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Internet Marketing Business - as I said yesterday, the best business in the world really. The lifestyle allows freedom of time, freedom in making huge amounts of money, freedom in choosing where, how, and for how long you work each day. It’s a fantastic way to be in business. “Business” being the operative word …

Being in business on the internet, versus say, opening up a retail location, or working out of an office versus your home, is exactly the same as business anywhere. In short, you still have to work. You still are “in business”. You have to spend money, you have to put in the hours, you have to lay a foundation and slowly grow.

The main benefit to opening up your business on the net, as I said yesterday, are the “instant on” abilities, fast pace of change, worldwide reach, and you can do it all at a fraction of the cost of opening a street corner location. Retail space on the corner, $5000 a month, and reaches people who drive by the corner. Retail space on the internet equals $50/mth (domain and hosting) and reaches everyone around the world. In both instances you’ll need a lot of marketing, promotion and advertising to succeed, as well as a great product and sales process.

There are so many scams, and so much false information about doing business on the internet that I simply wanted to make things clear. I am still “in business”. I still consider myself a “business”. I’m incorporated, I try (operative word “try”) to work every day. I have systems in place to manage tasks, and I create products and sales processes that take a lot of time and effort. Dispel yourself of the notion that internet business is not work! It’s a lot of work. Just as much, if not more, than opening up that regular business.

What internet business is, fundamentally, is far cheaper to start, and far quicker to open, allowing far broader a reach, and far more automated and long lasting results once you have your structure in place. Very cool indeed, but not the silver bullet all those internet marketing scams make it out to be.

Your business, on the internet or otherwise, will fail miserably if you do not have the entrepreneurial spirit and drive to make it succeed. Saying the magic words, “I own an internet business”, unfortunately, does not magically cure a lack of work ethic, laziness, poor marketing, bad products, or any myriad of bad business decisions and practices. Quite the opposite, in this day and age, competition is tough, wherever you may find it.

So, in preparing my pre-requisites for coaching, and who I’ll accept and want to work with, and whom I will not, I think it’s important that at their core, they have an idea they are passionate about. An idea, that ideally, has been with them for quite some time. A gift they want to get out of themselves and expose to the world, and a real passion to do it.

People often ask me, how can I be so successful at what I do. They look at, and envy, my success. They ask, “why can’t that be me”, or they simply brush it off, and say he “just wants to make money” (as if that’s a bad thing). Unfortunately, they miss the point. I believe success is a difficult thing to craft, and while we all seek to attain it, and in fact it can be mathematically achieved in many cases, it’s never the money that matters. In fact, I view my complete lack of interest in making money to much of my success (and I’ll get into that later).

My success is due to a simple thought pattern - I had gifts that I wanted to share with the world, I had a passion to make those things happen, and I worked extremely hard to do it. I also had a medium (the internet) which my father would have dreamed of having. Sounds easy when you put it that way, eh?

At heart, I was an Entrepreneur, and that’s the type of people I want to work with. Passionate, enthusiastic, positive people. I want to dispel the myth that internet business is somehow different than “regular business”. It’s not! Business is business. There are a few massive unique qualities to business on the net, but in a nutshell, you’re still going into business, and the real money makers, and passion seekers, will view it that way from the start.

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What have I done in 2008 (not 2009), that really impacted my business - either at a core profit level, or a core efficiency level. Here’s my Top three things I’ve done that have had a huge effect on my business. If you’re starting a business, or growing your business, these might make a big difference!

1) Apple, Gmail, and the Ultimate Shift in my tools and resources…

Ever seen those Apple commercials? Ever wonder if maybe they were right? 2008 was the year of the Apple, and while I still use my PC for certain things, my switch to Apple, and Apple products, proved hugely beneficial to my business!

I can get into specifics about why Apple versus PC, and why, and what tools I use on each, but I’ll save that for a longer, specific post. Suffice it to say, this was a huge time saver, and my business works better on Apple. now have 3 Imacs, 2 Powerbooks … and no headache.

2) Gmail and Google’s paid suite of business tools.

I may live to regret this, but since I was on PC, I used Outlook. Outlook is a horrible program, but I was so stuck in it. So many years wasted… so many emails lost…

Outlook is… quite possibly, the devil.

With my switch to Mac, I made the switch to Gmail, which was very difficult, laborious, and to my way of thinking, a waste of time. Yet, no single thing has catapulted me in productivity than switching to Gmail, and Google Docs, spreadsheets, etc…

Yes, I may live to regret this, putting so much faith into one company, but the paid version (pay the paltry $50 per person), is amazing beneficial to me, my employees, my company, and our productivity.

They simply work, and they work anywhere.  I can travel, and be completely connected to my business. Does anyone still actually use Outlook? I feel like I was a late adopter of Gmail, but it has catapulted me to a better Internet Lifestyle (work and play together).

3) Focus on fewer sites…

We have hundreds of websites. Yes, hundreds. Sometimes it feels like even more!

In 2008, we trimmed it down. Fewer, larger sites were the word of the day, and guess what? It’s working! Follow our lead … this is the wave of the future.

Ever notice how hard it’s getting to rank in Google? Yep - big sites win. Focussed sites win. I’m not saying the ocassional sales letter site can’t garner an easy 20-100k, but if you’re around for the long run - think big, and think, single or small group of sites.

What about link farms? Blog Farms? Etc…  Been there, done that!

Save those for the people whom want to work harder than you do!  You simple won’t need them if you work on creating a big site, with big content, and big community. That’s a fact!

What’s your top 3-5 business changers? What have you done in your business to blow up your productivity or bottom line? We’re getting our 2009 list ready, but would love to get your thoughts and insights first.

What are your game changers?

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Actually, it was closer to 8k dollars, but the interesting part of the story is not that I made that much money in a day. It’s not that I was going to the movies in the middle of the afternoon (Hancock, not that great). It’s not even that I woke up at 11am, made myself a hot Coffee Press coffee, and didn’t even turn on my computer before heading off to the movies…

So, what is the interesting part?  It’s simply that, until looking at my blackberry, I had no idea (nor, crazy enough, really cared too much) about how much money I had made that day. I admit, when I looked at my phone, and saw the dollar number, I did do a double take.  That’s a nice day’s work for anyone right? Even more impressive in that I hadn’t actually done any work that day.

I was happy! But the interesting part is that my business runs in such a way that, regardless of my individually daily plans, and regardless of how I choose to spend my freedom and free time, I am always making money.

I remember the days where I would actually sit glued to my computer for every sale. I would be ecstatic over every single one. $10 a day was great, then $100 a day, then $1000 a day. After a while (ok, it did take me a few years), you eventually get over it. You simply don’t check every day. It takes greater and greater amounts to even make you interested.  Don’t worry, we’ll get you there eventually … If you want.

Because the point of this email is not what you think. It’s not me gloating over a good day and it’s not me telling you about the freedom this kind fo life provides, it’s actually quite the opposite. As I went to this movie downtown, as I enjoyed my lunch outside, I saw the enormous number of workers. Office workers. They are everywhere. They get a paycheck every week, and they don’t need to worry about their jobs from month to month. I’m fairly certain I could have offered this lifestyle to each and every one, and actually had the knowledge to give to them to make it happen, and yet I couldn’t get over the fact that likely only a fraction would even want it.

They might not believe me. They might not believe they could actually do it. They might have excuses or ideas of why it wouldn’t work for them.

Even more than that, conventional society, and those that work within it, don’t ever have to worry about what they’re going to do everyday. They’ll be at work right? So easy. All the days of their week are spoken for. All their hours are determined. They have their free time after work right? It makes life… structured!  Structure …

Some people need this structure. They simply can’t, or don’t know how, to live without it. I find it excpetionally interesting. As you’ll hear me say shortly, I think that everyone can do what I do. I believe that everyone can turn their passions into businesses, if they are shown how, As i’ve told you before, I’m going to show you just that.

However, just because I believe that people can do it, doesn’t mean I think they will, or that everyone will even try. In fact, I think only a small portion of the people around me, and the people that I reach, will even try to create a business online. I think those that try, and those that follow in my footsteps, are in for an amazing life, and a thoroughly rewarding experience, beyond anything they can possibly conceive, especially from the vantage points of their 9-5 jobs.

So, it’ seems only right that on July 4th, we should talk of freedom. Because one thing you find in the MarketingCrazy lifestyle is freedom. What you’ll find is freedom … freedom of your time, freedom of your money, freedom in every way imaginable.

However, with freedom, comes greater responsibility, and that’s what people rarely see, or even want to talk about. 

Yes, I’ll teach you how to build a business online.Yes, you’ll likely find freedom, in many, many ways. Yes, it’s great to have ten dollar days that turn into hundred dollar days, that turn into thousand dollar (or 10k, 20k or more dollar) days…

It’s also extremely difficult to keep focus, to plan your days, to manage your time, to find your passions and keep them strong, to be disciplined, to manage your money, to be solely responsible for your business and your finances…

All those things that convential "jobs" do for you will be gone. What’s left is your time, your family, your days, your passions, and your freedom. So what’s so hard about it? Well, I hope one day to discuss it with you. I couldn’t imagine that I’d be in the position I am today, as I left my last 7 day a week, 24 hour a day, corporate job - but here I am, living a life that’s in many ways unimaginable, and all I can say is … why wouldn’t everyone want this?

Yet many don’t. They simply don’t, regardless of the reason. So I ask you, do you?

We’ll take it one step at a time, let’s get you that business first…Let’s prove to you that yes, you can actually do this too.

Happy July 4th! Enjoy your free time…