12 Tips to Success and 1 Great Motivator

So many people jump into an online business and think they’re going to get rich quick, the truth is, most never do. You can find the statistics, but we all know that most people who try making money online with an internet business fail. How do you get milk from this big cash cow we call the Internet?

What makes the difference between the ones who succeed and the ones who fail? Why do some people seem to make millions while others make zero or less? Here are 12 ways to improve your success rate, plus one heck of a motivator…

1. Keep getting up and getting back on your horse. Don’t stop and pack up your toys and go home just because your idea, product, or whatever failed. If you learn something from your failure, it’s no longer a failure. Utilize that knowledge and the probability of success in your next venture increases. If you look at individual things, products, or services, there are thousands of reasons something may fail. However, if you step back and look at the individuals behind those things, products, or services then you’ll see some people with successes and failures, and some people with all failures. (You won’t find anyone with all successes, if so, they’re not telling you about their failures). Successful people have failed, sometimes a lot, but they keep going, they keep trying, they don’t give up.
2. Over expectation. You have to grow your business. Continuing on with the cow analogy, too many people get their first cow going and expect to be able to fill up a tanker truck with the milk right away. It takes a lot of cows to fill up a tanker truck. Sure you read stories about someone starting their first web site and making a million dollars their first year or two, but those are the exceptions. There will always be exceptions. Constantly improving, testing, and monitoring are key to growth. Trying new ideas for traffic, duplicating the concept in a different market, or with a different twist. As your mother probably told you, “You can’t expect to run before you can walk”… the same applies here.
3. Take action. Doing something, anything, is better than nothing. I’ve had several “in person” conversations with people over the last couple of months, trying to get them to take that first step. For some reason, it’s hard to convince people that they need to get moving to make things change. This is probably the biggest reason people fail. Yes, you have to take action. No one is going to buy your product, use your service, or signup for your mailing list if you don’t have a website, blog, or some form of online presence. Google is not going to send you an Adsense check if you don’t have somewhere to display ads. It’s just impossible to succeed by “thinking about it”, “reading about it”, “getting around to it”, or “being too busy to do it”, or whatever. You have to do something. You have to take action.
4. Be careful who you follow. Just like you shouldn’t hang out in a public restroom seeking advice on dating, you shouldn’t hang out in most forums seeking advice on how to succeed in making money online. You need advice from people who have succeeded, not people who have time, or waste their time, posting all day in forums. Don’t listen to bad advice. Life has layers and the cream always rises to the top. You should only take advice from those who are in the cream layer. Rarely does this come free. Luckily blogs are a good source of information directly from the mouth of those living in the cream layer. You’ll find plenty of people in all the other layers willing to tell you how to get into the cream layer, but don’t listen to them.
5. Teach what you know. Nothing makes you learn something like trying to teach it. Take what you’ve learned so far and help someone who knows less than you. If you’re paying attention to what I’ve written, you may think that this conflicts with #4. Help people who know less than you learn what you’ve learned, but be honest with them about what you can teach them and what you can’t. You could create a course that you sell, you can blog about it, or just share one on one. You’ll be surprised how this will cement your knowledge of something. This works in a lot of areas of life: I read about a successful musician who paid for his guitar lessons when he was young by teaching his friends to play. He’d charge his friends a small amount and this would allow him, in turn, to pay for the more advanced lessons he was taking.
6. Leverage other’s talents/deligate. You can’t do everything yourself. It’s very easy to get sucked into thinking you have to do it all to save money. For example, let’s say your on-line products have nothing to do with graphics, and you’re no wiz with Photoshop. You spend 2 or 3 days working on graphics for your web site. Good or bad move? Bad. Get some help and pay or barter with someone who IS a graphic artist and can do the graphics in a fraction of the time you would spend as well as creating a more effective and professional look. The cost is offset by allowing you to spend those 2 or 3 days working on your product(s). You’ll possibly have greater sales from your more professional looking site too. Other ways to utilize the talent of others are: guest bloggers either as a regular thing or on occasion when you’re sick, on vacation, etc., some bloggers use interns or paid employees to write posts for them as ghost writers.
7. Don’t be a Mexican Jumping Bean! Actually finish something. Lack of focus and jumping around from one thing to another will kill your chances of success faster than Raid will kill a cockroach! Maybe you’re one of those people who come up with good ideas all the time. Don’t automatically jump from what you’re working on to the newest great idea that jumps into your head. Write it down and come back to it. Keep a list of ideas so that you can review them when you’re finished with what you’re working on and decide which one to tackle next.
8. Buying too much/too many “killer” “Internet Marketing” products will also kill your chances of success. Why? Because you’ll spend all your time learning about the new products, you’ll never think your products / sites / sales pages / etc. are good enough or ready. For example, successful marketers know that it’s best to use split testing or multi-variant testing. Maybe you have a hard time understanding how to do that. So what! Get a web site or sales letter finished, online, and able to take orders. It’s better to have the ability to take an order than not! After that, figure out how to introduce some testing and add that to the site.
9. Making things too complicated. Boy am I good at getting trapped in this one! Ask some people what time it is (like me) and they’ll start explaining how to build a watch. The Space Shuttle is really a technological marvel. It’s really, really complicated. It’s too complicated to ever be a commercial venture and make money. The space ships that will replace the aging Space Shuttle fleet will probably be much simpler in design and easier to operate. Very similar to #8, don’t get trapped into making the ordering process to complicated for people to figure out, or waste days and days adding some neat code to your web page just to have some neat code to your web page. If that neat code will boost your conversion ratio (number of sales compared to number of visitors) by 50% then it may be worth your time, but not just for the sake of having something complex. And again, it’s better to get your site and sales ability live and online sooner rather than later.
10. Not believing in your “silly little ideas”. This is huge. Don’t discount your idea because it’s yours. If you don’t have the self confidence to believe in your ideas, who else will? Pretend that you’re listening to a successful person explaining your idea… does it sound better now? 34% of all successful ideas are spontaneous and silly and result in millions of dollars of profit. Ok…. I made that up! But it’s sort of true. A lot of money has been made with ideas that were thought of as ridiculous by others or by the “established” standards. If you really read this blog, you know that I’m an amateur songwriter. I’ve heard a lot of songwriters say that their biggest songs have been the ones they wrote in 5 minutes, sometimes even as a joke. Don’t discount your ideas, no matter how off the wall they may seem now.
11. Fear: Don’t be afraid to shine. You’re just as capable as anyone else. If you have a talent or ability, it’s your responsibility to use it, not hide it. Some people worry that if they do well or succeed that it will make their family or friends, who may not be doing as well, feel badly. But what they fail to realize is that all ships rise with the tide. You’re more able to help others if you’re successful. You’re a better example for others to follow if you’re successful. You’re more able to give back if you’re successful. So pump it up and give it 100%.
12. Do something you love: Follow your heart and your intuition. Life is way to short to spend it any other way. Follow your passion and you’ll find success. Life’s too short to do otherwise.  Read the info in the box below about a friend of mine who followed his heart.

If you’re working a job that you hate, think about Scott and start making progress towards doing something you love to do. What do you think whet through Scott’s mind during his last minutes? Do you think he wished he’d spent more time watching TV, drinking beer, playing video games, working late? No, I’m sure it was of his wife, son, and daughter.

You never know what tomorrow will bring. I hope that you will begin to realize the value of your time and use it like it’s the most precious thing you have: because it is. Start milking the cash cow today by creating your own streams of income that will allow you to spend your time doing what you love and with the ones you love.

To your success,
Fred