Which one is the 'ultimate'? Well, if you hear them
tell it, theirs is, of course. "Turn $5 into $50,000,000,000 in 30 days with no
effort!" Did Bill Gates figure out how to condense his lifetime into 30 days?
I doubt that he would say he got where he is today with no effort. Are you listening
to these guys, or do you REALLY want to make money on the Internet? Becoming instantly
rich on the Net is about the same as sitting around waiting for your lottery numbers
to hit. I like to believe that we're smarter than that. We realize that the only
way to truly become successful at anything requires a lot of hard work, motivation,
persistence, and luck. Now let me explain each of these points. Hard work - This
is a no-brainer. You ARE NOT going to be able to turn on your computer, walk away
from it, and expect to end up with a successful business. You have to work at
it. The more productive work you put into your website and your marketing efforts,
the greater the rewards. Notice that I said 'productive' work. It is easy to spend
20 hours a day on the web and not do anything constructive for your business.
You have to focus your efforts to make the above statement true. To put it a different
way, if you spend 20 hours a day adding content to your site, refining the design,
promoting it, testing and retesting to learn what works and what doesn't, you
WILL see the results. Many websites fail not because the owner didn't work hard
enough, but because he didn't work smart enough. Motivation - How do you stay
motivated to enable you to survive the months and months of extremely long days
and nights glued to your monitor? Is it the lure of having a successful web business
someday? The idea of eventually being able to quit that job that you hate? Believe
me you will hit low points, you will get frustrated, and probably even utter the
words "at this rate I'm never going to make it". So how do you stay motivated?
The above questions can help, but I think the absolute most important motivator
is to pick a topic that you love. When you are working on a subject that you totally
enjoy the low points will be far less frequent, and have far less impact on you.
Your mind will be in the places it is supposed to be instead of constantly watching
the bottom line. If you are trying to create a successful business with something
you have absolutely no interest in...you are setting yourself up for failure before
you even get started. Think about this idea for a moment. Let it sink in as to
what I'm telling you here. What is your favorite pass-time? What is your hobby?
Do you get burnt out when you are spending time on your hobbies? Does an auto
enthusiast watch the clock at a Saturday afternoon drag race? Does a knick-knack
fanatic get bored at the world's largest flea market? Do sports fans wish football
season was much shorter? If you develop your business around a topic that you
love, that you enjoy spending time on, that you can't wait to get home and fire
up the computer to work on... motivation becomes a non-issue. Besides...isn't
enjoying what you do one of the key factors to success? I hate to be the one to
break it to you, but true happiness isn't all about money. Persistence - You have
to stick with it. You can't quit. Don't lose faith. There will be bad times, but
you have to keep going. You won't make as much money as you wanted to one month.
You won't get quite as many subscribers or visitors out of that advertising campaign.
The 'killer ad' that you just knew was going to pull like crazy...won't. These
setbacks are a fact of life. Accept them and deal with them accordingly. Learn
from your mistakes and move on. If you keep the right attitude during the bad
times, the good times will be that much sweeter. Luck - Yep, its going to take
a little luck as well. But if you follow the above guidelines, you can make your
own good luck. Luck is being in the right place at the right time. Luck is making
the right decision at that crucial moment. Luck is buying low and selling high.
Luck is realizing that you made a mistake and correcting it right before everything
crashes. The more knowledgeable you are about your subject matter, the more time
you spend educating yourself about it, the more you work at becoming an expert
in your field, the more luck you will have! When you know the ins-and-outs of
your industry, you WILL be in the right place at the right time. You WILL know
when to buy and when to sell. You WILL know what decisions to make, and when to
make them. Correcting a mistake? This is nothing more than testing an idea and
dumping the ones that didn't work. Don't sit back and leave it to fate...make
your own good luck! So, whenever I'm asked how can you become successful on the
Net, I tell them to work hard, pick a subject that they totally enjoy, learn everything
they can about that subject, stay strong during the bad times, and stick with
it!
