I am willing to learn, I have bought a number of ebooks, and have made a few affiliate sales (about $50-100 worth of commissions each month), but at this rate, I doubt I’ll be able to quit my day job and live on my online income anytime soon. What do you suggest I buy next and how much do I have to spend before I make a full time online income? Thanks!

Here’s a list of what I bought:

[A list of about 5 ebooks follow. I’m guess she’s spent about $300 on them]

Patty

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My Answer:

It’s encouraging to see new Internet marketers take responsibility for their actions and I think the fact that you’re generating sales from your website each month shows that you’re taking consistent effort.

To make the gap between generating “hobby money” (I define this as less than $2,000 a month in online income) and a living based on your online businesses means that you need a couple of ingredients:

• A Game Plan

Have you defined what income level you’re aiming for? ($1,000? $10,000? $100,000 per month?). More importantly, have you listed the amount of time and resources you’re willing to put into this?

Most new marketers write down a $20,000 a month goal when they start out, and they put in barely 2 hours a week into their business. There’s a serious effort-reward gap in the equation…

An online business still follows the effort -> result equation. You don’t just need to dream big, you need to put in the sweat equity at least in the early stages.

• Focus and Consistency

Do your research before you begin. What niche are you going to focus on? Is it a niche market? Is the demand sufficient to sustain your revenue (and profit?)?

Is it a competitive market? Can you compete effectively?

What’re your monetization strategies? A goal of 100 Adsense clicks a day might be a good start, but are they only paying $0.10 a click? Are there affiliate programs available? Would you create your own product?

Once your research has concluded and you’ve decided on your business model, you need to be focused and consistent in your efforts. There was an Internet marketer who built their blog up to about 500 visitors a day, she left for a 6 week vacation and the visitors dropped to about 5 a day when she returned. It took another couple of months to build it up to her pre-vacation traffic level.

• Go Beyond Costs, Focus On Results

Here’s one takeaway from my buddy, Amit Mehta’s post “What’s Your Investment Plan?“, you need to figure out what your expect return or result is from any investment you make…

It’s not just a cost issue, you need to take stock of the whole picture.

Here’s the analogy: Cost -> Investment+Effort -> Return/Profit

So if you incur a cost, you need to couple that with an investment (in the form of taking action).

You also need a clear idea of the profit you’re planning to generate.

It’s not enough just to set goals, you need to work towards them to get the results you desire.

I spend about $10,000 – $12,000 in new products and services each year, as part of my “education”.

Some of it is Internet Marketing related, some of it is marketing or business strategy related, and some of it is far outside of the business arena, focused on expanding my circle of contacts and network.

My expectation is that I’m able to generate at least 10 times what I’ve invested not just in financial terms, but in time too.

Developing your mind will bring you the biggest leverage in your business and investing in real world experience (in the form of testing new marketing campaigns) has given the biggest return for the time+money I’ve spent on them.

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If you’re a newer marketer, the Rabid Niche Cash Machine system I developed could help you on your way.

If you’re an experienced marketer, the Super Affiliate Accelerator which Amit and I have developed could bring your campaigns to a new level.

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The Monday Question is a weekly series where I answer reader questions. You can submit your questions via the contact form. Due to the volume of emails we receive, we will not be able to individually answer each question.

Additionally, you might also have read about how she was huffing and puffing (…from exhaustion) from all that dancing during her performance. It is perhaps opportune that she lip synchs to her songs, else you might have heard gasping and breathlessness more than singing.

But like any good rabid niche marketer, you would have seized the day and fired up your PPC campaigns and optimized for the keyphrases – Britney Spears, MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West, in between checking out celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton for more keyphrases to incorporate into your PPC campaign.

Gee, I hope the ringtone offers converted well, and it wouldn’t have hurt to put in a couple of Victoria’s Secret affiliate links too. And given the MTV demographic, a couple of Blockbuster, iPod and dating offers couldn’t hurt too.

I’m sure you realize that speed and time to market are key for success in this rabid niche.

If nothing else, you might like to check out the Rabid Niche Cash Machine.

Enjoy!

Hi Andrew stumbled upon your blog through a ewen site, mind you I was researching on how credible internet marketing was and if they were scams, so I have a few questions to help me understand and hopefully make a decision

How realistic would the rabid niche cash machine work, what is really involved? lets talk about money what are the realistic figures of profits on using this product, I dont fully understand how this would work and what creates profit. How much time do I need to input to see a decent return. I would really like to know if this is a proven method and someone like me could be able to use this and eventually become financially free, its all good to say buy the product and find out, but a little more understanding and some peace about this would help me 100% to make a final decision, $30 may not look much to you but for me at this moment in my life its alot, any help and more understanding will be genuinely appreciated, thanks so much for your time and look forward to hearing from you

-Anthony

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Lots of questions have been raised and I’ll do my best to address each point.

“how credible internet marketing was” – Internet Marketing is the broad name given to what was known as “e-commerce” previously. Internet Marketing is as credible as any other broad field like “advertising” or “engineering” or “biology”…

You have the big players like Amazon, eBay, MySpace, Friendster, Google, Yahoo!, and you have the smaller Internet Marketers and Internet Marketing business/companies.

Your question can be further broken down into:

Does Internet Marketing work: It does because it’s based on the same principles as “traditional business” and the laws of economics – supply and demand, elasticity of demand, marginal utility, etc.

Is Internet Marketing a scam?: Like any other field, there are the genuine marketers and the quick buck scam artists. You need to do your due diligences.

My personal note: I’ve bought and invested in quite a bit of Internet Marketing products and services – some of it provided great value and I’ve been able to grow my business using some of the techniques, while some of it was a complete waste of time. If anything, Internet Marketing is akin to learning to walk, if you’re not already proficient in it, you’re likely to fall a number of times, skin or scratch your knees, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

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How realistic is my product, how much can you earn, what is the time involved: My intent in developing Internet Marketing products has been and remains on creating sustainable businesses.

You have a 60 day period to test the product out and see how it generates income for you.

As Internet Marketers, we provide the tools, the income potential is dependent on how fast a learner you are and how much time you put in…

If you already have some experience under your belt, it should take you a couple of days to get your site up. If you’re newer, it’ll take longer. You will have our support in resolving problems you encounter along the way.

A good niche site should generate a consistent $3,000 – $5,000 in monthly income within 3-6 months (although your results might vary).

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“$30 may not look much to you but for me at this moment in my life its alot” – Setting up a brick-and-mortar business in the real world would cost anywhere from a mid five figure sum to a couple of million dollars, and having help set up a television production studio, a software development lab and a training division for a SMB previously, the cost of setting up an online business is pitifully small.

I can understand that if you’re a student, or a work-at-home mum or dad, the finance could be fairly tight.

Some might say you could use a whole bunch of free tools and websites already available out there. Having already gone that route when I first started out, I can say that you will be saving on a couple of dollars, but you will more than pay for it with your time (and possibly have free service providers plaster your emails and websites with lots of ads).

If funds are tight, I’d suggest holding off on buying anything Internet Marketing-related now.

Focus instead on building your “Internet Marketing budget” till at least $500 before embarking on Internet Marketing. You’d need to have funds to purchase a domain name, web hosting, autoresponder service and other tools to get properly set up.

If you’re serious about building an online business, I think your time should be focused on finding or developing the best products to meet your customers needs, and closing the sales.

Rabid Niche Cash Machine will give you a piece of the puzzle and will help you get started. You will need to put in effort to make your business a success.

Newer marketers may know, but fail to incorporate the concept that information is the true currency of the Internet.

It could be something as simple as knowing the URL for an open source software, or something more complex like the techniques of breaking into elite Internet Marketing inner circles. If you don’t know where and what and how to do something that will help you achieve your goal, you will be severely limited in your marketing, and by extension your income generation ability.

As a newer marketer, your core focus areas should be:

• Absorbing as much of the relevant intellectual property assets as is needed to accomplish your goal
• Develop IP assets to help you directly or indirectly generate income (and achieve your financial goal).

Specifically Information Marketers should focus on:

• Understanding their target market and going beyond harvesting relevant keywords, to fully understand their thoughts and needs
• Developing (as a product creator) or recommending (as an affiliate marketer) appropriate and relevant products and services to serve those needs

A maxim I’ve heard recently is that “it’s never your visitors fault if a campaign flops – It is solely your fault” because you did not meet their needs.

What’re some ways to gain an advantage in this “information war”?

• Develop Critical Asset Mass

A successful PPC campaign is an asset. An ebook or program which helps your audience meet their goal is an asset. Having the right network of contacts to be able to broker deals is an asset.

You probably don’t realize all the assets you have at hand, and auditing and keeping track of what you know and what you can do goes a big way in reaching your goals.

How do you define a “critical asset mass”, you know you’ve achieved “critical mass” when your assets have taken on a momentum of their own and enable you to achieve your goals easily.

Need to put a deal together? If all it takes is a single phone call to accomplish it, you’ve got networking mass.

If you need to create a customized package for a client and it’s a matter of bundling your existing IP assets together, you’ve achieved product mass.

Which brings me to my next point.

• Developing Relevant Asset Mass

If you’re taking an adhoc approach to developing assets, you’ll naturally end up with a hodge podge of assets and it can be a struggle to bring your assets together.

You’ve probably realized that a number of the posts in this blog are geared towards developing a focus.

You may just now understand that a number of things you do every day generates an asset: from the emails you send, the private messages, forum posts, blog posts – all these generate assets.

But are these assets focused in a specific area?

Or do they run across a chaotic spectrum?

If the IP you are creating each day is tightly-themed, you can be sure that brought together, their value will multiply and may just help you move that next mountain you come across.

PS: In response to questions about IP assets, I created my Apple iPhone-themed Rabid Niche Cash Machine to help you gain a headstart in your Internet business building.