How would you like to:

• make a full-time (6-figure) income from just ONE SINGLE BLOG?
• have 10.000 unique visitors to your blog every day (using just free traffic)
• have 3 best-selling products in the market-place, in one of the most competitive niches out there
• connect with the ‘big dogs’ in your industry

all whilst

• not working like a dog all day long
• achieve this within 6-12 months from now
• remain a ‘normal’ human being in the process
• and not requiring any super-human skills to begin with?

well, that’s exactly what Rusty Moore has done/is doing, and here you can hear his story.

Make sure to have pen and paper at the ready, there is a TON of great content in this interview!

Here are Rusty’s sites:

fitnessblogtraining.com
fitnessblackbook.com

Let us know what you think – leave a comment below!

Hey there,

Ever noticed how hardly anybody wants to declare publicly that they are an “Internet Marketer”?

Here’s my take:

when you look at Internet marketing, where it’s come from and where it’s now (and where it’s heading), then to me it looks a little like this:

First there was the Internet – then people discovered that you could use it like any other marketing channel to market your products and services. And that’s still a great use of “Internet Marketing”: ONE (of many) channels through which you can market valuable products and services.

Next, “Internet Marketing” was taken over by the spammers who exploited

1. people’s fascination with the new medium (including “it must be true, it says so on the Internet”)
2. the ease, speed and low cost of doing mass-marketing (often: spamming)
3. the incredible ‘arbitrage’ opportunities (buy cheap traffic, send straight to offer) – simply because the price of the traffic wasn’t appropriate for the inherent value.

(meanwhile, those who are using Internet marketing to market high-value products and services are still around and thriving)

Finally, Internet Marketing in the sense of the “greatest business opportunity of all times” comes along.

It’s not just one little opportunity like “hey, sell our pots ‘n pans to your friends” (who am I to complain, I’m using the good ol’ Amway frying pan I inherited from my parents a long time ago, it’s awesome;-), but suddenly *everything* to do with the Internet is a business opportunity.

And of course, like every other business opportunity, in almost all cases the person who gets rich is NOT you, but those who came up with the scheme in the first place.

So, why this rant in the first place?

(in case you don’t consider it a rant: I freakin’ *HATE* the whole biz-opp aspect of Internet marketing for so many reasons I don’t even know where to begin, and I absolutely LOVE Internet marketing as in “the marketing channel based on the Internet that’s used to sell high value products and services that actually help people”.

Why?

Because it truly lets you set up a business with less capital, more speed and less risk than ever before … but heck, I’m starting to sound like a biz-opper…)

So, rant in the first place because I see so many honest folks pulled into IM-the-Biz-Opp and then either give up after months and months, sometimes years of struggling to make *anything* work (and enriching the biz-oppers’ lives in the process) …

… leaving credit cards maxed out even more than before, that awful feeling “hey, am I really this stupid, why can’t I make it when everybody else appears to succeed with this?” and often enough a serious strain on their relationship with friends and family.

So, let me ask you again:

Ever noticed how hardly anybody wants to declare publicly that they are an “Internet Marketer”?

Could it be that deep down they already know they’ve falled for IM-the-Biz-Opp as opposed to really learning how to use the IM-the-value-adding-marketing-channel (IMVAMC;-)?

Tell me (I’m serious, tell me! and hey, we’re all anonymous here;-):

Which side of IM are you on? (wittingly or unwittingly)

And if you’re on IM-the-Biz-Opp (nothing to be ashamed of, sales-psychology is a strong force):

if you were on the IMVAMC side –

• what problem would YOU solve, and use the Internet to market that solution?
• would it even make sense to purchase courses that teach you
  • how to “exploit loopholes” (most likely to be closed tomorrow)
  • “crush, kill or maim” this, that or the other? (I thought it was about providing value?)
  • go “viral” by putting out “easy to source” content
  • build other people’s business instead of yours (both the biz-oppers, as well as Google’s, Amazon’s, Apple’s …)
• why would you even bother with the cheapest traffic possible, when you can get *targeted* traffic of people who actually want your stuff (and have the money to pay for it) for a tiny bit more?
• …

Tell me, and yes, I’m serious, let’s start a conversation here!

If you’ve been stuck in IM-the-biz-opp land, you’re not going to get out of it by sitting there, maybe even nodding your head, maybe feeling a little ashamed, or thinking that I’m an idiot (that’s me, not you!;) – tell me what’s going on … I’m more than happy to help, but I cannot read your mind!

over’n out

Veit

Hey there,

did an interview with Mike Thomas (http://mikefrommaine.com/) today which was great fun!

One of the ‘themes’ of the interview was how I went from affiliate marketer to product creator (and these days coach & consultant) – and whilst we’re talking there was an interesting underlying theme:

there were far more complete ‘f***-ups’ than successes – and yet, each one led to something bigger and better.

So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing a few of the foulups, some more epic than others, feel free to use them purely for entertainment, or maybe see how they’ve helped me move to ‘bigger and better’.

Epic f***-up #1

Time/star-date: around 2008.

online income: pathetic. Done a few affiliate promotions (my first ever was a sale for Stompernet/Paul Lemberg’s Formula 5, on which I made around $650 – using nothing but free resources – I think it was a squidoo-lens I’d ranked in the search-engines that made me my first sale) – but started to figure out that product creation is where it’s at.

My first product was going to be a ‘classic’ “put together a 12 expert panel, interview them on their individual field of expertise, sell the recordings & transcripts to the attendees”.

Of course I checked that they all had a list, and that they were all going to mail.

Even got a top copywriter on board to help with the “go check out this awesome panel of experts – they’re giving you free advice” email-template that I provided to all 12 experts.

And, because the 12 had a combined list-size of 150.000 and because this was me being rather new to the whole get others to mail for you game, I ended up setting up 2 hardened servers, spending countless hours setting up (manually) individual landing pages for each expert, so I wouldn’t end up crashing the servers when those 150.000 hit the servers.

Launch of course coincides with me being at a conference (oh yeah baby, why not go to a seminar in the middle of your first ever launch…), so when I rushed home after the conference to quickly check if they servers had managed to withstand the onslaught …

… well, it’s hard to put that moment into words.

Despite all the checking and double-checking and checking again, it really was only 612 people who had signed up for this revolutionary, and world-changing and surely setting the foundations for my IM-retirement fund series of teleseminars.

612 out of 150.000

Now I can laugh about it, but back then, like I said, it’s a feeling for which I’m struggling to find words

Did I make money with this exercise?

Nope, didn’t sell a single copy … we never even finished the series of interviews.

Do I regret doing it?

Nope, there were so many lessons in there for me, it’s almost like I’m looking back at it fondly and thinking “ahh, that’s when I went from ‘thinking about it’ to actually doing it.”

What’s even better: I made some pretty terrific connections through that activity and even now, whenever I launch a new product or service, the learnings from that experience help me make each new one better.

Key message – and I’m trying to do this without the raised finger and the “and the moral of the story is…”-sledgehammer that’s no bloomin’ common with children’s books these days (whatever happened to good ol’ story telling – these days even the freaking little ghosts, once they’re done with scaring the livin’ daylight out of the baddies have to agree that it’s a good thing to brush your teeth – but only with an electric toothbrush, otherwise you might damage your enamel… you’re a freakin’ ghost fer crying out loud…)

… anyway, back to the key message sans wagging moral sledgehammer (WMS):

if you’re looking to get started with pretty much whatever, let’s just assume ‘online marketing’, then here’s a slightly uncomfortable truth:

the stuff that really matters, they can’t teach you. You have to experience it first hand. There simply isn’t a step-by-step blueprint that’ll get you past those ‘awww, I don’t know what the word is for this feeling’ moments – and there isn’t one either for “how you take the learnings and simply make the next one better”.

enjoy

Veit

PS: I might of course be completely wrong;-) What do you think?

alrighty, ready for some uncomfortable readying?

Let’s go:

unfortunately, there are no clear statistics, but it’s pretty much universally accepted that most Internet Marketing training has a very low chance of success.

In the sense of helping the buyer of the training more successful.

Typically, the only bank-account that’s filling up, is the one of the seller of said IM training course.

Another statistic, again without ‘hard’ evidence is that on average people stick to the “making money on the Internet” dream for about 4-6 months before giving up.

But of course, not without first amassing a wealth of knowledge, more courses on their harddisk than they can ever go through, never mind put to good use in this or their next lifetime.

So, my rather rude wake-up call:

How Is That Whole “Internet Marketing” Thing Working Out For You?

Ok, enough of being a meanie, let’s look at a solution or two on how to really make it work – without really having to buy anything else.

The key to making pretty much anything work is that you have a plan you truly believe in.

This one is even based in hard science, it’s a concept called self-efficacy: if you know at every level of your being that this is going to work, then your chances of success are extremely high.

As you probably have no prior experience in actually building a business, what do you do?

Well, in most cases you go out and attempt to find a ‘blueprint’ that shows you step by step exactly what you need to do.

And that’s where the trouble starts:

Whether you like it or not, everybody is different – everybody’s experiences, connections, knowledge, funding levels, target market, … are different.

And it’s precisely because of those differences that pretty much all blueprints fail.

Why?

Because when YOU implement the blueprint, you’ll encounter obstacles that weren’t even an obstacle in the parallel Universe in which the blueprint was created.

And we all know what happens when you encounter one of those “I want to pull my hair out WHY oh WHY the heck is this not working”-type obstacles!

A short desperate search for a solution, a lot of outdated information on Google on how to solve it (ever tried uploading an avatar to your blog? Google will show you how it was done in 2007, nice one Google, problem is: it doesn’t work anymore that way in 2012), and before you know it, you

a) get sidetracked, and

b) get fed-up, and

c) start looking for a ‘better’ blueprint, one that hopefully doesn’t have them dang obstacles in it.

So, I’ll create the first line of the Blueprint-blues, you fill in the rest:

I woke up this morning,with a blueprint full of holes, …

Here’s the thing:

the moment you start using a blueprint as a guiding principle that may or may not contain some guiding principles, and accept the fact that most of the individual steps are more likely NOT to work for you (but they worked for someone else), the higher the likelihood that you’ll figure out the reason why those steps worked for others … and that’s where the real gold is.

Because that’s when you figure out a plan that actually works for you … because you’ve figured out the what, and the what if, and the how all by yourself (ok, with a little guidance by the blueprint), and that’s when you start believing in your plan.

Enter self-efficacy.

Quickly followed by high chance of success.

Dang, if thinking wasn’t such hard work … we’d all be millionaires (mhmm, chorus for the Blueprint blues?)

Right, time for some weekend-work:

Pick whatever plan or blueprint you have at the moment.

Make a list of the top 10 things you already know you should be doing, but somehow haven’t gotten around to doing.

Make it the 10 things that would actually make a difference, would help build your business the most.

No matter how simple or complex (even if at the back of the mind you already know that a particular point would just be major-league obstacle time)

Now review your list:

accept that each point is important, but there’ll be one that will stand out.

No left-brain thinking required, just go with what stands out right away.

Circle it, put a tick-mark next to it, highlight the heck out of it.

Now, start working on that item.

This is the ONE.

You already know it’s the one (you made the list), you already intuitively picked it as THE ONE.

So there’s no excuse for not doing it … right?

If it’s a simple thing,  obviously, there’s no excuse, so go do it.

But what if it’s something more complicated, like “get 10.000 visitors to my blog”, or “reach 100 top decision makers in my industry”, or “sign up 300 JV partners”, or ….?

Well, there’s that dang obstacle.

Here’s how you get around it:

Take a notepad, a freshly sharpened pencil, and write down 100 (yes, one-hundred) different ways of achieving that task.

Not 50, not 97, not 98, not even 99, but one-hundred ways of doing it.

Told you it’s a weekend task.

Have a notebook with you and just collect ideas all weekend long.

Incidentally, this is a good test to see if you’re serious about building an IM-business.

You already know that blueprints don’t work (ah, I guess I forgot to ask the meanie question before: “how is following blueprints working out for you?”), there is plenty of scientific evidence that self-efficacy is THE WAY, so what’s between you and success right now is … well, your willingness to knuckle down and do the exercise.

Yes, there will be silly stuff on there, but there is going to be absolute gold.

Maybe you only come up with 10-20 workable methods, but….

Woah, hang on!

Just a short weekend ago you were facing an insurmountable obstacle that’s pretty much killed any chance of success, and now you’re looking at 10-20 ways of moving forward?

Not bad for a weekend’s work!

I guess another line to be massaged into the Blueprint Blues should be

“a shame there ain’t no magic buttons for success”

Do this, don’t become one of the statistics noone wants to talk about.

have a fabulous and productive weekend … and report back on Monday how it went.

Veit

Right, as a follow-up to my post on what type of Internet marketing training actually works, where we pretty

much agreed that ‘learning by doing’ is pretty much the only way to really ‘learn’, here’s a question to ponder: What is the difference between curation and product creation? Start scratching your head and leave your answer below. Best answer gets a free pass to my upcoming Internet marketing training learning Veit

Join me & Sam Bakker for a LIVE webinar where you’re going to see for the first time a ‘Contest App’ Sam’s team has worked on for a long time that is finally ready…

…and because you are a valued subscriber we are inviting you to view this LIVE demonstration as Sam shows off live on the webinar how easy it is to create contests with his generator.

Here’s what you’re about to learn:

– A live example of an app that he’s running that made him $1500 in less than a week!

– Easy ways to find businesses that are desperate to run a Facebook contest that brings in money

– The best way to run a contest that brings in money within the first 2 weeks for any business!

– Finally you’ll see LIVE how you can generate your own viral contests easily within just 90 seconds.

Cool stuff, definitely highly recommend seeing this thing in action if you can make it!

spaces are filling up fast to make sure you register now to reserve your spot!

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/809014598

Hope to have you on the call

Veit

PS: here’s the workbook for the call: Download the Startup Business Guide

PPS: go through the Startup Business Guide, then have a look at my Full-time in come from a single blog post, (and then come back to what you learn in the webinar, the two complement each other perfectly!)