I’m crap at flight simulator games.

I have an app on my iPad called Infinite Flight, which is great fun but I find it really difficult. I’ve had it for months and though I don’t play it a lot I still haven’t managed ONE SINGLE successful landing on the basic Cessna level.

Ayway yesterday I hadn’t even thought about the sim but I found myself watching a ‘how to land a plane’ vid on YouTube. I was stuck, trying to write my newsletter and the one particular article I was working on just wasn’t coming together, so I went YouTube browsing.

After viewing several music vids, one fart-lighting and a bloke climbing the highest tower in the world I came across the ‘how to land a plane’ vid (who says I don’t optimise my productivity eh?)…

…immediately afterwards I jumped on the simulator and landed the Cessna first time. Whoop de do!

Dunno why, it wasn’t a great vid. The pilot was muttering a lot about cross-wind and I didn’t understand most of it, but it got me in the mood and it worked. My first ever successful landing.

Sad eh? – the whole thing. Proper dweeb stuff.

But then I turned back to my article and finished that off too…and it’s a good ‘un.

I don’t know why this approach constantly works for me but it does.

Just going and doing something else for a bit. Not rocket science or anything amazing but it works for me.

It just ‘de-tunes’ my thought patterns by doing something else for a bit and when I come back to my original task it just flows.

Just sharing 🙂

So when you’re an established marketer how and when does the money arrive on a practical, day to day basis?

Well when I first started out and was making a few sales a week I thought that my income would always feel ‘shaky’ and that even when it increased it would still feel very ‘day to day’…

I thought I’d never be able to have any sort of confidence about WHEN my next lot of income would arrive

Truth is it’s not like that at all

All the payments from my various Clickbank accounts arrive like clockwork into my bank account every Thursday

My merchant account payments plop in every Tuesday

I have various other payments that arrive on the same date every month

I receive dividends from my other businesses roughly the same time every month

Of course income from affiliate promotions, random sales and product launches are a bit haphazard by their nature, but on the whole there’s MUCH more regular payment that you think with an online business…

…AND it comes from different places, at different times and from different income streams.

Despite what people STILL think when I go to friends and family gatherings, having your own online business is MUCH more secure (if you set it up correctly) than a 9-5 job is

If you’re not convinced think about your own boss – if he had to choose between not being able to update his car every three years unless he fired an employee what would he do?

Many employers put their employees first…but many more don’t

You ever sit down and wonder what the Hell you should be doing in your business?

Here’s something I’ve always used to work past those obstacles

So you’ve built or you’re building an online business.

Maybe you’ve successfully launched a product and it went well. or maybe you’re just in the planning stages.

Either way at some point you’re going to hit a brick wall because you don’t have a plan to follow.

I started exactly the same way – creating products and selling them but not too sure where to go next apart from following the same procedure and doing it all again

I had some vague notion that I ‘should’ start a blog, or that it was probably a ‘good idea’ to get some form of recurring income flowing by creating continuity products or sites.

But on the whole, like most people when I first started out I was like a headless chicken, blindfolded, at night, in the fog….with just one eye and even that had a patch over it.

If you’re just as lost and don’t know what direction your business is going in, try the following.

Work Backwards.

Use a pen and paper or mindmap software or a dictation recorder or whatever…

…and just work out WHAT you want to be doing in two year’s time.

If you can see yourself working from wherever you want to in the world, coming up with ideas and then having them made into software, plugins or apps then start working towards that goal today

Build a team and start learning how the process works. NOT the techy side – you’re an ideas person remember not a techy. You come up with the ideas, oversee the process and reap the financial rewards.

If on the other hand you see yourself writing about a subject that you’re passionate about AND making a good six or seven figure income from it, then start an authority blog. Later on your can bring in a team to help with the writing or SEO or monetization.

Simple?

Yes absolutely it is, but it gives you direction.

If you don’t know where your business is going then try visualizing HOW you make your money in two or three years time. Do you have an office? Do you work from hotels as you perpetually travel the world?

Do you simply write about your passion then forward it to your team and they do the rest?

Do you liaise with web designers and techies on Skype to get your latest plugin created and brought to the market?

Visualise your dream, and work towards it.

It’s much easier knowing what you need to do TODAY when you know where you want to be at TOMORROW.

Are ANY businesses one-trick ponies?

I can’t think of any off the top of my head so feel free to tell me otherwise but here’s my question?

Are there ANY successful businesses you can think of that have only ONE stream of income?

As an example I took my little lad to a party today at a dry ski slope. The kids had a great time zapping down the slopes in inflatable tyre type thingies.

As they went inside for lunch I noticed that what used to be just a dry ski slope twenty years ago was now a children’s party venue, offered skiing lessons, sold food, had a huge climbing frame (paid) area and even offered corporate events

Sure it’s all in the same niche but it’s still diversification. if the demand for ski lessons dries up they can always rely on the children’s party events. If the events become scarce they can offer corporate lunch meetings.

How’s your business?

Do you offer products, coaching, a ‘done for you’ service, do you own online assets or operate an offline marketing service to local firms?

The marketers I know who are the most successful have several different streams of income that provide an element of security in terms of income.

I’ve been trying to think of any businesses in any niche that still rely on just ONE stream of income.

Even the accountancy firm I use sells ‘investigation insurance’ and offers book keeping services.

My wobbly little brain is a bit challenged at the moment after spending three hours at an under-7’s children’s party, but if anyone can come up with a good example of a business that relies on just ONE sole stream of income then I’d genuinely appreciate it if you’d share

‘cos at the moment I can’t…

You can leave any comments on my Facebook page

In the internet marketing  ‘make money online’ niche it’s really easy to get stuck behind the thinking that unless you’re creating and launching products you’re just not building your business.

This is balls. Bouncy ones.

It’s what goes on behind the scenes that REALLY builds your business.

Get used to encouraging your readers to contact you with ideas.

Let it be known that you offer different levels of consultancy packages or personal coaching AND more importantly, that you’re open to listen to their business ideas and proposals

Work with people in different ways

Behind the scenes in my business, away from the launches and the ‘public’ face of things there’s a lot going on.

I have partnerships with a LOT of marketers – percentage ownerships of websites and products that have developed from my personal coaching OR from just being approached by a reader, customer or subscriber asking for some advice

Apps, software, websites, products, books, WordPress plugins and offline businesses

All this comes from being approachable and encouraging my peer group, business mates, customers, followers, subscribers and readers to get in touch with me about pretty much anything

Yes it involves hiring email support of course, but I don’t have ‘Rottweilers’ on my desk, everything that needs to get through to me DOES get through and you’ll get an answer.

Product launches are great fun, profitable and a good way to get new subscribers and customers on board…

…but by letting people ALSO know that I’m also coach, consultant and business investor…

Well that’s where the REAL profit, growth and potential comes from.

My advice? Build this into your business (WHATEVER niche you’re in) from day one.

You don’t have to be a millionaire to dump 95% of the things that you’d rather be free of in your life.

If you earn enough from your online business to cover your current salary you can walk away from your job.

That’s a shedload of freedom you’ve just acquired right there

Sure, working for yourself brings other pressures but they’re different, more invigorating pressures.

Make a little more money and you can clear all your debts and your mortgage.

Depending on your debts you can do this quite easily again without needing to be a millionaire

Just a 50% increase in your income can lead to you clearing all your debts and paying off your house in a relatively short amount of time

And an online business that brings you $2,000 a month can be increased to bringing you $3,000 a month without too much trouble

Remember you don’t have to ask for a raise, you just have to work smart and find a way to increase the sales your business is making just a little.

And once those debts ARE paid off, even if you don’t increase your business income any more, it means that because yon don’t have those debts to pay, you keep more of the money for yourself, to invest or to do what you want with

Suddenly you find you can buy stocks, or gold or property as an investment.

All without being a millionaire, and all by just matching the salary you currently earn, then increasing it another 50% through an online business.

Now you’ve got a debt free, time-rich millionaire lifestyle without needing to be a millionaire.

Is that a good enough reason on it’s own to start an online business as soon as you possibly can?

Well it’s certainly good for the ego. I know a number of marketers who pride themselves on being inaccessible to their customers.

You MUST go through their support desk or PA to get anywhere near them.

Now I’m not posting this because I’m some sort of ‘my door is always open’ marketer because I’m bloody not – I value my family and private life far too much for that

But if you’ve been around me for a while then the chances are you know that you can always get in touch with me. I have a ticket desk that my support teams answer because otherwise I’d spend all my time dealing with lost download links, login URLs and testimonial requests

But the stuff like interview requests, JV offers, partnership offer and the like ALWAYS get to me and most of the time you’ll get a personal reply.

This isn’t always the case with online marketers though…

Some years back I was going to invest several thousand dollars for personal mentoring from a well known guru dude. I was pretty sure he was the right person to guide me through something I was setting up and contacted him to request a five minute chat.

It was like trying to contact bloody ELVIS

I was fobbed off by his support woman (a bit lower down the food chain and she’d have been living in a friggin’ POND), and then after a week when I did get some response he told me he wanted a non refundable $500 to speak to me on Skype for five minutes

I decided he was an ‘up his own arse’ tosser and the coaching thankfully never came off

I say ‘thankfully’ because I later heard bad tales of how he has a rep not being too accessible for his paying clients either

There is a school of thought that recommends getting paid for ALL your time, even the five minute consultations with prospective personal clients. I can see why that might be a good idea

But I don’t agree with it.

Instead train up your support to ask a few questions that will weed out the tyre kickers. And don’t forget that spending five minutes chatting to prospective clients allows YOU to know if you want to work with someone too. So it’s not all one sided.

The moral of the story?

Get yourself good support as soon as you can afford it to free you up for the important things, and spend time communicating with your readers. You’ll pick up some high value customers and you won’t take yourself so bloody seriously either

Comments welcome

You wouldn’t believe who’s selling, sharing or being extremely careless with your email address

Here’s something that will wobble your wellies if you get results anything like I did

Create a ‘catch all’ email account. You can do this in Cpanel in your hosting account

A ‘catch all’ is the kind of email account that lets you put anything you want in front of the @ symbol and treats it as a separate email address, but it still comes into your inbox

So for example if you sign up to The Warrior Forum your could use the email address:

warriorforum@yourdomain.com

if you signed up to my list it could be

tonyshepherd@yourdomain.com

if you sign up to another marketer it could be

billybigballsguru@yourdomain.com

You get the idea?

Make a note of which email address you used for signing up for whatever site

Then wait until the emails start coming in

All will be fine for a while but then you’ll probably notice how you start getting unsolicited emails from other marketers and companies.

I have email addresses that I only ever used ONCE to sign up for someone’s list, that is now being sent upwards of TEN emails a day from some spammer or another. This has happened to a worryingly high number of email addresses that I’ve only used once and mostly in the IM arena

And some are being used several times.

If anyone can answer WHY this happens please drop me a line at the ‘contact Tony’ tab at the top of the page because I’d love to know

Remember all that ‘we will never share your email address’ bollocks that you still see on opt-in forms?

Yeah right, as safe as a nine pound note

It might not stop the spam coming, and the lists you sign up for might not be the ones actually responsible for the leak, but it’s bloody interesting to see who is ‘safe’ to sign up for and who isn’t.

I just got off the phone with a potential new coaching client.

One of the scariest things he had to say was how hard it was to actually contact any of the previous mentors he’d hired, some of which he’d paid up to $9,000 to work with.

See how instantly you can get a potential client onside just by being willing to chat to the and answer any questions they might have?

Make yourself available

I know we’re supposed to be running ‘automated’ businesses that are ‘hands-free’ and on ‘autopilot’ but sometimes it’s nice to pick up the phone and chat to another human being.

I had a fun and interesting conversation with the chap this morning and we managed to put together a personalised coaching plan for him that I fully expect will take his business to the next level and beyond.

It does you good to know that the people who spend money on your products are REAL people not just metrics on a spreadhseet.

Lot more fun too