Create like a god. Command like a king. Work like a slave.
Psst. If you missed it, the secret to Internet marketing is contained in the title to this post.
That mantra also happens to be the subtitle of Guy Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries (first published in 1990s), and still equally relevant today.
There’s a paradox/dichotomy with Internet marketers. Almost all of us have the potential for unlimited income, but the vast majority (ie: more than 90%), work less than an hour a day.
That’s excluding time spent on twitter, facebook, watching youtube videos, reading ebooks, chatting on AIM. That’s less than one hour of purposeful, meaningful, goal-direct work each day.
The other “law” is that your amount of meaningful work is directly proportional to the amount of income you generate.
So that time spent goofing off translates into throwing away potential income too.
–
Deciding to be an “internet marketer” could mean spending time after you finish your day job, after you’ve eaten your dinner/supper and sitting at your table, trying to figure this “internet thing” out. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances tell me they want to “do what I do”, and then they go on to talk about how working from home would be great for them, how they’re really good at marketing/writing/creative stuff and they would make an excellent internet marketer.
So, like a fool, I give them an idea to work on, and they buy into the idea, they see they can do it, and I finish off the conversation with… “Remember, more than 90% of people give up after the first day, of the rest, 90% of the guys left give up after the first week. So only 1 out of 100 ever gets anything done.”
After promises that they’ll be that one outstanding individual, they go off to do their thing.
Two weeks later, I speak to them and they’ve got a lot of stuff to tell me. Mainly a lot of reasons why they didn’t do anything. Usually a combination of either:
- School
- Kids
- Relationships
- Their day job
- Stress, fatigue
- A lack of drive
- A loss of confidence
- Or they bought about $100 worth of books off Amazon, but haven’t had time to read a single book.
Which is a little disappointing because I gave one simple thing for them to do. If they had done it, they would have made $10, $20, or maybe even $100.
Even if they’d have made their first $1, it’d drive them to go on.
–
I’m fairly sure, it’s not anything specific to Internet marketing, e-commerce, being an entrepreneur.
It’s got everything to do with your drive, your motivation, your ambition.
It’s free to say you want to have a lofty goal, but it takes real cojones to do something about it.
–
Are you going to fail if you try it?
Possibly, and the probability is pretty big, especially if it’s something like CPA marketing, or using a new traffic method like PPV.
Are you going to lose money?
Heck yeah, possibly a lot of it too.
–
In sci-fri writer Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, the protagonist Paul “Muadib” Atreides is put to a test by the Bene Gesserit order.
His hand is put into a box and it feels like the flesh is being burned off it and his hand is being torn apart.
But he survives this test because his mother Lady Jessica has taught him a mantra, the “Litany against fear” which goes:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
–
Besides being my favorite sci-fi series, Dune also contains one of my favorite quotes.
Substitute “Fear” with “Failure” or “Adversity” and you’ll realize that anything worth the effort is going to involve some degree of pain.
If you’re starting something new, it’s going to take time to master it.
In all likelihood, you’re going to spend about 8 to 12 hours a day just figuring out something new – whether it’s blogging, social media, PPV or CPA.
Once you’ve understood the basics, it will probably take 4-6 hours a day to fine tune what you’re doing.
And in the third stage, you can probably get things going smoothly and you’ll be able to maintain your level of earnings with just one hour of effort a day.
How long will it take to go from stage 1 to stage 3?
It varies from individual, but typically the ones who aren’t afraid of fear, or don’t let it become their mind killer move much faster through the stages.
If you haven’t been brainwashed by some of the talk of buying a business-in-a-box or a pack of 2,506 ebooks to kickstart your e-commerce business, you’ll usually start out on a better footing.
–
To address some emails I’ve received:
“What’s the fastest time it will take for me to earn $xxx per month from websites/affiliate marketing/blogging?” – I suggest that rather than shoot for “fastest”, it’s better to bone up on your fundamentals. I’ve noticed that these “fastest” methods tend to rely on learning one method (usually blackhat) way of doing something and these generally last a couple of hours/days/weeks depending on your luck. Then you’re left running to learn another “trick”. You’re not building a business in my opinion, you’re just hustling for some spare change.
“Does it work?” – I could tell you I’ve been doing this for many years, but I guess you won’t know for yourself, until you’ve tried it out, will you?
“Can you coach/mentor me?” – I’ve not offered this for a long time (since 2008 I think). Unless you have an interesting project proposal/joint venture in mind, I’m wholly focused on long-term projects. If you’re newer or looking at bringing your earnings to a higher level, you should check out PPV Playbook. I’ve mentioned it a number of times, and you can check out a write-up here.
By the way, PPV Playbook discount codes are still available.)
“Will more Friday Podcast episodes be coming out?” – While I produced the series, it took a fair amount of time and resources. With two young kids and a number of ongoing projects, there’re no plans to continue it at this time. You can check out the archive here though).
“Will you be blogging more regularly?” – I was inspired after meeting FinchSells (aka Martin Osborn) last week in Singapore. He claimed that he was blogging about once a week now. I wasn’t going to call him out on it, but he seems to be blogging every 2 weeks, so I guess he’s a big fat liar. Now that my gnarly taxes are out of the way, I plan to publish a post every week. So check back often.