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I’m seeing this point made over and over, both in the wise words from the experts (like below from Perry Marshall), from my own experience running Internet businesses and in case study examples of business models that provide the contrary result, which proves the point.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about building an Internet business based on a sustainable, long term model.

99% of the business opportunities that I come across are focused on short term thinking and unsustainable methods of making money. It could be that they rely on using content of little value, or chasing search engine traffic using very inconsistent methods, or relying on tapping markets that are only lucrative short term.

Some of these models may make money, but as the made-for-adsense years prove, something that has little resistance to replicate and provides no real value to people, will not be making money long term.

My income curve has increased significantly in the 8 or so years that I have made money online, yet each time I move up a bracket I again realize that the entire process is about building on past work. In all cases shortly after receiving a nice boost in cash flow, I’m taking big chunks of it and reinvesting in growth and preparing for the future.

The trick is to reinvest current cashflow into sustainable business models, so you compound on your previous work and create greater overall value, even if you reduce your current profit margin - this really is a swimming strategy. This is analogous with taking equity from your current assets to purchase more assets.

Wise Words From Perry Marshall

Here’s what Perry Marshall had to say about this topic in a recent email he sent out to his Renaissance Club members (still the best marketing newsletter I know of!).

A couple of years ago, the rage on the web was clever little programs that generate thousands of garbage pages that get picked up by the search engines. You’d stick AdSense ads on them and make some money - because when people come to a junky page they either hit the back button or click on something that looks good.

It’s getting harder and harder to even find such pages as the search engines get wise to this.

As ephemeral as the web may appear, it really is more like real estate.

Long term value is built over time, and things of value are usually still there years later. There are almost a million sites that link to Amazon, and regardless of what Amazon does or doesn’t do today, those links will still be there tomorrow. Yes, there is the surface turbulence and flavor of the month on the web, but in the long run, real content and valuable links are an investment.

I cannot overstate the foolishness of fake content.

Every now and then we get emails from people that go something like this: “hey dude, i really need to make 5000 dollars in the next 3 days, can your ebook help me do that if it works ill buy your book thanks matt”

Sorry, lower-case matt, can’t help you. If you want to spend your life wandering the ghettos of the Internet, be my guest. But don’t blame me if you get stabbed by a heroin addict.

The Internet is just like real estate. So why would anyone want to build a building this month, knowing the wrecking ball is coming through the East wall next month? When you build on a solid foundation, you don’t have to start all over again next week after the search engines get wise to your game.

Oh yeah, and there’s another thing too: When you build your business on a solid foundation, when you cultivate your customer base, when you nurture your customers like watering a garden, guess what? If you need $5,000 in the next 3 days you can get it. Gotta plant the seeds first though.

Source: Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Club

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I’m thinking video might become a regular feature at Entrepreneurs-Journey. What do you think?

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A common small business start-up formula today is to offer a product or service and sell it online. If you are reading this blog chances are that describes your situation now. Perhaps you are a freelancer with skills to sell, or you decided to have a go at selling a product online, maybe through eBay or directly from a website. Maybe you quit your job or downgraded to part time work to have time to start your business, or you even attempted to do both at once - work a job and start a business at the same time.

Whatever the scenario, we all start at the same place - the beginning - and it’s at this point that we begin to take action to drum up business. Once you have something to offer, you brainstorm ideas for how to market what you do and then, finally, you go out there and “get in the face” of your target market.

During the early days you tend to do a lot of work yourself, and until you actually make sales, you are very pro-active (or at least you should be!) at chasing up more work and more sales. Generally, because the pressure to establish cashflow is so great, this stage of your business involves rapid action and you do a lot of activities that move you forward. I call this swimming.

Treading Water

Read the rest of this entry >>

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Ok, so the “Ekka” will mean absolutely nothing to most people unless you are from Brisbane. Basically the Ekka is an annual show, full of rides, showbags, entertainment, games - a huge funfair for the whole family, as the saying goes.

It’s really for kids - and I haven’t been since I was a kid - but when I recently purchased home and contents insurance for my new house I was given free tickets to the Ekka (how’s that for cross channel marketing!), so I decided to go.

I’ll be there tomorrow and really I go for two reasons - to see animals (cows are so funny!) and for the cadbury showbag, which is chock-full of…chocolate.

In the meantime I offer you some links I’ve collected over the past few weeks that you might find interesting…

Recommended Links

• I write a lot about the concept of Social Proof and I was recently notified of an interesting post over at the Internet Influence Magic blog that features a case study about how social proof can help you be more attractive to women. I’m not sure if the same proof technique works the other way around though!
• Dennis over at The Beta News blog asked me to show everyone my desktop and also asked about some of the common software programs I use every day.
• It’s pretty clear that the niche of “freelancing” is hugely popular at the moment, as demonstrated by Chris, who recently disclosed his freelance writing income for July 2007 and received quite a bit of attention. I should change my blog’s name to “Freelancer’s Journey” :-).
• Here’s an interesting concept - Sean Aiken is doing a different job each week and video documenting the whole process via a blog. The pilot episode is at a Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto and he recently finished his second week job at a tattoo parlor.
• Lately I’ve started to feel that we bloggers need to know more about the legal implications of what we publish, both in the articles we release to our blogs and the comments left in response. Anne-Marie Nichols offers a nice concise article with some handy links and discussion about what we need to know about copyright protection for photos and content.
• Ben Cook, who is one of my Blog Mastermind students, is running a competition and he’s giving away what he calls - The Complete Blogging Package - and of course Blog Mastermind membership is one of the prizes.
• I’m participating in Blog Action Day - you might want to as well.
• And last but not least, just in case you didn’t know already, my friend Darren Rowse just launched the new Problogger design featuring all kinds of bells and whistles - even a talking Darren head video once a week!

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One of THE BEST Internet marketing events I have ever been to was the World Internet Summit Melbourne (you can read my recap here). For me the event was awesome not because of the content, but because of the caliber of people I met and spoke with.

In Melbourne I had lunch with Mike Filsaime and Tom Beal, met and then chatted with Mark Joyner, hung out with Daryl and Andrew Grant for the first time in person and just had a great time with all the other attendees and speakers.

The guys behind the event, Tom Hua and Brett McFall have teamed up with Mike Filsaime and his i5Gold team, Donna Fox and Paulie Sabol, to do a combined event, this time called the World Internet Main Event and it’s going to be held in San Francisco from September 13-16, 2007.

Needless to say I think this event is going to rock. Unfortunately I’m not going because I don’t want to travel all the way to the USA, but if you are in the area or can travel there and you have never been to an event like this, definitely go, it’s a blast.

In terms of content, you can expect the usual - 90% content from each speaker, followed by 10% sales pitch for the package the speaker offers. The content is targeted at relative beginners, but even if you are experienced, it’s worth going just to see how these guys and girls ply their craft. It’s quite incredible to watch the presentations even if you know most of the content - just beware the sugar rush!

Here’s the link to the information page which lists the speakers and details -

www.WorldInternetMainEvent.com

Bonus For Attendees - Butterfly Marketing

Here’s the best bit about this event - since Mike Filsaime is part of it, he’s giving a copy of Butterfly Marketing (the full digital-version script) to every single person who buys a ticket.

The cheapest way I know of to get Butterfly Marketing is $497 for the digital version, so if you were considering buying the package you may as well buy a ticket to the event and get the script and course for free!

You can check out details about the offer at the World Internet Main Event page.

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