Jonathan Beebe recently contacted me asking to submit a guest article. Normally I say no because it is tough to find good writers with good content, but Jonathan did a few things right that convinced me to give him a shot. His email was short, to the point and he came across as a nice guy. He explained how he knew me as a long time blog reader, and here’s the most important bit – stated that he makes a living online, enough to support himself and his family of four.
Whenever I hear someone makes a living from the Internet and it’s enough to support an entire family, I immediately get curious. Jonathan showed me samples of his writing, which demonstrated he can put words together in an interesting way, so I asked if he would consider telling us his full story about how he became another one of the few who live the Internet lifestyle. This is his story…
Is It Just Plain Luck?
As you read the impressive case studies and online success stories out there, it’s easy to get the idea that these select few people are the one’s who simply got lucky. It seems as though they are the “lottery winners”, so to speak, whom you often read about but find it nearly impossible to replicate their success. If you’re currently struggling to see positive results from your online efforts, you may be wondering… Are these people just lucky, or is there some kind of secret to the whole thing?
As a guy who has personally went from being a physical laborer at a local warehouse to working full-time on the internet in a relatively short period of time, I can tell you that becoming an online entrepreneur has little to do with luck, and A LOT to do with persistence and consistent effort.
Today, I’m going to share with you my personal story in hopes that telling you HOW I got started, and WHAT I did will inspire you to find YOUR personal strategy that you can follow day-in and day-out until you finally reach your goal. You’ll soon find out that no luck is required when it comes to becoming a full-time internet entrepreneur, just a decent supply of willpower.
In the Beginning…
My interest in making money online started while in high school when I came across the term, affiliate marketing. Whatever I read got me very excited to learn how to make money online, so I decided to give it a shot. After an admittedly short period of time, I became discouraged when I failed to see sales coming in right away. I can’t remember what it was I read, but it was most-likely filled with a lot of hype that caused me to go into the whole thing with the wrong mindset.
Although I got nowhere with internet marketing at that point, I consider the experience to be a very important part of my journey because it opened my mind up to the possibility of starting an online business. It would be a long time before that seed would have a chance to grow, however, because after high school I ended up joining the U.S. Military on a 4-year contract. I left home only a month after graduation.
Fast forward two years…
I decided to re-visit the internet marketing world after I got married about mid-way through my enlistment. I didn’t like being in the military and thought it would be great if I could be working at home when I separated so I could spend as much time as possible with my wife. This time I was determined to make money online and so my official journey began.
What DIDN’T Work For Me
Remembering my previous try at affiliate marketing, I decided to go at it again, only this time I’d try my hand at pay-per-click (PPC) advertising (Google Adwords to be exact) and quickly found out that getting the hang of it was costing me way more than I wanted to risk. I did manage to make a few sales, but unfortunately, my advertising costs were way higher than what I earned, so it was time for me to start searching for something else.
A little vulnerable at this point, I started searching for online “business opportunities” and came across what seemed to be a perfect match for me (poor, gullible me). It was a network marketing company that I later found out to be a scam, AFTER I had already poured quite a bit of time and money into it. Needless to say, I got pretty much nowhere and was feeling pretty discouraged. PPC or anything to do with network marketing/multi-level-marketing (MLM) was completely out of the question for me at this point.
That’s not to say you can’t make money promoting affiliate products via PPC or getting involved with a legitimate network marketing company, because many people do, but those business models definitely aren’t for me.
At this point I was probably at my weakest state of my online money-making journey (or lack thereof), but I was determined to get somewhere so I didn’t give up. I didn’t really know what to do though, so I just spent some time taking in the free information on blogs, free reports, and I also invested in some eBooks to further my education before diving into something else and possibly getting burned again.
The Online Grunt Work
I finally made my first significant online dollars using “bum marketing” techniques to promote affiliate products. This was basically taking advantage of the free web resources to drive traffic to sales pages. My main strategy was to use article marketing in hopes of converting a certain percentage of that traffic into sales.
Although I was very happy to finally be making some money, I felt like the workload was way too much for the few sales that were trickling in here and there. It felt like online grunt work, and that’s NOT how I imagined running an online business would be. I guess it wouldn’t have been that bad, except I had no personal interest in most of the niches I was writing articles for. This left me feeling extremely burned out after a few short months.
But since I was finally making money, I stuck with it but kept my options open to anything else that might be a little more enjoyable for me. During this time I experimented with a lot of little strategies, one being a blog in the personal development field that I began posting to regularly. I also decided to start building my email list in that same niche as well.
Once my time in the military was up (summer of 2008), unfortunately my online income wasn’t at a point where I could support my family with it full-time, so I moved back to my hometown in California and got a job at a local warehouse working 12-hour shifts from 5pm to 5am. This only inspired me to work harder on my “make money online work” as my wife and I liked to call it (hence the current name of my website).
Finding My Place
As time went on, my bum marketing practices became less and less, and the focus I was putting towards my blog and mailing list became more and more. After sticking to a fairly consistent work schedule, I realized that my income had become pretty steady, and it was actually growing as I continued to build up my mailing list. I was amazed at this realization because as long as I kept doing what I was doing, my income would continue to grow to unlimited heights as long as I kept growing my list!
Since I knew I didn’t want to stay in the personal development niche forever (I just wasn’t passionate about it), I decided to create a free report and start building my list in the “internet marketing” niche, which is where I wanted to eventually migrate to. Long story short, I continued on with my strategy and applied my little “formula” (as I like to call it) to my blog and BOTH of my lists and was able to grow my income high enough to quit my job at the warehouse after working there for only a year!
My Winning Strategy
This is the exact strategy that I used to quit my job, and that I currently use to maintain and grow my online business:
- Start a blog (preferably in a niche you’re passionate about, so you don’t feel compelled to change in the future like I did) and start posting to it regularly.
- Sign up for an autoresponder service and start building your list (I personally use MailChimp and Yaro uses AWeber). The easiest way to build your list is to offer a free report in exchange for their email address. Be sure to advertise your free report on your blog.
- Every six days, send an email to your list (aka “newsletters”).
- Two out of three emails, send a link to a high quality article recently posted to your blog, or give them another freebie (such as another free report).
- Every third email, recommend a product or do a review. This is where most of the money is made, but make sure you’re ONLY promoting high quality products.
- Continue posting new articles to the blog and sticking to the six-day mailing schedule as you drive traffic to your blog and free report. I recommend article marketing, guest blogging, and discussion forum participation.
How and Why it Works
As you can see, the strategy I described above is fairly easy to implement, and isn’t at all overwhelming. Since you’re only sending an email to your list every six days, that leaves you with a lot of days in-between to optimize your strategy, focus on creating high quality content, or even work on your own products and services. Also, six days will keep you in the minds of your subscribers, but it won’t be so often that you’ll get on their nerves.
The reason why I refrain from promoting anything two out of every three emails is to make sure that I’m giving my list more than what I ask from them. They appreciate the fact that I’m willing to give so much to them for free, and look forward to receiving my emails and clicking the links inside. Promoting something every third email conditions the list to be buyers, or to at least expect the occasional promotion. Even for those who don’t buy anything, it’s well worth it for them to stay subscribed because of all the free value that is provided on a regular basis.
In other words, the strategy I described keeps your open rates and conversion rates high, and your unsubscribe rates and spam complaints low. It also earns you TRUST with your list, and that’s as good as gold in the online world. Another advantage to the strategy is that with the non-promotional mailers, you are simply directing them to posts on your blog, which means you’ll never be scraping for content to send to your list; you’re already posting new, high quality content to your blog on a regular basis.
As you can see, your blog and mailing list work hand-in-hand to form an income-generating machine that takes a reasonable—but not overwhelming—amount of work to maintain and even grow at a steady rate. This is the way I make money online and so far it has been working GREAT for me. I attribute a lot of it’s effectiveness to the fact that I enjoy this particular strategy very much.
Time to Find YOUR Strategy
Now, just because I enjoy the strategy I described to you, it doesn’t mean that you will to. The point of me telling you my story wasn’t to get you to “convert” to my way of doing things, but to get you to see that LUCK had nothing to do with my success. It was all about finding what worked for me personally, and then sticking with it until my desired results were achieved.
There are only two things that will cause you to fail as an online entrepreneur, and that’s (1) not sticking to something long enough (lack of persistence; opportunity hopping), and (2) just giving up altogether. If you find something that you can enjoy doing and doesn’t leave you feeling burned out, you will GREATLY decrease the chances of those two things happening… but ultimately, it’s up to you.
If you take some time to find your strategy and stick with it, achieving your goals might just be a lot closer than you think.
Jonathan Beebe
If you want to learn more about the exact strategy Jonathan used to quit his day job for good, grab a copy of his free report called Online Income Formula.
Nice work Jonathan. Thanks Yaro for allow him to guest post.
Aaron
Thanks Aaron, and yes, thank you Yaro for the opportunity to submit a guest post to EJ
Jonathan, it’s great to see your post here, big congrats to you!
I don’t think you could have said it better, persistence is key. Even when we are faced with overwhelming daily tasks, we have to look toward the light.
How will you ever know your potential if you don’t stick with it or give up all together?
Start with the basics, test the waters and never stop learning. It is discouraging when you don’t see sales coming in even after a considerable amount of work but once you have the well flowing, it will pour out at an incredible rate.
Hi Murlu, it’s great to see your comments on my posts OFF of my blog as well, so thank you very much–you always have something good to contribute.
I think the reason why most people give up after not seeing immediate results is that we’re conditioned to putting in work and getting a specific amount of compensation for it on a specific date–it’s hard to move from that mindset to a mode where you put in work and don’t know WHEN or even IF you’ll get anything from all of your efforts.
It’s probably why when I was in high school working at McDonald’s that I gave it a very short try before giving up, only to thankfully re-visit it way later on two years after graduating high school.
Thanks again and I’ll see you on your blog very soon!
Really a great piece of inspiration. Thanks Yaro, thank Jonathan.
You again prove that “MONEY ON THE LIST”
Eunus
Here’s some things I left out of the article that may benefit you (Yaro suggested I post the below info as a comment, so read it as a supplement to the article above):
I apologize for not being more clear and specific about the niches
I was in, and my traffic generating strategies, so I’ve detailed all
that below:
I mentioned I was in the personal development niche before,
but to be more specific, I was mostly into anything having to do
with mind development, brain training/brain games, and a thing
called Brainwave Entrainment, which is a growing niche having
to do with audios you listen to that will cause your brain to “tune in”
to certain frequencies to help you do specific tasks more efficiently.
I also wrote a lot of articles in the general personal development
field, but most of my traffic and resources focused on the things
above.
When I did “bum marketing”, I tried to focus on products related to
those niches as well. I don’t write anymore articles promoting
affiliate products directly using “bum marketing” tactics anymore,
but I do still receive passive income from my previous efforts, which
is nice.
The funny thing about that is, since it was my first “strategy” to
making money online, I submitted tons of articles, made Squidoo
lens, posted classifieds, etc. but didn’t understand or realize the
importance of TRACKING… so today I get a lot of passive income
from those efforts but have no idea where any of the traffic comes
from lol.
It’s unfortunate, but awesome at the same time. I don’t stress out too
much about it because I’ve moved away from the “bum marketing”
business model anyway and take the income as a nice “bonus”.
As far as traffic generation goes…
Both of my daughters are under 3 years old (!!), so I found that I get
burned out easily if I pile on too many tasks, so my traffic-driving
efforts are things that aren’t overwhelming, but produce great
results if applied consistently over a period of time.
My main traffic strategies include:
- Guest posting on other blogs in my niche (this is slowly starting to
replace all of my previous article marketing efforts). I try to write a
guest post every week if possible, but obviously the more the
merrier. Once per month is my bare minimum that I’ll go.
- Discussion forum participation – I simply reply to questions people
are having, mostly targeting threads that have only a few replies
(or none if I can find them). Every once in a while I’ll start a thought-
provoking thread also. My signature drives traffic to my squeeze page,
and the people on my list always tend to end up on my blog anyway.
I try to participate in forums a least a little bit everyday.
- Blog commenting. I comment regularly on blogs in my niche and
while this doesn’t drive A LOT of traffic up front, I find that my useful
commentary has gotten me pretty well known among some other
bloggers, so it’s a great networking tool that gives me a lot of indirect
traffic benefits.
Sometimes I drag behind with this one, but ideally I like to go on a
“commenting campaign” everyday.
- Twitter. I’ll admit I’ve been a little slow catching onto the social
networking craze, and I’m starting to get the hang of posting to Twitter
regularly, but this is proving to be a pretty good source of traffic that’s
only growing.
And that pretty much explains how all my traffic is driven. I don’t do
things like submit 100 articles to directories, or stress out about SEO,
submitting a crazy amount of social bookmarks or PPC because I find
that those things leave me feeling burned out, and since working online
is all about enjoying what you do… I don’t think I’d enjoy doing all that
“online grunt work” so I stay away from things like that. Plus my current
traffic strategy works great as long as it is done on a regular basis.
You have written an inspiring article and I believe this article can give all people who are just starting out in this field a good lesson.
In addition, thks for sharing in detail about your traffic generation methods.
John, thank you for such an inspiring and motivating article and especially thank you for the extra info you provided in the comments! Very beneficial and much appreciated!!!
Wow. I love reading success story like this.
I’m just curious, How old are you when you got in internet marketing?
@Eunus: And He proves that “PPC SU*K!”
Thanks for your comment
Not including what I did in high school, I was about 21 when I started getting serious about making money online, because my goal (which I didn’t end up achieving on time) was to be able to do internet marketing full-time by the time I got out of the military in 2008.
And I wouldn’t go as far as saying “PPC sucks”, because there are a lot of great uses for it, and I’m sure a lot of people are making fortunes using it… it’s just not for me, and it’s not worth the risk to learn. I think I may revisit it one day when my time/budget permits.
Really great post!
Many people fail to understand the importance of a list, your list is like an insurance to your blog and it makes marketing and promotion very easy for you.
Thanks a lot or the great post,
-Onibalusi
I like how you describe your list as being “insurance to your blog” because it really does work that way if you put a lot of focus on it from the beginning. Thanks for the comment Onibalusi
Hi again Jonathan, saw you at SPI as well. I like this article moreso because of your personal story. I’ll have to put these two posts together, side by side.
I’ve been thinking of offering a free report to build a mailing list…. so this will definitely kick me into gear. Thanks.
Thanks for your comment, and Thank Yaro for the topic because he’s the one who requested I talk about myself in this guest post lol
I didn’t think about it, but I guess this article and the one that was published on SmartPassiveIncome.com (on the same day) do go pretty much hand-in-hand (recommended you read this one first).
And yes, I *highly* recommend you don’t wait to build your email list, and offering a free report is one of the best ways to do so. Good luck!
People make their own luck. I realized long ago that wishing things won’t do.
Hard work, knowledge and perserverance equals good luck.
I think at times you get lucky here and there, but most of the time it’s the work you do that increases the chances of “getting lucky”. I like the little formula you came up with, it makes perfect sense.
Great job Jonathan!
Stories like this always push and inspire me to do better.
Awesome! Glad the post helped, just make sure you take action or your time you spent reading would have been in vain! Good luck…
Yes, yes, yes. I did not get this until I had major success in what I was focusing on. There is a great book that I think is powerful as a corporate branding concept and also a personal branding concept called Differentiate or Die by Trout. Focus will get you whatever you want in life, never stray from what you want!
Ray Higdon
Yup, that’s exactly the message I was trying to send. Focus, dedication, and persistence. Of course there is a lot of temptatation to give up mid-way through, especially when things are slow and you’re discouraged, but at that point you just remember to stick to your plan and eventually results will come.
Great guest post, I often feel like many of the tasks I do online are like grunt work, and like you I agree it was not the way I wanted to run an online business, I wanted everything more easy and automated, lazy me I know. The 2 out 3 rule sounds good to me, I will be implementing that now, I was never sure what ratio to use for mailings. I have tried, failed and gave up, but now I am back to try again, with a new passion so hopefully I can find the way that works for me this time, thanks for this post, it really helped me, Sally
I’m glad the post helped. I refer to repetitive tasks that I don’t have any passion behind as the “online grunt work”, not necessarily hard, dedicated work. I write articles on a regular basis, submit guest posts, and do a lot of things that could be considered “hard work” but I don’t consider those things “grunt work” because I enjoy doing them, and I have a deep interest (or passion) in what I’m writing about. Also remember that in the beginning your list response will be pretty low, and you probably won’t be making many (if any) sales until you’ve had a chance to grow your list and build up trust, so you just have to remember to not focus on results right off the bat and just DO for a while.
Your Message Great post! I am new to internet marketing and I found reading your post helpful. I liked how you talked about what you tried, and what “systems”did and did not work for you. Also important: that eventually you were able to make a living online. Thanks! Kris
Thanks Jonathan. As a new blogger, I find your post very inspiring. Thanks for sharing man
No problem! Glad I could help.. Don’t forget to take action. Refer to my comment (towards the top) for more specific traffic tips that I personally take.
Thanks I really needed this – i have not done anything to my mailing list and it is pathetic of me!
Thanks Jonathan for this great story. I need your help here.
I have a blog that is related to tech and mobile phones, i write articles and tips for computer users and also stuff for mobile phone users. So how should i go about building list. What topic i should choose for writing a free report (computer or mobiles?), what topics should i cover in weekly newsletters? (again computers or mobile phones).
I want to build the list from long but i am confused about this.
I recommend you look at your stats to see which article topics get the most response. Look at visitors, comment counts, tweets, any kind of statistic you can to see which topic is the most popular on your blog. Also look at your search engine traffic and see which one it relates to the most.
From there, you can either “wing it” and write a report based on what you think your niche wants, or you can use a free service like Survey Monkey, make a blog post and ask your readers directly what they want!
If your audience is too diverse, you may even want to split your blog into two separate ones to be more specific if none of the above works out for you. Most of all, just take action and judge your results/tweak from there.
Hope that helps!
Nice post, you write really well.
Your blog looks quite similar to Jonathan Mead’s blog from http://www.illuminatedmind.net/
I’m sticking to designing and making my own messenger bags. That’s seems to be what I am passionate about, so I am more likely to stick with it when the going gets tough. But maybe I need to implement something for my mailing list
Thanks for the great compliment!
Anyway, as a suggestion, perhaps offer a discount code for your physical messenger bags as an incentive to join your mailing list. Then, perhaps you can give them free coupons, buy one get one free offers, and things like that. I think running a mailing list would greatly benefit even the physical nature of your business because there are plenty of eCommerce sites that sell physical products and have a mailing list to help drive sales.
I see a lot using Twitter for that same purpose as well (offering discount codes, etc)
Jonathan, your story rocks! I am really glad Yaro shared it with us. I am heading over to your blog right now and will be signing up for your mailing list. All the very best on your journey, and thank you for the inspiration. Breaking out of the grunt work trap is key here.
Thanks a lot! I look forward to having you as one of my newest subscribers
And you’re very welcome for the inspiration, and thanks to Yaro for letting me share my story with everyone here on EJ.
I think a lot of people can deal with grunt work, but I find it easier to do work (even if it is hard work) when you can be passionate about what you’re doing.
Hey Jonathan,
Awesome post dude. Glad to see you here.
!! Your personal ..story really rocks \m/ ..
I think guest posting is the best way to get targeted traffic, brand awareness .. etc. !
Anyways, other tips are good as well.
Btw. I already know about your personal development blog (developminds.com)….
Thanks for sharing this great post.
Hi Dev, wow, I wasn’t aware you were a follower of my previous blog (developminds.com – now offline, R.I.P. )… And I agree that guest posting is highly effective, and THIS guest post has confirmed that to me yet again as I’ve gotten a pretty good boost in traffic and nearly 100 extra subscribers to my mailing list as a result of this article (thanks again to Yaro for allowing me to contribute).
See you soon Dev, and also thanks for being my newest affiliate!
One good strategy to monitor yourself and determine if something is working well for you is to give it half a year. start something and after six months, look at your progress and continue if it is worth it.
I particularly like how you always saw failures as positive things wherein you would learn to do things better.
That’s a great tip. While you may not be getting the results you would hope to have in 6 months, it’ll definitely be a good indicator as to whether or not you’re moving in the right direction! Thanks for sharing, and thanks for the compliment… I guess the only reason why I didn’t give up was the fact that I hated being away from my wife and passionately wanted a way to work from home doing something I ENJOYED instead.
Thanks for your response. I agree that our family should be our number 1 motivator. Sometimes, they’re the only reason why I still manage to carry on.
Jonathan, Very interesting and inspiring story. It is very good to see you here in entrepreneurs-Journey.
The winning strategy you pointed out above is definetely worth implementing if it gives results. I am certainly going to give it a try to see how it works in my blog.
Thanks.
Hi Adam, it definitely does produce results as long as you are consistent, and stick with it for a period of time–I recommend sticking it out for 6 months, assess your results and tweak from there.
Good luck! Let me know how it goes for you
Good story Jonathan. I will see if your information works on my blog.
Great! I hope everything works out for you, but remember, you have to be consistent and apply it for a significant period of time. Feel free to use the contact form on my site to ask me any questions and let me know how you’re doing!
I really enjoyed reading this story. It’s very inspiring and motivational. Just what I need to read at this moment
I agree with you, you need to be consitent with your email, particularly at the begining. Set up some auto responders to deliver a few weeks worth of content to help facilitate the relationship building process. Also, have some idea what your email newsletter is actually about. Its nice to have a list, but if you don’t know how to lead, because you have nothing meaningful to say, no one is going to follow you or stay subscribed. I like that you brought up a sales cycle. That is critical as well. Its all about strategy and execution.
I’m glad you agree with my strategy, and like your idea of setting up a follow-up sequence for new subscribers. What you can do is go through my action plan, and any emails that are timeless can be loaded into your follow-up sequence as you broadcast them. That way, as long as you’re in the niche, that’s how long you’ll have a constant follow-up with your new subscribers.
Figuring out what method works best is always the toughest process for me, personally. I mean it might take me one or two times failing before I really come up with a good method. I wish I just didn’t have to mess up those several times before, but I guess making a mistake is something we can learn from.
I think everyone will always run into their own mistakes, but thankfully there is a huge resource (the internet) you can look to and learn from plenty of other people’s mistakes.
Great article. I enjoyed the basic steps to take every day and every week.
The basic steps that you take everyday will make a long lasting success for you. Just make sure not to give up and you will succeed.
Really enjoyed your article, Jonathan! Your experience is probably familiar to many who had tried to make a go of it previously but the timing just wasn’t right or the method wasn’t effective. I found your article inspiring and yet down-to-earth.
Nice journey man! Hope will be more success in future.
Wow jonathan,
What a story, You are the kind of
person i wish i had found when i
started out after falling into some
of the same traps as you.
Thanks great post mate
Matt
Jonathan, thank you very much for sharing your journey with us. You’ve served to really give me a lift of inspirational energy on the tuesday afternoon. Keep up the good work, and the very best for all your future endevours.
Great post Jonathan – I look forward to putting your formula into practise! It’s not been that long since I quit my full-time job and I can only hope to see the same sort of success as you
good luck with it all!
What a great post. I really appreciate the layout of ” Jonathan’s strategy.” I have an auto responder…….but never really knew how to use it to my advantage until reading this post.
I now have a note pad full of golden nuggets that will be applied to my business…..and will be sure to share this post with all my friends! I would just like to say thanks Yaro for having Jonathan on as a guest. You always over deliver
Take care,
Antoine Grant
Kudos to you for taking notes! I like hearing that because it makes me feel like that someone who read what I wrote might actually take some action on it (this is most everyone’s problem)… but it’s not just about taking action, it’s about taking consistent action–even in the beginning when you’re getting no results.
WHAT to do with my mailing list was also a question I had in the very beginning, and is one of the reasons why I actually avoided it for a LONG time (I always heard “the money is in the list” but never really took that advice, I sort of got sensitized to the statement from reading it so much), so I’m glad I could help!
Thanks for your comment, as well as everyone else who thanked me for the inspiration!
I blogged for years before even realizing there was money in it! Your guides and advice have been very helpful in getting my blogs to not only pay for themselves, but to create a handsome profit as well. Thank you!
Jonathan,
Sticking to a plan and following through is the most important step that anyone can take in small business. It can be very discouraging at first, because it won’t feel as if your idea is working, but as YOU slowly train your small group of customers to the way that you deliver information, they will get used to your voice and will expect to hear from you.
I personally send out email and postings 5 days a week, using the weekend for strategy building etc. so that it what MY customers are used to, but if I did that with someone else’s list, they might all unsubscribe. It’s all about consistency and sticking with your plan for the long haul. There is NOT just one right answer with internet marketing. That is the beauty of owning a small business on your own.
Great post.
-Joshua Black
The Underdog Millionaire
That’s a great point, Joshua, and it makes a lot of sense. Those who don’t like your strategy and can’t get used to it will unsubscribe, and those who are accustomed to your mailing strategy will stay, so in the long run, you’ll have built up a huge list of people who know your schedule and look forward to hearing from you!
And you’re absolutely right, you have to stick with it and remain consistent or you won’t reach your goal. That’s exactly the message I was trying to communicate with my post.
Thanks!
Makes me want to start another blog! Yaro, thank you for allowing the guest post. Jonathan is an inspiration to us all.
Great post Jonathan, thanks a lot for sharing.
Do you include most of your messages in your autoresponder or do you broadcast most of your messages to your whole list ?
I have about 10 messages in my auto responder and usually broadcast my newsletters to those who have received all the autoresponder messages. However, I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just include all my messages in the autoresponder.
I normally just stick to my broadcasting schedule, but you can also just pre-load follow-ups into your autoresonder as you broadcast your messages out, that works just as good and I’ll probably do that with all my broadcasts that aren’t time-sensitive.
But whether or not you have a lot of follow-ups, I do recommend a broadcasting schedule of some kind because it makes you more “real” to your subscribers, and the more real you can be, the easier it’ll be for them to trust you. But make sure you don’t take advantage of their trust once you have it… always keep THEIR best interest in mind with whatever you send.
Great post Jonathan – I look forward to putting your formula into practise! It’s not been that long since I quit my full-time job and I can only hope to see the same sort of success as you
good luck with it all!
As long as you pick a strategy (whether it’s the one described in my report or another one) and just STICK WITH IT because no matter what you do, it’s pretty sure to be slow in the beginning so just find a way to stick to a schedule and not worry about results right away.
Perfect. Thanks for providing the value. I’m glad I’m not the only one who wasn’t a multimillionaire superstar marketer right out of the gate. Thanks again.
Thanks Jonathan for the great post. It’s quite encouraging to someone like myself who’s been trying to “find myself” in the internet business world.
Keep up the good work!
Lou
Great post Jonathan – I am trying very hard to make things a success thank you for your knowledge and input.
Great post. Hearing what people did that didn’t works as well as what did always puts the story in perspective… enjoyed it, cheers
David
Good inspiring Post Jonathan.
Thanks for allowing him Yaro.
Telling us where you failed is the same as telling us what to avoid. Thanks for the tips!
Hi Jonathan
While your track record clearly shows that you deserved the degree of success you have, I would not be so confident as to claim that luck hasn’t got anything to do with it. There are other people out there, who invested just as much, tried different approaches, but happened to make the wrong guesses at the wrong moment. Since there is no recipe for success, at some point you were probably lucky to strike the combination that got you where you are.
I’m saying this because some people who are still trying, may think their lack of success is necessarily due to their lack of perseverance, astuteness or effort, and become self deprecating to the point of giving it up. They may just need that bit of luck to complete the story.
People who are successful often do not like to admit they were at least a little lucky to achieve the critical mass that swung them into orbit. Maybe just lucky enough to have it happen before discouragement took the better of them.
I believe stories of people who failed would be insightful to show that some of the ingredients of failure stories and success stories are the same. So, while waiting for luck is a sure strategy for failure, eradicating luck out of the equation seems a little too harsh.
Nevertheless, congratulations with your achievements and thank you for your post!
Well, I wasn’t exactly trying to say that luck had NOTHING to do with my situation, because I consider myself VERY lucky, and am very thankful for my situation; however, the message I was trying to get across is that luck is not required to reach the same level of success.
I’ve analyzed A LOT of people who didn’t get to where they wanted to be and considered their efforts a “failure” all had one big thing in common: they GAVE UP and abandoned ship before they saw success. Sure they may have worked their heart out for months, but at some, point they got discouraged and gave up on their efforts and that’s one of the two things I mentioned in the article that will cause certain failure.
Because of the lifestyle and freedom that working online provides, I consider anyone who does it as a sole source of income to be VERY lucky, so therefore, you just need to keep at a working strategy long enough and eventually luck will find you. I guess I should have stated in the article that DEPENDING on luck is not required… because I think you WILL get lucky as long as you keep going.
Thanks for the comment and for expressing your opinion
The message was very inspiring! A must read for those who are starting in this industry.
Hi Jonathan,
What really struck me about this article is that it contains more important information in one guest post than I have seen on a lot of other so called “gurus” entire websites. Thanks!
And thanks to Yarak too.
Thanks Jonathan! I’m really glad you like the article and your comment really made me feel good. I’ve also found many (not all of course) gurus websites with information that really didn’t appeal to me as much as other blogs who weren’t nearly as established.
I always figured it was either because they are so focused on other things besides their blog so their creativity on their blog suffers, or because they are so far ahead of the game that the information they’re posting doesn’t pertain to me. But I guess that goes for anyone’s website no matter if they are a guru or not. Some websites will appeal to you, and others won’t.
Thanks again for the uplifting comment–I’ve followed you on Twitter as well
Thanks so much Jonathan for the great post. Reading your article kept on reminding me of myself and the challenges I had faced. Especially your experience with PPC. I had the same issue with my first online business…advertising cost out-weighing the sales.
But I agree 100% with what you say- it’s about sticking it out and doing what I’ve come to call the new PPC (patience, persistence and consistency).
Being passionate about what you definitely helps because it will be the foundation to your drive to continue to move forward even when faced with adversity.
Thanks again and I wish you much continued success!
Very inspirational Johnathon. Having fun and being disciplined is so important in any successful endeavor. Thanks Yaro.
Cheers
Jann Drew-Maskell:)
Thanks Yaro for allowing Jonathan for this Guest Post.
Its a nice Informative Post Jonathan. Keep posting such new posts.
I completely agree. In fact, you should stop even thinking about other ways or methods. Too many people chase better ideas and at the end of the day don’t achieve anything. I know people who developed their business by personally befriending and hunting down each client at a time. The most basic thing you can probably do but with plenty of effort and determination they are way ahead of all those: “I might give this a try” people.
Jonathan, first of all – thank you very much for confirming this by putting it on paper so the world (all struggling blogger) may realize that they aren’t the only ones failing all the time and that failing is quite just the case with any individual who haven’t yet acquired enough knowledge about making money online. Virtually as you have stated it: It’s about being persistent and consistent at what you are doing: meaning: If you start something, it’s best advisable to stick with it and make something good out of it. NOT being able to do this simple thing is what is making everyone that is failing, keep failing.
It’s all about been persistent and not giving up. I believed as long as you love and enjoy what you do, eventually you will find out what works best for you. It’s just the matter of time before you reach your goal.
A good system explained well. I’ve begun to agree that regular blogging of itself is preferable to article marketing. A few years ago it was easier to drive much more traffic with articles.
The internet mood has shifted and with a blog you build your own equity more powerfully than with the bum marketing methods. I’m not saying article marketing cannot be useful, but the nature of the way blogs (WordPress ones anyway) get promoted automatically every time they get a new post makes a blog a sensible part of a system to drive traffic.
The author mentioned using MailChimp, which is a good product, but has terms-of-service hostile to affiliate marketing. Whether they are tolerant of what the author has done in the past is another matter, but for new marketers wanting to build lists and promote affiliate products I recommend going with another autoresponder.
Where is Jonathan Beebe now? His website is down. Was it all a farce?
Jonathan’s sites hosted on Host Gator have been down for months;
http://www.makemoneyonlinework.biz and http://www.listzen.net
I’ve tried emailing him (as I’ve had email correspondence with him before) but as his email is based on his domain @makemoneyonlinework.biz I imagine he won’t be receiving emails either.
His Twitter account has been taken offline;
http://twitter.com/jonbeebe
(can see a Google cache version here – http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8TBBsleREi0J:twitter.com/jonbeebe )
So what happened to him? It’s like he dropped off the face of the (digital) earth…
Yeah we don’t know where Jonathan Beebe is now, he seems to have completely disappeared. Hope nothing wrong happened to him …
Thanks for your suggestions, I’m going to employ them with my strategy on my website. Hopefully I have some luck =)
I think the guy realised you cant make money online. Its only for a selected few – a combination of time, opportunity, money and circumstances. I have been trying for 4 years, wasted over half a million bucks and it the end I had nothing to show for it. It was not just me …my friends have similar stories to tell. I am in the offline business now..only for 6 months and I have made crazy amount of money for 1/100 of the effort and..mark this…1/Millionth of the investment!
Nitzhe once proclaimed..God is Dead. I now proclaim, Making Money Online is Dead!
About me: Well funded dude with connections in google and a few more places like that.
P.S. When I talk about money I dont mean 2-3K a month. I mean 15-20K and more a month.