How Stable Is Your Online Income
I’ve made some form of income from the Internet for the past ten years. That’s incredible for me to consider, as I look back over the years how for such a long time I felt very insecure about where my next paycheck was going to come from and whether there would be another one the following month.
For the first five years, roughly from 2000 to 2005, my income from the Internet varied, reflecting the choices I had made and my own variable focus. It went something like this…
- I made spare change money selling stuff from around my house on eBay
- I played a card game called Magic: The Gathering and began selling the cards I won at tournaments in online trading forums and newsgroups
- I built a website focused on the same card game, eventually earning a few hundred dollars a month from banner and newsletter sponsorship
- I started an e-commerce card shop from the website and continued to sell my winnings from tournaments, and began buying product at wholesale prices to sell online at retail (until credit card fraud forced me to shut it down)
- I started a proofreading business, which after a slow start, eventually earned enough income to pay me a full salary, equivalent to a first year university graduate
This is a list of the projects that I made money on during those five years. It doesn’t include the websites I built that shortly after I abandoned, my brief experiments at AdWords arbitrage and other various false-starts because I was so easily distracted by new methods to “make millions” online.
During this time I finished my university degree, held a couple of casual jobs and traveled too. I also watched, often resulting in plenty of self-doubt on my part, as my friends entered graduate jobs, which looked a whole lot more secure than what I was doing at the time and often paid them better as well.
Looking back over those five years the money I made proved surprisingly reliable, even though at the time my confidence in the income stream wasn’t there (good old hindsight). I had enough time to work on new projects because I focused on ideas that didn’t need too much personal time from me once set up, for example getting volunteer writers for my card site and using contract editors for the proofreading site, so I could easily manage them both at the same time.
The end result was a diversified online income stream that continued to grow as long as I did a few key activities (like put up posters to promote the proofreading business), plus I was creating assets that I would later sell.
The Era Of Rapid Income Growth
Tap Massive Leverage: How To Gain Access To Inner Circle Top Affiliates
If you plotted the growth of my business the chart would look like a steadily increasing line, punctuated by a handful of spikes a couple of times a year.
The first big spike in growth occurred in 2007, which was the first launch I ever did of the Blog Mastermind coaching program. Every aspect of my business grew during that two week period. My email list tripled in size and my income increased by almost the same margin.
Going forward, each new spike came thanks to some kind of launch. Whether it was a new product, closing access to a product or reopening of a closed product, each time I did some kind of launch campaign, the growth numbers shot through the roof.
This is obviously an endorsement of the launch process, and we all owe Jeff Walker a debt of thanks for bringing this style of marketing to our industry, however it’s worth taking a closer look at why the launch works.
The 80/20 Rule Of Product Launches
The launch process is a complex and subtle beast, which on the surface appears relatively simple. You release some great free stuff, have your affiliates promote it like crazy, open the doors to your offer with some kind of limitation, sell heaps, make a ton of money, and bamb!… done.
Once you do a few launches you start to see how intricate the variables are, and how important the psychology behind the process is. Everything needs to connect, to be coherent, to reinforce the same message, create excitement and flow together.
As daunting as that might sound, the process is actually quite forgiving, as long as you get a few variables right. You can “stuff up” many aspects of the launch process and still succeed. You can forget to do things, use lazy copy in your emails, and even leave parts out altogether, as long as you have the most important variables.
So, what are the 20% or less of components that go into a launch that count for the 80% or more of results? Here’s how I see it…
How To Launch Membership Sites: Your Questions Answered
I just spent several hours reading through and replying to some of the 300 plus comments left at the original Membership Site Masterplan blog post I did back in April 2009.
Back when I first released the Masterplan I couldn’t keep up with the waves of comments coming through as I was busy preparing to open the Membership Site Mastermind coaching program.
Today as I prepared for the final 2009 opening of the coaching program next week (October 27th) I had some time to address some of the comments.
If you have any interest in launching a membership site, or creating and selling your own information product online or you just want to see what problems people face when striving to do these things (it’s very interesting market research), then have a read of the comments and my replies at this blog post -
The Membership Site Masterplan Is Now Available
A word of warning – with 300+ comments it takes a while to load the page and it has been known to crash some people’s browsers (it works for me in the latest Firefox), so give it a chance to finish loading before scrolling down to read the comments.
I’m still going through and responding to the comments now, so new replies from me are going to pop up over the next few days. You can leave your question as a comment too, and I’ll do my best to reply this week, just make sure you stay on the topic of membership ship sites and information product launches.
Do You Want 2010 To Be A Big Year For You And Your Business?
It’s About Time You Created Your Own Product
I expect you have some pretty lofty ambitions for next year. You probably have a lot you want to get done in the rest of 2009 too!
If you’ve done your research then you know to really ramp up how much money you make from your online business, you need your own product.
If you’ve made the decision to create an information product like a membership site, ebook, coaching course, or some form of expert based service as your path forward, now’s the time to get help and get educated.
Back in April 2009 I did the first public release of the Membership Site Mastermind coaching program and it was a huge success, and a lot of fun to teach.
I’m now ready to invite the next group of students to participate, and this will definitely be the last time this program is open for 2009, so if you want to take part, you have to join next week.
The doors open Tuesday October 27th.
Have You Decided To Make Changes?
I’ve published a very popular series on creating positive changes in your life in the articles on my blog that came before this one.
I love talking about personal development and mindset, as I believe they are keys to creating financial success in your life – they certainly are in my life.
I’ve been through many periods where I didn’t know if I would ever reach the financial goals I set for myself and at times it has taken a monumental effort to stay on course. This is why your mind is so important to your success as an entrepreneur, but you don’t have to go it alone all the time.
If you’ve been reading my series on change then you know one of the keys to getting what you want is to make smart choices. One of the other techniques I talk about is getting help and following success patterns from people who have done what you want to do.
Making the decision to take my coaching course could be a smart choice for you. If you have an intention to create and launch an information product, you want to make at least $100,000 next year and you want to follow by far the simplest system taught today, then you are a good fit for what I teach.
This is not training that you will find anywhere else online, nor is it taught in any university or college around the world. This is practical advice based on what’s actually working online today, with a focus on the simplest implementation process available so as to avoid as many technical challenges as possible.
Of course you don’t have to make a decision now, you can decide after you do some homework on what I offer. What I do and teach is not for everyone, so I’d like you to first make sure what I have will take you in the direction you want to go.
Your Homework Today: Study The Masterplan
If you have not already downloaded your copy of my free report, the Membership Site Masterplan, you need to do so today and study it before next week.
The Masterplan is the most comprehensive free report on the Internet for launching your own membership site. If you have any intentions of ever releasing your own information product or online service, you should read this report.
I have a reputation for producing free reports that people tell me have more value in them than most paid-for ebooks on the same subject. I do believe the Masterplan is a really solid report and is enough of a starting point to get you going towards earning your first $100,000 online selling your own products, and then a whole lot more.
The Masterplan is also a great introduction to my system and teaching style, so if you like what you find in the report – and it won’t cost you a single cent to download it – then you will be in a much better position to decide whether taking my full coaching course is what you want to do when it opens again next week.
So right now you only have one action to take: go and download the Masterplan free report.
You can get both a text copy in PDF and an audio version in MP3 (I’m the narrator) for free from here -
Download The Masterplan Free Report
Make sure you mark down October 27th (that’s Tuesday next week!) as the day I’m taking enrollments for the final time this year.
Can Your Business Make You Rich?
Many years ago I wrote a blog post that looked at the reality of how much money you actually make when you run your own business.
You can read the article here – Do You Want to Run Your Own Business? Read this First!
My premise back then was that most business owners don’t make a whole lot of money until they sell their business.
This situation is very similar to what an employee, who stays with the one company for many years, goes through. A business owner can make a salary level income year after year, and then one day, likely at retirement age, the business is sold and a nice lump sum of cash is returned, much like a superannuation or retirement settlement an employee receives at the end of a long career.
Obviously this situation isn’t ideal if you are an entrepreneur looking to create freedom in your life, both time and financial freedom. If you spend all day, possibly beyond normal working hours, in your business, and you’re taking home an income pretty much equivalent to a salary (plus you have many more responsibilities than an employee), you are not in a great situation.
Turning Cash Into Assets
If I look back over the last five years of my business life, there have been a handful of significant “spikes” in my income.
The spikes have occurred because of either of these events -
