Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

I was listening to a fantastic call from Jeff Walker about email list building. Jeff’s the guy behind Product Launch Formula, the system I followed when launching Blog Mastermind and in my opinion a must have home study course for any person who is planning on releasing a product online (you can read my PLF review here).

Jeff does bonus calls now and then for his paying clients and they are always great. This one was particularly cool because I love the topic of email list building, but also because Jeff went into detail about a simple formula he uses to start niche businesses using blogs.

Here’s how the formula works:

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Here’s a challenging question to ask yourself - If you didn’t need money, what would you fill your days with?

I’m not saying that you imagine you are super wealthy, at least not from a financial standpoint - but you are from a time freedom standpoint.

You can do anything you want with your days and you don’t need to worry about making money.

Some people would say they would go on a never ending stream of holidays. Others might claim a desire to “do nothing”, which I always find silly - how can you do nothing?

I’ve often asked myself, would I do what I do without there being a monetary incentive? Would I keep blogging, teaching and writing?

It’s actually quite hard to answer this question because the financial reward is so tightly tied into the motivation. It’s not the only reason, but it’s a strong factor. You enjoy the process, the intrinsic rewards, the people you connect with, but given how our society is structured, money is ALWAYS a factor, it’s part of our culture and our value system.

It’s scary to think that. Money is a part of us.

What Would You Do If All You Cared About Was Money?

Here’s the opposite question. If all you cared about was earning as much money as you can, what would you do?

Blogging is definitely not the best choice if you only care about the money. Compared to other means of building wealth, blogging is slow, the points of leverage aren’t nearly as strong as other methods and let’s face it - it’s hard work to be a blogger.

If I only cared about the money, perhaps Pay Per Click marketing affiliate products is a better choice? Or as I’ve said before, I’d probably spend my time just buying and selling websites, since the return is much higher given the effort required.

I’m pretty sure I’d be doing Internet business of some kind if I was going to focus on financial wealth only, but blogging would not be the first choice.

It’s Not Black and White

Ultimately this question is challenging because at the root of it is the fundamental question about your purpose in life.

Many people have different beliefs about why they exist but I don’t know many people who would say their purpose is to accumulate as much money as they can, yet that seems to be the driving factor for most of us in Western cultures.

So…what would you do if money did not matter?

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After doing my profile of the business team behind the lightweight slippers known to the world as Crocs, I managed to stumble across this brilliant accessory. Jibbitz are tiny decorative snaps that fit into the holes on top of Crocs.

Just like Jonathan Hall, Sheri Schmelzer was able to leverage an already successful market, and breathe some new life into it with a complimentary accessory. Filling a need, or more likely a want is what separates a good invention (and the entrepreneur) from a bad invention, or at least one that isn’t likely to catch on. This is where so many entrepreneurs fail… they try to create a market instead of leveraging an existing one. But I’ll let Yaro tell that story. Back to Jibbitz.

Jibbitz come in all sorts of designs from flowers to smiley faces and they make sense when you figure the available real estate (the holes) that are available on Crocs. Sheri Schmelzer started this operation selling Jibbitz from her basement. It didn’t take long before she was selling out every batch of the $2.49 accessory. Orders got to the point where Sheri could no longer handle the demand. A good problem to have, but a problem all the same. Looking for an easy fix, Sheri brought her husband Rich into the mix.

Rich was an experienced businessman and he quickly set up a deal with a company that agreed to manufacture Jibbitz in bulk. Not long after, they signed their first distribution deal with the popular mall fixture “Clare’s”, the Schmelzers had sold an estimated 750 thousand Jibbitz at $2.49 a piece.

The success didn’t go unnoticed either. The actual company that she was selling Jibbitz for (Crocs) purchased the small operation for a tidy sum of 10 million dollars. The contract also states that Sheri Schmelzer is entitled to another 10 million if Jibbitz meets initial projections set forth by the number junkies at Crocs. Not bad for a business that had been around all of 4 years.

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Would you buy a pair of ugly shoes just because they were comfortable? That’s the question that Crocs inventors Lyndon “Duke” Hanson, Scott Seamans, and George Boedecker asked themselves when they set out to create a lightweight and extremely comfortable shoe. I personally would never be able to go without my Crocs again. These things are beyond amazing and if you don’t have them… your feet may never forgive you.

Crocs were originally created to be an outdoor/boating/watersports type shoe because of their rubber build, light weight, and the fact that they float. But instead, mainstream society has taken to these shoes like bees to honey. They have become the overwhelming success story of the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

But how does an ugly and inexpensive shoe take the world by storm? Let’s look closer.

In 2004 Crocs started to create some buzz in the watersport community as a comfortable and lightweight boating shoe. Later that year, Crocs purchased Foam Creations and their manufacturing operations to secure exclusive rights to the foam resin called “croslite” which actually forms a mold to the wearers foot, which provides a comfortable and functional shoe.

Crocs began marketing their product to the outdoor community but eventually word got out about their odd creation. Deciding to push their luck, the creators agreed to give their shoes a test run on the east and west coasts, and allow distributors to carry their footwear.

It didn’t take long for these odd, yet comfortable shoes to catch on to the masses. Crocs blew up in 2006 and has become the leading “sandal” in the world. Crocs projected profits for next year? A cool 400 million. Not bad for a product that started out as a rubber and foam mixture.

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When I posted my September blog earnings of $10,899.83 a few readers replied asking for advice with affiliate marketing. Given nearly $4,400 of that income was from affiliate sales - the largest single source of income - it’s easy to understand why people want further explanation in this area.

I’ll be frank with you, the area I make money from affiliate sales, is a highly competitive one, and I would probably make about twice or thrice as much money if I was doing what I do in a different niche. Selling affiliate offers to people interested in making money online is one of the hardest markets to sell in because it is over saturated and people are very skeptical. Unless you are the Rich Jerk or John Reese, two guys with huge email lists of people who love to buy Internet marketing products, you will struggle in this industry.

If I didn’t enjoy the topics of blogging and Internet business (especially combined together) and I was more interested in affiliate marketing just for the sake of money, I’d enter other affiliate markets like dating or ring tones (although these are quite saturated too) or go hunting for under serviced niche markets, where Internet marketing techniques will work even better because people are not used to them. A search of the various products you find at affiliate networks like Commission Junction and AzoogleAds provide plenty of inspiration for industries to enter as an affiliate marketer, beyond selling make money online products.

Not surprisingly, the Internet marketing industry is one of the most mature when it comes to Internet marketing tactics and as a result, the customers are over exposed to all the techniques we love so much, such as - namesqueeze pages, email marketing, sales copy, testimonials, etc. That’s not to say there is no money to be made, but you really need to be on top of your game. Other industries will be more forgiving.

I’ve been tempted many a time to jump ship after experiencing conversion rates lower than 0.1% on promotions I’ve done for Internet marketing products, although that might be more to do with the type of person I attract rather than the market itself.

The lesson here is that if you plan to enter the affiliate marketing arena and focus on Internet marketing products expect serious competition, and you better know how to find people who buy, which is an art form in itself!

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at how you can use a blog make affiliate income.

It Starts With The First Sale

The first money I ever made from affiliate marketing came from my blog. The grand total - $13 - and that was a couple of days after posting the article I had spent two hours slaving over hoping to make some big cash.

At the time I had an audience of 500 readers a day, although that may have been over exaggerated because I was using Webalizer to track my numbers, which generally provides a higher total compared to other statistics packages (Google Analytics for example shows less than half the visitors that Webalizer does). I was told about 2% is a reasonable conversion rate from people who know these things, so I assumed that would mean I would get at least 10 sales based on 500 readers.

I was like - Wow! if I can get 10 sales of an affiliate product that pays me $13 per sale, then all I need to do is write a great blog article to make $130 bucks! Do that a few times a week and you have a pretty darn good income, was what I thought to myself.

Rather than put in a half-hearted effort I wanted to be genuine and recommend something I knew was good, which I had used myself, from someone I respected and wasn’t too expensive (I didn’t think my readers had a lot of money at the time). I wrote my blog post, talked about how good the product was, used a little bit of scarcity because I thought the product offer was due to finish at the end of the month (turns out it wasn’t), published the article and then went to bed.

You can see the article here (incidentally the offer is still active - so much for scarcity!) -

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I woke up the next day, powered up my computer, opened up my browser and email, and excitedly looked to see if I had made any sales during the night.

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