The Truth About Making Money Online.

You may not want to hear this but you need to, the truth about making money online is this, there is no silver bullet or magic pill thats going to make you rich. Not over night and not in the next three years. You have to implement knowledge and tools in a persistent manner to build any kind of success. Thats the truth about every business, online or off.

Making money online is based on the same principles as offline business. Either you are selling a product or a service or you are selling your time to perform a task. In each of those areas there are tools and knowledge that if applied the right way will produce results. Then you analyze what works and what doesn’t and make adjustments.

Especially if you’re a business owner, there are things to learn and tools to use. This business isn’t any different so don’t swallow the bait. The truth about having success with internet marketing is the same truth behind offline success. You gain knowledge and work with the right tools and produce results by putting in your time, energy and effort. Wash rinse repeat, day after day after day. Incremental success and persistence. Oh, by the way, you will fail repeatedly but don’t let that stop you.. The more you fail the more successes you will have - provided you make the necessary adjustments.

I can tell you that like everything else in life you can do what you put your mind to, you can succeed in many business models that you can operate from your couch with a laptop. Put your mind to it. Hmmm, that saying has been around for a long time, that must mean that if you decide to do something and then learn how to do that thing you can do it successfully. And like driving a car on a busy highway, without knowing how to use the tool, in this case a car, you probably wont do it very well. Does that make sense?

If it doesn’t and you believe you can find a product that will do it all for you and make you a millionaire in the next 24 hours with no effort on your part, I want you to click on that red “x” on the top corner of this page and dont come back until you find it. Deal?

So, if your still here lets move on. We need two things, knowledge and tools. Not just any knowledge or tools though - the right info from the right people and/or companies and the right tools. You wouldn’t buy dinner for your family from the pet store, same principle applies in business. With second rate knowledge and tools come second rate results. But that doesn’t mean they have to cost you an arm and a leg, you just need to know where to look.

Let’s start with Knowledge.

How and where do you get it from? You can buy it and you can get it for free. But what is it you need to learn? That depends on what kind of online business you plan on building. If you can read between the lines and see through the BS you can get most of it for free. If you can’t read people well you’re gonna have to pick someone to trust, by judging them against other people in that field you will soon be able to tell if they are full of it or shooting straight.

Keep this in mind, if someone has created a successful business and they are teaching you how to do the same you probably wont get all their “secrets” whether you pay for it or just read their free info. Why? Most people, even the experts, will leave something out and force you to fill in the missing pieces. Thats just how life is. The only real way around this is to build friendships with people, I mean real friendship.

So, what do you want to do? In my opinion finding a market you are passionate about and can write about via a blog and then adding a couple other pieces to which I will cover later, is the best way to go. Why? Longevity. And yes I understand that you want to find an industry that is missing something and fill that void. All I’m saying is that If you are deeply involved in a business that stirs your emotions you are much more likely to have lasting success and you probably already have a head full of relative information on that subject.

Not to get away from what I’m talking about but let me relate a story to you. One of the internet marketers I respect and follow is a guy named Jeff, don’t worry I’m not trying to sell you anything right now. Jeff has created a name for himself in the “product launch” arena for the simple fact that his teachings and business model work. Jeff has a client in Oregon, I think, who is passionate about food but not just any food, healthy food, raw food, natural food and the like. This guy has created an entire business — and for that matter a hell of a business for himself. 15 months later he’s got 10 grand a month, every month that will only continue.

Raw food. Why did I use that example? The first reason - passion. This is a field you couldn’t really do well in without passion. Second its not a mainstream idea yet, YET that’s huge!!! Remember that.

Back to our topic. Knowledge: those who have measurable success with business will usually be an expert in only a couple of areas and outsource or hire others to do the rest. The reason for this is two fold.

• You can only do so much by yourself.
• You dont want to work 20 hours a day.

Take any top level professional or “up and coming” and you will see this is how its done.
If you take the time to do your due diligence you will become an expert in a couple areas relating to your niche. Which is the goal, unless I totally missed something.

So what now??? Well, we go back to what your passionate about. Find the top 3-5 people in the industry that you want to spend your time with and read everything they have to say, evaluate it against what you know and believe about that subject. Build upon what you already know and gain a different perspective on your new found business. Do this with enough people and you will build a crew, which is the underlying message in everything I write about. We will get to that in another post.

You need to add other experts to the mix. People who are experts in fields that are outside of your industry. Let’s say you are going to build a business about gardening, you have enough knowledge to get you going and you know where to go to find the best resources for gardening.

What else do you need to know? Well, if your planning on building an internet business you will need to know how to operate one, right? This leads us to the tools of the trade.

You will need a website or at minimum a squeeze page if your only going to do a newsletter. (I would not suggest that) Get a website, you cant have a restaurant without a building right?

• Website
• Autoresponder
• Payment Processor
• Advertising Solutions
• Membership management (possibly)
• Video editing software (maybe)
• etc, the list goes on. The tools you use depend on exactly what your doing. The point is you will need tools, some are free most aren’t.

I build niche websites based on the Wordpress platform for the purpose of helping people buy things they want or need and I’m doing this with the help of Ebay. I also have several other business models that require different tools. You are welcome to follow along and take what I do and apply it to your own business, the second intention I have with this blog is to show you what can be accomplished by working for yourself at home. The two categories you can find all of this info in are MMO and TOOLS.

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