Thursday, October 25, 2007

An Online Millionaire Plan: The bottom line of a website – and how to make one

The bottom line of a website – and how to make one
Here's my tips and strategy of building web sites:

1) Don't reinvent the wheel

2) Offer real solutions to real problems

3) Create and sell only what you can physically deliver.

A website, according to what I've studied, is simply a set of sales pages - held together by an index, which is linked on each page. The graphics are minimal and shared between the pages. And yes, there are tons of people who make money building huge websites – money we don’t have and don’t need to get started.

There was and is a theory that you build huge content-rich sites which bring tons of traffic to your site. These you monetize through selling advertising – but depend on how many “eyeballs” you continue to attract.

However, the most effective monetization occurs when you have a very simple page and invest the bulk of your time and efforts to driving traffic to one or a few pages.

You want to leverage a minimal investment into a maximal return.

The design:

Each page has it's own domain name (probably a subdomain.domain.com name) so it can be linked directly and cheaply.

Each sales page has a "thank you for ordering" page.

Sales is either through Clickbank or through Lulu.com (where I sell my books and yes, it’s free).

Each (every single) page has opt-in newsletters AND ecourses.

Means all pages are static, so they are VERY search engine friendly. And they have associate links, which then link to the key sites and blogs your core business requires.

And realize that your ThankYou page becomes another sales page, linking to other squeeze pages or sales pages you have.

Don’t forget your error pages – each of these can sell products and capture email addresses.


Why paid advertising simply doesn’t work

"Increasingly, people are skeptical of what they read or see in advertisements. I often tell clients that advertising has a built-in ‘discount factor.’ People are deluged with promotional information, and they are beginning to distrust it. People are more likely to make decisions based on what they hear directly from other people: friends, experts, or even sales-people. These days, more decisions are made at the sales counter than in the living-room armchair. Advertising, therefore, should be one of the last parts of a marketing strategy, not the first." —Regis McKenna, The Regis Touch (Addison-Wesley, 1985)

Simply put: The best way to succeed in business is to run such a wonderful operation that your loyal and satisfied customers will brag about your goods and services far and wide, referring new customers to you. Instead of spending a small fortune on advertising, it’s far better to spend the same money improving your business and caring for customers you already have.

Add to this is that you provide the best information about your product over the Internet, in addition to any local directories and participation in your local Chamber of Commerce and any other local business clubs.

Now, isn’t that just advertising? No. Promotion is a broad category, advertising is a tiny (and overpriced) niche in that category. Promotion works, if done right. A smile and a handshake can be the best promotion you can have – unless you are a politician.

What do I mean by “works”. Simply – produces more than statistical average. Any type, ANY type of promotion will produce 2-4% response. The cheaper the means of promotion, the more you can do. Effective promotion (like article marketing) will produce 10% or more response. By response, I mean purchases.

In this book, I’m working to get you the data where you can start cheaply and effectively on the road to making your own millions. That is why I don’t recommend advertising. You spend your money and you take your chances – but you can simply lose a lot of money right off the bat with nothing to show for it, due to the hidden pitfalls in most advertising setups.

Your product and your sales is based on your reputation. In brick-and-mortar businesses, their prosperity depends on rapid and effective service to their customers – which is what their reputation is built from.

If you do all of your business over the Internet, then your reputation is based on your delivery - plus paying attention to forums where your product and name come up. A few quick words here - and staying in the conversation - will win believers, especially when you are honest about the flaws your product is known to contain or exhibit.

This gives a reason why article marketing is so effective – the authors have built their reputation up with consistent and repeated useful articles which get read by many, many people. They build a relationship with their readers, who then trust them with their email address and buy from them.

In their very able book, “Marketing Without Advertising”, Phillips and Rasberry make the argument that businesses are better off investing in the quality of their services and delivery rather than paid-for advertising:

“• Advertising is simply not cost-effective. Claims that it produces even marginal financial returns are usually fallacious.

“• Customers lured by ads tend to be disloyal. In other words, advertising does not provide a solid customer base for future business.

“• Dependence on advertising makes a business more vulnerable to changes in volatile consumer taste and thus more likely to fail.

“• Because a significant percentage of advertising is deceptive, advertisers are increasingly seen by the public (both consciously and unconsciously) as dishonest and manipulative. Businesses that advertise heavily are often suspected of offering poor quality goods and services.”

They also tell the statistics that most of American businesses don’t use or don’t even see the use of Advertising. Mostly because they are small business owners, the single entrepreneur up against the world.

Neither do they have the money for advertising, they also know that they get there customers from repeat business – built through quality production and service. And good customers send them more customers.

Customers gotten from ads aren’t loyal and are their own headaches to turn into such. Phillips and Rasberry mention this:

Perhaps the worst aspect of traditional advertising, one apparent to anyone who runs a retail store, is that customers who respond primarily to media ads don’t usually return. The same truth has been discovered by magazines and publishing companies that rely heavily on junk mail solicitations to sell their wares. The fact is that customers recruited through scattergun advertising techniques such as TV spots, newspaper ads, direct mail, contests, unsolicited telephone sales and Internet freebies rarely come back.

As I’m gearing this for you to be able to start up on the cheap, with what you can scrape and save out of your household budget – and telling you to start a business instead of getting a second time-sucking, wage-slave job – I’m telling you to leave paid advertising strictly alone. Don’t even put it on your plate at this point.


How Marketing Fails

In the “ClueTrain Manifesto”, Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger expose the story of how corporate marketing is becoming unraveled at the sleeves by the Internet. An excerpt below tells how this is happening:

“The first markets were markets. Not bulls, bears, or invisible hands. Not battlefields, targets, or arenas. Not demographics, eyeballs, or seats. Most of all, not consumers. The first markets were filled with people, not abstractions or statistical aggregates; they were the places where supply met demand with a firm handshake. Buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met, and connected. The first markets were places for exchange, where people came to buy what others had to sell -- and to talk.

“The first markets were filled with talk. Some of it was about goods and products. Some of it was news, opinion, and gossip. Little of it mattered to everyone; all of it engaged someone. There were often conversations about the work of hands: "Feel this knife. See how it fits your palm." "The cotton in this shirt, where did it come from?" "Taste this apple. We won’t have them next week. If you like it you should take some today." Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.

“Market leaders were men and women whose hands were worn by the work they did. Their work was their life, and their brands were the names they were known by: Miller, Weaver, Hunter, Skinner, Farmer, Brewer, Fisher, Shoemaker, Smith.

“For thousands of years, we knew exactly what markets were: conversations between people who sought out others who shared the same interests. Buyers had as much to say as sellers. They spoke directly to each other without the filter of media, the artifice of positioning statements, the arrogance of advertising, or the shading of public relations.

“These were the kinds of conversations people have been having since they started to talk. Social. Based on intersecting interests. Open to many resolutions. Essentially unpredictable. Spoken from the center of the self. "Markets were conversations" doesn’t mean "markets were noisy." It means markets were places where people met to see and talk about each other’s work.

“Conversation is a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.

“The advent of the Industrial Age did more than just enable industry to produce products much more efficiently. Management’s approach to production and its workers was quickly echoed in its approach to the market and its customers. The economies of scale they were gaining in the factory demanded economies of scale in the market. By the time it was over we had forgotten the one true meaning of the market, and replaced it with industrial substitutes.

“In The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler wrote that the rise of industry drove an "invisible wedge" between production and consumption, a fact Friedrich Engels had noticed over one hundred years earlier. As production was ramped up to unheard-of rates, the clay pot of craftwork was broken into shards of repetitive tasks that maximized efficiency by minimizing difference: interchangeable workers creating interchangeable products.

“In the market, consumption also needed to be ramped up -- not just to absorb the increased production of goods, but also to promote people’s willingness to buy the one-size-fits-all products that rolled off mass-production lines. And management wasted little time noticing the parallels in efficiencies they could achieve all along the production-consumption chain. If products and workers were interchangeable, then interchangeable consumers began to look pretty good too.

“The goal was simple. Customers had to be convinced to desire the same thing, the same Model-T in any color, so long as it’s black. And if workers could be better organized through the repetitive nature of their tasks, so customers were more easily defined by the collective nature of their tastes. Just as management developed a new organizational model to enhance economies of scale in production, it developed the techniques of mass marketing to do the same for consumption.

“So the customers who once looked you in the eye while hefting your wares in the market were transformed into consumers. In the words of industry analyst Jerry Michalski, a consumer was no more than "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." Power swung so decisively to the supply side that "market" became a verb: something you do to customers.

“In the twentieth century, the rise of mass communications media enhanced industry’s ability to address even larger markets with no loss of shoe leather, and mass marketing truly came into its own. With larger markets came larger rewards, and larger rewards had to be protected. More bureaucracy, more hierarchy, and more command and control meant the customer who looked you in the eye was promptly escorted out of the building by security.

“The product of mass marketing was the message, delivered in as many forms as there were media and in as many guises as there were marketers to invent them. Delivered locally, shipped globally, repeated inescapably, the business of marketing devoted itself to delivering the message. Unfortunately, the customer never wanted to take delivery.

“During the Industrial Age, the movement of materials from production to consumption -- from flax to linen and from ore to musket -- was a long and complicated process. Potentially vast markets had potentially vast distribution needs. The development of new transportation systems eased the burden, and global systems flourished. Even huge distances could be spanned so that products could be delivered efficiently. Inexorably, business began to understand itself through a peculiar new metaphor: Business is shipping. In this shipping metaphor -- still the heart and soul of business-as-usual -- producers package content and move it through a channel, addressed for delivery down a distribution system.

“The metaphor was effectively applied not just to the movement of physical goods, but also quickly applied to the packaging and delivery of marketing content. It’s no surprise that business came to think of marketing as simply the delivery of a different type of content to consumers. It was efficient to manage, one size could fit many, and the distribution channel -- the new world of broadcast media -- was more than ready to deliver. The symmetry was perfect. The production side of business ships interchangeable products and the marketing side ships interchangeable messages, both to the same market, the bigger and more homogeneous, the better.

“One problem: there is no demand for messages. The customer doesn’t want to hear from business, thank you very much. The message that gets broadcast to you, me, and the rest of the earth’s population has nothing to do with me in particular. It’s worse than noise. It’s an interruption. It’s the Anti-Conversation.

“That’s the awful truth about marketing. It broadcasts messages to people who don’t want to listen. Every advertisement, press release, publicity stunt, and giveaway engineered by a Marketing department is colored by the fact that it’s going to a public that doesn’t ask to hear it.

“Marketers felt this truth in their bones, and learned to cloak their messages, to disguise them as entertainment, to repackage the content as regularly as business learned to vary this year’s product line. Today, we all know and have come to expect this. We are even disappointed if it’s not well done. Commercials disguise themselves as one-act plays, press releases play the part of important stories, and advertising masquerades as education. Marketing became an elaborate game between business and the consumer, but the outcome remained fixed. As sophisticated as marketing became, it has never overcome the ability of people to smell the BS behind all the marketing perfume.

“It is not hard to understand, then, that "business is shipping" at times felt more like "business is war," another pervasive metaphor. We launch marketing campaigns based on strategies that target markets; we bombard people with messages in order to penetrate markets (and the sexual overtones here shouldn’t be dismissed either). Business-as-usual is in a constant state of war with the market, with the Marketing department manning the front lines.

“Consider the distance we’ve come. Markets once were places where producers and customers met face-to-face and engaged in conversations based on shared interests. Now business-as-usual is engaged in a grinding war of attrition with its markets.

“No wonder marketing fails.”

This is why people distrust ads today. They’ve become savvy customers again – they’ve kicked off the traces of consumerism and become themselves.

And so the rise of “Permission Marketing” as Seth Godin named it. For our use, it means asking them for their email so you can send them offers.

Those offers are – surprise – soft sell, not the latest “Madison Avenue” psychobabble subliminal poltergeist theory for motivating people to buy.

People are expecting to be marketed personally – to them in their niche, not them as a mass of robot-thinkers. Corporations not only don’t get this, they can’t implement it. So it’s you and I on the small stage who have the duty – and the profits.

And that is how we make our fortunes, great and smaller.

Not through massive advertising or stupidly executed spam – but through precisely targeted and personally requested emails.


- - - -

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An Online Millionaire Plan: Running Your Online Business

Running Your Online Business

The trick to running your business is to run it as a business. The following pages have a great deal to say about various topics and really don’t cover every single basic of business there is. What is covered here are some details which are key to Internet Marketing, most of which don’t occur in the common ebooks, special reports and websites you find, either paid or free.

But this book is just one step in your education as a marketer. And it will always be a work in progress, as the Internet is constantly changing and evolving faster than books can be written – but I’ll never expand this book to become an encyclopedia of hints and tips on Internet Marketing. It will always be just a stepping stone.

Let’s get right into running your new business...


Every product has a Marketing Checklist

Each product you create on-line should have a marketing checklist - which can start even before you finish the product (which isn't advised). This checklist covers all the points we will be discussing in the sections of this book. This checklist is based on the steps I’ve outlined for myself as I use Lulu.com to publish my books. I give you this now so that you can have basic organizational steps laid out for you in order to schedule your days and weeks – so you can get everything done:

____ Blog entries (even as the book is being written) with appropriate links to publisher.

____ Squidoo “lenses” created from the blog entries – with many links and interactive modules included.

____ “Social Bookmark” each key blog entry and Squidoo lens as you go.

____ Press release when book is completed, when book is sent to publisher, when book is converted for Amazon, any milestone (like starting the book at all)...

____ Autoresponder series (ecourse, not just a single special report - although the book might have several of these). Includes squeeze page and ThankYou page.

____ Articles written and posted/accepted. This is a continuing work - but 50 on each product posted to at least 50 article directories each would be a minimum to start with.

____ Release special reports derived from these articles to build a viral marketing line. Blog and Squidoo these, with link for download after opt-in to your mail list.

____ Sales Page (needed for affiliates, but also for a "more data"

____ Download site (again for affiliates)

____ Ads for other products included in last pages of product (your book)

____ Radio Interviews: Media release packages devoted to your product.

____ Attend Book Fairs, local festivals and give out your web address via brochure. Make sure you get email addresses so you can send them their bonus for signing up. Sell books directly (discount on bulk purchase from Lulu.com) or sell only the download. You could even burn these to CD and sell for a special festival price (today only)...

Now, all of these can be spread out over the course of writing your book - as long as you keep your reading public in mind. You can do a PR release when you have the bulk of the research done along with your USP (which can change) - saying "a new book is being written and author is seeking assistance from (niche public)..." or similar. You can have a newsletter which is written weekly about the book's progress, along with a special report (only available for a limited time) from the book's research.

Your articles can be written as you get through the book, pointing to special reports available only through subscription to your newsletter...

Your Affiliate program probably has to wait until the book is done, but you can post and sent out media kits regardless, even if this isn't your first book - getting radio interviews and giving a website page so people can get the special reports and preliminary chapters.

Now you also then have pre-release versions (particularly if you are asking your readers to help with proofing - with a reward of the final PDF). And those who sign up for the special reports get a pre-release special price for advance copies of your printed book (for a limited time period before you finalize it). That's a great way to get reviews, as well.

Then you repeat this sequence when you make another version of the book - like the Amazon version.

So you could write a series of books and then come back and revise each book to include additional data. Brick-and-Mortar publishers often do this with the hardback and then paperback editions. The latter often has updates not found in the hardback. Their marketing plan is to make all possible money from the hardback and then continue with the paperback, milking each version for all they're worth. (Publishing with a Print-On-Demand publisher like Lulu.com enables you to update and republish within minutes.)

The Internet allows us to include the readers in your research and writing phase - particularly if you blog and article-market the book as you go along. This means you are going to have to actively write it - but you might get blog-comments as you go along to help you. On following books, you can then email subscribers about the event (giving them a nice bonus in the process) so they will visit your blog and help with the research and writing (at least cheering you on...) You are making the writing process an event in itself. And of course, the radio personalities would love that angle...


Sources to drive traffic to your lists - and what not to use

1. Articles

These are always short, to the point, and have a link to your squeeze or landing page. These are the most effective if they are really written by you.

2. Viral ebooks

Your giveaways also have your link(s) in them. Based on your articles, these are special reports which can be given away to others - and you can also include resale rights in them, just as added incentives.

3. Affiliate programs

These are people who do your advertising for you. They link directly to your sales page and so create sales directly. Means you also need an opt-in on your sales page so you capture their email after they buy – as well as when they don't.

4. Radio interviews

These will get spikes in interest, as people go to your landing page to buy your product. Of course, your landing page also has to have an opt-in, so you can get these people also for later sales.

5. Joint ventures

Only if you have tried the product for yourself and truly like it and use it. Otherwise, it's not true that you "highly recommend" it. And your readers will find out that this stuff is a bunch of garbage and opt-out.

6. PPC or ezine or any type of ads

Generally - don't. Advertisements are impersonal and don't build relationships. They work only if you have a loaded shotgun and a barrel full of fish. And those barrels are the most expensive to pay for. Since you don't build relationships, they don't know you and won't buy anything from you unless they really, really like your product. Advertising can work, but it's an expensive addiction.

7. SEO Gimmicks

Nope. Your best SEO is article marketing and effective landing/squeeze pages – and knowing what keywords you naturally use. Forget about various keyword stuffing, link farms, and other fads. Goes for link exchange as well. Write great articles and people will put them on their sites, which improves your rankings on various search engines.

8. Blog

You keep telling your story as it happens. Regardless of whether anyone comments on your posts, the search engines hold blogs highly as they have fresh content. Also, this is a great source for articles. In blogs, you link to everything you talk about - so when you speak in generic terms about how to do something, you link to a product you sell (landing/sales page).

9. Your email signature

Always include your landing page as part of your signature in every email you send to people.

10. Using other people's lists to start out

Nope. Keep your day job and build your quality list from day one. The reasons are above - people know you and trust you. Mailing to someone else's list won't get the results from getting people to find you. It takes some time, but spend it writing articles and blog entries every day, as well as pitching radio stations to have you as a guest. And meanwhile, work on your next product to sell - have it ready for the upcoming flood of traffic.

11. Squidoo

These lenses (as they are called) are a great source for links and are fairly highly regarded by Google. Some have built their list entirely through Squidoo lenses.

12. Offline marketing

Some can be a plus for lead generation and direct sales. Radio interviews fall under this, but you can also do conventional mailings and also attend tradeshows or local festivals. Mail out your web page and collect email addresses. Good for lead generation.

13. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmark everything you post on the web – at least the major stuff like key blog posts and Squidoo lenses, your Lulu storefront, etc. Bookmark on as many networks as you can.

14. Forums and discussion groups

Takes some time to do well. Build your credibility by giving good advice and open-handed help. Ensure you leave your link to your opt-in page as part of your signature.

15. Tell a friend.

Make sure a “tell a friend” script is on your blog and every page you have an opt-in form. You want to help people refer others to your product.

- - - -

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An Online Millionaire Plan: 8 Habits of the Wealthy You Can Adopt

Eight Habits of the Wealthy You Can Adopt

Michael Masterson – in his “Automatic Wealth” relates:

“Early in my career, the time I spent thinking about money was strictly pragmatic: how to get it.

“But then I started to think about wealth more analytically: what it is, how it’s created, and how it disappears. And so I’ve looked back at what I’ve done (both good and bad) and the lessons I’ve learned from others. And this is what I now believe:There is no one way to become rich. But there are a number of habits that some people develop that give them an almost supernatural ability to earn money and build wealth.

“I’d say these people have the following characteristics in common

“1. They work hard.

2. They are good at what they do.

3. They have multiple streams of income.

4. They live in (relatively) inexpensive homes.

5. They are moderate in their spending.

6. They are extraordinary in their saving.

7. They pay themselves first.

8. They count their money.”


The 5 keys you have to have to be successful on-line
  1. What you produce and sell has to have real value. No one goes to a rip-off artist twice (except maybe to get their money back).

  2. You are going to have to have an ‘online presence” - meaning people have to know you, what you do, and have a way to contact you. You have to hang out an on-line shingle, just as you do in any business. Your web site, your email address, all these add up to what you are and how you are known.

  3. You have to make and keep a schedule – like any regular business. You have to time-compartment your day and week so that you are actually concentrating on your on-line business as a business. If you just start doing something else when you get bored, or take a few days off when you get tired – how are you ever going to get the money rolling in?

  4. You have to be in it for the long haul. Everything has a ramp-up. Ray Kroc figured that his 40 years of sales lead up to his discovering the McDonald brothers, their special French fries, and his own fortune and fame.


  5. You never quit going to school. Learning is constant. Professionals are always studying up and improving their craft. You are no different. There are many, many more things to learn – if not in your field, there are related fields which need study and can give you insight on all that you’ve already learned. Whether you simply download them or pay for regular courses – just keep learning.


Financial strategy

0) You are running this as a business. Successful businesses have positive cash flow – they make money. Keep that in mind. You are successful. You can make a living, you can make a good living, and you can make your fortune – as big as you want it. But it means you are looking to make a positive cash flow (income greater than outgo) with any thing you try – count the beans before you invest to make sure you get back more than you put in, if not now, eventually.

1) Don't quit your day job. This is (for now) where you make your living. Get as good as you can at this and really do your best on this job. You need it to finance all those bills you currently have.

2) Make a budget and stick to it. Include saving some each week - about 10 percent if you can. And tithe weekly as well. Make sure both of these are in your budget. Make your expenses fit into your budget, don't expand your income just to match what you are spending. When you get extra from somewhere, sock it away in savings, or for your childrens' education - or somewhere you can't get to it easily. Live within your means.

3) Now, you start your own business instead of a second job or looking for overtime. If you've read Kiyosaki/Lechter or Allen or anyone along those lines, you've seen that there are tax benefits in owning your own business.

4) When you get income from this business, keep it in this business. Re-invest it in books or products or services which actually make the business do better. Or sock it away in its own savings account, so you can build it up for later big purchases. Remember, this business is where you make your fortune. Treat it like a business, not a hobby.

5) Once your income from the business really starts growing, then keep stashing it away and/or investing it in making the business grow. Don't take a salary right off– that would just put you into another earned income scene where you will have to pay Social Security and Income Tax. Buy and read books on what to do with all this dough - re-invest it in other income sources.

6) Finally, when you are making enough income to keep the business(es) operating on their own, and you have enough stashed away to operate your business (and pay your own living expenses) for several months with no income at all, AND you are making more part-time than you do full time - only then consider quitting your day job. I said CONSIDER. You make have substantial benefits built up, and that job may be paying for quite a bit of your lifestyle. The idea is to replace all those benefits and income with your part-time business BEFORE you quit the job which is bringing in that income and benefits. Better safe than sorry.

7) Now that you're working for yourself, doing what you like, and business is rocketing because you can (if you want) work at it full time - now write a book on what you know and get it published (in your spare time). Sell in online as an ebook, on Lulu as a hardcopy, or on Amazon. Get some radio interviews going in order to market it - and use the data you've found in this book to get a bestseller on your hands.

8) You can see that whatever you now do in your spare time is going to be icing on the cake. And you can use what you earn in that new spare-time activity (it's not really work, is it?) to invest in other high-return investments. Now you're on your way to your second fortune...

9) None of the above has to take a long time. Some people have become millionaires within a few months – most have taken longer. The trick is to know what to do with the exponential growth you are going to be experiencing and the flood of income coming your way...


Questions the public asks

Key questions the public ask – to themselves, if not you:

  • What’s in it for me?

  • How can this help me?

  • What are you up to?

  • What kind of information are you coming out with?

  • How good will it be?

  • When can I get this?

  • How much will it cost?

- - - -

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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Online Millionaire Plan: Basics - Multiple Streams of Internet Income

Multiple Streams of Internet Income

The idea is to start off with a niche you know, some personal solution to a problem you’ve had, some itch you’ve scratched.

Then you either expand that niche, or take on additional niches, or both.


Corey Rudl tells about having multiple streams of income and how he does it:

You can make a lot of money targeting niche markets.

As mentioned before, I have found that the easiest way to make money on the Internet is to diversify your interests. In other words, have a couple of non-related products marketed to a niche with each making a little money every year. Each may only make $10,000 a year (like my Dr. Stewart's Tape package), or $12,000 a year (like my Buy/Build Specialty book), or may make only $40,000 a year (like my emblem business), or $150,000 a year (like Car Secrets Revealed). And this is only to mention a few businesses I am involved in... can you see the potential here?

Once you add up the incomes however, you can have an easy $100,000 income in short order. Since everything is automated, it is not much more work (beyond the initial set up and marketing) to run one online business as it is to run four or five.


Rudl ended his book by stating that his annual income was now several million a year, and that he had needed to hire several people to take over the simple functions which had made him a millionaire:

Final Notes

In the world of business, there is no magic formula that will guarantee success every time you promote an idea. You've probably heard the saying, "opportunity knocks but once". Don't believe this nonsense.

Opportunities are around every corner! All you need to do is visualize the potential and tap into it.

Many people will be skeptical when you enter the business world. Don't advertise your plan for success... just do it! It is okay to express your ideas and get feedback, but if you express how wealthy or successful this may make you, others will be cynical.

Most people do not believe that wealth is a lifestyle choice within their control. Indeed, many believe the only way to get rich is to win the lottery or rob a bank. They will never be as enthusiastic about your future plans as you are.

Other people’s skepticism may be enough to kill your desire to pursue what may have been a fantastic opportunity. Ted Turner was asked what he attributed most to his success. His reply was "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise". This course attempts to promote that philosophy, combining hard work and technology for success. It is so easy to work smarter and more efficiently by automating your business instead of just working hard. Take advantage of this, be efficient, and don't get too caught up in all the technology. Use the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

For those who have serious business experience behind them, I urge you not to let the simplicity of this presentation frighten you away. The techniques I present here are the same methods that earn me hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a one-man operation working a few hours a day from my home (please note that as my online businesses have expanded to over 4.2 million dollars in sales every year, I have had to hire 6 new employees to take over some of the daily tasks).

You don't need a lot of money to get started; you need commitment, desire, and will. You don't need any advertising experience. You need the willingness to learn, and to apply the methods and techniques I have shared with you.


Income multipliers

Jay Abraham, marketing expert, has this formula for multiplying your sales exponentially:

1. Increasing number of clients

2. Persuading these customers to buy more in their orders

3. Encouraging these customers to buy more frequently

More customers. Larger orders. More often. Simple, eh?

Most businesses only work on 1) above. However, if they took the time to really service their clients and build trusting relationships, they would wind up with 2) and 3) as well – and often referrals from these very satisfied clients, which brings them more of 1)

This actually expands on something I discovered during my research for this book.

You want to be able to multiply your income, not just add to it. Multiples will give you exponential growth; linear just slowly increases income – but only if you’re lucky or very clever.

The rough formula I had was Job x Clients x Orders equal Income. (Profits = Income minus Expenses).

The guy in the day job with a 40-hour week or a fixed salary is working at 1 x 1 x 1 = 1. Getting a second job or overtime is 2 x 1 x 1 = 2. You can only work so many hours each day at the one job you are doing. Having your spouse work is then 3 x 1 x 1 = 3. But your expenses go up as you are paying a babysitter and the government is taking more money out of your paycheck for taxes – so your profits aren’t really increasing linearly, you’ve got them to increase slightly and you have less time for yourself and your family as a result. Family stress and strain are appearing.

Now, start a business at home instead of getting another job. Your expenses are less because you are allowed certain tax deductions for having a home-based business. But you are still linear, not working in multiples. But you are with your family more, working in more comfortable surroundings – and you are your own boss.

Your business opens a line of information products in a certain niche and gets this profitable. If you add in several more ways to get customers, then you are multiplying the effect.

You move from 2 income sources x 1 set of customers x 1 set of orders ( = 2) to 6 income sources x 1 set of customers x 1 set of orders ( = 6).

Now, lets get that all on automatic and move into another niche of information products and use all these new ways to get customers. You now have 12 income sources x 2 sets of customers x 1 set of orders.

You’ve just moved from 2 to 6 and then to 24.

Add in Abraham’s strategy of increasing the size and frequency of the clients’ orders, and you get something like 12 x 2 x 5 = 120.

See how this multiplying effect makes your income go exponential? Now note here that you are still working your full-time day job and have invested your part-time hours into your business (which is now starting to make you more than your day job...)

You increased your income by improving the effectiveness of your time, not by taking even more time away from being with your children or taking needed vacations, etc. Your income has gone up 120 times while your time invested has remained the same. (And when you can replace your day job, you’ll be able to reinvest those 40-plus hours however you choose...)

In this Online Millionaire’s Plan, I tell you more than eight different inexpensive ways to get potential clients for your business. None of them require much investment to get started with. But those eight marketing routes multiply your income each time.

Once you have the sales pages and mailing lists and sales funnel and all the rest built for your first product line, you can stream line this down to an efficient work-flow. Get most of it on automatic.

Then add another niche. Get a product for that list, apply the same tactics and strategies for your first niche. Add in all the eight or more marketing strategies.

You’ve just moved from

2 (day job and 1st niche business) x 8 x 5 = 80 to

3 x 16 x 5 = 240, tripling your income potential.

If you were making, say $24,000 a year salary working in a factory as a supervisor, you could then go to $48,000 with your own business and a single source of clients, buying the minimum from you. And then you could take it exponential, making possibly $5,760,000 (240 x $24K).

That’s the math behind this system, how it it is pretty simple to make your fortune online.

Now, of course, “your mileage may vary.” And you will have to prove it to yourself. But Corey Rudl did exactly that. In a quote earlier in this book he mentions 4 niches he was operating to bring him well over $100,000 annually (having quit any day job) and within a short time was making just over $4 mill a year.

And right now, in the set-up we currently have, anyone can do this same thing, take this same route to their own millions.

That’s why I wrote this book. It was too exciting to keep to myself.


What do you use to catch your fish?

Like any successful fisherman, the Internet entrepreneur has many poles in the water - or a baited string of hooks - or many traps. The fisherman with only one pole out there is just enjoying the rest it provides. The fish harvester goes at it with a net. The single-pole fisherman is lucky to come back rested and with dinner. The fish harvester brings his catch back to the market, where he is sells it for a handsome sum and supports his whole family while putting money in the bank.

You will need to have many different ways people are led to your site. This book goes over the key ones and you will probably find more as you go. Don't depend on a single pole to catch your dinner. Always have many lines in the water.


Joe Vitale wrote these now famous words, which say so much about making your own fortune:

The Five Steps in Spiritual Marketing.

The first is to know what you don't want. Most people are real hung up on what they don't want. They're always complaining, they're gossiping, they're saying they're hurting, they don't have money, they don't have the health that they want. They're stuck on this stage.

And I'm saying, Step One is know what you don't want, because you use it as a springboard to Step Two, which is know what you DO want. That's a very powerful single step.

I have learned about the power of intention. Intention can reshape the universe to your will. And it comes from making a decision for what you want, which is Step Two in Spiritual Marketing.

Step Three is to get clear, meaning that if there are beliefs within you saying that "I don't deserve the things that I want," or "it's not possible to get the things that I want," or "there are other things that may have to happen before I can have what I want," those are all beliefs. Get those beliefs out of the way so you're streamlined to go for what you want. And Step Three is all about that; that's getting clear.

Step Four is feeling right now what it would be like to have, do or be the thing that you want. So if it is to drive the new car or live in the new house or have this particular romance, this relationship, feel it. Feel it as if it's happening right this minute because the more you can feel it right now, the more you turn yourself into a magnet for the thing you want. And it will start to come to you as you start to go to it. That's Step Four, feel it.

Step Five is let go. Step Five is let go, because so many of us are still trying to struggle with life and make things happen, and I've actually found the escalator through life. And the escalator through life is these five steps that I put under the title of Spiritual Marketing.


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Online Millionaire Plan: Basics of Internet Marketing

Basics of Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing is a mixture of many different offline strategies and techniques. And the best of these are the ones which have survived and will actually earn you money.

Mailing lists, for example, come from bulk-mailers, who have used these successfully for years. The CAN-SPAM act has put in the rules on this area, enabling honest mailers to make a good living provided they stick by the rules.

But just because it’s being done on the Internet, it doesn’t mean that it’s illegal or “cowboy” or anything else. The basics of business offline are also the basics of business online.

So we are covering, briefly, what you have to know in this area to succeed.

One of the key points is that you treat what you are doing on the Internet as a business. Means you have a schedule, means you have a budget, means you keep track of expenses, means you do all the usual things a business does. And in that way, you actually succeed at this.

The government even gives you tax breaks for this. But the key reason they take away business tax breaks is that the person is using it as a hobby, not a business. The businessperson is constantly looking for ways to improve increase his income. The hobbyist is generally looking for a distraction from life, an entertainment venue.

The rest of us are treating this time off from our day job as a way to make a better income than our day job could ever produce.


Robert Allen laid out the simplicities of Internet Marketing success:

"The most important marketing advice you can ever receive is as follows:

"Find the right audience.

"Ask people what they want.

"Give it to them."


Marketing: The Relationship

Marketing, as has been said, is a relationship. It is all about carrying on a conversation with your buying (and soon-to-be-buying) public.

This conversation isn't any one-shot deal. The real profits of any business aren't made on the first sale. You want to build up a lasting relationship with the customer. You anticipate their wants and desires, deliver a quality product, and then ideally repeat the process every two or three months.

This is different from the "silos" which the larger businesses (Microsoft, IBM among others) build so that the customer is locked into their particular product line. Henry Ford thought this way when he would only produce black cars and trucks, even though people wanted colors. He thought he owned the industry and could dictate to the buying public. Both Microsoft and IBM have learned otherwise, though they still hold large "market shares" of their perceived "customer base".

Those quotes are because those ideas are very old school. As Doc Searls pointed out in the ClueTrain Manifesto, there is a new wave coming. It is the niche wave.

You only retain your buying public to the exact degree you fulfill their wants and needs with your particular solution. Once you have failed to fill those needs, you're replaced by a better product. That's the way it is.

And that's why you have unique, original products and services. You have to stay unique to your niche and best in that niche. The easiest way to do this is to do something you really love, something that you could do forever, something that provides you with constant challenge. You need to be able to grow through the product-line you create.

This keeps you unique, keeps the data coming from you unique - something your customers can't get anywhere else. And you have to keep delivering. Shakespeare, Louis L’amour, Jack London, Stephen King - these mastered their particular genre and kept producing high-quality work routinely. Something they alone could deliver.

If you don't love what you do, do something else. Success is not about money, it's about time, freedom, and choice. You provide service that people want and you get your success by accomplishing your goals. As you achieve your success, as you deliver your service, the money will come in. That's the way it work out.


Earl Nightingale said it best in his Gold recording, "The Strangest Secret":

"Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint.

"The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success - and success is in direct proportion to our service.

"Most people have this law backwards. It's like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it:"Give me heat and then I'll add the wood." How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

"We've got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we've got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don't concern yourself with the money. Be of service ... build ... work ... dream ... create!

"Do this and you'll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you."


The point about money

Money only represents the value of the exchange. What service have you been providing to the community around you?

Being rich is being able to

1) Make more than you spend,

2) Keep what you make.

Real wealth is to be able to reinvest your earnings to provide more service. Money is an energy flow - you manage this flow, not stop it. So excess income you have should be re-invested to provide more services, which in turn will provide more income (provided you manage these profitably).

Let's look at this scene from a very pragmatic approach. You are trying to make yourself a millionaire (or several times over). There is a lot of money around out there. More is being created every day than people actually use up (that's what really causes inflation). Beyond that, there is a great deal of this changing hands all the time, every second you breathe.

What you are trying to do is simply create an income flow (or set of flows) which bring you a pool of money which you can use to help people solve their problems better. Sounds altruistic, doesn't it?

Money isn't a lump sum of stuff that just sits in the bank and gets bigger.

You earn money by providing service that people want. The more they want it, the more valuable it is, the more you can earn.

What we aren't saying here is "making money" or "getting paid". For this isn't work as you have ever known it.

You are doing what you've always really wanted to do, what you "have been put here for". And that's how you earn the money, the millions you've been wanting.

There's no problem with you having a lot of money - as long as you know what you are going to do with it. Exactly what you are going to do with it. Because a sack of money is really just a sack full of paper. But money invested so that it will generate enough to send 100 kids through college - now that is a valuable use of money. When some celebrity spends money in Africa to build a school because she could do more with money there than in America - that's a valuable use of money. Sending billions over to medical research instead of to your kids - that's a valuable use of money.

Andrew Carnegie (and others) made a deal with God - help him get rich in the first half of his life and he would spend the rest in giving it away. And he is known for setting up libraries across the US in small towns and big.

Why did John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates both get into full-time "giving it away" mode after they made it rich big-time? Because they had nothing really valuable left to do.

And that's the point of all this. You aren't on this planet to "get rich" or anything else. You are here, more or less, to help everyone around you improve their lives and to live better ones. How you do that is up to you. Whether you accept this or not is also up to you.

But I can tell you that the road to getting rich is paved with good actions, not just intentions.

So go out and get all the money you can - right now, today, this moment. And know what you are doing it for, what you are going to do with it.

That's just the way it is.

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Online Millionaire Plan: Basics - USP; Your Product, Your Niche

Marketing Goals and Purposes - Self Analysis questions.

If I could do anything with my life, what would it be? What is my passion? What is my dream?

If I were living my dream, what would I do with each of the 24 hours I’ve been given in each day?

If I were living my dream, what talents, skills, and abilities would I use to live a full life, and maximize my income potential?

If I were living my dream, how would I use my financial independence to create a dream life for myself and my loved ones?

If I were living my dream, where would I live? What would my home be like? What would my lifestyle be like? What would my friends be like?

If I were living my dream, how would I share all that I have with others?

If I were living my dream, what would my Core Purpose in life be?

If I knew I couldn’t fail, what would I do?


Another Why you're on the Web

The other reason you are on the web is to continue scratching your own itch. If you are on the web just to "make money", you'd be better off doing door-to-door sales. Most web enterprises fail. Because, like life, you have to really be dedicated and stick with it.

Also, most successes have a whole string of failures before they hit it big. Like life, there is a long runway sometimes before take off happens - and some have to figure out how to build that runway and the plane which uses it (much less learn the techniques of flying and airplane.)

Someone else might buy or rent a plane from someone who enjoys building them, pay for lessons, and then pay for the opportunity to use someone's runway. Of course the money to do this comes from an earlier job which the person was successful at, already.

It all goes back to doing something you really like to do and giving away your service or product to someone else who really wants it - enough to give you exchange you for it.


Your USP

As you develop your product, you'll develop your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

This tells the viewer why you are unique, proprietary and something they can't pass up (scarcity).

Essentially, it tells your potential customer that you don't have competition - you're it. You are the only one with this solution. It answers that critical question... Why should potential customers buy from or hire you?

To develop your USP, do the following steps:

1) Given that you know all about your solution (and have experience trying it out personally), write down what service you offer.

2) List out all the benefits you can think of - then write the rest of them. No features, just what good this service does for the customer.

3) Identify your unique feature. Boil this down. What makes you stand out, what tells the customer to only buy from you? If you don't know, or can't find out - hit the drawing board again. Either you haven't tested your solution for all its worth, or you are trying to sell a commodity. There has to be something that make you distinctive. Get it written down.

4) Boil this all down into a tight summary. It has to motivate your buyer, so it needs to take into account the emotions and the particular needs of someone who has experienced the problem you've solved. Get this all into one tight elevator pitch. Work up several versions of this. You can test them by survey. The thing is to have something, a single phrase, which identifies and differentiates you from anyone with a similar product.

Then you’ll be ready to really roll out your products to your list.

But don’t let anyone tell you this is hard or difficult to do. As each of us is born on this planet, no two of us are exactly alike. Not even “twins”. The hardest thing we have to learn to do (and our government schools spend at least 12 years teaching us this ) - is to conform.

The old Industrial Age wanted people doing the same job over and over and over – and our modern factories and warehouses have this same demand. They want to hire people to do certain set jobs, they don’t want to hire individuals.

Henry Ford was noted for observing that it was too bad they had to hire a whole person when all they needed was another set of arms.

So: be yourself, be unique. Offer your unique solution to the world. Sell it to as many people as you can. Benefit the world community by being the unique person you have always been.


Your product, your niche

"The best way to get what you want in life is to give other people what they want." — Zig Ziglar.

The number one principle to follow to achieve success is "always offer the product the customer wants to buy." If you have the right product at the right time, marketing is a no-brainer.

Most other marketers go for the huge markets, looking for a knockout punch. But the huge markets are generally overcrowded with competitors selling very similar products to customers who are bombarded with product offers every day.

In the niche markets, the customers rarely see new products for their specific niche, and when they do find something, they sit up and take notice. That’s because someone finally created a product which promises the benefit they’ve been looking for.

The biggest mistake I’ve seen Internet entrepreneurs making is trying to sell either the wrong product, or the same product that everyone else is trying to sell. It's not that people can't make money doing this, but since you are selling a commodity, it is the buyer that sets the price.

And products aren’t the only thing that are commodities. The corner grocery isn’t there because they were selling the same thing as the other corner stores – and at similar prices. When you start selling only commodity items, you become another commodity store. May the store with the lowest prices win.

If you look at the trends, the top 100 sites, the top 10 downloads, you’ll see the things that people want. And you'll also see where the worst competition is located. Because competition depends on commodity solutions.

If you sell to your niche - and get there first - people will buy your product and you will gain the advantage of being The Name in this niche that others compete against. Or you will command that niche so solidly that there is no way for anyone to make any money except by creating cheap knock-off’s. Your loyal customers will continue to buy and recommend your product because of its inherent quality.

In Trout and Reis' book, "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing", the bulk of their work involves commanding these large markets. They say here that the first to enter a market controls the bulk of the sales. The second entering the market is known to the buying public, but has far less than half the sales. The third, fourth, fifth, et al - aren't even known to the public and have to divide around one-tenth of the sales between them.

One interesting point they make (and this book was written before the Long-Tail phenomenon of Internet markets was discovered) is that markets/niches will sub-divide over time. So this means new leaders can assume these new niches.

A study of fast-food chains will give you all sorts of niches which developed when originally there was only McDonald's.

Creation Versus Competition

But there is this point of Creation versus Competition. Nightingale said of his Nightingale-Conant Corporation that they had no real competition, only copy-cats and also-rans, which were more validating than bothersome. They were trying to copy N-C’s success, and not doing all that good a job at it. Because they weren’t creating their own product line.

Nightingale-Conant created a whole industry, starting from Earl’s Gold recording, “The Strangest Secret”. And they are still, hands down, the only real force in that industry. Now that niche might have subdivided into smaller niches, but overall if you want the best and latest in motivational audio – you look to Nightingale-Conant.

The same could be said of any niche product line today. But if there is “competition”, it means that there is a lack of original creativity.

You could even say that this book is entering into a very overcrowded field, filled with also-rans and wannabes. True. And that is the reason why I’m writing this book. Not to compete, but because it is so overcrowded that it ceases to make sense any more.

There are tons of books and, well, stuff out there that is being sold to people to help them with their Internet Marketing lives. But really, there is only a few handfuls at the top – and these don’t really compete, they compliment each other.

I’ve mentioned Corey Rudl and Robert G. Allen. The first created a premier Internet Marketing Course anyone could follow. The latter created a line of books based on his own studies, first in Real Estate and then branching into information products distributed via Internet. But having both on your book shelf only gives you a greater command of the subject in front of us.

Jay Abraham is known as probably the top Marketing expert in the country. Yes, he talks a bit about Internet marketing. But he is more about the core principles of multiplying your income potential through Marketing – the Internet is just one of the multiple avenues he’s studied.

And you can go to experts who made a living through Advertising, such as Olgilvy and Collier. Or you can find the top names in Search Engine Optimization. Or you can find a single name who tells you how you can make the most money out of Google’s Adsense.

Now I tell you in this book to stay away from advertising and SEO. I tell you to build web pages which only consist of two or three pages to begin with – not to build megaliths (though I’ve personally helped build one of the largest multi-media corporate sites back in the late ‘90’s when Netscape still ruled the browser niche).

But people make lots of money through advertising, and help lots of people optimize their websites for search engines – and many mega-corporations have incredibly large websites. But then, eBay didn’t get big by advertising and grew its website only as it had products to sell on it’s auctions.

The point is that these leaders in all these fields did so out of their creativity, not because they wanted to compete.

People who compete are running in a race where they don’t stand out from the crowd. You have a bunch of runners, or swimmers, or ball-players who all dress the same and follow the exact same rules and are on the exact same regulation playing field.

They are just another commodity.

The real world isn’t like that. Now, you can make something uniform in its construction or assembly so that it becomes a commodity. In Ray Kroc’s Hamburger U, he taught his McDonald’s franchise holders exactly how to create the perfect French fry and to build a standard, high-quality hamburger. And now you can get pretty much the same McDonald’s meal from coast to coast – baring only regional and seasonal qualities in the beef they use.

But right now you also see a shake out in the major burger franchise companies on this planet. The niche is splitting apart. One is selling tremendously big burgers, with fewer items on its menu. Another is selling real family value and concentrating on its chicken sandwiches.

And there are now coast to coast sandwich shops which tell you you can have a very filling low-fat submarine sandwich. Another says you can get filled up on eating soft-shelled Tacos.

All these sub-niches of fast-food have their niche leaders. But they are niche leaders because they are creating, not because they are competing.

This book really only was created to scratch a certain itch: I needed to learn how to market because I didn’t have any money to hire a publicist or marketing firm. I had books to sell and a personal demand to make more money going into business for myself as I couldn’t stand working in factories, warehouses, or at corporate or government jobs.

And I stumbled into finding how millionaires made themselves that way.

But I could care less how many other books there are out there about making yourself a millionaire. I do care that people find this book and buy it and use it to make themselves rich – or at least comfortably, financially independent.

To that, I welcome the “competition”. As long as they tell the truth. But I had to write this book because there is a lot of very shoddy advice being given out there – a lot of partial answers. Few are pulling the whole thing together into a single package that makes sense and works.

And one thing that has taken this book so long is that I’ve been testing everything as I go. You won’t find a principle in this book that I haven’t found written or stated in probably a dozen locations before I wrote it down. I took each of these principles and tested them for myself to see they worked before I started writing them down for you.

Yes, the jury is still out on some of them. But I’ve seen where they have worked for others (like Allen and Rudl) and so I include them.

But these key individuals Create their Success and then Wealth finds them. Those who are merely competing have a much tougher and less-rewarding time of it.

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Online Millionaire Plan: Basics of Becoming an Online Millionaire

Section 0: Basics

Basics of Becoming an Online Millionaire

Internet Marketing is a mixture derived from many different offline strategies and techniques. And the best of these are the ones which have survived and will actually earn you money.

Mailing lists, for example, come from bulk-mailers, who have used these successfully for years. The CAN-SPAM act has put in the rules on this area, enabling honest mailers to make a good living provided they stick by the rules.

But just because it’s being done on the Internet, it doesn’t mean that it’s illegal or “cowboy” or anything else. The basics of business offline are also the basics of business online.

So we are covering, briefly, what you have to know in this area to succeed.

One of the key points is that you treat what you are doing on the Internet as a business. Means you have a schedule, means you have a budget, means you keep track of expenses, means you do all the usual things a business does. And in that way, you actually succeed at this.

The government even gives you tax breaks for this. But the key reason they take away business tax breaks is that the person is using it as a hobby, not a business. The businessperson is constantly looking for ways to improve increase his income. The hobbyist is generally looking for a distraction from life, an entertainment venue.

The rest of us are treating this time off from our day job as a way to make a better income than our day job could ever produce.


A way to become rich through using the Internet

00. Get a presence on the Internet

0. Drive people to your site

1. Capture every identity you can

2. Find out what these people really want

3. Sell them a solution to that problem

4. Continue selling them similar solutions


What are you doing here?

You may have wondered occasionally about the reason humankind was put here – or how we managed to find ourselves in this current scene. Whether we were put here by Divine inspiration or evolved by remarkable circumstance and good luck – that is beyond argument here.

The key point is that we are here and there are reasons as individual as each of us which drive us.

It is up to you to know and follow your own dreams. Second to that is to not place yourself across someone else's dreams.

There is no real reason each of us cannot dream large and have that dream occur around us – excepting only those limits we have placed on ourselves. And where we recognize that we placed those limits, we can move them or eradicate them.

You can be, do, or have anything and everything you want.

Now, this isn't just someone shouting down a rain barrel (or into an empty cave). All of this has been subjected to very historical and scientific research by the most ancient of philosophers and religious prophets, right up to the most modern professors and researchers in quantum physics.

If you get a stack of religious books, add in a stack of self-improvement bestsellers, throw in the classic philosophers – you will find common themes and statements to all of these. You will find simple laws and basic operating systems which form and guide our actions. These laws and systems have been in place as long as humankind has walked and breathed on this earth.

And you can find them.

I did. And I'll tell you about some of them here – as we go along through this book.

This bug to find out the basics of this universe bit me at an early age. I followed it through my rural upbringing over into the West Coast, where I worked in many professions while I studied counseling and consulting in all my spare time. I practiced at this and became very good at helping people solve their problems.

In middle age, however, I became dissatisfied with the corporate structures I had been part of and relocated back to my rural beginnings to help my aging parents.

It was here that I began to make sense out of that voice, that urge which had been pressing me on through all my years. In the relative quietude of rolling fields and creeks, I began to understand how to listen to that voice.

It showed up when I was walking one day, accompanied only by the farm dogs and my walking stick. Stopping by a huge, hundreds-year-old tree, I suddenly found peace. It was like having the wind just drop right out of your sails and suddenly be left coasting along, alone out on the calm, balmy ocean.

And as I started reflecting on this, it left – crowded out by my very thoughts. But this incident made me think. And think – and think some more.

I had been looking for this internal peace my entire life and had chased it across both coasts – but hadn't even known what I was chasing. I still didn't understand it. I knew I needed to know more.

Since I had never started college, and “the best” local jobs seemed to require a college degree, I went back to school at a local community college.

Here I found that Academia had built not just one Ivory Tower to defend its hold on knowledge, but a tower for each of the major bodies of thought as they had described them. And these towers were silos in themselves, not talking with the other towers or sharing their information.

But I did. Forced to study in each tower (as part of being “well-rounded”), I found in them keys which unlocked hidden rooms in the other towers. Algebra and Geology unlocked Economics. History unlocked Science. Each, in turn unlocked the others and helped them make sense as a whole system, not individually as single parts.

I began a study (several really) to unravel the 40-some year journey I had traveled thus far. There were many things which I had studied, yet no cohesive whole statement or theory which said, “This is what it is all about.”

I knew that one could obtain peace of mind wherever one was – city or country. But I had no way of telling people how to get this for themselves. I knew some people had gotten rich and famous, but many hadn't. I knew that for the most part, people lived lives of Thoreau's “quiet desperation” and didn't really have answers to questions I had been asking all these 40-odd years.

So I said to myself, well maybe some of these books unlock others – and no one person has all the answers. I then began to read and download others until the walls of my room were over-filled with books that dripped into piles on the floor and my hard drives had to be emptied onto CD-ROMs which built into their own unsteady stacks to make room for more data.

Eventually, I narrowed down all these authors into a handful of dead ones who had been outrageously successful in their own life, while telling people how to be successful in theirs. I wrote a book as part of that study and then left it sit – so I could see if the seed I planted would sprout.

I then continued my studied to get my sheepskins, since I found that making good grades was fairly simple and I was getting some government support to remain a poor student. As well, being able to work only part time was far less stressful than trying to make sense of corporate policy and foibles at the various jobs who wanted to hire me full time.

Another study gave me an interesting theory of how people actually think and how they make sense of the world around them.

A tertiary study involved enabling rural communities to become prosperous through improving broadband capability (see, the academia nomenclature still resides somewhere in my veins).

As I started getting to the end of these studies, I realized that I was never really going to fit into corporate or factory or warehouse or laborer positions. But I had to make a living somehow.

So I poured my studies into some Masters and PhD molds, paid these off with a credit card I couldn't pay and finished up my work.

Then I started writing. And writing, and writing. I found a great place called Lulu.com where I could publish for free. So I published and edited and published and published some more. But for all their online excellence, I soon realized that I needed to market my way out of where I was. I was making all of $30 a month in book sales. That wouldn't pay for the credit I'd stacked up, nor rescue me from my day-job drudgeries.

This book, then, starts up where my others left.

It is my studies of marketing and my own real-world application which make me rich, famous, and a success. I took my own best advice, and that of those same do-it-yourself writers I had studied – and now I’m making the world of my dreams become reality.

And you can follow my steps as I do.

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Online Millionaire Plan: Introduction - how to work from home and make money online in Internet Marketing

Introduction

Imagine a world where you didn't have to work a 40-hour wage-slave job to earn an income. Sure, you worked for what you got, but it was only a few hours each week. And you did your hard work earlier; now it's all paying off. You can do whatever you want the rest of the day, with plenty of time and money to do it. Start projects, play golf, do art – anything you want.

[Is this a get-rich-quick scheme? No. Read on...]

In this Internet Ages, you can set your own financial system up to bring you money in exchange for sales you make over the Internet. You don't have to make anything – it's already made. You don't have to prospect and sell people on your product – your website does this. The money you make is automatically deposited into your accounts – for you to spend or reinvest as you chose.

The Internet – if it is properly used – improves efficiency and makes life easier.

The caveat is that this isn't for everyone. And it isn't free. Some people find it easier than others. And it only works to the degree you really invest yourself into it. You have to have a good product that helps people improve their lives – not some get-rich-quick scheme which is only a rip-off. And that knocks out about 90 percent of all the books about Internet marketing right now.

At the beginning, be prepared for 50 and 60 hour weeks or more. You aren’t going to drop your day job; you’re going to start a business and invest all your spare time (that you aren’t using to spend with family).

[Did I scare you off yet? No? Read on...]

However, from what I’ve researched and tested, the results are routine if you know and follow the simple plan many on-line millionaires have used. The trick is that the work you do accumulates and builds. You don’t just make one widget at a time and sell it online. You are setting up an exponentially growing scene which brings income based on very small inputs. But those inputs have to be put there – and the more you put there, the more you can leverage.

I've been studying up on how to make a million (or 2 or 3 or several dozen or more) by selling and delivering on the Internet. This means I've been doing the dirty work of reading all these hype-filled books (as well as the stuffy academic ones) to weed through and find the actual working systems which drive Internet economics.

What I've found had to meet some strict guidelines:

  • You didn't have to live near a large city with a large population – you can live anywhere you can get Internet access.

  • You don't have to have a lot of money to start with.

  • You don't have to quit your day job, or radically change the lifestyle you have.

  • You don't want to get another wage-slave job at the Internet, either. The idea is to free up your time and give you plenty of money to spend!

And after distilling all these books, tapes, and web pages – a really simple idea fell out.

This is really a fall-off-a-log simple idea:

You work up something which can be marketed, sold, and delivered without you having to touch anything.

With computers, the whole thing can be set up on semi-automatic and so you need to do almost nothing except amuse yourself by checking your bank account online.


Really, it can be that simple.

Your customers can be all over the planet, especially with digital products. The trick is that you are bringing the store to them - at their convenience. Yet you don't have to own, rent, or lease a building. You don't have to maintain a warehouse or an inventory (although you can use this same system to offer, sell, and deliver material products as well).

That is our modern, popular, and evolving market place.

And, like any successful millionaire or billionaire, you don’t just expect all your income to come from one place, one product, one storefront in this marketplace – or even just settling for one marketplace.

[Still sound too good to be true? Read on...]

This all started from needing to scratch an itch. Actually, the problem was that I am intensely creative and get very frustrated in having to work day jobs to make my spending cash. Seems I'm usually able to do things better than my bosses and so it isn't long before I'm completely bored and frustrated to tears at any job short of running the company myself.

On top of this, I live in the country – on a farm. I had done some studies years ago that anyone in a rural area should be able to equalize their incomes through using the Internet and available broadband connections.

Rural areas have lower costs of living, so the jobs pay remarkably poor as a result. They are set to keep you in the traces – “they only pay as much as you won't quit”.

But I was still on the cash-tight end of the scale. So, I used my peer-to-peer connection to find a few hundred books and programs and added on some fairly large hard drives to hold all the stuff I found. Then I made time to digest all these.

My study program is simple. Read a lot of great and not-so-great books and find the common points they all share. Then really study the best of these. Finally, distill the basics and edit them into a book – this book.

The reason this book is better than the ones I had to read is that you don't have to read all those books or do all that research. You have in front of you a digest of what is needed to start from nothing and take it to something. You also have the benefit that I've tried all these suggested ideas myself. Everything in this book can be made to work – it all depends on you, your hard work at the beginning, your ability to see it through.

[Here’s where you have to go to work for yourself...]

As you go through this book, feel free to take notes and review other sections – and come back to this one as much as you want. The deal here is that you need to learn this for your own sake. If you can get it all down pat in just one time through, fine. The rest of us build on the basis of reading, planning, and doing – then going back and read, plan, and act some more. Over and over.

That’s what I advise for you. Make this book into an action plan.

I don’t say this book is the last word in this subject, or that you can only do what is covered in this book. You are, actually, going to find better ways to do it than what you read here. And the material in this book is going to age, gracefully or not.

Continuing testing and review has made this book take longer than it should have – but that's the continuing drive to make what’s covered in this book only the most workable I can find. If you really understand and apply the concepts in this book exactly, then there is no reason on God's green earth that you don't have several million in income coming to you right now.

Again, it's up to you. The only guarantee I can make is that you will get out what you put in. If you create and sell and deliver a product which has a help value far in excess of what you charge – then you will receive income and returns far in excess of what you put into it.

[“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” goes the old phrase...]

I don’t include much on PPC or advertising in general in this book. Simply because to be effective in the advertising venues, you have to have deep pockets from the get-go. The premise of this book is that you and I don’t have or need a lot to get going. Another thing you won’t see is any of these hot SEO tricks to get you in the top standings. You will see some very simple and direct efforts that if done for long enough will have you in the top standings quickly enough.

And after I go over all the mundane ways to make a million or so, I’m going to briefly touch on some of the more esoteric ways to do that – as I’ve uncovered in doing this research up to this point. (I call it a postgraduate section... and you can find it at the back of this book as a bonus section.)

As I wrap up this book to take it to press, with all it’s many and varied ways for you to earn your millions online, I’ll work to improve the online version of this book, with tons of links to tools, ebooks, MP3’s, programs, and all sorts of tools to help you on your journey to your own millions – just as I am making mine.

Count on this book to be updated and improved as we go. As well, the mass of material which was cut in order to fit it into the biggest book size Lulu could handle (and still keep printing costs low) – will show up as various smaller, related books and published under this brand so you can find them.

The testing of this material will continue. While I initially thought to test each area as I wrote it up, I quickly got too excited with new ideas for products which I needed to get out (I currently have two other product lines, which were put on hold while I jumped this book to the head of my work-line). And so you are the winner here, with a complete book – way ahead of the refining tests and continuing research and final editing required for most books.

[So, I’m still in here with you even after you bought this huge text...]

I’ve even set the initial pre-release versions quite cheap so you can get them early – if, of course, you are a subscriber to my list... ;)

I’m also setting up a feedback system. Right now, as I turn this book into a blog/blook, you can comment on the individual parts as I publish them to my blog, http://onlinemillionaireplan.blogspot.com, I’ll respond to all comments as needed. Of course, you can heap your praise there as well...

What you are seeing in this book is the steps I am taking to make my own route to millions. The base we are starting from is having a day job (or two – remember, I farm) and a half-decent Internet connection. Plus some knowledge of how to put an HTML page together and keep my computers running. As my career on the West Coast left me with no retirement or benefits, for the most part, I started with nothing. I didn't have much to invest except my time. As I was already well into middle-age, I also had to spend this wisely.

While much of my own story will unfold through this book, the reason I wrote this was to help you make yourself an astounding success through your Internet connection – and your hard work at achieving that goal.

So this is how I’m making my first million and how you can, too.

I wish you the best of luck in what you do and how you do it.


Robert C. Worstell

Oct. 19, 2007

- - - -

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