Building Up an Internet Marketing Business on Strong Foundations

I’m no creative writer by any stretch of the imagination, or else this post probably would be far longer than it is. I can sense you breathing a sigh of relief!
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So what’s been going on since my last post about being let down by my JV partner?
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Well, my best performing site is now bouncing around in Google ranks once more, which is having a negative effect on income (once more). Oh darn it! Its frustrating me close to tears.
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I think Google are simply playing a game with me to test out my strength of mind – see if I’m really up to this SEO type stuff after all. Mind you, I suspect Google would argue that me being an SEO type of guy – I’m the one that’s playing a game with them, what with the backlinking work that I do. Hmmm… for sure, for sure.
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But this is definitely making me aware just how fickle this SEO game can be, if I was not already aware (which I was, fortunately). When you first start out as an internet marketer, you simply don’t bat an eyelid over these sort of things. Its all about ranking a web page and seeing a little bit of income. But as you gain more experience and you spend more and more time working in the world of SEO in particular, you have to begin to pay attention to the vagaries of the game. Are you building a serious income, but yet a business on foundations of sand? Or are you building it on strong foundations, from which it will flourish for many years to come?

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This is a question I’ve only truly been asking myself over the past 6 months, although I remember when I first began using eBay – almost a year ago now – that I was not entirely comfortable having to rely on eBay (in combination with Google) for my life-blood (full income). And as the months pass by, its hitting home that much more, and the thoughts I was beginning to experience back then, are perhaps becoming the reality.
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I sense that at least a part of my internet business is based on rocky ground, which could disintegrate at any moment. Not that I am doing anything wrong. Its just one of those things that I have less control over than the “gods” above me.
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Its for this reason that I have been branching out – much more than ever before. It would be very unwise, so I think, to keep all my fingers in one pie, whilst presuming that I could build up my income to a huge extent and then retire on it.
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If I’m honest with you, given 3 years from now, and I suspect I’ll have almost no income coming from eBay. I cannot afford to trust that much in it – not the way I have built it up over the past year, anyhow.
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I think most of you know by now about what I am doing and what I intend on doing to change this. Namely to build up on my own products and to sell them – very worthwhile products in my opinion (the marketplace will dictate this, of course), which will be sold at a competitive price. In the meantime that will mean relying to some extent on the likes of Clickbank, but again – I’m not too comfortable relying on CB either. Its just the way I sense things, it may very well be different for you. No worries.

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I’ve been thinking about re-vitalizing my current SEO eBook which up till now has been sold via Warrior Forum as a Warriors Special Offer. I’m not sure that you’d call it a special offer any longer, but its still plodding along on there to this day – some 6 months after its first release. Wow – 6 months – time flies by too fast!
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Finally, I’ve taken the bull by the horns (with some encouragement from my mate Danny from the UK who is a techie geekie sort of guy and can thus advise me on the more techie geekie sort of business aspects). I’m not only re-writing some parts of the eBook itself – adding in some content and deleting the odd thing here and there (although not much deletion is going on, fortunately), but Danny is going to help me with some real nice charts and diagrams, so that’s going to be cool. The original version really needed that, but I had little cash flow at the time to get help on that, nor did I have the contacts either.
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Further, I’m going to get a series of videos to go with the eBook. I’m not sure to what extent these will go, but at least for now they will be highlighting some of the finer points that can easily be made into video. This will help simplify the whole process of the basis for the 40 Day Challenge. But I also want to add in some hot tips and a bit on the workings of one or two tools that I either use now, or I feel would benefit other people get ahead in the game of internet marketing.
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After that, I guess the best way forth is to sell the package via Clickbank. I’m not entirely happy with that – I know for a fact that there can be a fairly high returns rate on Clickbank, and probably more so for IM type products than for anything else.
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Now let me remark on something here, if I may.
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I rarely buy any eBooks these days (although at one time not too long ago I would buy up the latest and “greatest” as if it were going out of fashion tomorrow!!). But when I do buy the occasional info product, I will read up on what it offers (which will generally be written in some glossy sales page type of thing, which invariably makes me cringe at the sight of it!). If I sense there is true value to be had by making the purchase i.e. its not all glossed up by such terms as “make $2k within 3 months online, working part time!”, and “make money while lying in bed all day every day watching television”, and if I feel that the eBook is going to offer me something new to what I already know, then I may well grab it and happily pay the fee, no matter how much the seller is asking.
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If the thing costs 100 bucks but I feel I could make 1000 bucks from utilizing even a single principle that it offers (one that I was not aware of before, but it complements my current knowledge and techniques fairly well) then its a superb investment!
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However, if once I get the eBook that happily informed me within the sales page that I would make good money while I sleep and this product was perfect for the laziest online marketer, and it does not deliver on the promises, then I’ll “send it back” for a refund, and I’ll let the seller know why I have sent it back too. Simple as that! (I did that only recently). But if it does deliver on the promises within the sales page, then I’ll be keeping that eBook no matter how much it cost me to purchase in the first place, and no matter that I may only read it once through.
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But let’s face the facts here. There are quite a large number of folks who will purchase an eBook from Clickbank and no matter how great the content is, within a couple of weeks they’ll still ask for a refund. Its this sort of behaviour that puts me off selling via Clickbank. On the other hand, is there a better marketplace for selling, particularly if you want to encourage affiliates to sell your product too?? I don’t believe there is a better market place than Clickbank, is there?
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How to safeguard a sale against the serial Clickbank eBook returner?
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I know you can safeguard a sale to some extent as an affiliate of a CB product – by offering valuable add-ons to the sale. So for example “buy through my link and receive $20 back, but only if you send your CB receipt to me after 2 months have elapsed”. That way, you as the affiliate can check the Paypal Transaction ID (or whatever) against your own Clickbank account to ensure no refund has been made.
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How else to build up a really solid online business that will be fruitful regardless the vagaries of the likes of Google and its continually changing rankings algorithms?
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I suggest to you that one of the best ways to go about this is to learn from the experts. After all, why re-invent the wheel, right? Thus, just recently I’ve been reading up on a guy called Tim Ferriss. You may have heard of him – 4 Hour Work Week.
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When I first heard of Tim Ferriss, not long after he released the 4 Hour Workweek to the amazemnt of many who work in the online (and offline) world, I kinda poo-pooed the theory, even if it did seem like a nice idea at the time. I believe he released the 4 Hour Work Week back at the end of 2007. I read a bit about it in early to mid 2008. I did not purchase the eBook, however. Most probably my mistake!
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I also signed up to his email list and what have you, but since then I’ve been so busy building my own business (on foundations of soft sand, lol!) that I paid little attention to his words of wisdom.
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About 4 months ago, an online aquaintance mentioned his name to me once again, and I paid just a tad more attention, but not so much – I do follow along with some folks online and their regular progress, but it tends to be almost entirely related to either SEO (which can be a very dry subject indeed, so I really limit my reading on that) or to internet marketing in general – which is a lot more fun to read about than pure SEO stuff. I have rarely if ever paid much attention to inventors and soothsayers (re-inventors of the wheel, if you like). I used to read about philosophy and “rich man sayeth this…” way back in the olden days, when I myself was a lost soul and totally fed up of working a 9 to 5 j o b. But not since then.
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I only really started to indulge in what Tim Ferris was saying hmmm… a couple of weeks ago.
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What has this to do with internet marketing?
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Well, everything and nothing. Let me explain as briefly as I can, so as not to lose your attention…
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If I have not already been aware of this fact, then I am slowly but surely coming to realize it now. And that is…
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Its not money that will make me happy.
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If truth be known, I’ve never had much money, and even now with my growing income from my online marketing efforts, I cannot claim to be making serious money. Give some time then sure – I very much intend to be making what to many of us would be a very serious income. But even now, I’m not too excited by the thought of making $5k a month, $7k a month, $10k a month, or even $15k to $20k a month.
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Don’t get me wrong – I’m not some spoiled bratt. Very far from it, actually!
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But its not really the money that now brings me excitement. I used to think it would be amazing to earn even $3k a month from my online work. No – even $1k a month, would be amazing! It is amazing for sure! But its not what happiness is about. There is something deeper, that may very well be tied in with the large income. If truth be told, I suspect for me, having a large (very large) income would be a bit like having a Doctorate to my name. Its almost all about my ego – a regular ego trip, and not much more than that. About proving to my parents, my family, my long lost “friends”, my girlfriend, and everyone else who has crossed my path since I was a small boy, that I am very capable of “success”. Success in human terms that is.
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When I think back to the times I’ve been happiest in my life – I’m now 43 years of age (even though I look like I’m 25, hehe), its not been when I’ve earned the most money. Its actually been when I’ve been earning the least money, oddly enough. And this is contrary to all the education I’ve endured since the age of… a teeny tot.
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My parents were hard up when I was a teeny tot and they could not afford to indulge us (me and my elder sister) as kids. But my mom and dad both worked very hard in their careers and gained a level of success and achievement. Along with some nice investments and “windfalls” from family wills, they are now comfortable.
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Yes, that level of comfort – that plateau if you like – is necessary – I believe, to achieve a sense of happiness, contentedness. Some would argue differently, but at the basic level I’m thinking along the lines of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid where he discusses human intrinsic needs.
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The times that I was most fulfilled in life was when I was volunteering full time (and more) for disabled folks and working for the Church of Scotland. I am not religious in any shape or form (my god is Google, after all, and I keep displeasing him (or is it a her?)), but for the 6 months I volunteered to do that work, I was very satisfied with life.
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The other period of time I felt satisfied was for a 2 year period I had at university. I had little income, but I was really content. Stressed with the work load, but content all the same.
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Any time I’ve had a lot more income I’ve been either discontent with life or immensely discontent with life.
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There is more to it than the large income!
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I thus have to learn from folks such as Tim Ferriss, who it seems to me is something approaching a “genius” (for want of a better term), just by the words he speaks and the thoughts he shares. He will never claim to be a “genius” of course.
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The fact is though, by reading and learning about such a person and how they think, I sense that I can build up my online business so much more successfully and on more solid foundations than I have been able to do up till now.
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The saying is…
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“its not about working hard, its about working smart”!
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But more – its the sense of achievement and inner peace that has to be sought, and not the money in itself. To base a life on money alone is indeed to be setting up our level of happiness and peace on a foundation of sand.
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Thus I say to you, consider your business as a potential source for happiness and contentedness, and this way you will be setting yourself up for great achievement – not only in the business world, but in your own personal world also.
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For me, that may entail becoming heavily involved in charity work, or offering my services on a voluntary basis. Doing something that will touch many people’s lives, and not just doing things for myself.
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So, to do this successfully, I still need to build up my online business to a very high level, and work smart (not hard) in doing so. If I manage to do that, I can then go forth and touch many more people’s lives in the process, which is what I fully intend on doing!
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Comments please, are more than welcome on this topic as a whole! Thank you!

Tagged as: how to be successful in internet marketing, how to create a successful online business, long term internet marketing success