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[sean06]

I've been around this little world of ours for a few years now. And while I don't claim to be the greatest ever expert on internet marketing, I've been full time for a couple of years, so I feel qualified to teach other people how to do it.

And in the few years I've been involved with this stuff, I've seen loads of people come and go. For every person that "makes it", there's another 100+ who never get anywhere. They might start off enthusiastic, but after 6 months and no real results, they give up, never to be seen again.

So, newbies, pay attention. Here are what I consider to be the 8 reasons why I'm making good money online and you aren't.

1. Get your head right

I'm a big believer in getting your head right. I'm not a fan of the airy fairy "manifestation" stuff everyone seems to be spouting though. While everything that you create is a result of your thoughts, it's not that easy.

Sitting on your bed visualising your ferrari won't magically make one appear. But it might get you thinking about things you can do to get that ferrari. And sure, your first 9/10 attempts will probably fail, but eventually you'll get one right and you'll be closer to your ferrari or whatever you're after.

Basically, without getting your head right, you're in trouble. However, I don't know of any magical pill that can get it right for you. It's something that happens over time. For example, I didn't actually believe this stuff was real.

It wasn't until I got my first Clickbank cheque of $161 that my brain suddenly went "Holy sh**, this stuff is real. Get your act together so we can make more money". And that's what I did.

I could write an entire book on this stuff (and probably will one day) but basically, focus on the action stuff and your mind will gradually change. Action is way more effective than meditation for this stuff.

If you need a kickstart though, something to overcome that initial inertia, just focus on your goal, whatever that may be. Keep that in mind and you'll slowly work your way towards it. Don't think that you'll magically wake up with your goal though, it doesn't work like that. But thinking about your goal will cause you to feel desire, which should get you off your backside and doing stuff. This isn't new, Napoleon Hill was talking about it a long time ago...

2. Get a real mentor and avoid the parrots

It took me a while to get things off the ground. I floundered around at the start, not really knowing what to do. Meanwhile I was trying a million things at once and I wasn't really doing that well at any of them.

It wasn't until I got a mentor that things really started looking up. As well as giving me a more solid direction to head in, the biggest thing he gave me was hope. I felt that with him on my side, I'd achieve my goals a lot quicker. And I did.

The first time I made more money online than I did at my job (factory worker, not fun) was a few weeks after I started following my mentors advice. It felt pretty awesome walking into work that day knowing I'd already made more in my sleep than I would standing at a conveyor belt for 12 hours...

But how do you find a mentor? Well, it is a bit hit and miss. I think I was pretty lucky to get my mentor. But there are a few things you can do to improve the odds. Firstly, you need to figure out who your mentor should be.

And you should only be looking for someone who has successfully done what you are trying to do. There are way too many people following "mentors" that really have no idea what they're talking about (but more on parrots later).

If you want to make $5000 a month selling info products, find someone who's done that. If you want to make $10000 a month selling supplements, find someone who's done that. And so on.

Once you've figured that out, go and find a whole bunch of people who would qualify as your mentor. Then, be prepared to pay them some money. Sure, successful people love to take on mentees, but the people you want are usually too busy to deal with time wasters.

And until they know otherwise, you are a timewaster. I get emails all the time from people who want to be my apprentice. And while I do work with a few people, I only accept people who can pay me a ton of cash up front.

And it's not because I'm greedy. It's because I don't want to deal with time wasters and neither does anyone who's doing well online. I've tried coaching people for free before and only one person has ever done really well.

Sure, you'll find some people who will take you on for free, but they're rare and you have to prove to them that you're not a time waster. This can be hard when you are starting out.

And I should mention, when I say find a mentor, I'm talking about someone who will work with you one on one. I'm not talking about someone who'll send you a "coaching" video every week.

While information is great, that's not a mentorship.

Also, avoid the parrots. Who are the parrots? They're people who've read an ebook or watched some videos and now think they're ready to start teaching other people how to make money online.

While I have nothing against these people (hey, we've all gotta make an income somehow), they're not the people I'd want mentoring me. I only want to deal with people who've done what I want to do.

So find yourself a mentor and avoid the parrots.

3. Start developing your skills

Unless you were born with internet marketing skills, you've got a lot of stuff to learn. Marketing, sales, business, management and so on. And you'll never stop learning this stuff. So start now.

Get your head around PPC, figure out how SEO works. And I'm not talking about the latest and greatest "PPC System". I'm talking about how PPC works. If you can figure out how to use PPC, you can figure out how to use it for your specific business.

While money making systems are great when you're a newbie, you'll eventually have to create a solid asset. But more on this in a few points time.

Buy books, buy courses, keep browsing forums like this. It doesn't really matter how you go about it, but you've gotta keep learning stuff.

4. Learn from your mistakes

If you're going to do this, you're going to screw up. Lots of times. I've screwed up so many times, but after each screw up, I learn another lesson and just move on. I don't get all upset (well sometimes I do, but I quickly get over it) and quit.

And I still make mistakes. And I always will. And so will you. Don't get too stressed as each mistake is one step closer to your goal. Just keep that goal in mind and you'll be on your way.

Sometimes it will feel like you're going in circles (and if you're not taking notice of the feedback, this could happen) but if you can ask yourself what went wrong and what you could've done to improve things, you'll get closer.

This stuff takes work, anyone who says otherwise is probably selling their "Million Dollars overnight" package. Ok, enough about this point, I think it's pretty common sense.

5. Just do stuff

Far too many people get "paralysis by analysis". And it's easy to get caught in this trap. When you're new and you lack the confidence about what to do, fear can take over and you worry about screwing up.

Get over it and just do something. The best student I've had is a guy who just does stuff. I'd teach him something, then the next day he'd put it into action. Sure, he screwed up. But I corrected him and he went on to the next step.

Most people spend way too long on little things like their hosting company. They research, they go into forums and ask questions and a month later they haven't even got their hosting sorted.

You need to get a lot of things done in this game and if it takes you a month to make a small decision, you're gonna be in trouble. I'm not saying to act without any thought whatsoever, but you need to be decisive.

Remember, you're going to screw up, so don't stress about making mistakes. Just get out there and do stuff and you'll get to where you want to go a lot quicker. The quicker you can get feedback the better.

6. Work towards building a business

One huge problem I see is that people are far too concerned with developing a "money maker", rather than a real business. And while this is fine when you're starting, you have to be thinking that you'll eventually need to build something solid.

When I was getting started, I knew nothing about business. So someone telling me to go and build a salable business would've been useless. I needed to start with some money makers and chances are most of the newbies here do too.

But if you never graduate to building something solid, your success will be limited. You can make money with money makers in the short term, but sooner or later they fall apart. So if you don't know anything about business, that's fine, but at least start thinking about it.

7. Stop caring what others think of you

This is also huge. If you care about the opinions of others too much, you'll be paralysed by fear whenever you go to do something. Your brain will entertain thoughts of people making fun of you and so on.

But if you want to do well, you've gotta try and get over this. I'll admit, it's not easy. And we all care about others opinions of us to a certain degree, just work at making it less and less important to you.

I'm sure most people will have positive things to say about this post, but I'm also sure some people will have something negative to say. But if I got worried about that stuff, I'd never do anything in my business and I'd still be working at that factory.

So next time you do something and that fear of embarrassment creeps in, just move on regardless. If you can make a habit of this, you'll be much better off in the long run. You'll also be able to lead a life where you're not constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Go and read Fountainhead by Ayn Rand if you want a good read about this stuff.

8. Deliver Value

Last, but not least is deliver value. If you want to make money, you've gotta understand what money is. It's just a medium of exchange. People exchange money (one form of value) for a good (another form of value) because they value the good more than the money.

So focus on delivering stuff that people value. I've seen a lot of people come out and confuse this with helping people. But I don't really like thinking of it like this because what you think is helping someone might be different to what they think is help.

If you see a drug addict, you might want to help them by getting off drugs. I'm sure most of us would agree this is a good thing. But that probably has less value to them than the drugs they're buying, since they're spending their money on drugs. So if you wanted to tap into the cash of drug addicts, you'd be better off selling them drugs than rehab (from a purely financial point of view, I'm not talking about ethics here).

So it's not about what you think is valuable, it's about what your prospects think is valuable. Figure out what people want (or what they WOULD want) and give it to them. Simple, but it works.

Ok, so I'm done. That's the longest post I've ever written here or any other forum I post on, so let me know what you think. Please don't email me about getting coaching for free. While I'd love to coach every newbie on the planet for free, time just doesn't work like that. That's why I created my free site (see sig).

Have fun and I hope that helps!

Sean Morrissy

 

[jpastorizo]

Sean,

Thank you for taking time to share your knowledge. I learned something today...and just like what my former client said "Take each day as a chance to learn something new."


Regards,
Renato
PS How much is your coaching fee? Seriously.

 

[sean06]

hey Renato,

Nice work for getting through the whole thing. As for the coaching, it's not cheap, but I'll send you a PM about it.

Sean

 

[jpastorizo]

Hi Sean,

That's cool. I want to know the range so I have an idea an when I am ready I will have to find myself a mentor.


Thanks,
Renato

 

[Sixtos]

This is great.

I'm in, I think my first newbie slump. My site is strong, and the new articles I'm working on are going to fly. Keywords.

I am having trouble getting my keywords down so I'm going to review the first lessons again and get them going.

Thanks for putting thing into perspective, I never had any delusions about easy money and I understand business, but I admit I do over fantasize sometimes.

Again, thanks. I will keep going until I get this right.

High Regards,

 

[netfitters]

Hey Sean,

Cool post! I'm sending you a PM regarding the coaching so I know how many banks I need to rob. ;^) Also joined your sixdayweekend site and received an error that I'll forward to you. Cheers!

- Jeff

 

[dahlgrenINC]

Awesome read!

Really nice stuff, probably gonna read it a couple a times over:)

 

[wollowra]

I was just about to go to bed and read a book and I thought to myself, I wonder if I should take a quick peek at the forum..
Then Mr Sean had to post the longest post in Affilorama history which I just had to read...lol
Good post Sean.

Regards
Troy

 

[mjsmale]

When you say you're better to sell drugs to an addict you are not counting the true lifetime value of that person. If they are on drugs they are less productive and the whole society suffers.

You need to take a long hard look at what you are doing there buddy. I'm disgusted.

 

[EvoBilly]

hey mjsmale i don't think Sean was saying he sells drugs he was using it as an example that in every market there are products to sell its best to choose something that the visitor really want not what you think they need!

 

[sean06]

hey mjsmale, thanks for the comment and the really eloquent PM. Calling me a selfish fool and a drug dealer says more about you than it does about me.

Anyway, you have missed the point. I'm not saying go sell drugs (that would be illegal in most places and jail isn't cool) but I'm saying that if you wanted to tap into the drug addict market (ok, probably not the best example) you would make far more money selling drugs than a rehab program.

And if you got them off drugs, they'd no longer be drug addicts and therefore not part of your market.

Sean

 

[jpastorizo]

Sean,

He did miss the point. I was supposed to reply but I wanted you to be the one to reply..I guess Billy beat you to it! LOL


Renato

 

[JJPerkins]

Thanks for the excellent post!
I'm in a "four months in and is this ever going to work" slump, it was just what I needed.
I would print it out for the office wall, but I'm trying to chnge from being a "reader" to a "doer" so I shan't :-)

Off to take some action now.... cheers J & J

 

[diyacorp]

Sean,

Nice post.
In the past one year since trying to make income online, I've also witnessed and observed most of the things which were mentioned by you. I've not been successful yet (barely able to meet the costs), but I've not given up yet :-)

Could you please PM me about your coaching ?

 

[marwill]

Hi Sean, What a great post. I hit a wall at week six of the Affilo program, but am up and, if not running, certainly at
at a trot. I am trying to learn all I can to build my business, but I think I picked a subject which is not going to be
easy to make money on. I have nearly 40 pages on solar and wind power and think maybe its time to start another
site, and come back to this one and tweak it later on.

I am going to print out your post so that I can read it whenever I find the going a bit hard.

It really helps when someone shares what they went through, which is exaclty whats happening to you.

Regards, Marie

 

[vince974]

Hi Sean,

Great post to read as I'm in the phase where you ask yourself if this is ever going to work. After one sale at the end of the first month nothing in the second month although traffic to the site doubled. I'm not giving up yet but that thought crosses my mind sometimes.

Cheers
Vince

 

[nakibk]

Number 5 was useful for me. Even though I've read "just do it" a million times before, I'm doing market research now and kind of got 'paralyzed'. So thanks for that :)

 

[JasonDodd]

Hi Sean ... thanks for sharing your words of wisdom, backed up by your own experience. I think part of the mindset you talk about in the first reason is really commitment to something. Its easy to dip your toes in the water before you dive in but a lot of people dont get past that stage, they get fearful 'the waters too cold', 'its too deep', 'i just washed my hair' etc etc while the successful people are leaving them behind, diving in head first.

It reminds me of when I used to skate vert ramps and the worst part was usually standing at the top of the ramp waiting to drop in. Once you committed yourself to dropping in you were fine - you just needed that commitment to making it happen.

Actually in week 1 of AB Mark discusses the dreaded paralysis by analysis and how to overcome it.

 

[Fanatic]

Hey great post Sean.

I just started doing this full-time so it's
cool to hear from someone who's been
doing it a couple years.

Thanks for taking the time to write the
post.

 

[sean06]

hey Jason, I think you're spot on. As they say, the best way to get over a wall is to throw your hat over first. I think most people are pretty content with their lives, which is why it's hard to put in all this effort.

Whereas I associated so much pain to having a job (since all my jobs really sucked) that I was willing to do anything to avoid ever "working" again.

Sean

 

[wollowra]

Yep, Ask yourselves this question...
If you got sick with the Flu for a few weeks ( Currently for me it's 3 weeks ) and your wife broke her leg or some other unforseen circumstance happens..
How long do you think you could keep paying the bills?

Things might be ok now, but think about getting yourself to a point where you can still pay your bills and grow your business if something happens to your income.

Regards
Troy

 

[jpastorizo]

I agree with you Troy.I think Tim Ferriss has a very good example of this in his book "The 4-hour workweek".

 

[marshallg]

Well worth a mention on that book there, brilliant read :)

Also thanks for the post, Sean. Another good read!

 

[esolutions]

Hi mate,

Great post, I enjoyed it.

Consider Reason 9: You need to do more than skim read content to actually learn something. LMAO at the guy who totally misunderstood your drug addict example.

 

[paulie69]

Hey Sean

Thanks for another excellent post! :) It's a shame that mjsmale completely and utterly missed your point. His comments are uncalled for, are unwarranted and infer that he's (a) "not on the same page" and also (b) "not even reading from the same book". Such destructive and misguided comments as his go against the ethos of trying to help each other (particularly when they seem to get a little personal) - which is what this great forum is all about. It's both sad and unfortunate that some individuals in life have to show such a blatant lack of appreciation and just aren't happy unless they're criticizing others, whether through motives of jealousy or otherwise.

Sean, your posts ALWAYS help to serve and better this community and are very well intended; this post is no exception. You, Renato and many others on this forum continually go out of your way to answer our questions (even the dumb ones like I ask!) and give members the benefit of your experience. I can't put a dollar value on that help. Thanks again, mate.

 

[ddenby]

Hi Sean,

Excellent and uplifting!

I am a newbie and currently 4 months into developing my own website. I was laid off in January from a company I worked for 12 years. I decided to use the severance package and take the time trying my hand at Internet Marketing. Currently I sell a product I developed as well as sell products as an affiliate. I have never worked harder in my life.

I realize now that it is not instant, no matter how hard you work or how much time you put into it (me-10 hours daily), it is a process. The passion I feel for my new venture is incredible, which makes it all worth it.

Lately, I have been wondering, “will this ever work?” Your post gave me the inspiration to "press on". Each day I try and do one thing to improve my site. I am finally at the stage where I am proud of it even though I have yet to make any money!

Thanks for the realistic advice and extra push!