When I first started this blog my business was not a stable source of income, nor was I confident that it ever would become one. I constantly searched for other ways to make money online. As a result of my desire to stay updated with Internet business, I was exposed to many different money making opportunities and people who were enjoying tremendous financial success online, many of whom I blogged and podcasted about.
When I first read that Darren Rowse was earning $14,000+ USD monthly from Google AdSense for his work blogging in 2005, I thought I could do the same. My blog had some traffic – I could start some more blogs too – and I probably knew more about the Web than Darren did at the time, so I slapped some AdSense up to see how I would go. After a few months of earning about $10-$20/m I removed Adsense and realized that perhaps that was not how I was going to get rich.
Later I read about Daryl Grant, who with her husband was earning a quarter of a million $USD per year by creating ebooks and selling them online via Google AdWords. I interviewed Daryl in a podcast and she kindly let me join their coaching program for free. Thanks to the details they revealed in the podcast and with their coaching program, I thought for sure I could make a go of replicating their success. I certainly understood all the pieces that go together to make the system work, I just needed to set out and do it.
My friend Will Swayne and I arranged weekly meetings to get our ebook business going. After two meetings it was clear to both me and Will that we were acting divergent and spreading our resources across too many opportunities. Will and I both had start-up businesses, which were still embryonic, yet we were devoting time and headspace to something else. It didn’t work, and we quickly ceased our attempt at making money from ebooks to focus on our core enterprises.
Unlimited Opportunities
Over the many months I have published content to this blog, I’ve studied, researched and featured a host of opportunities, including –
- Niche Content Sites
- Website Flipping
- AdSense Videos
- AdSense Templates
- Buttefly Marketing
- Pipeline Profits
- StomperNet
- Dot Com Secrets
At one time or the other I’ve written about, thought about or even started the following businesses – affiliate marketing with clickbank, a blog network, a blog hosting and content service, affiliate marketing with CPA networks, writing ebooks on Internet marketing, coaching programs, subscription podcasts – and even extensions to my own business BetterEdit by branching into resumes, corporate editing and language translation. And that’s just a small sample of the ideas that have gone through my head.
Some of the systems, business models, products and opportunities I purchased and/or implemented, possibly to augment what I was doing at the time, or even as a brand new standalone business that I hoped would grow. In almost all cases I stopped way before anything happened and realized it was just too divergent.
The Stubborn Mule
Despite the fact that the majority of my time was not going to my main income earner, I was still doing enough to keep it running and growing. While most of the day I blogged and investigated other ways to make money, BetterEdit continued to make money. I may have neglected my baby, but it kept growing as long as I supplied the basic nutrition that it needed – a little marketing and consistent customer service delivering a quality service.
The pressure of needing to earn *some* money meant that no matter what, I would not stop running BetterEdit, it was my cash cow, albeit a small one and barely making enough for me to get by. But I wanted more so I toyed with all kinds of ideas, all the while blogging about them too, instead of focusing on what already worked.
Most of the opportunities that crossed my mind or presented to me in the form of Internet marketing product launches, are sound ideas, which could quite potentially make a lot of money. The problem was if I decided to implement one idea, I’d be dividing my energies across even more things, thus weakening my output across everything I was doing. I was already trying to wear 50 different hats as a solo business owner, I didn’t need to multiply things across more business opportunities, yet I continued to get excited about each new idea.
Consistency Pays Off
If you look back over my first years in online business, while I may have failed (false-started is more accurate) pretty much every opportunity I mention above, I consistently did one thing – blogged.
I maintained the status-quo with BetterEdit and blogged a whole lot here. Strangely enough, these two entities have become my greatest assets and generate the most money for me. Despite wasting a lot of time and stressing to do a bunch of activities all at once, I kept repeating enough of the core activities to eventually reach the point where I am at today.
Opportunistic Thinking
When Rich Schefren launched his coaching program, one of the main premises he ran with was to stop thinking opportunistically and start thinking strategically.
His flowchart with “you”, the Internet business owner, in the middle, is now famous and accurately depicts the current situation for most Internet business solopreneurs – including me – although I am slowly divvying up and out-tasking many of the jobs I used to do by myself. Here is that chart –
A strange thing happened to me after reading Rich’s Internet Business Manifesto trilogy and joining his coaching program. From that point forward I mentally declined each new business opportunity that came my way.
I’m still intrigued, I read enough to learn about the program so I can blog about it, I am still excited about the possibilities and the hype, but I do not sign-up. Definitely not before the current projects I am working are running without me.
Your Preeminent Talents
Rich taught me that I need to focus on one thing if I want to build a sustainable business long term – yes, ONE thing – in fact, Rich teaches that you need to break it down to the one thing that YOU are good at – your unique talent.
Your business should present preeminence to the marketplace externally, in the mind of consumers, while internally, you leverage your unique talent to create that preeminence.
A problem for a lot of people is they don’t know what their unique talent is, but they do know they want money. Therefore, when business opportunities arise it’s easy to get caught up in the hype and buy simply because of the potential for cash. The problem with this way of acting is you don’t leverage your talents to build something sustainable, nor do you establish any preeminence in the market. You are just yet another person attempting to replicate a system without any thought of how you can uniquely leverage that system using your talent.
There is no point being a jack of all trades unless you always want the pressure of competing with everyone else doing exactly the same thing, using the same system – there are a lot of Jacks out there!
Eventually any money you make is eroded away as the smart people compete with you using business models that work a lot better than you do by yourself, or the environment changes, reducing the amount of money you earn. You work hard just to remain self employed, while others work less and earn more because their system grows exponentially.
Your Future
I’m not there yet. I’ve only just started out-tasking some of the jobs I no longer should or want to do. I’m still refining my unique talents to locate what exactly it is that I enjoy and am exceptionally good at, the talent that can be the foundation for my preeminence or my business preeminence. Thanks to Rich’s coaching I’ve realized why this is so necessary in order to build the business that I really want, something that can eventually turn over a million dollars without me needing to sit down and “turn a wheel” every day. Something that that I am happy with from all aspects – money, time and creative expression.
In your case you are in one of two situations –
1. You don’t have a business.
This category includes everyone who chases opportunities, is currently self employed or employed by someone else. Obviously you have to want to own a business one day too.
There’s a group of Internet marketers who do quite well working solo, possibly pumping out adsense sites, or creating information products or marketing affiliate products. You might even make an above average salary doing this, maybe even high five figures a month, which is nothing to sneeze at.
The problem as I see it as that you still do not have something sustainable long term because there is nothing solid about what you do. Your thinking goes –
“I make $10 a day from this site in this niche, if I can build another 10 sites in more niches, I’ll be set”
That money can come from adsense, or affiliate products, or even your own information products, it doesn’t matter the source, it’s the thinking behind it that is at fault.
Unfortunately with this model, you might make good money, but for some reason every single morning you wake up with a huge task list that doesn’t reduce – it grows. Your job is to find opportunities in marketplaces and capitalize before someone bigger and more strategic comes along and does it better. This is fine as long as you are prepared, for the rest of your life, to continue to always run just ahead of the pack, always looking for the next opportunity or niche that you can tap for a little gold before anyone else does. It can be lucrative, but it’s not sustainable, nor is it a business.
If you believe that by creating more websites, or writing more ebooks or producing more of anything on a divergent range of topics, or writing multiple blogs yourself, or buying each Internet marketing product that comes your way, or if you are a freelancer, or a contractor or consultant – anything where you directly exchange your labor for dollars – that you will be able to one day sit back and watch the money come in without you, you are kidding yourself.
You need to build a business.
2. You have the potential to build a business.
Many people from group one can jump into group two once they realize that building a system around them is crucial, that you must learn to outtask, outsource, employ, systematize, and most importantly – tap your unique talent, do more of less, establish preeminence and offer one unique selling proposition using one system.
To put it more simply – if you currently make money online and you do so only because of your direct output, but you want to find a way to remove yourself from the day-to-day roles, increase your market share and thus boost your revenues and profits, then you are ready.
Yaro
Slowly But Surely Figuring It All Out
Great Post Yaro. I was part of one of Rich’s program. He certainly has a lot of solid ideas. It’s helped our business grow for sure.
– Bryan
Yaro I just want to thank you for providing such excellent resources in an easy to read well thought out manner. You might remember the comment I made about your pipeline profits post. Now this kind of copy that you have written wants me to drop everything and sign up immediately to Rich Schefren program (via your aff link of course).
I have to say once again I can’t wait to see what you come up with your traffic school. Any word on when that will be released? Keep up the good work Yaro. I always feel a bit bad after reading such high quality blogs. I really wish that bloggers where paid better for the copy they produce. I signed up to text link adds via your link.
Yaro,
Thanks for a great article.
Having watched Rich’s excellent 1hr 35min video on Google many times over, the key “tip” that comes over so strongly is the importance of staying focused. Don’t flit from one internet business to another – after all, if,for example, you run a car repair shop, you don’t decide to pack it in and go off to become a painter and decorator, just because someone else is doing it!
But, that’s what so many online business owners seem to want to do amost every day.
Keep your eye on one ball at a time, and you can always see which way it’s rolling!
Steve
This is all true guys,
I am/was exactly like Yaro and most of u
jumped from one idea to another, never stayed focus.
That has all changed now since I started my car site, I have practically abandoned all my other websites and don’t have any ambition todo any other type of business…
Focus is the key! I signed up for the seminar and found out it was 4am AUS time.. dammit!
Deeply impressed Yaro!
Although this whole website is covering your “journey” every now and then a post stands out; being more personal, weighing heavier, having deeper impact on its reader, me.
This post is outstanding.
Being in the heavy process of taking over a family-business personally, FOCUS is what it all comes down to. It has side-influenced my strategies on the web as well, and I have been down-sizing and therefor focusing a lot lately (dropping domains without any remorse).
Thanks for sharing this valuable personal insight.
Nice one Yaro. It was great speaking to you the other day, after reading your blog for some time.
You’re a smart person I believe the product you’re working on will be hugely successful.
Good luck.
I definitely agree with you about all the work you put in just to make a little money with blogging and thinking one day it will all be automated! not you have to blog and post just as many if not more to just stat where your at…thats why I started http://www.randombull.net and where users submit,post,edit articles for my blog on frauds,fakes, or internet scammers on the net or internet webtreneurs that get choked up on their own hype! check it out yaro… http://www.randombull.net
Yaro,
This is a great post and something Ive been thinking about a lot recently. I’ve been sharing with friends and colleagues the idea that, despite the fact that information marketers reside in the long tail (catering to tightly focused niches), you need a strong head of the tail in your own business model.
Put another way, if you zoom in on a graph that represents your business opportunities on the X axis and the money you make (or preeminence you have) in each on the Y-axis, you’d better have a strong head of the tail niche/system and not just one long “long tail” graph of opportunities each with small income and no preeminence. Hopefully I made myself at least a little bit clear with that explanation.
Every internet marketer should build a brand as an expert in a primary niche and develop a community around that brand. A list strengthened by community exponentially increases the longterm value of your business.
This has become a key philosophy on our podcast, Internet Business Mastery. I’d love to have you on the show sometime to talk about your views on preeminence.
I love your content. Keep it up.
-Jason Van Orden
Great post. For me, this is a much more reachable model than trying to become a problogger, for instance. And, with what I love to do, I can still serve my clients.
What an amazing post! Sort of like a summary of your “Entrepreneurs Journey” up to this point.
Reading about all the Internet biz ops you’ve considered was sort of like looking into a mirror for me.
Last June I quit my job to pursue a method I came up with for making money online. Unfortunately, that business plan crashed and burned and I’ve recently had to come to the (difficult) conclusion that the plan just can’t be made to work. Since then I’ve been flailing around, jumping into one method for making money and considering a few others.
Your post is a good reminder to stop and think long term about what I am doing and what will work for me. Thank you so much, Yaro!
Bryan – Which business are you talking about? I’m interested to hear how you implemented Rich’s ideas?
Mark – thanks for the feedback, I agree – bloggers should be well paid for good copy 😉
Pipeline profits I’m sure is great, as long as that’s the business you are focusing on. Rich’s program is more of a tool to benefit something you are already doing well in, rather than a new business idea or concept, which is why I feel comfortable promoting to people who are already reasonably successful online.
The Blog Traffic School SEO for blogs book is coming soon, very soon and the course will follow shortly after.
Great post, Yaro! The part about picking a focus and running with it especially struck a chord with me. I’ve always believed that an entrepreneur is better focusing their energy where their talent is.
When you spread yourself thin, you don’t benefit from the synergy and creative explosion that is possible from focus.
Very eye opening and inspiring post…
Although I’m not new to the “focusing on one thing at a time, till you gain momentum”, your article included several other points that made me see things from a slightly different perspective…
Mystery
http://mystic-pandemonium.blogspot.com
Yaro,
If your sole objective is to make lots of money, then I think you’re in the wrong industry. In my opinion, the entire web publishing business is too new and changes too rapidly for any reasonable chance chance of building a sustainable business.
You’re better off going with an older industry like real estate or trading stocks. Not because you can make more money, exactly, but because they’re relatively stable and the formulas for success are relatively defined. You have a higher probability of building a successful business.
Or do your goals go beyond making money?
Awesome stuff Yaro! I’m thankful someone posted a link to this post in another forum I frequent. I’ve never seen your site before today, but I’ll definitely be adding your feed to my Google Reader!
So anyway, after reading this post 3 times (slowly), I came to a disturbing realization… I’m not inspired, motivated, or passionate about anything that I would want to do as a “business” based on the model presented here.
I’ve basically been a money-chaser for many years; always doing things like ebay, affiliate marketing, adwords/adsense, blogging, mlm, etc. I’ve never made decent money doing any of it, and also never focused on anything long enough to make it successful.
I recently started a jerky business/website, but I have to admit — I’m not passionate about jerky either. 🙁 Let’s just say it’s not something that gets me up early and keeps me up late, if you know what I mean.
Thanks again for the outstanding post! I have some important decisions to make now…
Yaro: The reason I ask is, for me, the issue was “what” rather than “how.” Once I knew exactly *what* I wanted to do with the money, *how* I made it didn’t matter. I stopped searching for fulfilling work and started searching for fulfilling goals. Once I made that distinction, my income went from nothing to $120,000 in about six months, and it’s doubled every year for the past two years.
And it wasn’t with the Internet, either. I examined all of the possible models for making money and decided real estate was superior to all of them. So, I started building a real estate business. Do I love real estate? No, but I do *love* the lifestyle and opportunities it’s helped me create. For example, my company is about to donate half a million to a research foundation to cure my disease. Now that’s uber cool. 🙂
Hi Yaro! I felt so identified with this post…
Some weeks ago, I decided to quit my job in order to run my own online business.
It started quite well, I have a big company as my main customer. But the moment I became a freelancer, I started to think of ideas, different business, niche blogs, and more.
I had reunions with some colegues, to talk about my business ideas, but none of them passionate me for more than a 3 days.
By reading this post, I realized that although I think all the time that I need to focus, I never stop planning new business!
Congratulations, this has been one of your best articles.
From Argentina,
Julia
Yaro:
First forgive English mistakes, I’m Spanish.
Although I’ve received the opportunity of joining the seminar through very different sources (including rich’s list) I signed through your link and I did it after reading your first post about it.
I’d like to tell you my main reasons for this, that maybe you want to know them in order to see why your readers tend to act.
1.- You were the first. Yes, the fastest, after some hours my inbox started to grow with the typical miriad of affiliate e-mails about rich’s seminar.
I read from you first through Netvibes rss aggregator. Speed is critical, I see it everyday in my Internet business and I think it’s vitally important if you “play this game”.
2.- As you say, you market a preeminent product. I knew about Rich when the Manifesto and the IWA, so he has preeminence for me, I recognized a great opportunity instead of “the ultimate new product of the month” and I acted.
3.- Maybe the most important reason. You connect with me more than others because I think you have found you own voice and with that you’re starting to attract readers that become loyal fans because they connect with you philosophy of doing things.
Maybe because I’m not much older than you, maybe because I admire your tone and your sincerity (maybe you will make mistakes some time, everybody does, but I’m quite sure that your intentions are always sincere when you promote, review or write about something and that always you try to deliver REAL VALUE), like in this post, outstanding post I must say.
So because I recognize that you first offer VALUE and then make a sincere offer in what you believe, I always listen to you, and if instead of being the first the time, twenty e-mails including Rich’s arrive at the same time offering to join the seminar, without doubt I’d choose yours.
I write this to explain my reasons and because I always wanted to say that your blog and your posts always deliver some value and learning (maybe some times it’s only a good read, but that is very valuable in itself for me) and that if somebody gives value for me, I must be grateful and tell him.
Best Regards and keep the good work.
Yaro,
I appreciate the vote of confidence. Brian Clark has been pushing me to put together a blog as well, but I don’t believe it’s the most effective method for achieving my objectives. I’m more focused on writing a best-selling book and starting a speaking career. I think they are more stable and predictable models.
But I could be wrong. I’ve only been working toward it for about two months.
Also, I don’t totally disagree with the people that say you need to enjoy the journey. If you know what you want, then the journey of achieving it is pleasurable as a natural byproduct. Along the way, you might also find a method that suits you better for achieving the same objectives, which you can switch to, as long as you are not tied to the specific path.
In any case, I don’t mean to preach at you. It’s just a belief system that’s worked for me.
Have you watched the DVD The Secret? It was on Oprah Winfrey and I think you are the kind of guy that would really appreciate the concept.
Thanks everyone for your kind comments, I’m actually a bit surprised this article has struck a cord with many of you as much as it has, but I’m glad it did.
I really appreciate the feedback too, especially when you guys say you enjoy my candid approach compared to some of the other Internet marketers, which is a difference I am pleased you feel.
Unfortunately my sphere of influence is a lot smaller than the Internet marketers with access to lists of hundreds of thousands, but it’s always nice to have your own community, no matter what the size.
Jon – I agree, if we are talking about building something sustainable purely for millions of dollars in profits, I don’t think anything I publish in the current niches I write in, will get me there.
BetterEdit has a better shot at it because of how the model works, but even then it’s a long way off.
That’s actually one of the things that studying under Rich has triggered in my thinking. If I really want millions then I need to think what markets and business models I use to get me there.
In the meantime though, until I figure it out, I’ll keep working to create a sustainable six figure income, which isn’t bad for a worse case scenario. You can always pour solid five figure cash flow into something like real estate if you don’t think your business will get you there.
And of course money is not all I want 🙂 or what anyone really wants, I realize that. In fact I’m usually happiest when I forget about the money altogether and just let it flow in as a side effect.
Jon, that’s an inspiring achievement – you should be writing about how you do it, I know I would read your story.
In my case I’m still trying to fit all the pieces together that result in my happiness, financially included. I’m getting there and improving in all areas each year, but it’s definitely an ongoing work in progress.
I’m about to embark in my first real estate purchase this year and you never know, that might be an area I end up really enjoying.
It’s interesting that you mention the purpose behind wanting the money rather than the process of acquiring it, is what motivated you. For many people it’s the journey that they need to come to appreciate and not focus too much on the end destination.
Again, it would be interesting to read your story and point of view on these issues – you should be blogging about it!
Yaro
Yaro,
I already know what you stated above, but it’s a good reminder.
You may not know it, but I recognize some of Rich teaching in the way you run your blog.
Steve Cowan, your comment is the missing link to many newbie Internet marketers. Losing years doing nothing but surfing… I am myself trying to get out of that loop.
I am tempted sometimes, but I keep track on MY business.
What is funny is that I wasn’t like that at all when I had my offline business.
Very sound advice Yaro, you are very open and your story is very easy to relate to, until recently I was tring the Jack of All Trade Paperchase with the dream of millions having multiple streams, but you just reach a dead end in each venture, BECAUSE you realise you cannot commit anymore of your time to it without robbing something else of time or going literally insane. As you said, the best trick is to go back to what you do best, become excellent at what you do best, become a leader and field dominator in what you do best, and money and opportunities will follow you, nice post, will read all your archives now.
Hi Yaro, Hope the Florida trip turns out to be all that you hoped for, and more.
I enjoyed and very much respect your excellent post here. Far too many ‘web guys’ just spend their days telling everyone about their latest and greatest “thing” and, yo hear them talk, you’d think they never had a failure.
As one who has been there and done that a time or two I am here to tell you failure is as much of growth and your final goal than is momentary success. Only the truly strong and talented seem to own up to that, though.
By the way, as a possibly interesting future follow-up here, I was wondering if you had had any content with Daryl Grant lately? I listened to your interviews with her, looked through some of their materials at that time and formed an opinion that they were probably on fairly solid ground. But recently a friend wanted some guidance in some sort of career he could follow that would use his writing capabilities and it appears to me that Daryl might have moved on to other things … their website is essentially untouched over the past 9 months or so and they don’t seem to answer direct email inquiries.
I’m not bringing this up to ‘slam’ them or you, merely as a thought it might be of value to do a postmortem type of update.
It’s a great article Yaro – it all sounds so simple but it’s often the simple things that elude us.
Keep up the good work – I’m off to build a business! 🙂
Great post. I really dug this one even though it took me a few days to get to it. I fully agree, but now that you’re focused on your goal, at least you have the knowledge that if you ever wanted to apply another strategy to your system, you could do so more fluidly.
Thanks for this.
Very good post. Learning to get help is one of the things I’ve struggled with too. It’s a challenge to let the different parts go, especially when you combine trying to run a business with sticking to a budget. But I have managed to let a few things go and I think I’m getting better.
Great post / sales letter Yaro. The huge response you got from this one is just prof that Internet is contagious (just like making money). People want to learn and read how others do it.
I actually started with these sales letters, building mailing lists, etc. Then moved on to my blog.
Dave, RE your question about Daryl Grant and her husband – They are currently organizing a large conference in Brisbane for their clients at $1000 a pop for four days of intensive training and they have almost sold out. I suspect this has been their focus recently.
They also are speaking at some conferences around Australia and it’s all related to their ebook business, so if anything they are definitely still in the same biz.
They may have poor email response times due to being too popular – I certainly can understand that!
J.R. – I suspect you saw my latest post where I mention the secret and yes I have seen it about 4 or 5 times now, it’s a great DVD. I met a new friend at the conference who trains people in the law of attraction and she’s invited me to take part in her teleconference training too, so I fully intend (no pun intended – doh, there it is again!) to continue working on LoA discipline, and I’ll probably blog about it more soon too.
Yaro,
Thanks for spending the time and dig down to answer all the comments … indeed, first is in the position of not getting any interaction and then the floodgates open and how does one keep up … keep swimming, guy.
For those who have also been wondering about this question I _did_ receive a response from Daryl since my original query here, so all seems well. especially given Taro’s update on their activies .. I guess if you sell out your conference you don’t need to advertise it on your website *smile* … BTW the response I received was sort of a “canned” autoresponder note, but it did serve a number of purposes … kept me in the loop, kept me interested and provided the politeness of a response … albeit after two weeks or so. On the ‘net as well is in conventional business, politeness still counts even when you are feeling “snarkey”
Lesson for all of us who plan to grow someday … put a ‘gap filler” auto response in place now … say something that would kick off if an email isn’t responded to in three days or so … there won’t be time to put it in place later if things take off.
Hi again Dave- I’m attending the Brisbane conference that Daryl and Andrew are doing, it will be good to meet them in person.
You are spot on about keeping up with your growth, it’s especially hard when growth doesn’t translate into more cashflow since you only get extra work and no money to hire people to help.
Not saying that’s my case, or Daryl and Andrew’s either, but it’s definitly something to think about.
Yaro you caught my mind with words ! I had begun realizing that i was doing something real wrong after making $10 per day after 1 year of killing hard work. You have summed it up beautifully in your article.
Grrr The human mind.
Wow, what a great post, and an incredible mirror of my own life. 🙂 I have not heard of the person/program you mentioned, and I will check it out. Thanks!
Jackie Lee
http://www.thesecretyellowpages.com
Yaro you leaked Rich’s secret that he taught in his coaching program 😉 Anyway nice post and very productive. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.