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The Two Hidden Barriers To A Full-Time Income

October 16, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

We all want to become successful. And most of us define success as making a full-time income. We don’t celebrate the income itself, but instead we celebrate the possibilities created by that income.

People get inspired to become successful and make a full-time income by thinking about the possibilities and reading the case studies. I’ll never forget when I first read Jeremy Schoemaker’s case study of going from broke to making eight figures with his blog. That case study lit the fire and made me realize it was possible for me as well.

In my journey, I encountered several obstacles. The largest obstacle I encountered in the beginning was my age. It’s easy to write off a 13-year-old who recently became an entrepreneur. It’s harder to write me off now. People won’t believe you in the beginning, so you have to rise above that.

The big barriers I am talking about don’t focus on the motivational side of success. You need to be motivated to become successful, but these two barriers can even hold back the most motivated people who strive to become successful.

These two barriers held me back until a few months ago. The interesting thing about these barriers was that I didn’t know they were barriers until I made it on the other side. Yes, the grass is actually greener on the side I’m on. These are the two invisible barriers:

#1: Time

In my opinion, I believe people know a lack of time is a barrier, but few people don’t understand the full scope of that. Just because you are productive for eight hours per day and never avoid burnout doesn’t mean you will be successful.

I normally compare busy work to productive work and say that busy work is just a waste of time. But nay, I’ve realized that being productive isn’t enough either.

That’s because we define our productivity. For me, following hundreds of people every day to grow my Twitter audience was me being productive. I gained anywhere from 300-500 followers per day, but by calling it productive, I couldn’t have been fooling myself more than I had.

Then I became a CEO. The simple version: I started hiring people.

Never again will you find me manually following hundreds of people in a given day. I have outsourced all of that work to a trustworthy employee. Never again will I create a picture for one of my blog posts. I hired someone who creates pictures that are better than my pictures.

I thought I was productive by following all of those people and creating pictures. I only saw how wrong I was when I jumped over to the other side. After jumping to the other side, I immediately questioned my productivity as a whole.

Was it productive for me to schedule tweets every day? Was it productive for me to edit all of those videos? Was it productive for me to schedule my blog posts? Was it productive to send pins and grow my Pinterest audience?

NO! None of those activities were productive. I understand if those four things don’t happen, critical parts of my business become obsolete. If no more blog posts get scheduled on this blog, then it’s only a matter of time before search engines stop ranking this blog high. If my videos don’t get edited, I can’t create Udemy courses.

I decided to change my definition of productivity. Productivity isn’t putting a lot of work on your shoulders–even if all of that work is vital for the growth and survival of your business. Productivity is identifying what you (and only you) can do and then outsourcing everything else to other people.

Here is the current list of things that only I can do for my business:

Write blog posts (no ghost writers or contributions. I’ve written all of these blog posts since Day #1)
Create videos (I can sort of outsource that when I create courses with other people. I’ll talk more about that later)
Create slides for my presentations (I should know and create my entire battle plan for every video I do)
Engage with my social media audience (that’s too important for me to outsource)
Look at results (I only do this once a day just so I see what is working and what isn’t working)

The list looks like a decently sized list, but think about all of the things that did not make the list. This gives me more time to explore new opportunities and leverage what works for me. Once I created this list, I set my boundaries.

Any work I do for my business that does not make this list is unproductive. With this new definition, scheduling tweets is unproductive. So is scheduling blog posts. I don’t remember the last time I edited one of my videos. Someone else does that for me.

#2: Not Being In An Inner Circle

This invisible barrier is a barrier few people recognize. Part of that is because of the way we define an inner circle. To be clear, role models aren’t good enough. Role models create inspiration, but an inner circle is more valuable than that.

An inner circle that helps you thrive fits the following parameters:

The people within the inner circle are doing what you want to do.
They are more successful than you and/or possess expertise that you don’t have.
You actively engage with these people and they actively engage with you back. You both get to know each other on a more personal level.
You are giving back and providing value too. Let these people know what works for you and work together on some of the projects.

For some of you, school may have been a long time ago. Think about creating a diorama. The most successful diorama is usually created by the group with the most skilled students working together to achieve the same goal. They both bring different skills and work to the table, but both of them put in a lot of effort.

Then when they get the A, those students become best friends afterwards. They go on to create numerous dioramas throughout the year that make the teacher marvel.

That’s how the inner circle works in a nutshell.

Creating courses on Udemy taught me the power of the inner circle. I’ll never forget when my friend Jerry Banfield sent an email encouraging other instructors to make a course with him. At the time, I didn’t know him well on a personal level. I knew he was crushing it on Udemy (he makes over $1,000 a day from it), so I decided to create a course with him and see what I could learn.

We each approached the course with different skills. It was a course about how we write thousands of words every day. I personally prefer to type away, so I created videos that focus on the typing aspect. Jerry prefers using a dictation tool that lets him speak/write over 10,000 words in an hour.

Working together allowed us to create a valuable course that targeted multiple writing styles. Jerry provided insights that I wouldn’t have included and vice-versa.

I learned his approach to creating successful Udemy courses and saw how he promoted my course in an email blast. I got to see some of the methods that worked for him and how it impacted our course sales in the long-term.

After co-creating a course with Jerry, I decided to turn course co-creation into an integral part of my business. I saw that Jerry partnered up with other instructors. I decided to contact some of these instructors asking them if they wanted to create courses with me.

Joe Parys, another highly successful Udemy instructor, got back to me. I got to learn from him as we created a course on social media time management. We brought different expertise to the table which resulted in a better course.

The important thing to note is that creating the courses with Jerry and Joe wasn’t the end. We continue talking with each other to this day and thinking of different courses we can create together. Jerry and Joe gave my Udemy strategy a new level of accountability.

You need to have a group of people who raise you to the next level and have the proper expertise to do it. That’s what an inner circle is all about.

In Conclusion

We see the visible barriers to success. We see that motivation is essential and that taking action is just as vital. However, we make barriers like these seem so big that we let the invisible (but often larger) barriers go unattended.

What are your thoughts on these invisible barriers? Do you think there are other barriers that we don’t give much attention to? Sound off in the comments section below.

My Outsourcing Case Study

October 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

A common theme on my blog lately has been outsourcing. The reason I have mentioned outsourcing in many of my blog posts is because of the following

I recently started outsourcing most of my work
Writing about outsourcing inspires me to outsource more of my work
Time is valuable, and we all need more of it

Some entrepreneurs go as far as saying that if you aren’t outsourcing any part of your business, then you are not a real entrepreneur. Ouch!

When I first discovered people said that, I thought to myself, “I’m an entrepreneur if I don’t outsource.”

If you don’t outsource, then you are still an entrepreneur. However, you aren’t as good as you could be. If Tim Cook had to worry about responding to all customer emails and pitching iPhones in the Apple Store every day, he wouldn’t have any time to lead the company to success.

You can’t do it all by yourself. I only discovered this when I decided to outsource some of my workload. Since then, I have outsourced various areas of my business. Here are three notable things I outsourced in August 2015:

All Pinterest activity (except comments)
All Twitter activity (except interaction)
All intro pictures for my blog posts

When you put the three together, it takes an hour of my time every day. Now I’ve got that hour back. I feel like a more productive entrepreneur, as I should. That hour now goes into creating additional videos for my training courses.

I don’t even edit the videos anymore. I hired someone for that too 🙂

Right now, I am saving close to 10 hours of my time every week because of outsourcing. Put those hours together and I save 520 hours every year. Outsourcing those four parts of my business allowed me to get 21 days back.

We feel great when we get an hour back, so getting 21 days back put me on cloud nine. My goal is to get 60 days back by the end of the year.

The Beginning

Once I realized I needed to start outsourcing my work, my first step was figuring out how to actually outsource the work. I tried using Fiverr to get assistants but I didn’t have a good experience.

Some research led me to UpWork (formerly Odesk). I decided to post my job and see what would happen. The first job I posted got seven applicants. The second job I posted got 27 applicants. The great thing about UpWork is that you don’t have to worry about people seeing the job you posted. You’ll get applicants if your job description is good.

After getting the applicants, I narrowed my list down based on price and value. It’s easy to find someone on UpWork who is willing to work for less than $5/hr. It’s a great option for entrepreneurs who feel tied to a shoestring budget.

The First Struggle And Lessons Learned

The first time I experienced difficulty with outsourcing was in the very beginning. There was some miscommunication between me and the virtual assistant I hired. Since this was the first assistant I hired, I thought outsourcing wasn’t worth it.

Luckily I stuck with it.

The key to success on UpWork is to outsource the people with a mix of price and value, and then create detailed videos showing them what you do.

I didn’t take any chances with my Twitter activity. I created a video showing my assistant exactly how to follow and unfollow people so I could continue growing my Twitter audience without putting in any of the work. All I do on Twitter nowadays is interact with my audience.

Still Not Convinced?

I heard about two things for many years before I actually implemented. I wish I started them earlier. The first thing I wish I did earlier was build an email list.

The second one was outsourcing my work. Yes, outsourcing my work is right up there with building an email list late in the game.

For a long time, I shunned outsourcing and thought it was a solution for people who didn’t like to work. Seeing books like The 4-Hour Workweek didn’t please me because I saw it as people trying to escape their work all together. Why not work 40 hours every week if you love what you do?

I wasn’t a workaholic, but I was close.

Then it hit me. People are outsourcing most of their work so they can work on the most important parts of the business. No one can write my blog posts or do my videos. With the proper guidance, anyone can follow and unfollow people on Twitter.

But this was the main reason it took me so long.

Why would I pay someone to do something I already know how to do?

I knew how to unfollow and follow people on Twitter. I knew how to edit my videos. I knew how to do everything that I outsourced. Why hand it to someone else and pay them when I could do it myself?

The answer is outsourcing opens up more time. New time makes it possible to develop new skills and explore new opportunities. On a typical school day, I used to go home and do the following (for the sake of this list, homework isn’t included)

Grow my Twitter audiences (20-30 minutes)
Create a picture for one of my blog posts (10 minutes)
Create videos (30 minutes if I was lucky. This activity was skipped on most days)

Here’s what my after school (and post-practice) schedule looks like now (again, excluding the homework):

Create videos (30-60 minutes)
Play the piano (30-60 minutes)
Explore other opportunities

Fewer tasks stand between me and creating videos. That makes it possible for me to create more training courses, YouTube videos, and Periscope broadcasts. I save 30-40 minutes per day. I could have done those two tasks on my own, but now I have a lot of extra time to play with.

In Conclusion

Entrepreneurs love to self-assess themselves. They like to see how they have grown or stayed the same. Most entrepreneurs stay the same and don’t do much growing. This is where the frustration sets in.

Remember that the frustration is part of the journey. However, the frustration and stagnation may be a result of an inefficient amount of time. Outsourcing your time will open up more time which can potentially skyrocket your entrepreneurial success.

Think about the business person you admire. If you’ve been an entrepreneur long enough, you admire some of the top entrepreneurs around. For me, Seth Godin quickly comes to mind.

Here’s the interesting thing. All of these entrepreneurs are outsourcing some of the work. Seth Godin (and most of the top authors) has an editor. When Squidoo was around, he hired people to respond to bug reports and interact with the community.

As productive as people like Seth Godin are, they can’t do it by themselves. Neither can you, and it’s okay to admit that. Outsourcing parts of your business will open the door to hours upon hours of extra time.

Do you outsource parts of your business? If not, are you willing to give it a try? Sound off in the comments section below!

My Stance On Blogging and Social Media

October 12, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media and blogging are my jam. I have over 300,000 social media followers and get hundreds of thousands of annual blog visitors. I’m also getting a lot better with Facebook ads. In less than a month, my Facebook Page went from 300 likes to over 10,000 likes. And I average $0.01 per like.

But social media and blogging are just two slices of a much larger pie. They are critical pieces of the pie, but if you exclusively rely on blogging and social media, you will be disappointed.

Two years ago, I aspired to surpass 100,000 Twitter followers. I eventually surpassed that milestone, but my income didn’t skyrocket in the same sense. I quickly went from 1,667 Twitter followers to over 100,000, but the changes in my income were minuscule at best.

Getting all of those Twitter followers resulted in a big increase in my blog’s traffic. Social media is the main reason this blog became successful, and seeing that social proof every day boosted my confidence.

So I was successful on social media and getting a ton of blog traffic. Why was my income at the same level?

I didn’t look at the rest of the pie. I was missing out on some great opportunities. And yes, I’ll say it. Many others already have.

I SHOULD HAVE FOCUSED ON MY EMAIL LIST EARLIER!!

I was getting traffic, but I wasn’t getting sticky traffic. I wasn’t building strong enough relationships with my audience. Creating an email list is the best way to strengthen the relationship between you and your visitors. Some email lists are also highly profitable.

When I focused on my email list, I started getting better results. Each of my product launches was more successful than the last because my audience continued to grow. So far, my most profitable months on Udemy were because of email blasts.

But I’m about to turn the tables and flip the world upside down.

Your email list isn’t enough either!

You need to make money. More specifically, you need to make money by creating your own products. Affiliate marketing is an option, but if you rely on affiliate marketing, then your income depends on other people creating products and giving you good rates.

Most of the money I make comes from my books and training courses. The best part is that this is passive income. I create the product, market it, and then people buy it. I make money in my sleep.

Blogging and social media get the ball rolling—you can grow a large audience. Your email list and products allow the ball to roll in the right direction—you build the relationship and promote your products.

The best part with this strategy is that you can scale up. That’s why each of my product launches has been more successful than the last. My audience continues growing each day. Across all of my social networks, I gain over 1,000 new followers per day. This growth leads to more subscribers and more revenue for each of my product launches.

Since we are on the topic of product launches, I want to discuss one important thing about product creation. It is tempting to look at the most recognized entrepreneurs in the world promoting one product for a long period of time. They may go on numerous podcasts promoting this one product for many months before finally launching it.

For these entrepreneurs, it’s a great strategy for getting a massive amount of sales. Some of these entrepreneurs are also authors who use this strategy to turn their books into bestsellers.

However, I don’t recommend that approach (unless you are one of those entrepreneurs with millions of subscribers. Then go for it). The reason is that if you only create one product and focus on it, it either makes or breaks you.

I focused on one product for six months. I didn’t spend any of my time creating other products. That one product broke me. Luckily I didn’t lose money, but I lost a lot of time.

Now I create four Udemy courses each month. Not all of my Udemy courses become successful, but some of them bring in a bulk of my income. I get to learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Creating more products also makes it mathematically easier to reach income goals. Let’s say you want to make $1,000 per month from Udemy training courses. If you have 10 courses, then each course needs to make $100. If you only have one course, then that one course must make the entire $1,000 per month.

I’m not saying to trade quality for quantity. However, you don’t want to gamble your success on one product launch.

In Conclusion

Social media and blogging allow you to grow a large audience. It takes a lot of time and effort to accumulate that large audience. That’s why you want to make sure you pay attention to the other slices of the pie. While having hundreds of thousands of social media followers and blog visitors helps, you must also build your email list and create products.

What is your stance on blogging and social media? What other slices of the pie do you take seriously? Sound off in the comments section below.

6 Ways To Strengthen Relationships On The Web

October 9, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Relationship building is one of the most underrated parts of success. As an entrepreneur, it is tempting to think everything can be done alone. For a long time, I had the solo entrepreneur mentality. I didn’t even think of working with other people let alone outsourcing.

Twitter taught me the importance of relationship building. As you engage with your followers every day, it doesn’t take long for relationships to build. You see the same people engaging with your content, and then it’s only a matter of time before you talk about baseball teams and track PRs.

Many of these relationships developed into friendships. The podcast interviews were some of the bonuses that emerged. So how do you build a relationship with someone on the web? Try these six methods:

#1: Praise The Influencers In Personalized Emails

As you consume more content on the web, you will eventually find yourself on the same blog multiple times. The bloggers who own those blogs will soon find themselves within your version of the sphere of influence—people who inspire you to take action.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you got to chat with these bloggers? They notice you and engage with you often? That would be cool, and that can happen. Just be someone the influencer sees often. I’ll combine some of my experience with OkDork’s Poster Child formula to give you the full picture.

Share their content on social media every day (and mention their @username)
Send them occasional emails letting them know how their content was helpful
Comment on the influencer’s blog posts
Mention the influencer in some of your blog posts
Email the influencer letting them know about your blog posts mentioning the influencer and kindly ask for a share

Every day, I get emailed from people who fit into two categories. The first category looks like this:

“You’ve never really heard of me, but in case you didn’t know I’ve got the best stuff on the web and you should share it.”

It sounds something like that. Some people will word it nicer than that, but the translation is all the same.

The second category is must smaller, but I pay attention to them. The people in the second category follow most or all of those five main points I highlighted earlier in this blog post.

Daniel Cleveland is one of those people. He’s been engaging with my tweets and sharing my content for a long period of time. He has let me know how my content helped him. Then he sent me an email asking me to share his latest blog post.

And the blog post included me and a link to one of my blog posts (sweet). If you really want an influencer to share your blog post, mentioning that influencer and providing a backlink is the icing on the cake.

You better believe I tweeted that blog post. I even retweeted some of his tweets about that blog post. I’ll even link to it here.

Okay, I totally understand that was five methods wrapped into one. The other ones will be shorter but just as effective.

#2: Respond Quickly

When an influencer responds to you through a comment, social media post, or email, you want to respond as quickly as possible. As soon as you get a response, nothing else is more important for your business right now than replying.

And that’s because of expectations.

The web has created an expectation for super speed. I talking about speed that rivals The Flash. If this blog loads within a second, great. If this blog takes 10 seconds to load, then we’ve got a catastrophe on our hands (well, mostly my hands since most visitors wouldn’t wait that long).

Some of us get frustrated when it takes someone longer than 24 hours to reply to an email. The only difference with an influencer is that unless you were mentioned in the media or a part of the media, most influencers won’t hunt you down for a follow-up.

They get many emails of people trying to build relationships. They get more emails of people saying something along the lines of “My content is the best in the world. Share it.”

Influencers have enough emails to respond to and enough work to do. It’s like college (I am a high school student enrolled into a full-fledged university course so I get to say that). It’s your responsibility to follow-up. Don’t bank on the influencer reminding you to follow-up.

Follow-up quickly and become friends with the influencer, and that’s like acing the final. If you don’t follow-up quick enough and the influencer forgets who you are, you miss out—but it’s not the end.

The quicker you respond, the more appreciative the influencer will be. Not all influencers will respond to you within 24 hours, but they will remember you if you respond quickly and follow-up.

If I see an email that I should respond to, I often flag the email before I respond to it. Flagging an email prevents me from losing it in my inbox. Even if I respond in a week, a response is virtually guaranteed.

#3: Become A Contributor

Some influencers open their blogs to guest contributors (I opt against that for this blog). One of the benefits is that an influencer gets valuable content for free and for no work. Content is literally given to them, put on their blogs, and then SEO kicks in.

This is a great strategy to saving yourself from a lot of work in your blogging strategy. And since influencers have credibility, many of the top bloggers would love to have themselves and their content featured on their blogs.

So if you want to get noticed by these bloggers, become an active contributor. I have read Jeff Bullas’s work for years and enjoy reading it to this day. I thought it would be cool to talk with Jeff Bullas and get some of his insights about blogging.

So I decided to become a contributor.

I submitted my idea and my credentials. Then I waited…and got a response.

Jeff liked the idea and I got to work writing the blog post. It was one of the more challenging blog posts to write because it forced me out of my comfort zone. Jeff gave me several tips such as writing shorter paragraphs/sentences and including tons of pictures that were different to my prior writing style.

The final product was 5 Ways To Flood Your Blog With Traffic Using Pinterest. It took me over four hours to write, but it was well worth it. I got to learn more about blogging, talk with Jeff, and get more traffic to my own blog.

When you contribute on a blog the first time, and you want the influencer to notice you, contribute multiple times. As you contribute more often, the influencer may feel obligated to return the favor in some way (email blast promoting one of your products, social media share, etc).

Any effort from a contributor to return the favor turns out to be awesome in one way or the other.

#4: Grow Your Audience

Growing your audience serves two benefits to relationship building:

More people are in your audience. That means more people to build relationships with (no kidding).
More credibility when approaching influencers. I appreciate everyone who tweets my content, but if I get tweeted by a celebrity with millions of followers, I can’t help but stare at that tweet for a while. You don’t need millions of Twitter followers to create a strong impression. However, the larger your audience is, the more it supports what you do.

Start by growing your audience on social media. Then, let some of the people within that audience trickle to your blog. Then, some of your blog visitors trickle to your email list. Some of the people on your email list become customers. By the way, that’s social media ROI in a nutshell.

#5: Write Concise Emails

Successful self-published author Steve Scott lives by the five sentence rule. If the email is longer than five sentences, he won’t read it. I’m sure he makes some exceptions, but the five sentence rule lets him read and reply to emails quicker.

I wrote a five sentence email to Steve Scott asking him some questions about Kindle publishing. He got back to me with a concise email of his own. It saved us both time (he wrote a short email which means it didn’t take long for me to read it).

Since then, I have been using the five sentence rule for all of the emails I send. I understand that some people get slammed with hundreds of emails every day. If my email was a few paragraphs long, many people wouldn’t read it.

One of my ambitions is to be a frequent contributor for some of the websites I enjoy reading content from. Contributing to Jeff Bullas’s blog allowed me to realize this ambition. However, there are other websites that I enjoy reading.

So I decided to send Arianna Huffington an email.

I briefly told her my story, credentials, and my desire to contribute to the Huffington Post. I got a response. Seeing the response land in my inbox felt almost as good as my first sub five mile. In short, I was overjoyed.

This wasn’t a very long email. I believe that a mistake many people make is over-pitching themselves. Many people mention all of their credentials and awards instead of only mentioning the 1-3 that matter the most.

When you want to build relationships with people in the media, write concise emails. They get hundreds of emails per day, so they’re not interested in reading emails that are paragraphs long.

#6: Become A Part Of An Inner Circle (Or Create Your Own)

The strongest relationships happen within an inner circle. While a sphere of influence consists of all of the people who influence you and your work, an inner circle is more valuable.

An inner circle consists of people who are more successful than you and willing to help you throughout your journey. In other words, an inner circle is a group of awesome mentors guiding you in your journey.

The great thing about mentors is that they have been on a similar journey. They can help you achieve success faster since they know the pitfalls and golden roads. The best part is that they keep you accountable. Co-creating courses with people like Jerry Banfield and Joe Parys is one of the best ways I stay accountable because the course creation is now a team effort.

If you want to build your own inner circle, you have two options:

Pay for consultation sessions with successful experts (they’ll force you to be accountable)
Partner up with successful experts so both of you are held accountable (only partner up with people who you know can raise your standard of excellence)

If I slack off on my side or find myself working past the deadline, then I don’t feel like a team player. The pressure is on to deliver. That’s the power of an inner circle.

In Conclusion

Building relationships is important. Some relationships lead to opportunities while other relationships create accountability. Regardless of what type of relationships you build, they bring additional value to what you do.

Right now, I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts about building relationships with other experts in your niche? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Do you have any other tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below!

7 Ingredients To Online Success

October 7, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

If you are reading this blog post, you want to know how to make a full-time income by working online. Many people want to earn a full-time income from the web. The thought of working from home is a dream that many hold. Working at home eliminates the commute and makes a life balance easier to maintain.

It is possible to make a full-time income on the web. Many people post their income reports. And some of those income reports reach eight figures. It’s amazing what kind of opportunities the web has created. To get the best of those opportunities, we must utilize them.

So how does one go about building a large audience and making a full-time income? Here are the seven ingredients to success on the web:

#1: Large Audience

Building a large audience that constantly grows makes it possible for you to scale up with your business. Having 100,000 people in your audience creates a larger platform for your products than having 1,000 people in your audience.

However, it does not take long to realize that growing an audience is easier said than done.

I stumbled across this problem in the beginning of my journey. I had no idea how to grow an audience, but I knew social media was the next big thing.

So I gave it a try and decided to focus on Twitter.

My best advice for growing a social media audience is to focus on one social network in the beginning. Once you master a social network, it becomes easier for you to master all of the other social networks on the web. Social media is the best free tool for growing your audience. However, a social media audience is only part of the story.

You also need a large email list. I primarily use social media to engage, provide value, and build my email list. Having a large audience matters for social proof and success.

Now that you know a large social media audience and a massive email list are the two most critical types of audiences, it’s time to explore the other six ingredients to online success.

#2: A Product

If you want to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, then you must have a product. You can write Kindle books, create Udemy courses, or put up any type of product. But you need a product, and that product needs to be exceptional.

Most people with the six figure income reports make their money by creating and promoting their products. While affiliate marketing is a possibility, affiliate marketing is not as powerful as having your own product and promoting it to your audience.

The best part about creating your own product is that it is an asset. You can literally start making money in your sleep once you create your own product. Even if you only make $2 when you wake up, making any type of money in your sleep is an incredible feeling.

Products make that possible, and if you continue growing your audience and creating products, that $2 per night will scale up very quickly.

#3: Provide FREE Value

Many people are okay with providing value in their products. The customer pays money for the product, so it makes sense to give them a great experience. For some reason, the same logic does not apply to free value.

The free value you provide allows a relationship to build between you and the people within your audience. More importantly, the people in your audience begin to trust your value and expertise. That trust eventually leads to sales because of a common belief (this belief actually turns out to be true most of the time)

Paid value is better than the free value

If you over deliver in your free content, then imagine what impression that gives prospect customers. Providing free value also allows you to grow your audience. People who like your content will share it to their audiences. Your content will get more exposure, and as a result, your audience will grow.

#4: Relationship Building

When you grow an audience and take the time to engage with that audience, relationship building is one of the outcomes. Knowing the individuals within your audience allows you to serve them better.

That means you can write better content and create better products based on what your audience wants. Building enough relationships will potentially expose you to more opportunities such as podcast interviews, guest blogging opportunities, and speaking engagements.

Building relationships with the people within your audience is paramount to understanding your audience. But the people in your audience aren’t the only people you need to build relationships with.

You also want to build relationships with successful people within your niche.

Each time I began thriving in a particular area within my niche (i.e. Twitter and blogging), it was because I built relationships with people more successful than I was. I read the influencers’ blog posts, applied their methods, and actively engaged with them.

Right now, I have my eyes set on Udemy. I have created several courses on my own, but I also co-created some of my courses with other Udemy instructors. The Udemy instructors I create my courses with are more successful than me on that platform. And that’s by design.

There is a difference between running with people you see in the trail and running with an Olympian. There is a difference between having a consultation session with any business expert and having a consultation session with Bill Gates. There is a difference between hanging out with the ordinary and hanging out with the extraordinary.

If you associate with people who have a higher status than you, then you will have more motivation to thrive. You are surrounded by successful people cheering you on—whether through their content, through their videos, or via a 1-to-1 conversation—and that will motivate you to reach the next level of your success.

#5: Effectively Communicating Your Message

Clarity is what results in people coming back. If you are a returning visitor, you came back to this blog because you understood and appreciated the message and tidbits within the content. Then you wanted more. That’s why blogs get returning visitors.

Effectively communicating your message results in more people sticking around longer. It is important to practice with your blog posts.

Once it becomes second nature for you to effectively communicate your message, it will become easier for you to explain your products. Prospective customers don’t know what your product is until you explain it to them.

The better you do at explaining your product, the more people will buy it.

The way you effectively communicate your message depends on your niche and the message itself. However, copywriting will help you in this leg of the journey. There aren’t many blog posts on this blog that deal with copywriting, so I’ll end this portion of the blog post with two notes:

When it comes to copywriting, Ray Edwards is the man.
This blog post on CopyBlogger has awesome insights about copywriting.

#6: Seize The Game Changing Opportunities

When you see an opportunity that you believe has the potential to lead to rapid growth, jump on that opportunity. I first heard about Periscope on the day it came out. I saw the potential in the social network and decided to create an account.

I did some scopes and then largely went dormant on the social network. Now I’m back on it. The lesson from this story?

I did some scopes on the first day the social network came out. Three days after Periscope’s launch, I was already past 2,000 followers. I was only following 16 people. I stopped because at the time, I wasn’t fully aware of Periscope’s business potential.

In my defense, Periscope at the time was a social network where people broadcasted their puppies and there was always a “What’s in your refrigerator?” comment during the live stream.

Seizing the game changing opportunities when they are still new allows you to reap more of the rewards sooner. Then, once you master the new opportunity, you can move onto the next big opportunity when it comes up (or work on two big opportunities at the same time. It’s entirely up to you).

#7: Look At The Results To See What Works

Once you are utilizing the first six ingredients to success, you are bound to get results—good or bad. The only way you get better results is by analyzing your current results. Analyzing your current results lets you know where and how you can improve.

If that Facebook ad does well because you included/excluded certain countries, and you can see the difference in your results, then you know how to get better results from that Facebook ad. My blog gets a lot of traffic from Twitter. That’s why I spend so much time on Twitter.

My blog traffic from Facebook started picking up ever since I started advertising and posting more often. As a result, I am continuing those activities.

In Conclusion

Online success consists of many ingredients. Making all of these ingredients a part of your business creates the possibility of making a full-time income from your house. The biggest challenge is actually implementing all of these ingredients and making them a part of your business. However, it is a challenge that is worthwhile.

Right now, I want to hear from you. Which of these ingredients to online success do you think is the most important? Do you believe there are other important ingredients in the recipe? What are your thoughts about online success as a whole? Sound off in the comments section below.

What To Do When You Lose Faith In Your Blog

October 5, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Blogging is along, drawn out marathon. Some people question themselves right when the starting gun goes off. Others question themselves on the last mile. While in a marathon you know the finish line’s location, the location of the finish line for blogging (for this analogy, the finish line represents a blogging empire) is unknown. You won’t know where that finish line is until you step on it.

During the journey to a blogging empire, you will encounter some bumps along the way. You may quickly get over some bumps and question yourself on some of the other bumps. When you lose faith in your blog, you need two things:

Inspiration
Clarity

The inspiration is easy to get. Just read some case studies about blogs that suddenly started growing like crazy. This picture is the most inspirational picture I saw throughout my journey.

The only problem with inspiration is that inspiration alone is only a temporary solution. You feel inspired in the moment, but are you ready for the next bump? To be ready for the next bump, you must build upon your clarity.

For your blogging strategy, building your clarity means devising a step by step plan. What are you going to do today to get more blog traffic? What are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do throughout the month?

Every week, I take some time to look at my plan and identify different methods I could utilize to get more blog traffic. I now invest in Facebook advertising because it’s having an impact on my blog’s traffic. Spending an hour going through my tweets and analyzing the results for each of those tweets lets me know what I should continue tweeting and what I should stop tweeting.

How did I reach the conclusion of focusing on Twitter and Facebook? The answer is that Twitter is my blog’s main source of traffic, and Facebook has some on and off days. Putting more time towards Facebook now allows me to see more “on days” than “off days.”

Look at what you are doing for your blog right now. See where you are getting your best and worst results. Focus on amplifying the platforms you use to get your best results, and don’t spend as much time on the platforms that yield poor results.

Combine that with some research to discover more ways to get traffic and sales, and you’ll have a strong plan.

At this point, inspiration and clarity are both working for you. These two ingredients are enough to get you through a few days feeling the blogger’s high. However, there is one more piece to the puzzle. Let me give you a hint:

Any plan that looks good is just theoretically good.

You can’t say a plan is good until it brings in the results. A plan to bring in money isn’t the same as actually bringing in money. Implementing the plan lets you see how good that plan actually is.

I created a plan for profiting from Facebook ads and growing my audience with Page like ads. For an entire week, I was anxious about the plan. Even though I knew the plan was good, I had no idea what would happen. Plans are theoretical, not reality. However, plans let you tackle reality more effectively.

After you create your step by step action plan, act upon it. Don’t wait for next week to get started. Get started now. If you get started now and keep at it every day, it doesn’t take long for a plan to turn into a habit. An effective plan that gets implemented habitually spells out success.

So how do you go about implementing your own plan? The answer is to start small and build your way up. If you consider Facebook ads for your business, it doesn’t take long to understand how confusing it could get. There are more than a dozen different ads you can create and advanced audience targeting tools.

So I decided to only create a Facebook ad for getting more Page Likes. I knew that to make a profit on Facebook, I would need more than that one ad, but I needed to get started. Focusing on that ad for a few days allowed me to learn a lot about Facebook advertising. I quickly got the cost down to $0.01 per like and got over 10,000 likes in my first month. I aspire to surpass 100,000 Facebook likes by the end of the year.

Only after I understood the Facebook Page Like ad did I start utilizing other Facebook ads. You can’t have a blogging plan that takes you from zero visitors to 100,000 visitors in one year. However, you can have a plan for getting 1,000 visitors in your first month. You can create a plan that allows you to scale your growth month by month so you eventually get 100,00 visitors in one year.

In Conclusion

The blogging journey has its triumphs and bumps along the way. It is how you get through the bumps that determines how likely you are to become successful. Starting with accomplishing a small goal gives you the small win. Putting a string of small wins together results in long-term success.

Successful blogging requires inspiration, clarity, and taking action. Until a plan gets implemented, that plan is theoretical. No matter how good a plan seems on paper, the power of that plan is determined by the implementation.

How do you stay strong through challenging times with your blog? Which of these tips was your favorite? Sound off in the comments section below.