Tales of a cyber-hippy running an online business from home
I’m not your typical internet marketer I reckon…
I don’t drive a flash car. We have a new one for going places in and an 11-year old one for chucking garden waste and stuff in the back and doing countryside ‘workhorse’ stuff
I don’t live in a big fancy house. We have a comfortable cottage in a nice village with enough garden to grow veggies and easily fit in a trampoline for the kids.
My kids wear second-hand school uniforms sometimes….
I just spent an 8 hour day writing out a plan for my outsourcer…
It’s a 4 page PDF of instructions, and those four pages will generate THREE separate income streams for me.
Let me explain…
The more I’m around internet marketing the more I realise there’s LESS to learn
It all comes down to one thing – if you have traffic you’re sorted, if not you’re struggling.
Yes there are all the little piddly things that most newbies (me included) get bogged down in such as how to install an aweber form on your sales page, how to BUILD a sales page…and even ‘what’s a sales page?’
I read somewhere this week (can’t remember where so I don’t know if this is true or not) that last year there were 180,000,000,000 emails sent compared to ‘just’ 60,000,000 Facebook messages and status updates…
Personally I don’t think you can draw any conclusions from this BUT here’s my personal opinion… Continue reading
Well LOADS of you grabbed a copy of work at home
mum Sara Young’s system after I told you about it
yesterday…
In a nutshell it’s a six-step system for earning a
passive income working less than an hour a day
Get more details by clicking below:
It works using FREEE tools as well…
…so that’s NO hosting fees, NO traffic fees and
NO charge for anything else
Sounds too good to be true?
Well then throw this into the mix too – people are
seeing results in just DAYS
There are comments on the page such as:
‘I can’t believe it, it actually WORKS!’
and
‘First sale in less than a week’
and
‘I got results within days’
My opinion?
Well as I said yesterday, all I can tell you about
this is that it’s a great price, it has a SIXTY day
guarantee and it’s sold over 1,000 copies but has a
TINY refund rate of around 1%
So one way or another it seems that people really
like it
Get full details now at the link below:
Are you still trying to reach everyone in your
business?
I think you’re making a big mistake if you are
Trying to reach all ‘newbies’ or ‘bloggers’ or
‘affiliate marketers’ (if you sell to the IM niche)
for example, is STILL too broad in my opinion.
Dig deeper – go narrower.
Examples:
I’ve created products that ‘only’ appeal to
marketers who want to set up a sales funnel using
paid traffic from buying solo ads…
I’m currently researching a system of using
Facebook ads to build a fast, extremely responsive
list for email marketers who provide good content
One of the personal coaching programs we run is
ONLY for people who want to create, sell and flip
their own plugins…
…and you have (hopefully) noticed that I target
my marketing emails to people who can think for
themselves, are above average intelligence and
aren’t too bothered about what others think of
them.
All the above are what I reckon are pretty narrow
target markets yet work incredibly well for me
So when you’re creating your next product, or ad
campaign or personal coaching program have a good
think about who you want to target
I’ll make it even easier for you –
Just think about WHO you actually want to work with
on a day to day basis
It’s just so much easier working with people who
have the same goals and are interested in the same
things…
…than it is wading around the shallow end of the
gene pool trying to pull out customers that just
don’t care about what you’re trying to help them
with
So my advice – suss out where your own passions
lie, what you want your own business to be about,
and just help other people who want to achieve the
same thing
That’s it….it’s always worked for me
Anyway…
I was researching the whole Facebook Ad setup and I
saw this:
It allows anyone to build ‘ready to run’ Facebook
ads in seconds, which obviously brings your costs
down dramatically.
Better than that, there’s no Photoshop, resizing or
programming involved.
It’s priced incredibly well, so I didn’t hesitate
to grab myself a copy and I’m looking forward to
trying it out.
There’s even an interface for letting you manage
your entire campaign BEFORE you export your ad to
Facebook…
…and it’s currently on offer for less than ten
dollars, which is just crazy.
It’s going to be of interest to you if you’re
investigating FB as a marketing tool like me…
…and it’s also one of those items you should
think about picking up now even if you don’t need
it just yet.
You can read more about it below:
http://jvz8.com/c/7617/56146
I’m never so….driven…as when I’m working on a brand new project.
The idea came to me around Sunday lunchtime while I was stacking the dishwasher so I sent a message to the partner I want to work on with this giving brief details and arranging a Skype chat Monday.
Monday morning around 10.30am I showed my partner the research I’d done and why I thought this could be a killer idea.
We Skyped on and off most of yesterday, ending at 11pm at which time we’d sorted out a product, a supplier, a product name, the platform and our branding.
We still have to research fulfilment and a few other bits and pieces before we start to test the market.
I reckon we’ll be ‘live’ by next week.
It’s not in the IM niche but what I DID want to share is that it’s important to ride that first wave of enthusiasm.
In 24 hours we did almost ALL the research and setting up ‘grunt work’ that was a delight to do because we were excited about the new venture, but would have been an absolute pain and taken days if we’d missed the tide.
When you get something new going you have a window of excitement that you need to hit and hit hard, because it can make the difference between acting on your ideas and never getting projects finished.
Some of you will know exactly what I mean I think
I’m knackered this morning though 🙂
As online marketers we hear the phrase ‘multiple streams of income’ to the point that it just becomes a sound bite, like ‘passive income’ or ‘leverage’
But the fact of the matter is this…
I know quite a lot of very successful marketers. I know them from a business point of view, and I know them from a ‘who’s turn is it to get the beers in?’ point of view too
And long ago I noticed this:
Almost ALL successful people I know have multiple sources of income.
To give you an example, my income comes from selling my own products, selling other people’s products as an affiliate, from software, apps, coaching, blogging, websites, consulting, offline businesses and a few of other things
If some of the streams vanish overnight and I still have revenue from the rest
“Stating the bleedin’ obvious again Shepherd?”
Well not really because most people don’t really understand the following SINGLE fact:
Business has CHANGED.
I don’t just mean online, I mean everywhere.
Farms near my house are no longer just dairy farms or sheep farms, because if they ARE, they’ve gone under.
The farms that are thriving near my house now make their own cheese, sell free range eggs from a van, run stalls on farmer’s markets every weekend, sell plants, sell rare breed meat, breed rabbits or guinea pigs, have petting zoos and play areas for kids, offer tractor rides, livery stables and a one even has an American style diner.
They don’t ALL do all these things obviously but they almost all DO have multiple streams of income.
And so do the small independent shops in our village – websites that complement the physical shops, pottery classes, hiring out rooms to Ukulele groups, painting days for kids, outside catering, artwork commissions and hiring out display cabinets in their premises for local artists
Multiple streams of income.
Here’s another example. I have a product I sell – an ebook – that brings me around $4,000 a year. It’s an old one but the info is still very valid and I make around half a dozen sales each week from it
Could I make a living from it?
Absolutely not, but combined with the $2,000, $12,000, $30,000 and additional streams of income I have, it adds up to a pretty comfortable income.
So that ebook or plugin or PLR package of yours that ‘only’ sells a couple of copies a week and maybe brings you ‘just’ $5k a year and that doesn’t feel like you’re being successful is just the start of things.
Not everything you do has to be a stunning firework display of brilliance. You just need to make sure that your income mounts up from different sources, slowly and steadily.
It gives you security (there can’t be many people who still think that working for a single wage in a 9-5 job is secure), and it gives you flexibility.
Start with a simple ebook perhaps, then add a paid mastermind group based around it. Add a personal coaching option and maybe a plugin that automates the process and suddenly you’re earning six figures a year from four different sources.
Rinse and repeat.
I’ve over-simplified it of course, but I reckon you get what I mean.
You might have noticed that I created a Facebook
Hippy Marketing page a couple of weeks back
Obviously I’ve got plans for it that I’ll share
with you when the results come in.
But in the meantime I spotted this and bought it
immediately…
…because it’s an out and out BLUEPRINT of how to
make moolah using FaceBook
I’ve not looked at it yet, but you already know my
position on blueprints – I just buy them ALL
because they’re the next best thing to watching
over some guy’s shoulder while he creates his
income
(And the chap in this blueprint makes 10k a month)
Anyway, no recommendation on this because like I
said, I’ve not had chance to investigate it fully
yet, but it looks pretty interesting
The creator says it’s fully step by step AND it’s
working for people
For the price I think it’s worth reading the
salespage and making your own mind up…
…anyhow, I’m just giving you the heads up about
something I bought
Full details at the link below:
We all have ideas about a business we can create.
As a business owner myself I know that after a few beers at a party when the conversation gets round to the usual ‘so what do you do?’ that when I say I run a business, the other person at some point invariably says ‘Oh I have a really good idea for a business’
…and if you spend 20 minutes browsing the online business forums you’ll soon realise that most people are pretty good at coming up with business ideas.
Unfortunately they’re pretty crap at following through with them, because they all stop and ask permission.
I don’t mean they ask permission in the ‘can I…?’ traditional sense, instead they ask numerous questions, ask forum members opinions (regardless of the other persons background, education, or mental stability) and basically put OFF following through with their business idea because of the opinions and off the cuff remarks of other people.
One comment from a stupid person in a forum can put a newcomer off a business idea. I’ve seen it happen.
If the rest of their lives worked in the same way it would be chaos.
But it doesn’t.
People start families without asking anyone’s else’s opinion (except usually their partner’s) they decide to join gyms, apply for other jobs, make friends, take mortgages and buy ten thousand dollar cars…
…ALL without asking anyone’s opinion. So WHY, when it comes to a relatively minor decision such as setting up a part-time online business (certainly minor when it’s compared to taking out a two hundred thousand dollar mortgage) so rational people feel the need to ASK whether they’re doing the right thing or not?
It’s crazy. Totally bloody mad.
But it’s prevalent. Do you ask for permission to follow your gut feelings? Do you need approval to set up your business or are you looking for an excuse…
Why an excuse? Well because if you follow someone’s else’s advice and your business doesn’t work out, you have an excuse – you don’t have to take responsibility for the way your business has gone
I don’t need to push this point, I think you know what I mean so think about it. You don’t need anyone’s permission, you just need to take responsibility for your own decisions, and take action.