn some good income with very little input from me.

How many times have you started a hobby or an exercise program but given up after a few weeks because you aren’t seeing results? Think what position you’d be in now if you’d continued. It’s the same with Making money online , how many sites or projects have you started but not finished. If you’d started building just 1 site a week 2 years ago you’d have over 100 now and would potentially making a few hundred dollars a day?

Plan Ahead -Think Longterm

Here are a few practical things that might help you get your plan together.

1. Believe in Yourself and Think Longterm

2. Get yourself a white board if you don’t already have one.

3. Change the wallpaper on your PC to something you really want.

4. Remove email and IM tools from autostart. And set your default setting for IM to Busy or off line.

5. Have realistic monthly targets If you are earning $100 a month now don’t aim for $100,000 by march. When I first started I tried to double my income for the first 3 or 4 months then grow it 10-20% per month. Some of the members of Wpgoldmine find it good to bring forward the date that they make their targets every month so that they have to achieve it one day earlier each month.

6. Focus on income streams that use your strengths. Try to develop new strengths

7. Use as many free tools as you can.

8. Set a monthly budget for tools and reports. Don’t exceed it. You don’t need every tool that comes out.

9. Every Dollar you don’t spend means that profit is a dollar closer. So concentrate on value for money.

10. Cancel mailing list subscriptions if they aren’t giving you valuable information. if all you ever get is sales letters leave.

Some of the guys in the Wordpress Goldmine forum are going to try to build 100 sites in 100 days, thats a very ambitious goal but I have no doubt that with the mutual support they are providing some of them will do it. Personally my goals for the next year are simpler.

100 new adsense sites

20 new clickbank sites

4 new products in clickbank

Continue to strive to make Wordpress Goldmine the BEST value membership site in the world!

Happy New year Here to taking Action in 2010

The birth of the Internet and the mass availability of personal Computers in the late 80’s changed peoples life forever, Everyone now has had the potential to be their own boss whether you are mother at home looking after your children or a manual laborer there are opportunities in abundance . Just a search on Google for business opportunities will bring up more offers than your parents would have had in their whole life. So it must be easy to make a living from the internet right?  Wrong!  No it’s not, you need a firm business plan and you need to work hard at it.

Lets make it clear from the start: To Make Money Online You Need To Work.

Setting up and running an online business does have several advantages over setting up a “normal” business. You can usually run it in conjunction with your current job, your potential market is bigger your initial overheads are usually smaller and you can operate it from the comfort of your own home. Once you decided that you want to enter into the world of E-commerce you then need to take a lesson from main stream business and create a business plan.

The very first thing you need to decide is what type of business is right for you and then research the market. Possible businesses open to you are.
Adsense Sites

Affiliate Sites

Selling Products

Creating Info Products

With an Affiliate Program you are paid a commission for selling a companies products. You have no contact with the customer, all you do is provide sales leads to the company of whom you are an affiliate.

An Adsense site is where you take an existing website of yours about a particular subject and add contextual Adverts from Google’s Adsense program. When a person clicks on an advert you then receive anything from a few a few cents to several dollars. There are 2 approaches to Adsense programs, build a well respected Niche site with lots of traffic the more traffic you get the higher the Click Through Rate (CTR) and thus the higher the income. The second method is sometimes referred to as the shotgun method, build lots of sites with less traffic but earning a smaller amount from each site. A $1 a day income from each of 50 sites is better than $40 from 1 site.

The final E-commerce method we will look at is the most similar to mainstream business, selling a product. You build a web site with a shopping cart and give as many details about the products as possible. The products can be something you make yourself, or a product you buy in bulk or a product from a drop shipper. With drop shipping you sell products which are then dispatched from a location elsewhere by a 3rd party.

Creating and selling Info products can be very profitable, whether you create your own or buy PLR products and make them unique this method can lead to a very good income in a short amount of time especially if you get lots of affiliate selling your products.

If all this sounds too easy it’s not. Setting up the business is just the start of it, the hard work needs to start now. You need to get traffic, the more traffic you get the higher your sales will be. In addition you need to look at the performance of your site and tweak the layout so you make more sales. You need to get your site onto the first page of Google and other search engines. You may need to write adverts and operate a Pay Per Click program or create multiple articles. In short you need to become an expert in many new subjects.

If you have the drive and dedication then it is possible to make a good income from E-commerce but don’t expect to spend an hour a day at the computer and the rest of your time on your Yacht.

I really don’t want to put anyone off starting an online business but there is work involved and if you are happy to work or outsource the work you don’t want to do then you can create a great lifestyle for yourself a few years down the line.

If Hard and a steep learning curve  doesn’t put you off and if you want a place where hundreds of like minded people hang out and help each other achieve their goals then we’d love to have you visit Wordpress Goldmine