Unravelling The Rubik’s Cube Of Business Success

Talking to a number of budding entrepreneur’s at last evening’s Singapore Facebook Developers Garage and hearing about their growing pains served as an impetus to get this post out. Some of you whom I met up with at Affiliate Summit would have heard parts of this, but here it is in more detail…

No matter whether you live in Las Vegas, or Vancouver, BC, New York city or Singapore, the questions are the same – How do you grow your business?

I’m going to outline 3 discrete stages that I see business go through, and I’m going to paint some generalizations here. (generalizations refer to 90-95% of the people in each of these categories out there. So hold off on the flames, especially if you’re part of the 5-10% of “distribution curve busters” out there)

The 3 stages of Continue reading

Monetization Options For Facebook Application Developers

In a couple of hours time I’ll be on the panel at the second Singapore Facebook Developers Garage, which features the topic: “Marketing and Monetization of FB Applications: Hype or Goldmine?

The session moderator Bernard Leong has posted a kickoff post: Marketing and Monetization of Facebook: Prologue

If you’ve spoken to me or exchanged emails, you’ll know that I’m a pragmatist at heart. Having see the rise of the dotcoms and dot-crashes soon after, I’m certainly not in this application if the end result of facebook monetization is mere “hype”.

Talking to Jason Bailey, whom I’m helping to launch his $uperRewards FB monetization system, I’ve seen the applications and case studies of successful FB applications which are making $100,000 – $200,000 a month.

These applications are probably in the top 5% of Facebook applications that turn a profit and a huge profit at that…and the reality of any capitalist society is that you must benchmark yourself against benchmark yourself against the leaders, rather than the other 90% of Facebook developers who are merely scrambling to find two nickels to rub together…

A business must be able to generate positive cashflow and must be able to sustain a comfortable lifestyle for the application creators. Anything less and you’re running a charity.

Let’s break this down for a moment…

An “average” application might generate $10,000 to $15,000 a month, which could be fairly reasonable…until you break that $15,000 by 30 days, or $500 a day.

$15,000 a month or $500 a day, with an assumption of 50,000 daily active users means you are generating 1 cent per daily user…that’s pretty pathetic

Instead, if you want to go big with Facebook Applications, you need to define your goal and reverse engineer the process.

I think $100,000 per month is a decent benchmark. (as a starting point…)

With an average of Continue reading

Busting Through The Internet Marketing Learning Curve

It’s a fact that no matter how smart you are there’s something out there you will not have got a handle on yet, and that’s where books and other learning material fill the gap.

books

What I like to do before heading to the US each time and order a bunch of books from Amazon and send it to my hotel.

Observer say we’re likely to be in the information economy for a long time to come, and a lot of times what separate you from your competitor is using one extra technique or website or service that they aren’t using. So every little bit of “intellectual juice” helps.

On this trip, among the books I’ve picked up were:

  • WordPress for Dummies
  • Instant Income by Janet Switzer
  • Blogging Heroes: a series of interviews with bloggers
  • Various titles from the Dan Kennedy “No BS” series of business books

I fall into the trap sometimes of having the books in hand, but not putting in the time to read them, and by extension putting the knowledge into action.

Being successful is hard work…and not putting in Continue reading

Post-Affiliate Summit West Monetization And Action Plan

I’ve landed in Singapore after a gruelling 17 hour 30 minute non-stop flight from LAX to Singapore (considerably shorter than the 20+ hour flight with a stopover in Tokyo or Hong Kong) and promptly took a 7-hour afternoon nap. I do love working my own hours…

affiliate summit shawn collins missy ward

At Affiliate Summit West with ASW co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward

If it was your first Affiliate Summit or you would like to get more out of your trip, here’re my suggestions:

  • Follow Up

Yes, you can mass mail all the people you met, but social marketing/conversational marketing is what’s going to give you an edge in building relationships and bringing your business to the next level. Include a personal note, talk about winning Continue reading

Affiliates Do Death-Defying Stunts On The Segway…

Have you heard the one about Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins walking with a mock limp along the hallways of the Rio, only to have a sympathetic hotel employee offer a Segway. Shawn gets onto said Segway and rides off into the sunset…Or does he?

Uncensored and via “fake live satellite” (to quote some Jim Kukral Daily Flip parlance, we present spy video and spy pics from the hallways of the Rio.

Note: Please note that these acts are performed by pure amateurs who did not undergo any professional training. Please do not try this at home, or anywhere near beloved household pets…

The Shawn Collins video montage with obligatory pounding bass dance track back:

More photos and videos…

segway

Revving up the Segway’s gyroscope while celebrity pit engineer Continue reading

A View Into The PUA World Of Mystery And Project Hollywood 2

I just got back from spending half a day at Project Hollywood 2, the homebase of PickUp Artist Mystery and the Venusian Arts team. Besides Mystery, I also got to meet Lovedrop and Matador.

If you missed the first season of VH1’s The PickUp Artist, you can check out the VH1 page.

The series is slated for a second season and there’re a number of surprises planned, so reality series fans should be waiting with bated breath…

So into an undisclosed apartment complex in Hollywood, I got to check out Mystery’s digs, which has a great pool and BBQ area, just perfect for parties…

I got to do the old meet-and-greet at Project Hollywood 2 AKA Hotel Mystery:

mystery

And besides getting a copy of his “Mystery Method” book autographed, I also got to hear about Continue reading