Not so sure this morning actually.

I had to go into the office for a meeting with a techy. The office is miles over the Yorkshire moors from my house, and this photo was taken as I drove over at 9.30am.

Mist, a bit of snow (I apologise in advance to any Canadians reading this who know what REAL snow is) and fog made it very interesting, not to mention sheep with no road sense.

I actually had to use the four wheel drive option on the car for once.

I’d normally work from home on a manky day like this but as I said I had a pretty important meeting so I set off.

 And 5 minutes ago I got a call from said techy who informed me he’d been ‘out on the beer’ last night and wasn’t in any fit state to make our meeting. 

 At least he trusts me enough to tell me the truth, but I must have pink buttons up the back of my head in some people’s opinion.

So Mr Techy – if you’re reading this – you’re fired!

And sometimes it seems as though real, face to face business has let itself go a little.

As marketers are we spoilt by being able to interact with people at any hour and get pretty responsive replies?

When I outsource work it’ s rarely from someone I’ve actually met – purely because you can’t rely on the most skilled people living within a couple of hundred miles of where you’re based. So I outsource work to people in the US, India, Australia, the Far East and a dozen other places I have to look up on a map.

But I get great work done.

If I had to reply on people with a similar accent to mine I wouldn’t have anywhere near the skills available to me (actually in some parts of Yorkshire they have one brain cell per village that’s loaned out in turn) that I need to run an online business.

And while there is a certain downside to outsourcing using email communication it also means that outsource workers have to be reliable and competant, because if they’re not, It takes less than a day to find someone who is.

So think about that the next time you go into your local shop and get growled at by some grumpy sales assistant who’s only slightly more articulate than the contents of the deli counter.

Whatever part of the world you’re in, the gene pool is a lot shallower than the whole of the internet combined.

Use the resources on the net – and this is my public apology for not using a techy from elance or rentacoder. Next techy I work with, will have a strange accent, a funny sounding name and a different flag on his postage stamp.

And it’ll be bloody great! 🙂

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So I’m sitting here at my desk with my usual two laptops fired up.

I took a quick pic with my phone so you can see me ‘at work’, which is why my hand is reaching towards you – it’s holding the camera.

One laptop shows my email inbox and is also running the Open Office word processing software. I’m editing the latest MonthlyPLR ebook.

And of course I’m logged into my blog to write this.

The other laptop has only one screen open and that’s Youtube.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with internet marketing.

I have headphones in and I’ve been bouncing round in my big comfy leather chair listening to Jimmy Hendrix, Van Morrison, The Fratellis, Radiohead, and other decidely dodgy music while I work.

And I’m having a great time.

This is my first ‘real’ day back at work although I’ve been checking on the emails and stuff throughout the whole of the Christmas period.

And I’m loving it.

It’s really good to be back at work.

And if it doesn’t feel like that for you then maybe you should have a long hard think about what you’re doing.

Because here’s a sad fact about our society.

It’s become the norm to hate work.Most people don’t like their job. In fact we;re brought up to expect to dislike our jobs from an early age, albeit in a very gentle, almost subkiminal way – look at TV adverts and lifestyle TV – much of the focus is on escape, dream lifestyles and getting away from the ‘rat race’.

It’s accepted that work isn’t fun.

Which is partly the reason that we don’t have a mass revolt on the first Monday in January each year.

And it’s possibly the reason why salaries appear to be designed to keep you JUST above the breadline.

Think about it – most people in Western societies (although things may change this year) are able to pay their mortgage or rent, buy decent food, clothe them,selves and their families and have enough left over for holidays, electronic gadgets, trips out, and some nice things for their home.

But not much else.

It’s becoming rarer to hear about people investing for the future.

It’s becoming rarer for people to take off 4 months to travel around Europe or learn how to play the Oboe – or to just take a ‘sabbatical’ from work for a while.

In fact it’s becoming rarer to hear about anyone who doesn’t seem to be just about managing to keep the wolf from the door financially.

How many times do you hear of people who scale down their hours at work – go part time – because they can afford to do so and just ‘want the time’?

Not many.

Are salaries deliberately kept at a level where most people are just about able to survive month to month, unable to stash away any real savings?

I have no idea.

But imagine if a significant percentage of the population had three year’s worth of salary saved up.

Would you have gone into work today with 80 grand in the bank?

Or would you have thought ‘Bugger this, I’m taking a year off to spend canoeing with my family in South America’? or whatever your dream equivalent is?

But life is – or rather SHOULD be – about choices.

Imagine if a million people decided to take a year off at once?

It’ll never happen?

I agree – but it COULD happen to YOU.

The beauty of our social system is that people ‘play the game’ – they follow the rules.

Most people have never thought about taking a year off in their lives, and they never will. Because they think it’s unusual, wacky or just something that other people do.

And that leaves a lot of potential for people like me and you who are aware that there is an alternative way – a much more liberated way – to live.

So if you’ve had serious thoughts about starting or developing your online business but then thought ‘if this is acheivable why isn’t everyone doing it’?

Think again.

Well I’m no psychologist but my guess would be that most people would be gripped with icy cold terror if they even contemplated for a split second the thought of ‘going against the grain’

People are followers by nature. Herd animals.

And there’s safety in that.

But safety costs.

It costs in terms of freedom, finances and time.

Setting up your online business is scary.

You might fail – family and friends might (probably will to start with) laugh at you, ridicule you or possibly even get angry.

You might succeed – even scarier eh? Because then you have to start thinking about what you want to do with your new found money and free time.

In fact how many people go back to full-time jobs after trying to set up their own business ‘because of the security’?

This is a huge undertaking you’re about to begin.

Make no mistake this is a life changing decision.

If you choose to strech yourself by starting your online business be aware that you’re not only starting a business, you’re making a decision to take full responsibility for your life and where it’s going.

You’ll have to decide what you actually enjoy doing, and then go and do it, in the face of the majority of your friends and family who will probably say ‘what the Hell does he/she think he’s playing at??’

He/she has family/a mortgage/ responsibilities / a good job to think about’

Trust me – I turn up at family gatherings looking slightly dishevelled and hairy (just look at the picture on the right!) and listen to family members with ‘good jobs’ (‘for GOD’S SAKE Tony – you could have been an accountant by now!’) tell me where I’m going wrong.

Yeah well I’m the one who’ll be ‘working’ from a Villa on a Greek island for a month sometime this year.

…….and a wooden hut in a forest, a 28 foot sailboat, a gite in France and quite possibly, a pub.

And all because I chose to start an online business.

I chose to do things differently.

Personally I LOVE people who have never even heard of internet marketing, because they’re the people who keep the herd running in one direction.

And we know that the money, the freedom and the choices lie in the other direction.

If you’ve dragged yourself into work today, hating every second and glancing at your watch every five minutes then think on this….

It’s not just going to feel like a long year if you have to do it day after day – IT’S GOING TO feel LIKE A LONG LIFE.

Jump on board with us now – make the smallest of steps NOW while you feel motivated – sign up for The KickStart Course and we’ll guide you through how to set up an online business, or at least give some serious thought to the path you want your life to take.

If you read my blog regularly you’ll know I’m not in the habit of putting many sales links in.

But in this case and judging from the feedback we’ve received I think this is something that can make a difference to a lot of people.

I hope so anyway.

Check out http://www.kickstartcourse.com

See you there.

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So Happy New Year Guys.

The festivities are drawing to a close in our house, luckily no family member has yet killed another (although it was close last night when the last lime was used up in some fancy cake when I needed it for my gin and tonic).

And it’s a new year.

I always feel an amazing sense of anticipation at this time of year, and business and personal ideas buzz round my head.

Reading the emails and blog posts that have been sent and written by various internet marketing experts is always interesting at this time of year, and the advice ranges from excellent to downright obvious ‘BUY MY PRODUCT’!

I on the other hand being generous, giving and extremely hung over feel like offering words of wisdom instead.

Joking aside this is something that hit me when I first came across it (it’s old advice) and I keep a reminder pinned above my desk because I’m guilty as Hell of this particular internet marketing crime.

It’s simply this – not all activity is productive.

Getting up, logging onto your PC and just doing ‘stuff’ won’t bring you any money. You need to be doing the right stuff.

I love designing web page graphics. Adore fiddling about with Photoshop. The thing is, if there was a prize for being crap at it, my shelf would be full because I’m hopeless.

Now that’s an obvious example of doing ‘stuff’ that doesn’t increase my income. It’s much more profitable for me to pay a web designer (hello Darren) to do it for me because in the 8 hours it would have taken me to design a horrible looking header I can earn ten times the cost of the graphic work.

But sometimes it’s not so easy to spot.

What about going through my Aweber account and deleting the people who have unsubscribed but are still on the list?

What about a blog post that doesn’t link to any product or serve any sort or promotional service (like this one) but I just fancied writing anyway?

And what about things that you THINK make you money like writing and submitting articles?

Sure they can create income, but at some point you’ll hit a level where you should be outsourcing this type of thing and getting stuck in to something that you’re really good at – in my case it’s writing ebooks or coming up with new product ideas.

Go back through your Paypal or Clickbank account and look at where most of your online income came from for the past couple of months. THIS will show you where you should be concentrating your efforts.

I was quite amazed to find that a noticeable chunk of last month’s income came from affiliate selling, yet I rarely concentrate on this sort of work unless it’s from pre-existing income streams.

So this month I’ll be making a bit more of an effort to make some affiliate sales in various niches and maybe concentrating less on pay per click, which I enjoy dabbling with but takes up my time and last month only brought in a couple of hundred dollars.

Likewsie if your business isn’t yet bringing in a lot of money the temptation is to try  different things. So for example if you try affiliate marketing and find it only brings in $100 one month, should you try pay per click or article writing?

Well yes, AT SOME POINT, but for now why not stick with something that you can see works?

If you can make $100 through affliate sales then tweak, test and double your efforts rather than spending time on just doing ‘stuff’ that other internet marketers say they do.

Trust your own bottom line – your balance sheet. It’s concrete and real proof of YOUR workable system. Do what has brought you cash. Do it again. Once you know how to do it, outsource it to someone else while you try something else maybe.

And as for 2009….

 Well a leading UK mental health organization has just announced that making new year resolutions is bad for you because it can cause you to become depressed if you don’t acheive your goals.

Well as a marketer it could also leave you poor if you don’t hit some targets and set some goals.

I’m not a huge fan of goal settings but I often promise myself when starting a new product that I won’t judge the results in ANY way for at least 3 months. This gives me breathing space to get on with the project without having one of those crappy deadlines like ‘By 1st March I will have made $10,000 from this project’ approaching.

The next person who tells me to write a goal on a postcard and keep it in my wallet could find they’re storing said postcard in a much darker and tighter place.

Don’t give yourself a hard time just because it’s a new year – instead make things easy on yourself my not trying to judge or quantify what you’re doing for at least 60 days. Tell yourself you won’t set any goals or think about any results so you can focus on the actual task of DOING rather than watching with dread as your goal deadline approaches.

This year is going to be a tough one for a lot of people so don’t go hard on yourself – you need all the emotional support you can get and there’s nobody better than you to provide it.

Instead congratulate yourself for having the balls (ladies too) for actually DOING rather than just thinking about it or as most of the population do, whining but not trying to improve things.

That’s it from me I think. I was considering having some lunch now but after watching (at 2am as the drink flowed) someone’s granny trying to break the Yorkshire record for how far they can carry a pork pie using just their arse cheeks I think I’ll give it a miss.

Happy New Year.

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If you’ve not been hit by the credit crunch yourself I’ll bet you a tenner that you certainly know someone who has.

Repossessions, unemployment, banks getting frightened and trying to squeeze every last cent out of customers in exaggerated charges and pensions disappearing faster than you can say ‘Granny’s here I’ll open another can of dog food’

You’ve got to make light of it because these are seriously hard times and they’ve not even started properly yet.

People have a ‘I’ll worry about the bills after Christmas’ attitude, which is absolutely OK with me – January’s going to come around whether you worry about it or not so why not have fun until you NEED to worry?

So with all this going on you’d be forgiven for feeling that your government, your financial system and your employer have quietly edged away from you to save their own skins and now it’s actually happened……you’re on your own!

And you are- we all are – completely alone when it comes to making a living in the world.

And that’s the way it should be. It’s not healthy to look to other people to provide your living for you, nor is it right that you should support anyone you don’t want to.

No big lecture coming about politics or taking responsibility because it’s bloody scary when you realise that you are in fact a grown up and stand or fall in life by your own efforts.

And just as I said worrying is a fruitless activity until the poop actually hits the fan (and I don’t mean bury your head in the sand, I mean just don’t turn worrying into a hobby), there is also something that’s an even bigger waste of time – and that’s blame.

Sure, your boss might have cut your overtime so he can take his secretary to Bali for a dirty weekend but that’s life. Rather than blaming him, have a think about what you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again (and I don’t mean sending an anonymous letter to his wife although that probably would cheer you up an awful lot)

And that’s what this post is about – embracing the fact that when it comes to making a living you are standing naked in the middle of a football pitch with a sign up your ass that says ‘please employ me’. Not a great position to be in.

 If you have been hit by the economic recession then you’ve been chucked into the deep end without a lifebelt, and you need to do some serious doggy paddling if you’re going to stay afloat. If you’re currently still employed then it’s maybe prudent to consider each week you remain in employment as a bonus and potentially your last employed week.

What I’m saying is my same old boring message – get your online business started before it’s too late.

If you’ve already started then a HUGE congratulations because you really are one of the chosen few – those rare souls who are aware that they can improve their lives hugely through online business. Most people aren’t even aware of what we do guys, let alone know where to start.

Use your advantage to pull ahead of the crowd because in the coming few years it is going to make a difference.

And I might have lied a bit when I said you’re on your own, because none of us are in IM – every single one of us in internet marketing, whether full time, part time or just starting has a support group. Like it or not we ARE a community – a niche – and their are a huge shedful of forums, newsletters and blogs designed to help in many ways – information, freebies or just moral support.

So don’t be worried about signing up to newsletters or mailing lists. You WILL get sold to – sometimes viciously and sometimes gently. The secret is to take what YOU NEED from it and forget the rest.

So if you need a verbal kick up the jacksy to get yourself motivated read my blog, if you need information then jump into tyhe Warrior forum. The secret (again) is to take what you need and ignore what you don’t, without getting offended if someone tries to sell you something.

 I’m on loads of mailing lists and sometimes find myself getting bugged when I receive no less than two emails a DAY from some marketers. Then I calm down, read the emails and think ‘oooh that’s a nice bit of copy – I’ll have that for my swipe file’ or ‘look how he buggered up that {firstname fix} thing in the subject header – that looked awful – I’ll have to be careful when I send out a broadcast’

Cherry pick. Dump the rest.

We’ve been quiet this month because Christmas is a wonderful time and I stop work and crack open the wine at the start of December and come up smiling some time mid January, but I really wanted to write this post because I honesty genuinely know that times are hard for some people.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m having to sell the furniture but I do know from the emails that you send (via the helpdesk now 🙂 ) that there are some good people taking a few knocks from all this economic mismanagement dumped on us.

So I’m posting in the only way I know how – and that’s to say PLEASE don’t lose your dreams of an online business – you might have to work harder if the money isn’t there to pay for outsourcing or get creative if you can’t afford that new software but an online business is the best – most accessible too –  way I know of making a huge difference to your income and therefore your life.

 It’s open to anyone – it doesn’t take a degree, experience or any sort of special ability except sticking at it.

Enjoy your Christmas and New Year if you celebrate it, and don’t worry about all the crap that might happen next year – at least until next year comes.

And while you’re enjoying it try to keep the buzz and excitement alive that you felt when you first realised the huge possibilities that were available to you online – your OWN BUSINESS – it’s an opportunity that your grandparents, and even your parents didn’t have.

Instead of that horrible sinking feeling that comes after Christmas, try and replace it with a feeling of excitement and anticipation, because it’ll be a new year, and you can make a new start.

Look at how far you’ve come.

‘Not bloody far enough!’ you might think.

I would argue with you.

You’ve come a LONG way, because there was a time when you didn’t even know what internet marketing was and had no idea of the earning possibilities.

NOW you DO. You know about mailing lists, websites, affiliate marketing, online payment systems, domain names etc and even if you’re not an expert you NOW know they exist – you know what amazing rewards can be generated by using them.

You’re a rare breed – you’re AWAKE, you’re not sleeping like the majority of society are when it comes to knowing about the potential of your online business.

Use that info – you deserve it for getting this far.

A wonderful Christmas and New Year to yourself and your family, and we’ll speak next year.

Tony

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Life is short.

Far too short to give yourself a hard time about anything.

So if I have one glass of wine too many with dinner or find I’ve put a couple of extra pounds on after raiding the biscuit tin (cookie jar) for three nights in a row then that’s fine with me.

I think life is for enjoying not worrying about. Discipline is for the army and guilt is for Catholics.

LIFE is for doing things your own way, making sure you laugh more than you cry and if it feels good do it more often and this time with strawberry flavoured yoghurt or a set of handcuffs.

But human nature being what it is, people do judge themselves far more harshly than anyone else ever would, and rather than dwelling on their successes seem to focus on failures, bad luck and honest judgement errors.

Today I was in a supermarket. I needed a few things for my office and ASDA was handy.

As I packed up my purchases I struck up a conversation with the girl at the checkout and as probably happens to most of you when you’re making smalltalk, the conversation got around to the global recession.

It turns out that her boyfriend had just lost his job, and their finances were decidely shaky.

Put simply, apart from looking for a new job they didn’t have a clue what to do.

I tenatively asked if she’d every considered setting up an online business – Initially I mentioned Ebay and told her about a few things I used to sell on Ebay and said there was a lot of scope for earning online.

I wasn’t in any way attempting to sell her anything and didn’t mention any of our sites.

I stopped in my tracks when I realised she was looking at me as though I was speaking Martian.

She paused then spent the next 30 seconds telling me why she could never do anything like that and wasn’t much good at ‘ideas’ or very good with computers. She also reckoned that everything she tried turned to sh*t and she didn’t do very well at school. And anyhow ‘you don’t get something for nothing’

The thing is, if I’D said that to her she’d have floored me with a shopping trolley, but because she was saying it about herself it was OK to rip apart her own confidence and abilities. Crazy!

And the stats tell us that 95% of all people think that way. They can’t see possibilities.

So my esteemed readers, the next time you find yourself ripping in to your own skills and self-confidence, and telling yourself that you can’t do something or you’ll probably make a mess of something, take a firm grip of yourself, preferably somewhere that makes your eyes water, and squeeze.

Because YOU are reading this blog – YOU are looking into the possibilities of online business, which means that YOU are one of the visionary 5%

And while you might not yet be where you want to be, you’re a bloody sight further on than most people.

You might be only halfway up the mountain, but at least you realise there’s a mountain there in the first place.

And I take my hat off to you for it!

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Well the time has arrived when we’re getting a shedload of emails every day.

It’s got to the point that we need to streamline things a little so we’ve set up a new ticket based helpdesk.

This doesn’t mean we’re going to be impossible to contact or we’re outsourcing our support emails to some call centre in another country, although that may happen one day.

At present we’re still answering all support tickets personally but the support ticket format means we’ll be able to answer absolutely everyone who needs us, and will still be accessible to all of you.

You can check out the support desk by clicking on the support link on this blog.

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I’ve never been mugged before and I didn’t notice it this time until it was over.

I was in a dodgy part of town buying a sandwich on my way to meet a techy about business. I stopped at a petrol station to get some money from the ATM machine. I picked up a sandwich first then went to the machine and put in my card and my number.

As my cash came out a little bloke came approached me from the left and shoulder charged me.

At least I think he shoulder charged me. I’m pretty sure he didn’t trip and fall against me because I saw him change direction and lunge towards me.

He was quite a bit smaller than me though and he bounced off me.

I said ‘what??’

He mumbled something and went back to a waiting car containing two other men. At this point my brain clicked to ‘on’ and I realised what had happened. I got back in my car, locked the doors and drove off.

I think the moral is you can’t afford to be subtle if you’re a mugger.

And true to form, and to tie this post in with Internet Marketing, I’ve been guilty of ‘gentle mugging’ in the past.

I have a minisite in another niche – nothing to do with IM – and it’s basically a content site. I bought some REALLY good PLR and rewrote it and filled the minisite with the content. So I ended up with a very informative site within this particular niche which gets a lot of traffic.

The next step of course was to monetize it which I did with Ads that sort of looked like Google Ads but were ads for related Clickbank products netting me 50-75% of each sale but without the hassle that Adsense sometimes brings (an example of hassle would be that you can’t control which ads show and if the product is crap you get backlash from unhappy customers).

At least with my Clickbank products I could buy them and read them myself so I knew they were of a certain quality.

But I was making few sales.

To cut a long story short it took me AGES to realise that my ads were far too subtle, and I wasn’t telling people to go and buy the products.

So I changed the look of the page and put the affiliate links into the actual content itself, and removed the sidebar ads. I also told people, again in the content of the page, ‘Look – if you’re looking for a definitive guide for *****’ buy this book and gave them the link. I almost shoved it up their noses, I was THAT obvious.

And it worked.

And it still is.

So if you’re struggling to sell, whether it’s in the IM niche or whichever niche is your ‘thing’ then get bold, blunt and brassy.

Tell people to buy.

Don’t be embarrassed about it or ‘fanny about’ as a mate of mine is fond of saying, tell people to buy. Be proud of your products and wave them in front of your customers.

It works.

Unlike the prat who tried to relieve me of my wallet last week.

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Early feedback from The KickStart Course is pretty good. Actually it’s better than pretty good – subscriber Vanessa Deux said ‘This is what I’ve been looking for since I started trying to make an online business work!’

Alex Jeffreys wrote us a rare testimonial too after we met up in London and I gave him early bird access to the lessons.

More than half of the 500 available places have already been snapped up – and that’s from just launching to subscribers! Tomorrow The KickStart Course will go ‘live’ on the internet in general, and we fully expect it to sell out in a few days -perhaps even hours as our last subscription site did.

If you’re struggling with success online you need guidance – you need information that leaves nothing out – even if you think you already know what you’re doing, you still might be missing those tiny details that mean the difference between success and constant money worries.

For example – we thought we knew how autoresponder systems worked until someone pointed out that we were leaving thousands of dollars on the table by not knowing this one, TINY piece of info.

We put it right very quickly I can tell you – and it goes to show that you never stop learning.

If you want to know how to set up a six-figure online business from a course that explains the most basic of steps right up to the most advanced marketing tricks, subscribe to The KickStart Course before it goes live tomorrow.

Be quick!

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We’ve just let loose www.kickstartcourse.com to a limited number of people, so it’s going to move pretty fast

If you’ve always felt you’ve been held back by not having an online direction, lack of knowledge or worse, fear of getting started (this is more common than you think), please give yourself a break and check out the site above.

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I’m writing this blog post from my hotel room at the UK Focus Marketing seminar in London. Heathrow actually.

I set off from home on a cold dark Yorkshire morning at about 6am and by 9.30am I was sitting in the hotel reading the Financial Times, four hours too early to check in.

Luckily I spotted one of my IM buddies staggering across the hotel suffering from a hangover from the night before so we went to have breakfast and he gave me the low down on what had happened since the seminar started on Friday.

After that we went into the seminar room itself – filled with about 100 people (I’m guessing) to watch the speakers.

Now I’m going to give you more info next week about the speakers – I’m not making any judgements because I’m going for for a Chinese meal tonight with some friends from the biz, and I’ll get to know more about what’s going on then.

I will tell you though, that I’ve seen mentoring products on offer ranging from $4,000 right up to $30,000 today, although the latter was discounted down to $4k for seminar attendees.

The best deals though, are the ones that are struck through an informal chat over a coffee or lunch – and in the bar tonight I think there’ll be some major JV’s arranged. The question is will anyone remember the details in the morning 🙂 ?

More soon

Tony

PS Don’t forget about the new launch we have for you – Monday 20th October  – 5pm UK time, 12noon EST.

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