Welcome to my end-of-August Internet Marketing Update!
On the 1st of every month I add a new post to AidanBooth.com – sometimes about changes to the internet marketing landscape, and other times just to share useful information and ideas.
Today I’m taking a look at what makes internet marketers successful online, and specifically what you can do to give yourself the best possible chance to succeed online in the long-term.
As part of today’s content, I interviewed friend, and fellow internet marketer, Brian G. Johnson, asking him about how he’s had success online for such a long period of time and the things that have been important to him.
Here’s the interview video (the video quality isn’t great unfortunately!):
Brian gives some great tips in the video.
Something that definitely resonates with me is the need to identify a mentor, someone who’s already achieved what you want to achieve, and to then emulate exactly what they’ve done.
There’s a lot of junk on the internet these days so it’s important that you listen to people who’ve actually been there and done it, and ignore the “cowboys”.
4 Common Reasons People FAIL…
Before I give you 5 big “takeaways” from today’s post, here are some of the reason I see people FAILING online over and over again:
- People don’t persevere long enough to see results. An example, giving up on a project because you don’t have top rankings in Google after just 2 months of link building.
- People don’t stick to the blueprints. An example of this is when people modify the method they’re using BEFORE they’ve had success. Modify the blueprint and make it your own AFTER you’ve already seen some success.
- Procrastination. Sitting around won’t get you to your goals…you’ll need to actually do the work!
- Jumping from one idea to the next. There are lots of different ways to have success online, but you need to find one method and stick to it. Avoid the hype and stay focused.
Are you guilty of any of these?
What Can You Take Away From All This?
To make things easier for you, I’ve taken what Brian has said in the video, and combined it with the most important factors in my success.
Here are 5 fundamental rules to follow to boost your online success:
- Find a mentor you trust who’s ALREADY achieved what you want to achieve and follow him/her. Ignore the rest.
- REPLICATE a system that’s proven to work and don’t change any part of the system, copy it perfectly.
- Understand that online success won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to be PERSISTENT in your effort.
- Set realistic GOALS and back them up with firm DEADLINES.
- BELIEVE in yourself and believe in the system.
Have you already had a taste of success online?
If so, what was the key to that success?
Leave a comment below to share your experience with others…
Awesome video! What can I say, Brian is responsible for my first big success in he IM world’ I made my first $500 in a month after applying his methods and built a few websites according to his Commission RItual course.
He is a great guy who is worth following and listening to. And you are just as great as he is.
I am grateful for meeting both of you and having you as mentors and teachers.
Hey Romi, thanks for the compliment! It’s a shame the video wasn’t filmed in HD, but I only had my travel camera with me so it really was a “make-shift” video.
I’ll make sure Brian see’s this comment 🙂
My take away from this is to ‘copy it perfectly’. The success I have had is because I have copied you and Brian.
Hi Kelly – you know, when I started truly copying proven methods, all of a sudden I started seeing results as well…funny how that happens 🙂
A couple of things, Aidan –
To ‘echo’ a couple of your thoughts, it’s important to realize that any business requires an investment, in time and money.
Following the plan you have laid out, I have a website in the top ten of the search results. I’m feeling a little pressure (self-imposed) because I haven’t seen a return on my investment yet. However, the ‘success’ of being able to get on page 1 will hold me over until the return starts coming in.
I see building a business in IM as trying to ‘push’ a heavy vehicle (like a bus) up a long hill. It is difficult. It takes a long time to get up near the crest of the hill. There are many times along the way you wonder if you can even get to the top of the hill. You can think of many really good reasons why you should quit pushing. There is much doubt about whether
you can even get to the top of the hill. There is much doubt about whether it’ll be worth it, even if you can get to the crest of the hill. (All work, no income).
But you keep pushing. And pushing. At some point you notice the bus is nearing the crest of the hill (Income starts trickling in).
As the bus begins to go over the crest of the hill, you can’t help to notice it is taking much less effort to keep the bus moving forward. (Income increases enough to really get your attention).
As the bus fully crests the hill, it is taking very little effort, and is actually continuing on without any effort. (Your expenses are being met quite nicely).
That is the beauty of residual or, passive income. If you want to relax your effort somewhat, after the bus crests the hill, you can do that because the return on your investment comtinues to come in.
(Reasons to be Cheerful, part 6)
Hi Dave, awesome comment and awesome perspective!!! I know you’ve worked hard for your top 10 ranking, it’s only a matter of time for you until you get that momentum working for you 🙂
Where better to start your journey, or how better to systematize your understanding of a new field of expertise, than to follow a path already taken by so many others who have succeeded, before branching out on your own.
That’s something I have to constantly remind myself, and Brian and yourself have done just that in this post–reminding us to stick to just ONE system until we, for lack of a better term, master it. It’ll take a lot more resources to take bis and pieces of multiple money-making systems to form one yourself, without actually having already succeeded in any of them.
That’s probably where idea-hopping would lead us…lost in a sea of fragmented ideas with no real proof (personal experience and testing) to dispute or support any one concept.
Hope that made some sense…
Nonetheless, thank you both for the great advice!
Thanks for your comment Ken…makes perfect sense to me. I also like to think of it as baking a cake…if you stick to just 1 recipe, it’ll probably turn out better than if you try to combine several different recipes…
Lol, yep totally…unless you really know what you’re doing.:)
One thing I have learned following Brian and you Aidan, is setbacks aren’t permanent unless you let them be. Some days it’s tough to work through problems, but leaving them for a while and coming back later or asking for help usually gets me where I want to go.
Hi Jeff, that’s right – setbacks are temporary, and obstacles are what stop the determined from succeeding 🙂 Thanks for your comment!
I have been following you guys ever since. Its weird how i still get sales from those halloween sites like in june and july.
🙂
Gotta love those random recurring sales 😉
Hey there Aidan thanks for making this video i m sure it will be very usefull and i always like hearing from Brian so thank you both for sharing.
Thanks Simon, and you’re welcome!
I can relate to what Dave said. The problem is that the crest of the hill appears to keep getting further away, or somebody is sitting in the bus while I am pushing it, resting his foot on the brake. Fortunately (unfortunately?) I am either too stubborn or too stupid to give up, even though that thought crosses my mind every time I look at my IM income stats and wonder if I really needed that $1.37 earned today.
I hear you about sticking with a method with someone you can trust, and Brian has done a great job in his videos (pbseo and 300-im), but it requires almost super-human effort to maintain focus and keep going when you aren’t even seeing a *sign* that an ROI is forthcoming.
Hi Jon,
A friend of mine forwarded me an email today (it was from Jared Croslow), it really resonated with what so many internet marketers face…it went something like this:
“Here’s a secret I want to share with you, because at times it’s hard.
You keep pushing and pushing and it seems like nothing is happening.
I want you to imagine for a moment you are trying to crack the nut on a fire hydrant.
Now picture this flaming red fire hydrant with a little rust from age, and you have this big wrench trying to break the nut free.
You press…
And press….
And press…..
But nothing seems to be happening.
Then all of a sudden after hours, maybe days, maybe weeks of pressure. The nut spins off and water gushes out.
So much water that you couldn’t stop it if you tried.
This is how *success* is.
You press, and press, and press.
At first it appears nothing is happening, then all of a sudden.
Maybe after months, or years of work. It happens.
The flood gates open, and you couldn’t stop the flow if you tried.
I want you to hold this image with you whenever you feel like what you are doing isn’t working, or feeling like you’ll never get there.
Remember, all that pressing is breaking things free beneath the surface you just can’t see. But one day… it will happen.
BOOM!
So keep on pressing my friend.”
Hi, Aidan,
People lose perspective when they pay more attention to world news far more than they should.
Remembering your visitors the fundamentals of success is a hard job (must be repeated everyday) but I think you should be congratulated exactly for that.
And, sometimes, simple is THE best way to put it. As you did.
I hope all the others will agree with this and read your other articles, too!
Best wishes,
PT
Hey Paolo, thanks for the comment – appreciated!
I can completely relate to your comment about remembering the fundamentals of success…they’re easy to forget, especially with so many distractions around us…
Hi Aidan,
Great video and I think I can relate to Daves comment. It is a long and difficult road but I can see that it is worth the effort and I can see that it works. I am grateful having you guys as teachers. As Dave puts it, I think I am nearing the crest of the hill with one of my sites in the top ten along with my squidoo lens at #4. I am beginning to get a trickle of income. It has been a bit slow for me but it has been my own fault in the past. Reasons for that,classic #3 and #4 I have procrastinated and chased too many shiny objects, wasting money. I am confident that following the “plan” to the letter and doing the work, I will be rolling down the other side of the hill in the months to come.
Hey Jim, thanks for your comment. Now that you know how to get rankings, it’s just a case of replicating it for the right keywords 🙂
Hi Guys
Love the feel of this video.
There you are and both of you are chilling out and talking about work. Thats the nice thing about IM – it mixes well with chilling.
Ciao
R
Hey Rosemary, when you love what you do it’s not really “work”…like replaying to blog comments on a Saturday morning for example 🙂
Hi Gang,
Great video
@Dave Christensen, I really like your analogy been shoving the bus for a long time , every now and then I hit a small dip in the road and get some income from a forgotten blog on a weird subject – I never knew there was a system for coloring handguns but what the hey it earns me $25 or so a year on a free blog.
The one thing point I would add is you need to be in a market that has money and can pay. I had a blog in a market (VAMPIRE related) that was getting 300 visits a day but the visitors were young teenage girls with no real disposable income. IMHO you need to be in a big competitive market with credit cards 😉
Regards
Nick
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the comment. I’m not sure you need to be in one of the “BIG” niches like credit cards, but I agree 200% that if you’re trying to sell a product then you need to first be sure that theres a proven market 🙂
Nothing wrong with $25 from a free blog!
Hi Aidan,
Should have clarified what I meant by big niche – I was talking about “Golf” or any other sport, Weight Loss, Fitness, Gardening etc.
Small niche = 18th century harpsicord sheet music
My rule of thumb is if its not on DMOZ.com I’m not certain its worth pursuing.
Regards
Nick
Hi again Nick, you’re probably right. I hadn’t thought of using DMOZ as a place to get niche ideas 🙂
The key for me is always the search volume (for adsense sites) and the search volume + commercial intent for website where I’m actually selling anything (affiliate + eCom)
Well said. The biggest problem I’ve had for years is “Jumping from one idea to the next”.
I wish I could stop doing that.
I am suffering from “information overload”.
Hi Mark, I’m glad you’ve recognized this to be an issue…focus on one thing and you’ll get better results 🙂