MakingMoneyOnline.com’s First Big Milestones

Wow, I can’t believe this site has been live for 2 months now, and not only that… it has grown way faster than we could have imagined (which is a great thing). We owe it all to you out there who stop by and read what we have to say, so we want to say thank-you very much! Also, we would like to send an extra great big THANK YOU to all of you out there that leave comments regularly, which makes this a very interactive site and really fun for me and Mark to run.

Well here is a list of the milestones we have accomplished here at Making Money Online Dot Com in our first two months…

1. Post number 50! – Well… this is actually post number 52, but 50 sounded like a better number to celebrate! I know this probably does not sound like a lot compared to a lot of you bloggers out there, but it is great for us. Also, this number should be increasing faster in the upcoming months, as we only used to post to the blog once a day, Mon – Fri. Soon we will start posting on Sundays too, and eventually we might write posts on Saturdays as well, but we will have wait and see.
2. Over 1000 Comments – This one truly blew my mind. In less than 2 months we have received almost 1200 comments on this site, not including pingbacks and trackbacks… which is AWESOME! Of course many of the comments were probably written by me and Mark, as we always like to reply to as many comments as we can… but the number is still great! Again… thank you guys for all the comments and all the help you have given us!
3. Listed on Page #1 on Google for the Keywords “Making Money Online” – Okay, I know I said receiving over 1000 comments blew my mind, but making it to the first page of Google for the search term, “Making Money Online” in less than 2 months REALLY BLEW MY MIND! We are on the bottom of the first page (and it jumps back and forth between there and the top of page 2), but we are on the first page as I am writing this post! This was definitely one of our main goals for the site, but we did not expect to make it to the first page for like a year or two… so this is an incredible milestone! Someday we hope to grab that #1 top spot.
4. Somebody Asked to Interview Me – This was really cool as well. To be honest, it was a buddy of mine, Jared Little from TheMoneyCult.com who I met through this blog that asked to interview me. But an interview is an interview and I felt honored he asked… and it was fun to do. You can read the entire interview here.

Well that’s it for notable milestones! Again, we want to thank all of you for visiting our site and hanging out and interacting. Without you guys, this site would be pretty boring.

Now we have lots of big plans for the future of this site with interviews with successful online business owners in all sorts of niches, lots of fun how-to tutorials, money making ideas,  case studies,  quick tips on how to do all sorts of things, and much much more. So please keep coming back and follow us on our journey.

Build It and Eventually the People with Money Will Come

I was having a chat this morning with one of my buddies who is one of those successful Bloggers/ Internet Marketers who many of us (at least I am) are striving to emulate. I called him up because this blog (Making Money Online Dot Com) has been live for about one month now and yesterday was my best day (as far as profits go) for this particular site.

Just yesterday alone, this site earned a whopping $148.97.  $145.20 came from 3 different affiliate product sales, and $3.77 from Adsense. Not a bad day at all for being such a new site. Unfortunately, as of me typing this… the site hasn’t made a penny yet today, but the day is not over yet.

The reason I am sharing this information with you is because of something my buddy told me when I first decided to start this blog. He gave me a very encouraging tip that I think a lot of the newer bloggers who aren’t making money online yet will really appreciate.

He said, “Build it, and eventually the people with the money will come”. When he first said it I chuckled, as it reminded me of the line from the movie, “Field of Dreams” where a voice keeps whispering to Kevin Costner’s character, “Build it and he will come”.

He explained to me that building a successful blog comes in basically 3 phases:

PHASE 1

When you first start out blogging you really have nothing but some (hopefully) good content. The next thing you need to do is market your site and build up your reputation, and the best way to do that is by networking with other bloggers in your niche. There are many ways to do that like leaving useful comments with back-links to your site on other blogger’s websites, as well a Guest Blogging. There are lots of ways to build traffic, but I am not going to go into that in this post. The key point here is to get your name in front of everyone you can.

PHASE 2

Soon your traffic will start to grow slowly, and hopefully your reputation. Here you will start to see some money, but the big money won’t start coming in just yet. The reason is that most of the traffic you are generating is from other bloggers in your same niche, many of whom are just starting out like you and don’t have a lot of money.

Traffic will continue to grow as more and more people learn about your site through word of mouth advertising, and you should start getting some organic search engine traffic in this phase as well. The key here is to not get discouraged that your aren’t making a lot of money yet, and to continue to do what you have been doing, as this phase can last for quite some time.

PHASE 3

This is the phase where the big money comes. Eventually, you will have built yourself an “Outstanding Reputation” as being an expert in your niche, and 95% (just a made up percentage, but probably close) of the bloggers that were around when you first started will have thrown in the towel… leaving you to shine with your other friends who have stuck it out. Now your name is everywhere and all the new bloggers are looking up to you. Your subscriber lists are all off the charts and anything you recommend sells like hotcakes!

I know it sounds a little oversimplified, but it absolutely makes sense.

So my question to you is…

Are you going to be one of the ones that stick it out to the end?

I know I am!

Declare Independence for Yourself!

With tomorrow being our country’s Independence Day, I thought I would write a quick post for those of you out there still working 40-plus hour a week jobs…

Are you tired of being told what to do each day by your boss? Well back in late 1700’s the colonists were sick and tired of being told what to do by Great Britain and having to pay the always increasing taxes. So they decided they wanted their independence and went to war to get it. Was it hard? Absolutely! Was it worth it? Absolutely!

As with your job, if you hate it, why not make a change? Will it take a lot of work? Absolutely! But will it be worth it to work for yourself? Absolutely!

Now I am not saying to go and quit your job tomorrow, as that would not be very smart at all. What I am saying is; why don’t you find some business that you can start in your spare time and start working toward your goal of eventually working for yourself fulltime?

It is definitely going to take a lot of work, as most great things do. But, if you stick with it and finally become successful enough to declare Your Own Independence, it will be well worth the hard work you had to put in.

We wish everyone a Happy Independence Day!

Make a Plan and Hit the Road

The most successful people I know that are making money online had some type plan that they followed to get to where they are today. I never use to as I just went through life plodding along not knowing where life was going to take me.  If you don’t have a plan, now is the time to start.

Planning for your business is no different than the planning I did for my family’s trip to Disneyland. Here’s how it works.

You have to know where you’re starting from. In this case we’d start from our house, but on other trips there might be a different starting point.

For a business your starting point is your current business situation. What’s your competitive situation? Your financial situation? Your staffing situation?

You also need to know where you’re going. In business, this would be your goal. What do you want to be different at the end of your trip? How will you know that you’ve succeeded?

So you’ve got your starting point and your goal. Now you need to figure out how you’re going to make the trip.

What resources will you need?

If I’m driving to Disneyland, I might want to rent a van to carry my family and all our gear. Maybe it would be a good idea to get a GPS system to make sure we don’t get lost. There are two other resources to think about: money and time.

What’s the trip going to cost?

On a real trip you’ll be thinking about gas, food, hotels, park admission and other expenses. For a new web site you should be thinking about the cost to register a domain name, designing a website, hosting the website, marketing, etc…

How long will it take to make the trip?

On a road trip you want to think about how often you’ll stop and what speed you’re going to drive and where you should spend the night. For a business journey, you want to lay out the milestones that will measure your progress and serve as review and decision points.

Here’s another question that I like to ask when I’m planning a trip: What would be fun to do? There may be attractions along the way that we want to stop at. There may be things we want to plan to do at our destination. I like making a list of those as we think of them.

If you’re planning for your business ask the question this way: “What would we do if money and time were not an issue?” You’ll be amazed at how many of the things on your list turn out be possible.

Most books and articles on planning make it seem like a straight-line, one-time-through process. But no trip I’ve ever taken was like that. Neither was any business plan.

The planning process always goes around and around until things jell. That just seems to be the way it is.

And when you do hit the road, a flat tire or road construction can change your plan. So can the sight of a place you want to stop but hadn’t planned for.

Business is like that, too. You can’t plan to cover all the surprises, good and bad. So plan to be flexible.

Planning really is the key to success whether you’re driving to Disneyland or making money online. And, since you already know how to plan a trip, you won’t need any more of those fancy planning books.

Don’t be a Victim of Perfectionism

When it comes to making money online, there is one thing that has slowed me down more than any other thing that I can think of. Not only has it slowed me down, but it has probably cost me tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of unearned potential income over the past 11 years of my Internet business career. The “evil thing” I am referring to is PERFECTIONISM!

Here are the two biggest things that perfectionism can do to stop you from making more money online.

1) WASTE YOUR VALUABLE TIME

I am actually writing this post because I fell victim to this monster again over the last two days. What happened was I decided to create my first screen capture video to add to my last post which shows people how easy it is to create an Ultimate Footer Ad. I just purchased Camtasia last week, so there was a little bit of a learning curve, but I figured it out pretty fast.

Looking back, the very first video I created yesterday actually turned out pretty good. But the perfectionist in me would not let me use it. You may find this hard to believe, but I probably spent more than 8 hours yesterday working on that basic 3 minute “screen-capture” video and another 3 to 4 hours today. I just kept redoing it over and over again, as I wanted it PERFECT!

Then to top it off, I actually ended up using the video and audio from one of my first takes that I made. Is it perfect? Not even close, but it works fine for this site.

How much time should it have really taken me create the video? I am thinking maybe 2 or 3 hours, as there was little bit of a learning curve, but 12 hours… that was ridiculous! If I wasn’t such a perfectionist, I could have gotten 4 times as much work done yesterday.

The same thing happened when creating this blog. It should have been live weeks ago, but I just kept tweaking the layout, as I never thought is was perfect enough to go live, but I finally said, “screw it” and opened it up to the world.

2) STOPS YOU FROM EVER PULLING THE TRIGGER

What I am talking about here is being such a perfectionist that you never complete your project or open your website. I have done this many times over the years and it can be a killer. You create this awesome product or service that is extremely relevant at the time, but you never release it to the public because it is never perfect enough for you. Next thing you know time has passed and your product or service has missed its opportune window or other people have released similar products, so you just shelve the project.

Now I am not saying you shouldn’t want to put out a great product, you absolutely should. What I am saying is you shouldn’t be such a perfectionist that it stops you from actually finishing a project or opening your first website.

What you need to do is set yourself a timetable for completion and stick to it. Just get it out there and make tweaks after it is live. I guarantee you that almost every successful marketer out there is not 100% happy with their products when they first release them.

Please don’t let perfectionism keep you from following your dreams.