There are some virtual storm clouds brewing at the Money Gym. Judith and I came the closest we have ever been to a row the other day at our board meeting while talking about me re-writing my book for 2009 and beyond, and the topic was the same old recurring theme of Internet Marketing – Is It The Emperor’s New Clothes?
This topic has also been rumbling around our Money Gym Mastermind Google Group as Marion Ryan (one of our Money Gym coaches and no slouch at making money online herself with her Rockin’ Blogging service) asked “Is anyone out there making any real money with affiliate marketing?”
Just to clarify, when we are talking about Internet Marketing, we are not talking about “Marketing Your Business Online” which all of us at The Money Gym totally love, do effortlessly and succeed in all day every day, but “Internet Marketing” as defined as the ability to create automated flows of passive income from selling information products (your own or someone else’s) online without having to deliver a service, workshops, coaching, all those things that involve you actually doing something and turning up for work in the real world.
Judith says “Internet Marketing simply isn’t viable and perhaps all the gurus are selling a dream, albeit one that we all want. We cannot point to any single success story within the Money Gym community, including ourselves as principals of the business, and that that simply isn’t good enough for our clients, they deserve better. We are not in authenticity and even worse, we could be misleading our clients”.
Although Tim Ferris’ “4 Hour Work Week” book is one of her all time favourites, and leans heavily on his passive income made online by selling a product, Judith feels very strongly that when I re-write OUR book I should not imply that you can make millions online very easily. That I should be more realistic and not hang out the internet dream in the book as, in her opinion, there is no real evidence in our circle that it works. She considers that we might even remove it as a separate Lane Of The Wealth Highway in our teachings in the Money Gym coaching programme , including it instead only as part of our business module.
I passionately believe the opposite and I say it does work because I know a LOT of people – met at many seminars over the years – who make their living like that. And a very good living – defined by me as more than £5000 or $10,000 per month upwards to the “millions a year” merchants.
I believe they earn that because of the lifestyles they lead, the fact that they are able to afford to go to all the seminars, cruises, the Maverick Adventures all around the world, the houses they live in, the cars they drive and that they never seem short of cash.
Judith’s logic asks: “well, if it works, how come specifically none of our Money Gym clients while able to become wealthy, even millionaires, through the other lanes of the Wealth Highway, have ever yet managed to become an internet millionaire or even make any meaningful recurring passive sums of money working online? If you yourself, Nicola, have been – to use your own words – diddling about online since before God was a lad, how come you are not one of the internet millionaires living the life you describe above?”
I say, because none of us ever do it right. We never keep it simple and “just follow the bloody instructions” to quote Frank Kern.
Actually it’s very rare that any of us simply just do it.
Example #1
Last year, we hosted a 90-day Money Gym Internet Challenge, where our clients were supposed to define their internet goals and then, with our support, achieve them in 90 days.
Some set goals to finish their ebook, some set goals to make their first $10 online, some set goals like “get my first 100 subscribers to my ezine list” and I really did my best to help them keep it real, set realistic goals and then work out how they were going to achieve them.
We were supposed to post up our goals for each day, actions taken and achievements to a special Focus Day google group we set up.
So, did anyone do that?
Some, for a while.
Did even one person finish the challenge or achieve their goals set?
No.
What went wrong? Well, I always say that the difference between success or failure is more about what you don’t do, than what you do do.
They didn’t get focused, didn’t take consistent action, they got discouraged, they just gave up. Sometimes life just got in the way.
Just think for a moment about one of your goals, one that you constantly fail in achieving. Think about the one single thing, that if you did it, would absolutely guarantee success. Now think about why you don’t do and why you don’t do that thing.
But I’m getting distracted here…one of my issues with my own internet marketing success by the way.
Tracy Repchuk talks about the fact that 92% of people who go to internet marketing seminars will NEVER succeed and it’s true. They will buy more and more stuff, hoping for the magic wand, the secret key….hang on, this is sounding just like the people who go to property investment seminars, business building seminars, stockmarket trading seminars. It’s sounding like wealth creation in general.
Tracy also talks about the importance of getting focused in her excellent best selling book “31 Days To Millionaire Marketing Miracles” which, incidentally, was written in days and took just 58 days to become an Amazon best seller. Focus works and she’s demonstrated that. But Tracy Repchuk was a successful business person before she discovered internet marketing and lots of the gurus were too. Judith would say this just proves her point; “Tracy is selling more information on how to do it rather than just selling something online like Tim Ferris for example!”
So is it possible for ordinary people to create a passive income online? Or are they wasting their time, chasing a dream?
The Money Gym Internet Challenge wasn’t a total waste of all our time because, a year later, some are just getting to the point of finishing their ebooks, have websites up online and have mailing lists and some even have membership sites.
But hardly anyone is “just following the bloody instructions” and getting on with it, step by step.
Read Part 2 Here >>>
“Actually it’s very rare that any of us simply just do it.”
It’s even more rare that any other organisation is as open and honest about differing opinions within the executive ranks, and about their own doubts over their own policies as this one is.
Without that openness and transparency, an organisation is set to fail. That’s why so many do.
With it, eventual success is a natural conclusion.
I’m surrounded by so much bullshit and bluster in my “normal” life, reading stuff like this restores my will to live. If just one single organisation acts in this manner, it illuminates the rest of the darkness.
I think that post was the very definition of “integrity”. I like it here.
I agree with Graham thanks for being so honest, I am sure your honesty and integrity is what draws people to you and makes us trust what you say and what you recommend.
I can see where you are both coming from with this….it is a method of earning money but I agree with Judith in that as you have had little success with this lane then that should be stated and if you can say why then this maintains your integrity.
Maybe there are two models within the one lane? – 1)Using the internet to promote and grow your existing business 2) Using the internet to make money from your own or other peoples products – the affiliate model.
Number one is successful for you, number two less so. There are also a number of MG clients who are successful with model one.
Many people including a number of Money Gym people have persevered with making money from the internet (model 2) but have had little success and maybe we could explore why?
My own take on it is that it requires more time at the front end than most of us are prepared to devote before the rewards are forthcoming and whereas other wealth lanes have a pretty well defined plan with a more or less guaranteed outcome this one does not. As such it requires more focus than most of us either want to give to it or can give to it without giving up some other activity.
Hi All
I have just been sent this from an ex-client who has asked not to be identified for his own privacy reasons although some of you know this person. It is real, nonetheless.
STARTS
Dear Nicola,
I read your article yesterday about no one from within your money gym group making a success out of internet marketing and thought I’d write you something that may inspire more than one or two.
I’m going to keep this as brief as possible, I was first introduced to the internet marketing world by Nicola. Her enthusiasm towards it was inspiring to me. I started to go to seminars and learn all about it from her and many others. My first small ventures were a success, I had my own ebook written and made money selling it, and on an arbitrage through Google Adsense before they changed the rules I was making a fair bit of profit.
Side note on success:–
Along the way for every success there were 10 – 20 failures online. But it is not the success that is your friend, it is the failure, as James Dyson says, ‘learn from your failures because you never learn from your successes’.
Failure to me is an ESSENTIAL part of success, and as Edison said, ‘today we have learnt another way not to make a light bulb.’ Success is about persistence and persevering despite failure. Success afterall lies just on the other side of failure. Besides if success comes to easy then you may not know how to repeat it.
Well I persevered and created my own first product. I pre-sold this using affiliate marketing which raised me enough money to pay for the product. I then sold this massively using affiliate marketing techniques to create my first capital to re-invest. I re-invested it and then created thanks to going to seminars and your education Nicola a membership site. I then created other products and seminars and successfully launched those using high powered techniques. In my first two years of business I think I generated approximately £3 to £4 million in revenue with substantial profits like you would not believe if you ran a traditional business.
Side note on Business/Internet Marketing should they be in the same group as Judith says:-
I am tended to agree with Judith, but I think the problem is that you simply cannot compare an internet business that uses internet marketing and online hosting to reduce costs with ANY traditional business. So I think that the classification for Internet Business would be better than either business or internet marketing but that it should be in its own group. With both of the above, you need a knowledge of business and a knowledge of marketing.
Some of my online ventures when you take out affiliate costs have been as much as 98% net profit, and others that involve affiliate partners have still been as high as 45% net profit. I think the worst of my successful online businesses has been a pitiful 20% net profit. Now in the blue chip world of traditional business this would be a stellar result as I am sure Judith would agree.
During the two years I switched from affiliate marketing as our main list builder to online marketing using google adwords and generated over 100k of unique visitors per month, which I used to build a substantial list. We worked our marketing costs down and down and increased our conversions again and again until we reached the pinnacle of successful marketing. Which is making a profit on front end sales with my main profits coming from my back end series of products. The first rule of internet marketing is that you make money on the back end, so without an upsell you are doomed to failure, as your front end product (which should be excellent) is just for the purpose of creating a list.
Then I started to use the list to sell affiliate products to, and in the last 12 months have done 3 promotions, the first generated £15k, the next £35k and the last £150k. I expect to do at least one of these every year now as I have a warm list which I continue to keep warm and expect to earn a minimum of £100k/year through this, with currently a potential of £400k.
What’s more I have used the same list to create sub lists which have started me up other businesses. Currently I am about to use my online skills to set up a completely new business outside of my existing field that will generate substantial income that I have to do virtually zero work for but get 50% of all the profits and I have lifetime benefits from all of the clients, so this is truly an ‘ongoing’ passive revenue stream. I suspect this will be a stunning success and will generate me a seven figure/anum income. My total involvement in this will probably amount to less than 1 month total work in 24 months! I expect that my ongoing work after outsourcing will end up being direction and accounting for profits.
What’s more I have the most powerful thing that any truly wealthy person has, and it is not the money. It is the ability to do it again if for some reason it should all fail. Thanks to the internet marketing skillset I have now, which originally was inspired by you Nicola I now know that if I lost every penny today, that by tomorrow afternoon I would be making money online again of at least £10,000/anum and all I would need for that is an internet connection from anywhere in the world! I watched a speaker at one of the seminars I went to say that he wasn’t an Entrepenuer and that he could do 2 days work a year to generate all of the money he needed to live from a standing start. This is the power of internet marketing and Internet only business.
So I can speak on your behalf from personal experience that internet marketing will work, but only for those who persevere as I cannot overstate the power of learning marketing and applying it on internet only businesses.
I hope this inspires people to think about what you said, and that it is not the internet marketing that does not work, it is that they lack the perseverance to follow the basics and not over complicate their offering.
One last little tit bit from what some would say was an internet guru (however I am definitely not as you well know) is that a web page must only ask for one action from the visitor and that the headline must offer them the solution to a problem that they have right now. Creating a successful internet business is not about what you want to do, it is about finding a hungry market of people then selling them something, it doesn’t matter what it is if there is a market for it. It is about them not you.
Kind regards
Me
ENDS