milliondollarmaybe - the blog

Just lately I’ve been pondering with the idea of going back into offline business in the real world rather than the virtual one …

Why?

Because I actually earnt more money!

It’s not that I don’t believe that marketing on the internet works, on the contrary, it does, but with the amount of effort you have to put in whilst never knowing for sure if  ‘it’s going to work’…I sometimes think that I’m just chasing the dream of earning a million dollars a day while out playing golf, etc.

Even though I know this is impossible and all the busllshitters out there who tell you otherwise are lying through their teeth, you can’t help feeling that maybe there is a way.

There’s not!

Internet marketing takes a lot of time, energy and effort and done well can earn an awful lot of money.

BUT…

So can real world offline business.

This is something that I’ve lost sight of lately. For example there is a highly successful direct marketer in the UK called Andrew Reynolds and part of his sales tactic  to get you to buy his stuff,  is to show slides of his dad’s empty shop whilst waiting for the customers to come in.

It’s very powerful and you start to believe that this type of offline business is doomed to failure. You get taken over by the images and before you know it you’re buying into Andrew’s ‘Cash on Demand’ system and adding to his twenty million pound ($40,000,000) fortune.

However I have just recently finished reading ‘Anyone Can Do It’ by Duncan Bannatyne, a UK entrepreneur who is now worth over £300,000,000 ($600,000,000) and he hardly even knows how to switch a computer on! He could eat Andrew Reynolds for breakfast!

Basically his fortune started from an ice cream van which led on to greater things. He now owns a chain of gymnasiums across the UK. His book is totally inspiring and the fact that he didn’t even start his business until he was thirty just makes me want what he’s got…and just maybe, I’m not too old (43 and kidding myself perhaps, but you gotta have goals)!

Anyway the bottom line is, conventional business can make you a fortune .

In fact although there is a statistic that says the internet had made more millionaires in the last ten years than in the last centuary, which although probably true, I wouldn’t mind betting that there are more people who earn really good money from an ordinary offline business than the millions who fail online. And despite what they say, having a successsful business doesn’t necessarily require you to work all the hours in a day.

It’s all about marketing and managing your business…online or off…to get the financial freedom that we all crave.

If you want to read ‘Anyone Can Do It’ I highly recommend it, you can get it here:-

Prepare to be motivated…

Nothing to do with internet marketing or anything like that today, but something completely different. It’s the 6th April 2008 and a few days ago people were walking around in shorts. And just when we thought summer was on it’s way, the good old English weather throws this at us…

Yep that’s snow on the beach! I’ve lived on Shoreham Beach for nearly twelve years now and although we’ve had a few episodes of snow in that time I’ve never seen it settle like this.

But that’s not all. Myself and a friend took our kids up into the hills at the back of Shoreham for some sledging and snowball action…it was great.

However the thing that really got me was that there were some adults up there also messing around…but how about this…they didn’t have any kids!

Most of us take the rat race far too seriously I think and very often forget to let our hair down. For me and those adults up there, acting like kids was a day to remember.

Perhaps we should all do this a bit more often.

It’s the 1st April and I haven’t written much lately primarily because I had some recently bad family news that put everything into perspective, and secondly, I haven’t got much to say.

However it has struck me lately how many of the ‘lists’ I’m on spout useless crap just to keep in contact. We’re all told you need a list to make any money online and I suppose it must be true but I have to say now that even the ’big name’ email messages, I just delete without even reading them. Others are telling me they do the same thing so is this list building business yet another online scam just to write about, produce a product for and then sell?

There is no doubt that a database of customers to backend sell to IS a proven way to make money, but it seems to me that most (obviously not all) ‘internet marketers’ are getting this all wrong.

After all if you are emailing your list just to sell a product, then another product, then a different product, without offering some kind of service, then this type of business is all fake. And while this fakery is exploited by the ‘gurus’ who have lists of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, for most of us it is just plain dishonest (in my opinion). 

When I had my traditional business I only contacted my customers when I genuinely had something of value to offer them. The true marketing experts will be backend selling all the time but only with related products to their primary business. It seems to me therefore that list building just because we are told ‘you must have a list’, is all wrong!

By all means build a list but don’t bombard it with trash. Write with decent, honest information as and when it is appropriate, and not just for the sake of it.

I for one NEVER buy from emails I get all the time, especially the ones that recommend the products that everyone else is recommending, i.e. the latest ‘launch’. How can the new product be tried and tested so it will work FOR YOU, if it’ s brand new? How can the marketer truly recommend it without the proof it works? If I buy I want to find out more, just as I would do in the real world, so an email recommendation is not good enough, on it’s own.

Maybe I’m too cynical but it seems more and more people I come across agree with this. Maybe in the short term it works for some, but I feel the only way to build a long term successful business is to offer your customers, value, quality and ultimately great service. Just because we are all interested in the virtual world of online marketing, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t offer service too.

So with that said, anyone whoever buys a product on my recommendation, please feel free to email me or telephone me, my contact details are available on the contact page on the www.milliondollarmaybe.com website.

Since my last post, and with a healthy dollop of fresh enthusiasm courtesy of Kirst McCubbin (www.affiliatestuff.co.uk), I have set to work on building a site template to start off my new affiliate marketing empire.  And rather than using the content management software (CMS) that I normally use, I thought I’d have a bash at adapting Wordpress to turn it into a CMS.  After all everyone who’s anyone in the IM field will tell you how important blogs are to search engines etc.

I was so inspired by those clever folks over at www.revolutiontheme.com that I set to work in earnest on Monday just gone.  Two days later I’m still no where near finished my ’theme’ but I’ve learnt so much about how Wordpress actually works (…I’ve still got loads more to learn).

From ‘widgets’ to ‘themes’ to ‘plugins’ I was amazed at how much stuff this platform has to offer, and how much free info there is out there. My plan is to get a template up and running and then adapt it for different sites for different products…nothing to do with IM of course!

I am fortunate in as far as I have some web developement skills but even if I didn’t have, Wordpress is really simple to use and even if you were a total beginner, with just a little bit of learning, you can have your own website up and running in no time. Now I know this will be old news to many but to anyone who has never put up a site before this software is a must.

As for me, when the sites are up I shall post the URL’s on this blog to show what can be achieved.

As anyone who has seen milliondollarmaybe from the beginning, you will know that the only way I made any consistant money was from Google Adsense, and even that wasn’t a fortune. With the odd affiliate sale here and the occasional Clickbank cheque there, for an eBook that’s out in the ether somewhere I certainly couldn’t call myself a ‘Guru’ (nor would I want to even if I was one of course)!

However I constantly read about these super affiliates and have always believed there must be a way to crack it…but never have!!!

Oh yes on several occasions have I tried and on even fewer occasions has it worked for me. Either my Adwords ad bids are too low it seems or my keyword targeting is off somewhere, I don’t know. Whatever I tried I came to the conclusion it doesn’t work unless you go to a sh** loads of trouble to follow the procedures set out in products in the world famous Affilaite Project X (in fact I had never made a single affiliate sale until I read APX).

Don’t ever let them kid you it’s easy, ‘coz it certainly ain’t!

However I believe I’ve recently had my eyes opened to what affiliate marketing should be about and although it still requires a sh** load of work, I reckon it’s going to be enjoyable.

The problem is that most ‘newb’ affiliate marketers try to go for the ‘make money’ niche, which although is highly lucrative, if you’ve never actually done it, without proof of how fantastic you are, you’re never going to earn your fortune from it now are you?

But then I came across KirstyMcCubbins site www.affiliatestuff.co.uk a few days ago and to be honest I was hooked on the info that I got from her.

Herself and others seem to be making  a sh** load of money from other niches where the punters aren’t even aware of things like affiliate commssions etc.  Because of this they are much more likely to follow links and buy…because they don’t believe they are being SOLD to!   Get it?

It’s just so obvious to me now why, although I have only been recommending what I consider to be decent products, I haven’t been making the sales.  I think it’s because very often people THINK they are being SOLD to.

It should be said that I never recommend products if I don’t believe in them but I can see why many prospects might not necessarily believe that! So what do I do about it?

Try the markets where the prospects don’t know what’s going on! I’m not trying to be deceiptful here but I can see now that this is what serious affiliate marketers do.

For me it was a light bulb moment and I’ve decided to update some of my other sites and concentrate on being an affiliate for other niches. And guess what? I’m fired up about it, because I am starting to believe again!

It’s Sunday morning, again I’m at my PC and now writing this post. Whereas I should be out and about, especially living here on Shoreham Beach, instead I’m sitting where I usually am.

Why?

Because I love this stuff. Friends and collegues can’t understand why I spend so much time at my desk because when I gave up my ‘bricks and morter’ business I always said I wanted to work less! The truth the matter is I now ‘work’ much more than I ever did but, the key is, I love it!

I’ve always said it’s not work if you enjoy it and I think that’s what sets apart the ‘big boys’ from mr.average…they love what they do and if you love it, you can usually make money from it (if of course you want to).

The majority of people spend their weekends not even thinking about work because they want to get away from what they ‘hate’ during the week. I can honestly say that I don’t feel this way because I love what I do even during the week.

Now that’s not to say I’m satisfied with what I’m getting out of it, on the contrary I want more…but the difference is I am always looking for new ways to get it. And this has almost become a hobby!

Why do most people accept their lot even if they secretly dream of bigger better things?

As for me I may or may not end up a rich man but I’m gonna have a damn good go at it!

Did you see this…it gives a whole new meaning to ‘never give up’!  Apparently the pilot turned round and lande safely at the SAME airfield!

Never giving up is one thing but sometimes when there is too much at stake, maybe we should try something different. Or to put it in context, why didn’t the pilot divert and land somewhere else?