I reckon one of the big attractions of running an online business is that you don’t often have to deal with real people face to face.

If you write an email saying ‘I’m sorry I won’t be refunding you because you purchased my product more than 30 days ago, and I only offer a 30 day guarantee!’, it’s just an email. It’s gone once you press ‘send’

You might get an email back with a choice word or two from your (now ex) customer. But that’s about it.

If it comes to the worst case scenario they’ll run a chargeback or write something nasty about in some forum or other. But as business discomfort goes, it’s not that bad.

If you’re running a real world business and you do the same thing when someone comes into your shop or office a LOT of different factors come into play.

First you size each other up – physical size matters in the real world and if you’re a 5’2” mini-hitler ranting about your business terms to a 6’7” ex special forces, highly disgruntled customer you could very well finish up with the blunt end of the office stapler poking out of your ass as you limp into the A&E department of your local hospital.

Then there’s the small matter of having to look into someone’s eyes and tell them they’re NOT having their money back.

If you’ve ever complained in a shop or restauarant then you’ll know it’s an uncomfortable experience for most normal people (Liverpudlians and New Yorkers excluded)

Likewise having a customer break down in tears because you’re not offering the refund they want is disquieting, even disturbing.

So why the current trend in IM for ‘offline marketing’?

Well I have to admit to being tempted into this area myself because there’s not much of a learning curve.

Now before all you offline ‘experts’ get precious about how complicated it is, please remind yourself that I’m not (nor is anyone reading this blog) as blissfully unuaware of how websites and stuff work as your average offline business owner is.

Seriously – we’re all GENIUS level with our knowledge of websites, squeeze pages, autoresponders, wordpress, plugins, testing and tracking systems, email capabilities etc etc etc compared to the average business owener who runs the restaurant up the road.

I had a quick look through my local yellow pages today, then did some local Google searches.

I’ll tell you now, if I want a mobile friendly website creating or some basic SEO doing on my hypothetical offline business website, not only do I (if I were an average business owner) not have a bloody clue about how to do it, but neither do most of the local businesses that claim to be able to PROVIDE these services!!

Most non-IM peeps who say they are SEO experts or whatever just AREN’T. Compared to you and me they’re green newbs who still think keyword stuffing is state fof the art.

Real competition is tiny.

You have the knowledge of a GOD compared to most ‘website designers’ out there who have no idea how far the technology in IM has moved over the past two years.

And therefore you can charge STOOOOPID prices such as $1,000 for installing a WP blog, uploading a nice theme and doing some SEO using the all in one SEO plugin. Would take you two hours at the most.

Even better you can get the whole thing outsourced for $200 tops and pocket the rest.

Simple

Frighteningly, stupidly simple.

So why aren’t we all doing it?

I’ll tell you why….because it involves talking to real business owners and that means people who are watching their expenses very carefully, have probably been running their ‘real’ business for several years and are absolutely bloody ruthless business people.

Yep – even the little old lady who runs the cake shop up the road will SLAUGHTER you when it comes to a business deal.

Why?

Because you’ve been living in a soft, cosy, padded world populated by fairies and fluffy puppies, never having to come into contact with anything hard or spiky to burst your IM bubble.

You’ve done business hidden behind a gmail account and Aweber and you’re SOFT.

You’ve lost any edge you ever had, and to be honest you probably never had one anyway.

(and yes having ventured back out into the real world of business lately I can tell you my balls are still sore from where I’ve been metaphorically kicked in them because I’ve lost my edge over the past few years of online marketing. Owwww!)

But SERIOUSLY if you’re thinking about offline marketing consider this…

These people deal with sales reps on a daily basis. Cold calling, hard selling b*astardo sales men. They also deal with people who owe them money, staff who are impolite, late, steal from the till and have numerous days off with hangovers while pretending they’ve got ‘food poisoning’ (shouldn’t have had those extra two vodkas ah?)

They have to deal with enforced meetings to discuss overdrafts at banks who lost the equivalent of a small country’s GDP because they were (and are) run by moral crooks.

And then finally, FINALLY when they’re just about to start work on keeping their business above water in the middle of the biggest depression we’ve seen for years (‘dip’ my arse), YOU turn up and try to explain why their number one priority should be a PRETTY WEBSITE.

You’ll get ripped to SHREDS.

If you do get the job they’ll probably bargain you down at least 40%. Then when you have your first ‘real’ meeting (while you’re blinking, pasty-faced into the sun after leaving your computer for the first time in two years) they’ll slash your profit margin to almost non existence by insisting you add ‘extras’ in order to seal the deal.

You will not have the slightest idea how to deal with a real person who isn’t just ‘passionate’ about their business. In fact they probably won’t have the luxury of being passionate. They’ll be trying too hard to keep costs down and profits up to feed their families.

Then YOU turn up and with your little flowchart, try to explain how SEO works and why they NEED to capture their leads.

Phew! Take a breath Sheps.

Some will buy the package of course.

Then they’ll phone you every day to ask more questions, alert you to more problems, or simply moan at you because it doesn’t look/do/bring sales like you implied it would.

This isn’t IM any more Toto, and real businesses are unlikely to hand over $1,200 and then allow you to walk away leaving them with nothing but a new BLOG.

No chance. Nope. Nada.

They’re offliners, they’re not retarded.

If you’re scared of running your own WSO because it ‘might flop’ or because people ‘might not like it’ then don’t even THINK about doing anything offline until you’ve dipped your toe in the water when it comes to dealing with real people, not email addresses on an autoresponder list.

Otherwise it’s like sending a virgin out to milk a bull.

There is some good news from this ranty blog post though.

Dealing with offline businesses is also great fun, and feels fabulous because you’ll immediately realise you’re running a real business where you’re out there in the open, with just your wits and skill to protect you.

It’s a much more ‘alive’ feeling than an IM business. It really is.

Because it involved real business skills, which are something we don’t see too much of in the typical internet marketing arena.

My advice to you?

There actually might not be any – I just fancied having a rant and sharing my honest views about offline marketing.

Oh sorry – yes there IS a point, and it’s this…

Despite what I said in this post, you ARE in an amazing position to market to offlne businesses because you are in the top ONE PERCENT (that’s an utter guess by the way but it sounds good) of people on the planet who know their way round websites, autoresponders etc

Most offline businesses don’t even know that autoresponders exist, let alone what they do….and content spinning, drip feed, autoblogging, .edu backlinking and ‘do follow’ links….

Well they’re like something out of ‘Harry Potter and the Chunky Meat Pie’ – total bloody fantasy.

But I’m serious –

You DO need to get some business skills first – raise your head above the parapet and get some communication going with real people – outsourcers, clients, potential customers

(Yes why not actually EMAIL someone personally and ask for their business rather than trying to ‘drive traffic’ or SEO your site to number one in Google?)

Find a site that needs your copywriting skills, or graphic design or whatever and email them personally.

Introduce yourself and what you do – jump on Skype or give them a call on the phone. Bet that’s got you sweating eh?

But it’s exhilarating when you DO get in contact with other online businesses to do deals.

It feels REAL

Do it online first where you can still hide (a bit) behind your computer and get some experience.

Because if you don’t, when you end up trying to sell your SEO service to the local pet shop owner up the road, he’s gonna feed your innards to his hamsters.

Comments welcome as usual

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This is a great place to start if you want to experiment with setting up a ‘real’ business providing services to ONLINERS while you get your business ‘mojo’ back. It won’t break the bank if you find it’s not for you but it’s a really clever little system. This guy pulls in four figures a month selling IM services to online businesses. Find out exactly how he does it HERE

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Check out these genuine comments you sent….

The question I asked was:

What are the main challenges you face building your online business? Eg: Product creation, list building.

You said….

‘Staying focused…’

‘Confidence good solid training list building someone to trust’

‘FOCUS is the main one, I have many projects that are giving me some scarce results’

‘Have trouble focusing on one thing. Tend to over complicate things’

‘Mostly lack of focus and continuity. I have started things, don´t see results and stop’

‘Confidence and Focus’

‘NO focus at all..’

‘Motivation to work through when things get difficult and monotonous, rather than jumping onto another new project’

‘Find it hard to concentrate, maybe a good kick up the arse might help!”

(Love the last comment – sounds like me!)

They’re all from the survey I asked you to fill in (thanks) some weeks back

They’re obviously all anonymous so I don’t know who said what, BUT aren’t they interesting?

Obviously there were a lot of people who said they struggled with the technical side of IM too – things like creating a website, installing a blog, setting up a followup message in Aweber, making a squeeze page etc

But I was pretty stunned to see what a high percentage had problems remaining focused on their online businesses.

When I’m working with my one on one clients I regularly get someone saying ‘Ok Tony THIS is the point where I would have abandonded the project to buy the next latest shiny product!’

It’s usually when things start getting a bit challenging or they come across something they’ve never done before.

I keep them on track and invariably we see the project through to the other side.

But if they’d stopped when the going got tough, those mental and financial rewards, not to mention the ongoing security of an internet business would have vanished.

Look every time you spend a day or a week or longer working on something then just abandon it to go buy the next big launchey thingy, you’re throwing away WEEKS of your life.

I can’t believe the number of people who say to me

‘I started a passive income / niche / blog / whatever site but it only brought in $20 a month so I moved on to something else’

What??!!

Give it to me then you silly git!

When a fire’s burning – a tiny little fire – it’s simple for any eeeejit to come alng and put more wood on to make it bigger right?

The hard part is spending an hour sweating, hunched over a piece of wood, rubbing sticks together to create it in the first place.

I still maintain that making your first $100 online is MUCH harder than increasing it to $10,000.

It’s the basic conception – the creation – that hurts like trapping your private parts in a zipper.

Which is why most people abandon it.

Going back to our $20 a month site.

I said ‘Give it to me’  because I know that if something works, no matter how small the scale, I can increase it.

I just stick at stuff until it works.

I don’t knacker myself out every day spending 10 hours trying to move projects forward like some marketers.

That’s REALLY stupid, and the best way to lose interest. If Angelina Jolie cleaned my house naked every day I’d probably get used to it in, say a decade or two.

You can overkill things y’know.

You need motivation.

Once way of doing this is to get an accountability partner. Now being English and northern I get a bit nervous around stuff like this. I still think therapy is eight pints of beer and a fight for the last taxi at the end of the night.

But I work with several business partners and accountability works.

It’s very basic but deadly effective and goes something like this:

Me: I’ll write up that copy and get it over to you for noon tomorrow at the latest.

Them: (the next day) Did you write the copy for me Tone?

Me: Errr I didn’t actually. I seemed to have a lot to do and it got pushed to one side.

Them: Well get it done now you useless tit because you’re holding the whole project up. How anyone can run a business on those lines I’ll never know.

So duly embarassed I drop everything and write the copy like I was supposed to.

And of course if THEY then don’t come up with something in the near future I can yell at them back.

Eventually we both do things on time because we don’t want to look silly.

If you can get yourself an accountability partner I’d do so because it works.

Likewise if you can make your first project a partnership then I’d highly recommend it. You can support each other, motivate each other and threaten each other if someone isn’t pulling their weight.

And it seems like this is a bigger issue in IM than I thought for newcomers, even based on the small survey I did.

So what can we do about it?

Well I dunno really.

If you’d like a dedicated thread on my blog where you can make yourself publicly accountable to other readers (and me), would that float your boat?

It’s just an idea but if you’re into it, leave your comments below and I’ll set it up.

You (and me) can post on it saying stuff like ‘by next Monday I’ll have finished my sales page and I’ll post the URL here for feedback / critiques.

It’s just a thought anyhow. If feel like you’d benefit from some Hippy Marketing Tribe support then post your comments below and we’ll see what happens.

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I think we’re in for a rollercoaster ride this year.

It looks like the USA and it’s mates (including the UK) are going to invade or attack Iran in some way. There are a couple of aircraft carriers and a shedload of warships down there at present.

They’re not there to get a tan.

So no matter how optimistic you are, fairy dust isn’t going to keep the price of oil down.

On top of that the Euro is fast turning into toilet paper, the British government are taking benefits away from the weakest members of society and the American government seems determined to pass laws that will allow them to lock up ANY citizen that bugs them without a trial.

Top it off with ACTA – the  internet ‘anti-piracy’ legislation that appears to me to be a back door for a bloody big ‘OFF’ switch for the entire internet. That’s raising it’s ugly head again.

And it’s just gone February.

So as we wave farewell to various basic human freedoms, freedom of speech and the last vestiges of hope that us in the west will EVER allow other nations to just do their own thing, let’s look at why it’s VITAL that you get your internet business up and running this year.

1. Because the world is going mad, and you can either put on your tin foil hat, rush out to buy the latest widescreen TV and join them

2. Or you can take a step back and think…’Shit, my time to becoming financially self-sufficient is fast disappearing down the plug hole of destiny’

Whew! Quick splash of the face with cold water and my rant is over.

From the day you’re born your whole life is about CONTROL.

When you’re a kid (and if you’re lucky) this usually comes in the form of loving parents / guardians.

Teachers take over this role when you hit school age and while they see conformity as the biggest virtue a young human can aquire (‘Oh she’s always punctual, polite and well dressed’) rather than a questioning, active mind (why IS there no mention of the British concentration camps in the Boer war in my history book Miss?’), on the whole, school is about care as well as control.

Then comes your job (we’ll miss out marriage in case my wife reads this)

I’ve talked about this before. It’s wrong to have to ask permission or lie to go to see your son’s first school football game, or your daughter’s Nativity play.

It’s definitely wrong to have to ask permisison to take a piss because someone will have to replace you on the production line (been there)

And it’s DEFINITELY wrong that someone else decides how much you’re worth and how much they’re going to pay you each month.

I’m NOT a leftie liberal who thinks that being an employer is evil. I’m an employer.

I just think that there are different kinds of people in the world.

AND THE FACT THAT YOU’RE TRYING TO IMPROVE YOUR SITUATION THROUGH INTERNET MARKETING PUTS YOU FIRMLY IN THE ‘SPECIAL PERSON’ CATEGORY.

Not because of the internet marketing thing, but because you’re aware that there’s room for improvement in your life and you are willing to take the responsibility for making that change.

It;’s cool.

You should pat yourself on the back.

And more importantly it’s about doing what very few people ever do in their lives.

Taking control BACK from the people who have it, and putting it firmly back in your own hands.

Acually, being your own person is pretty easy to do, in theory anyway.

All you need to do is become debt free and work for yourself.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but I AM saying that if you know what needs
to be done – having a target – then it becomes SOMEWHAT easier than
wandering round not knowing how to take back your freedom.

Work for yourself.
Become Debt free.

That way, few people have control over you, your family or your life.

Think about your current situation.

If you’re in a job, your entire leisure time is controlled by your boss.

Don’t think so?

Try taking next week off and spending it learning to paint.

Tell your boss that no you’re NOT taking some of your holiday days, and you’re not sick, you just won’t be in next week, and perhaps the week after that because you’ve just bought some acrylics, got a nice big canvas and the light in your kitchen is just PERFECT for painting.

Likewise try telling your mortgage lender that you’ll be taking a year off from paying them because you thought it’d be fun to spend the money on a small boat. Nothing too fancy but you won’t be paying them anything more for 12 months, at which time you’ll pick up repayments again.

You have to work because of your debts or outgoings.

If you didn’t have debts you could work part-time. Maybe a couple of days a week.

Control.

Just because 99% of the population are in the same situation doesn’t mean it’s right – it’s just means it’s the norm.

BIG difference.

It’s quite uncomfortable to hear this sort of thing right?

I agree.

Wanna know WHY it makes you uncomfortable?

Because you’re one of the tiny minority in society who actively wants to improve their situation, and WORSE – you KNOW it’s possible.

Sometimes you wish you’d never heard of this internet marketing lark right?

Because then you’d have the blissful ignorance of most people who simply aren’t aware of the HUGE potential for the internet holds for making you FREE.

You know.

You can’t close Pandora’s box once you’ve opened it, so you might as well get on with the business of creating a freedom-producing income for yourself online.

Even if you go back to your life before you saw the potential of internet marketing you’ll always wander back, checking the Warrior Forum for posts, or subscribing to a new list ‘just to see…’

So why not just resolve to get on with the job of earning that extra money that can free you up forever?

Forget everything that’s gone before – the frustration, the failures, the information overload and the fear of making mistakes.

And start again, from new, right now.

An internet marketing virgin.

You can’t unlearn everything you already know, but you CAN ignore what you don’t need.

One simple system.

Focus on one thing until it’s done.

If you’ve been trying to get your online business going for more than a year and it’s just not happening, it’s time to DUMP what you’ve been doing, because it ain’t working.

Go back to basics. Go back to fundementals. Get away from your computer and sit quietly with a notepad and pen. Switch off distractions. Take control. Take control.

Comments welcome as usual 🙂

======================================================

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It’s about focusing on just one thing that works, making fast profits, and is highly upscalable.

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I’ve spent the past weeks putting together a brand new personal 1-2-1 coaching program for subscribers only.

It’s based on the results of the survey I posted on my blog earlier this month. I got an amazing response (thank you) and I’ll be sharing the results of the survey, which was very eye-opening in my newsletter on 20th of this month.

I wanted to deliver am affordable coaching program where I could work one-on-one with you. I considered group coaching but I know from personal experience that you just can’t deliver the same quality when you’re working with a group as you can working with one person.  Also judging from your survey replies I can safely say that this is possibly the most unliked form of coaching around. I can fully understand that.

I had two things I wanted to be able to do with this coaching:

1. To make it affordable for people who need it most, but at the same time I knew I had to ‘price out’  tyre kickers and people who might not take it seriously. If I’d priced this coaching at $47 I’d have sold 300 slots but there’s NO WAY I would have had time to work with everyone on an individual basis.

So if I’ve priced you out of this opportunity I’m truly sorry, but at the end of the day you are building a business, and that’s always going to require investment.

On the other hand I knew that pricing this at $997 per month, while making me a decent return, would mean that the people I really want to work with just couldn’t afford it.

2. The second criteria had to be the amount of time I’d need to free up to do this. Remember I only work a couple of days a week usually, and I need to almost double that time to work on a one to on basis.

Which is why I’ve limited this opportunity to just 10 people.

Financially it doesn’t make sense for me to do this. I could easily make the same money from running just two extra promos a month, with no extra ongoing work.

Instead I’ll be working significantly more for little return.

Now before you start recommending me as the first internet marketing saint please realise that I will be seeing a lot in terms of non-financial rewards. Apart from the buzz of watching my coaching clients start up their own (hopefully) successful businesses, I’m also going to get a lot of word of mouth kudos and the business that brings from successful clients.

So I’m not quite ready for that halo yet 🙂

Finally, please realise I’m not pissing about with this. I want to work with 10 clients on their businesses so that they can acheive their goals, be it simply quitting their job or having half a million dollars in the bank by summer. I expect my clients to work on their businesses at least as hard as I will.

Once these 10 slots have sold out I’ll put a form where you can register for a waiting list. You’ll then be notified if and when I decide to open this again. I don’t know if that will happen, I’ll have to see how it goes.

Here’s the link to the page where you can sign up to work with me.

http://www.hippymarketing.com/121personalcoaching/

If this is your thing I’d love to work with you.

Comments on this welcome as always, below.

 

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A slightly belated blog post due to the usual over-indulgences, social engagements and rabbit-in-the-headlights feeling that Christmas and New Year seem to involve.

Throw kids with Chicken Pox into the mix, a dead chicken (old age we think, not part of the Christmas feast) and various Wii injuries and you’re starting to get the idea.

We had a thoroughly good time and I hope you did too.

So welcome to 2012.

I’ve read a lot of marketer’s blog posts this week.

Many are about predictions for 2012. A lot are boring waffles about what the particular marketer plans to do for 2012.

Who CARES what target he’s set for himself?

What about how it can help his readers eh?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m always happy when someone makes an extra half million, but immediately afterwards I want to know what it can do for MY lifestyle. I don’t think that’s selfish BTW, I just thihk it’s how anyone should approach making money online.

I don’t know if you agree with me, but for me, Internet Marketing boils down to just one thing.

Teaching people how to make money online, then getting stuck in and working with them.

Telling you that MY goal is to own a new Ferrari by July 2012 does absolutely bugger all for your business plan right?

So here’s what I’m planning for the next month or so, and I’d love it if you’d like to get involved.

I want to do some personal coaching with you.

Now hang on, I know I already have a $12,000 a year personal high-level mentoring program (sorry but that one is full) and I’m ALSO aware that this prices most people out of the equation immediately anyway.

Also, it doesn’t take Brenda the bare-knuckle psychic to see that things are getting economically VERY tight all over the world and this year is only going to get worse.

So if you’ll allow me I’d like to start work with you RIGHT NOW, on two things that could offer some protection for you and your family:

1. An online business to provide extra money or a full-time income

2. PERSONAL coaching from me that is affordable for the people who need it most – usually those on a tight budget.

So I’m putting together a VERY limited program, where I’m going to take on a handful of people and personally coach them to success. Not as a group – but on a one-to-one basis.

Now I haven’t fixed the price or the delivery method yet.

I want to see what YOU want first.

I DO know that my coaching will probably be unlike anything you’ve come across or signed up for in the past.

If you’ve already bought any of my products you’ll know what I mean.

So if you’d be interested in working with me on a personal level then have a look at the survey below and let me know what sort of thing you’d be comfortable with.

I’ll look at the results and should be able to put together something that you can both afford and that you’re comfortable with.

I’m planning on running a few more surveys this year to find out how I can provide what you want.

Click on the link below to take the survey if you have 2 minutes to spare.

**LINK REMOVED**

EDIT: I’ve taken down the link because of the phenomenal response. The 100 free survey responses I was allowed in my SurveyMonkey trial were eaten up by your responses in the first couple of hours but I’ve enough information to give me a very good idea of what you want to see.

In the meantime any comments about what sot of personal coaching you’d like to see from me are welcome – just use the comments box below. I’ll include every answer and opinion when I’m putting my program together.

This coaching will ONLY be open to my subscribers.

Thanks guys, and I look forward to working with you.

T

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Last Wednesday in the UK around 2 million people went on strike to protest about what is, in essence, government theft of their pension disguised as having to pay higher monthly contributions and having to work for a significant number of extra years until retirement. I wish them the best of luck.

Our village school was closed therefore and it was a chance to spend some times with the kids.

But my missus and I still needed to work. Christmas is a busy time, not least because of the offline business that is based at home, but also because it’s a GREAT time for internet marketing because people are used to spending lots of money at Christmas, so it’s a good time to put out offers in my experience.

Most of it was paperwork – planning, ideas and admin and would only take an hour or two of ‘power’ work.

The kids also needed to do their own ‘admin’ which involved letters to Father Christmas (still young enough to be doing this!) Christmas cards to classmates, family and friends and even learning lines for the Nativity play up at school next week.

The usual, boring, wonderful family stuff that I love.

So in true Shepherd style we relocated everything from the house to the pub up the road.

It’s a 17th Century Manor House (the pub) so we’re talking roaring fires, Christmas decorations, real ale and good grub, and apparently a Ghostly Monk who haunts the Gents toilets. Cottaging in the afterlife eh? (If you’re not sure DON’T look it up)

We took the usual notepads, stuff for the kids and redirected the phones lines from home to the iPhones which also doubled as our internet connection. Yep – this quaint old English pub has a wireless connection faster than ours at home!

We grabbed a huge table next to the fire and settled in. We got drinks in for all of us, and ordered food, then settled down to wait. The food takes a while to appear but it’s worth it and we were making the day up as we went along anyway. No rush.

Here’s a pic of my daughter about to tackle her Christmas cards with the same expression I had on my face when about to tackle this blog.

We got about ten percent the work done before the food arrived and the rest of it later, having a lot of fun, chat and taking the pee out of each other. I sampled a couple of their real ales and my my wife tucked into the the wine.

It was feeling very Christmassy.

Once you’ve got the foundations of your Internet Marketing business built, it actually doesn’t take that much to keep it ticking over if you want to take some time off. Even a serious amount of time off.

The important thing is making sure you do the RIGHT things.

In western countries most of us are conditioned from birth to have a ‘work ethic’. We feel that if we’re not working around 8 hours a day we’re not doing ‘proper’ work.

My own personal belief is that the Calvinistic worth ethic we’re stuck with is only about 500 years old and it’s purely there to keep people tired and unable to have too many original thoughts or ideas.

It’s social control. Keep ’em knackered and they won’t question the system too much.

What bright spark came up with 8 hours a day, 5 days a week anyway?

It’s arbitrary. Why not 3 days work and four days off?

The technology is in place to free us up. It really is.

Yet the more ‘time saving’ devices that are invented, the longer the average working week seems to become.

Doesn’t make too much sense to me. Yeah I know the industrial revolution changed the way we work, increased output needed a standardized workforce but I have to say, reading between the lines it all seems like BOLLOCKS to me. How come I can receive a bank payment from across the world in three seconds, my phone has more processing power than the first manned space flight but they can’t manage to give the world’s population Fridays off?

Grrrrrrr!

We’re here to make babies, look after the place and have fun. To me that does NOT include some corporate tit inventing ‘overtime’.

I could rant about this for a long time but here’s the point of this blog post:

Most of us find it VERY hard to shake the work ethic. Me included. I spent a LOT of time feeling guilty that I should be working on my Internet Marketing business 5 or 6 days a week when I first started, even though I just didn’t have the time.

Most of us don’t if we come from a full-time job and are trying to build an IM business. (Can you imagine how much easier it would be if we all had fridays off?)

Then I realised that wasn’t the point of what I wanted to do. For me it’s NEVER been about the money. It’s about the TIME.

My kids are both under 8.

No matter how much money I acrue in the future, I’m never, ever going to get back this time again. Once it’s over it’s gone forever, so I make sure I spend as much time as possible with them. Because at some point they’re not going to want to hold my hand when we’re walking up the street, they’re going to want twenty quid and to borrow the car.

Which is fine. It’s what happens. It’s natural.

But too many marketers bring their 5 days a week, 8 hours a day routine into their IM business. I know it’s fun working on your own business and doesn’t often seem like work, but ask yourself why you got into IM in the first place?

I get emails from marketers who spend hours every day doing stuff that isn’t vital to their business just to ‘put in the hours’. Trust me if you’re one of these people who put in an 8 hour day every day to ‘discipline’ yourself, you WILL find something to fill those hours.

It might be forum browsing or Skype chatting. It might be learning a new marketing technique or testing out a new method. But you WILL fill those 8 hours. Trouble is, as Pareto states in his law, probably only 20% of it will be effective. Think what non-work stuff you could be doing with the other 80%?

Personally, I’ve always preferred to take a ‘power hour’ or two a day and really hammer through the tasks that need to be done to put money into my business. I also have time I put aside for developing new things.

I didn’t get into IM to work 40 hours a week. Sure there are many marketers who earn a lot more money than me. That’s fine with me. I’m very happy.

Back to our day off…

After we’d got the ‘work’ done in the pub we headed up into the village and decided to go for a coffee at a great little coffee house where the kids can paint pottery. It’s then fired in the kiln and we pick it up a week or so later.

Here’s my son just having finished a piece of chocolate cake the size of his own head, while painting a ceramic Santa.

By the time we’d finished it was dark (as it is in Yorkshire at 4pm at this time of year) so we wandered home. A really simple, but pretty great day.

As I managed to wedge my stuffed belly behind my desk later that evening I saw that my ‘pub power hour’ promo had almost hit the four figure mark. This is possible from a business that was set up part-time, AS LONG as I concentrate the time I dO work on what really matters.

Here’s an example.

I’m writing this post on Friday and this afternoon I’m going up to school to take the kids round their school fair. Tombola stalls, visits to Santa (who looks spookily like the school caretaker) face painting and the rest. My wife is running one of the stalls.

So I’ve got another hour or so clear to work before I need to set off.

I’ve got a list on my desk of half a dozen items I need to do. Three of those will actively put money into my bank account, another one is to publish this blog post and the other two are instructions to send to my PA.

Now I wasn’t born with a personal assistant stapled to the back of my head, it’s something I implemented as soon as I recognised the need (far too late actually), but remember I’ve never worked 8 hour days (for any length of time) on my biz. Sometimes I’ve had to pull an all-nighter to get something done sure, but I’m talking about my ongoing business model. I work maybe 15-20 hours a week on my biz.

In fact since this is the first ever year that my children have both been in full-time school I haven’t wanted to work any more than that while they’ve been at home.

So my advice to you would be threefold:

1. ONLY do what matters. If something isn’t actively putting money into your bank account or isn’t more than ONE step away from putting money into your account (for example installing tracking code on a squeeze page won’t actually make you any money but the conversion tracking and subsequent tweaking WILL) then ask yourself if you really NEED to do it

2. Don’t start work with 8 hours in front of you. Write a small list and then break it down into an hour’s work. Once that’s done go get a coffee with someone you fancy or play a console game for an hour. It’s NOT about wasted time, it’s about training yourself to focus on what needs to be done.

‘Oh it’s alright for you Shepherd, your business is built! You don’t have to put as much work in!’

Yeah well my business didn’t plop out of my arse already built. And as I’ve said before, I’ve NEVER worked on it full-time for any length of time. That’s why I built into it the processes that really matter from day one – continuity, list-building and traffic driving. Do you need much else? Get those basics set up and you’ll have the freedom to experiment with other stuff without having to worry about your bread and butter income.

3 Finally, you are NOT evil if you work less than 8 hours a day. Nor are you lazy or ‘not buckling down to work’. You’re an internet marketer and thus you have a different set of rules to an employee.

YOU make the rules. Nobody else, and that includes your spouse, mother-in-law or anyone who spouts dung on the warrior forum.

I’d go so far as to say working 8 hours a day was actually BAD for you, bad for your business and bad for your personal relationship.

I know it’s easy for me to say. Why not make it easier for YOU to say too?

CLICK HERE to get a look at the ONLY internet marketing system you’ll ever need to learn!

Comments welcome below

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I’ve done some pretty stupid stuff in my IM career over the years, most of which has raised my stress levels for a few minutes if not longer.

I once prepared a broadcast email when launching out a new product but didn’t realise I’d put the DOWNLOAD page URL in rather than the salespage.

So everyone who opened the email got it for free.

That stressed me out a bit.

Got some nice emails though.

Then there was the time I launched a product after a few beers. I did it from a hotel room while at a seminar….

All went well until I realised I hadn’t quite finished the salespage completely and didn’t have any of the necessary passwords with me to access FTP or any of the members areas.

A few frantic emails and phone calls back to base sorted it out, but it also gave me a few grey hairs.

It went on to make over $100k though so it all turned out well.

But those small glitches pale into insignificance when it comes to the WORST and most stressy 5-10 minutes in Internet Marketing.

Adding the WSO buttons to your WSO thread and upsell pages when you make your Warrior Special Offer live.

If you’ve not run a WSO before you might not realise what a bloody FAFF the whole thing is.

(For non Brits a ‘faff’ is an inconvenience or a long drawn out process that isn’t straightforward)

Here’s how the process is supposed to work:

1. You write your WSO thread offering your deal and submit it to be approved.

2. When it’s approved you then have to pay $40 to make it go live. Approval can take five minutes to 24 hours in my experience.

3. Once you’ve paid and it’s live you THEN need to go over to WarriorPlus and buy a $19 license to use a WarriorPlus button on your thread (this is advisable because your thread then gets listed in the WarriorPlus system and you can track all your stats. But more importantly it attracts affiliates who promote your product)

4. Once you’ve bought your $19 license you then have to complete 15 or so fields for each one with info such as download delivery page, title, commission for affiliates, keywords etc.

5. ALL THE TIME YOU’RE DOING THIS YOUR THREAD IS LIVE BUT WITH NO PAYMENT BUTTON ON IT

6. Then you get the button code and you have to edit your thread and add the code.

7. Hopefully the button shows up. IF you’ve done it correctly.

8. This all takes me about 5 minutes but I can’t relax yet, because…..

9. I also have two upsells in my sales funnel and they both require me to buy a £19 license, put the code onto my OWN pages (there’s no forum thread for upsells so you usually host them yourself)

10. Then you’ve got to FTP the sites up to your sever to make them live.

While all this is going on you’ll be getting comments on your thread saying things like

‘Where’s the payment button?’

and ‘How am I supposed to pay for this’

and worse, once you DO get the payment button live on your thread, and you’re FAFFING about using DreamWeaver or whatever to put the button code into your OTO or upsell pages people are buying your main WSO and then saying’I saw your OTO but there was no button on it’

I find it a VERY stressful 5 or 10 minutes.

Actually on my latest WSO it took me more like 20 minutes but that’s because the button code wouldn’t go in the right place on the thread and it took me another five minutes to work out what I was doing wrong.

You’re thinking ‘nob head’ right? Getting worked up about nothing.

Let me tell you chaps, I’m no newcomer to IM but this whole putting the button code on isn’t fun.

And if you speak to pretty much anyone who runs WSO’s they’ll mention the button ‘jig’ that they go through each time. It’s like watching a fat bloke trying to tapdance. Metaphorically speaking of course.

That said it’s WELL worth running Warrior Special Offers and I thoroughly recommend them as a source of highly targeted traffic on tap and a relatively fast source of publicity, list building and profit.

You can visit my lastest WSO by clicking the link below:

http://www.jobhaters.com/oneyear

And if you check out the comment I left on the bottom of my thread in the ‘reason for editing’ box, you’ll get an insight into my headstate at the time I was doing the ‘button faff’

Comments welcome below – thanks!

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I’ve been wandering for a few months.

Taking a break from internet marketing because, well it can send you a tad CRAZY if you’re not able to stand back a few feet and see it for what it is, which is certainly interesting, definitely profitable, but not exactly earth shattering in terms of gravitas.

My approach to internet marketing is that if you have the right mindset you’ll be able to make as much money as  you want online… Continue reading →

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I just got hold of a copy of a license for this plugin that allows me to share it with my subscribers so I thought you might like to have a look at WP LIst Pro, and if it’s something you can use on your blogs please accept it with my compliments.

It’s a very simple but clever little plugin. It automatically adds anyone who comments on your blog to your mailing list.

You can download it from the link below. See what you think.

Download WP LIst Pro for FREE HERE

Download the INSTRUCTIONS HERE

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