Building Your Online Income in 2008

**andrew wee** · 01-25-2008, 10:27 PM

I'd been listening to episodes of the WonLiDoShow or the Juan Lee Dough Show over the last couple of days and it was pretty inspiring to get ideas to build some of the forum ideas I have in my head and bring them to the next level.

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One way I wanted to bring value to EF is to pen down some ideas to bring your online business to the next level this year.

If you're at the $100 per month level, shoot for $500 per month.
If you're at $500 aim for $1,000
If you're at $1,000 aim for $5,000 and so.

Here is some of the techniques I use:

1) Set a goal:
Nothing will happen unless goals are set.
It's like walking in a mall, if you don't have a destination in mind, you won't reach where you would ultimately would like to go and will just get by with whatever falls into your lap.

Whatever falls into your lap usually isn't too great though...

More importantly, write it on a sheet of paper. Put it on a stick-it pad and tack it to the edge of your monitor, so you take a look at it every time you're at your computer.

2) The "Is it important" test

It's not just enough to write "I want to make a million bucks this year"

You need to make it personally relevant too.

Why are you doing what you're doing?
To create a better life for yourself and your family?
To do some social good? Give money to charity?

Entrepeneur evangelist Guy Kawasaki (who's spoken at one of the Elite Retreats) mentioned that besides making money, business owners ought to aim to "change the world".

There are lots of entrepreneurs who only aimed to make money and have failed, so why not aim to change the world and make money too.

3) Make your goal big and exciting
Let's face it, the road to online success is not always a bed of roses - you'll find yourself occassionally fixing a site which has just crashed at 2am in the morning, you might be editing 10,000 lines of code by hand in notepad and doing troubleshooting line-by-line, none of this is particularly inspirational or feels like you're going to change the world.

There's going to be some pain involved in moving yourself to the next level, so having something big and exciting to motivate you always helps.

I listened to an interview recently (ok, I listened to so many that i cant remember exactly who said this)...

But what was mentioned was this: The difference between an amateur and a professional is that the professional is willing to work through the pain to get to their eventual goal.

4) Make a plan and act on it.

Ok, after you've worked out your plan, you need to break your big goal (maybe earning $20,000 per month consistently) and break it down into smaller tasks.

What're 3 things you can do today to move yourself closer to your goal.

What are 3 things you can do tomorrow to move even closer.

Continue planning for a week.
Create a microsoft word or excel spreadsheet to list down your tasks.

Be able to separate critical tasks (getting your site up, link building, create content, monetizing), from non-critical tasks (reading email, visiting digg, doing up your myspace/facebook profile).

If you spend at least two solid hours a day doing what you're supposed to do,
you find yourself progressing by leaps and bounds.

5) Do it NOW!

A plan is useless unless it's put into action.

After reading this post, stop. And take action immediately.
Get your 2 hours of work in, then come back here.

**JulieLA** · 01-26-2008, 10:35 AM

Great post, Andrew! Thanks.

**andrew wee** · 01-27-2008, 04:21 AM

My pleasure, Julie.

**andrew wee** · 01-27-2008, 04:27 AM

So the first thing you want to do is get decent webhosting.

If you're starting out, I'd suggest shared hosting.

Although it's good when you're starting out, I'm finding that for my business to grow, I'm increasingly going towards either a VPS (virtual private server) or a dedicated server, so I can grow my business faster.

You do lose a number of visitors if it takes too long for your site to load up.
Even worse, you get 'CPU quota exceeded' errors as this happens, so it's good to get your foundation right.

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At the same time you want to do your research.

I though Lee gave some good tips in the Juan Lee Dough Show episode 11 for forums, but it would equally apply for other types of sites too.

Open up Google, Yahoo and MSN Live (live.com) and type in your keywords.

If you're planning to develop a blog, add the word "blog" to your keywords.
If it's a forum, add "forum" "bulletin board" "discussion board" etc.

So your search would be something along the lines of "skiing forum" or "brazil vacation blog".

Spend a little time going through all the relevant results on page 1-3 of the search results.

If you want to be thorough, go through page 1-5.

Take note of the strengths and weaknesses of each of those sites.

From there you should be developing your site plan, and brainstorming on ways to generate traffic, and more importantly monetize (I'm assuming you're not bill gates and doing this for kicks....)

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To be continued....

**andrew wee** · 01-27-2008, 08:13 PM

Re: Traffic, SEO, Paid Traffic

I think there's a fair amount of misinformation out there, and some would have you believe that you should be spending tons of time on SEO or paid traffic, or trying to game digg, myspace, facebook or some other social network.

I think if you do all this, and the content on your site is below-par, it's tantamount to spamming....

Why do I say this?

Because you've taken a portion of that user's time and brought him or her to a site and not delivered on your promise. Essentially you've wasted that person's time.

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Just think about this for a moment, you run an ad for a restaurant, you spend loads of time and money promoting it and you bring a flood of people to your site,

The food you're serving, unfortunately, consists of baked beans and 'spam' coming out of a can and nuked in a microwave for 2 mins before serving.

So even if you've done your best in bringing the crowds, you're destroying your ability to build loyal readers, as well as your own rep in the process.

So the first thing you want to do is to build a site that brings value to your visitors, makes them want to come back, again and again, and in the process generates income for you.

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How is this done?

Let me give you some general principles to think about:

1) Interactivity: For most internet users, straight internet browsing can be a boring, one-way form of communication.

A lot of us don't think of them this way, but email and instant messengers and forums and social networks like facebook, myspace, as well as other forms of communication like usenet, a mailing list, are ways in which we can talk and communicate with people.

If you want to build something big, you need to incorporate means of communication.

2) Entertainment/information: Why do people watch TV? Either they want to learn something from a channel like a news channel or Discovery or National Geographic, or they want to be entertained when they watch HBO, Cinemax,MTV.

Likewise, your content to provide something of value.

If you're giving out good stuff, you will get return visitors, especially if they know you're consistently giving out good stuff daily or weekly.

3) FUN: The most bookmarked sites are those that incorporate an element of fun in them. "Fun" is something that triggers an emotion of happiness or joy in your visitor.

Maybe i can explain this by what fun is not.

When I was in school and learning stuff, I enjoyed getting new knowledge and figuring things out.

But if your teacher talks in a boring fashion, reads straight out of the text book, talks in a slow manner, that'll kill all enjoyment you have real quick, even if the content is very interesting.

I remember I had a lit teacher who would read straight out of the novels we were supposed to be learning from....that was a killjoy.

On the other hand, if you've watched or read "Dead Poets Society" or "Shall we dance" or "Dangerous Minds" you'll know how learning can be made exciting and brought to the next level....

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Is there a specific topics or area you're interested in?
If so, drop a comment about what you'd like to see below...

To be continued...

**ShawnX** · 01-28-2008, 08:41 PM

What a great topic! Thanks Andrew! :thumbup:

**MarketLeverage** · 01-29-2008, 10:13 AM

Great post Andrew! I think most people forget the part of making a step-by-step plan to achieving their goal.

"What're 3 things you can do today to move yourself closer to your goal.

What are 3 things you can do tomorrow to move even closer."

Writing these down the night before or the morning of each day may help you move closer to the goal.

Also, writing down a "to do" list each day of the things that you would like to accomplish for the day will keep you focused on your task. It will help you from wondering off on other things online.

**andrew wee** · 01-29-2008, 10:47 AM

Hi,
Great points you've added to the discussion.

The most important element is to take action.

Writing down 3 tasks for the day means I will not go to sleep until they are done, even if it might be 5am when they finally get done.

That's the only way to get massive results in your business.

I heard a quote that said, the difference between a professional and an amateur is that the professional is willing to go through the pain to get the results that they want...

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarketLeverage

Great post Andrew! I think most people forget the part of making a step-by-step plan to achieving their goal.

"What're 3 things you can do today to move yourself closer to your goal.

What are 3 things you can do tomorrow to move even closer."

Writing these down the night before or the morning of each day may help you move closer to the goal.

Also, writing down a "to do" list each day of the things that you would like to accomplish for the day will keep you focused on your task. It will help you from wondering off on other things online.

**DogFaceBoy** · 01-31-2008, 09:38 PM

Good article. I am off to a great start this year, and I expect to be even bigger in a few months. My goal for this year is in the $x,xxx,xxx.