He Said I Was Probably Getting In My Own Way …
When I started out online information overload wasn’t a problem. There were a lot less people online and a lot fewer products being marketed that could distract you from building your business. Within a year of getting started I was making regular commissions and my successful future should have been guaranteed.
However, it didn’t turn out that way – far from it.
I did OK for a few years but gradually things started going wrong. Google came along making marketing online as we knew it much more difficult.
As the number of people marketing online grew and the number of emails that we received trying to sell us products increased we all became less responsive to those emails and the people on my lists were no different. They weren’t clicking my links as much either.
To cut a long story short, somewhere along the road I seemed to lose my way. Try as I might I just couldn’t figure out why newbies were coming online and within a year or so, sometimes even in just months, they were generating 4 and 5 figure monthly incomes and I wasn’t.
If you resonate with that, if that’s what has happened to you or maybe is still happening with you I’d love to read your comments down below. Tell us all about it, and if you overcame it how you did it.
Anyway, sometime during my feeling lost point I attended a seminar that was being run by Daniel Wagner, someone who had been where I was and was now doing well again.
During one of the breaks I took the opportunity to have a long chat with Daniel about what I had been going through, how I couldn’t seem to figure out where I was going wrong and how it seemed to mirror his own experiences.
Daniel’s comments to me were interesting, thought provoking and started me on the road to turning everything around.
The one comment that I will never forget was, “… you’re probably getting in your own way”.
I’d never heard that explanation for it before. It got me thinking, how was I getting in my own way?
That one comment prompted me to take a step back and analyze what I’d been doing and more importantly what I needed to change.
I went right back to when I started and dissected everything I’d done from the beginning. It wasn’t long before it became really clear where I’d been going wrong.
This is what I discovered. When I started out there was only really just one way to market online and that was affiliate marketing. We were taught to build a list of subscribers and market affiliate products to them with email.
So that’s what we did. Clickbank was really the only affiliate network at the time and Cory Rudl had an affiliate program for his Internet Marketing Center and so I joined both.
Then I started marketing to my growing list that I built using article marketing, forum marketing and ezine ads.
In summary, I was just doing ONE thing. I wasn’t distracted by dozens of different techniques because there weren’t any. There was no video, no social media, no webinars, no WordPress (so no themes and plugins to keep buying).
I had email and affiliate marketing – that was it. So I got stuck in and took action.
When I compared that to where I found myself that day at the seminar I could see that the significant differences were that I was trying to keep dozens of plates spinning at the same time running from one to another trying to prevent any one of them from falling on the floor – you know like the juggler does in the shows?
… and I wasn’t actually taking action to get anything finished. In my research at the time I read an article (can’t remember who by now) that said if I wasn’t getting the income that I wanted I should analyze how many buy buttons I had on the Internet.
That proved to be one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received. I know I wasn’t any different to the vast majority of people trying to make a living online in that I was great at starting things but rubbish at finishing them.
Be honest with yourself, how many things have you started but still haven’t taken them through to getting a buy button up online for someone to buy from you?
I had dozens of them. My hard drive was bulging at the seams with resale rights, PLR, free downloads to give away to people joining a list.
I had stopped taking action, but not just any action – the right action to move my business forward.
That’s what “getting your own way” means. It means not having a clear picture of what you want to achieve and putting a plan in place to achieve it.
Daniel reminded me of something that Jim Rohn said – “Either you have your own plan or you become part of someone else’s”. And guess what they have planned for you – not very much in most cases.
These days online we tend to make things a lot more complicated than they need to be. The secret to success online is simplicity. You can build a six figure income with just one sales funnel.
I won’t go into the detail of building a sales funnel in this post but if I get enough requests for it I’ll do another post about it on another day.
The important thing is to stick with building out that funnel until it’s complete through to the end and the squeeze page is online ready to take subscribers.
Than all you have to do is drive traffic to the squeeze page and let your visitors work their way through the funnel. Some will join some won’t but if you keep sending visitors to the squeeze page your list will build and so will your income.
It’s really as simple as that. Once you have one funnel running on autopilot you can create another, then another and so on.
The real takeaway is that it doesn’t matter how many part complete projects you have on the go, unless you have a buy button for it up on the Internet you are not selling anything.
As my friend Marlon Sanders once impressed upon me – half done, be done soon, will be done tonight, be done as soon as I get time – AIN’T DONE. On;e DONE makes you money.
This is a clip on YouTube of Marlon explaining it in his own unique style at the seminar where I first heard it.
Needless to say I started working more on one thing at a time and although I’m still not totally cured of the spinning plates syndrome I’m a lot better than I was and the results have followed along with it.
Now since you’ve read this all the way to the bottom I have a special gift for you. I’m going to be launching a new product in a few weeks time and the front-end product is already written.
I want to include a few reviews for the product when I launch it so if you’d like a free copy to review just add a support ticket at my helpdesk at http://www.asktrevorgreenfield.com and I’ll be happy to send you one. Make sure you include your email address with your request so I can send it.
That’s it for this time, I hope you found it useful and please leave me your thoughts/comments below.
