When I started putting this Frequently Asked Questions section together I thought “how do I avoid setting up one of those boring FAQ pages that hardly anyone ever reads? How do I actually make it useful for people?”
Well, what I have done here is take the popular questions from my Contact page and crafted a response as an FAQ. On the Contact page I ask “what are your three biggest sticking points when it comes to making money online?”
In pasting the questions and responses I get here I’ve taken out any personal references or stuff I think might be so specific to the individual so as not to be useful.
I will answer the questions I get regularly here.
Quick disclaimer – these are my thoughts and ideas that I do not guarantee you will necessarily benefit in any way from my advice and thoughts here. Everybody is different. How you benefit and progress is entirely up to you.
Sometimes though I may be able to point you in the right direction or even just provide you with an alternative opinion on something – in the hope that it makes you think and take action.
Anyway, take a look down the page or go and complete my Contact Form – I’ll try to answer your questions here:
Your Sticking Points In Making Money Online Are:
Information Overload – not knowing where to go for help for beginners?
Yup – we all go through this. We know the market is saturated and it’s very easy to waste time going through the mountain of information and email bombardment that is out there. Particularly when you are on the steepest part of the learning curve as a beginner.
The best course of action I would recommend is to find a mentor and/or coach. It’s much easier to learn from others who are more experienced than you are and who provide focused coaching. Find someone you can trust, is ethical and who teaches at your level.
When I started out I struggled on my own for a long time. Only when I took the plunge and signed up for online coaching was I able to focus more and progress in a logical way.
Of course, you need to ‘go your own way’ still – find what you like and are good at. But it’s really tough doing it alone. I have since been through several courses, most really good in their own way. I hesitate to recommend any here – you need to decide yourself – but for a beginner I rate John Thornhill’s Masterclass – simply because John takes you step by step – over 36 weeks – on how to build an online business from scratch.But take a look around and find what suits you.
Time to learn when you’re working and managing a family!
Know how you feel!
This is how practically all people start out until (1) they give up, or (2) they become successful and quit their job, or (3) get divorced (only kidding!).
You have to be really strict with your time commitments. Get a routine, minimize distractions by cutting down on emails and try to focus only on a handful of tasks that you repeat and repeat.
I was on a webinar the other day run by Alex Jeffreys – one of the best teachers online – and he gave me a great quote – he said most marketers do “4000 things 14 times” – what you should do is – “14 things 4000 times”. Nice eh – good title for an eBook too!
The point is that find out the things that work and repeat them continuosly. So if video marketing is your thing make sure you produce at least 5 videos per week – upload to YouTube and build your subscribers with services such as TubeFool or Tube Toolbox.
Here are a couple of resources that might help:
1) The Contrarian Report – 7 Things You Should Not Do To Succeed Online by Peter Downs (Yup – Me)
2) Download The Internet Marketing Wheel of Doom by Matt Wadsworth.
Money to pay for courses when you’re not sure whether you’re going to get anywhere or not.
Umm, a very common but very difficult question.
I guess this is a personal decision people have to make considering their circumstances. I would not go as far to say that it is impossible to make money online without spending money – but it’s extremely difficult.
Certainly to build a successful business online is no different to building a business offline – it takes planning, a budget and a commitment. I think you need a plan and you need a budget. Put something aside and stick to it.
It’s difficult running an online business without paying for, at least, hosting, an autoresponder service and buying domains. Now, compared to offline businesses the cost of setting up an online business is minimal and extremely cheap – ridiculously cheap and doable.
But realistically, if you cannot afford web hosting costs, domain costs and other what I would call ‘must have’ services such as autoresponder services and Amazon S3 accounts, then you are going to find it difficult.
But not impossible. I am actually working on a solution to this right now – subscribers watch out!
