If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you probably understand that the most important factor in achieving success is your mindset. While I also discuss the specific strategies that should be used in consulting, it’s your attitude and beliefs that will determine whether you will implement these strategies. In other words, beliefs come before actions. You will only take actions that you believe to be worthwhile. As further proof to the importance of mindset in your success, check out this book: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
.
Making more money, working from home, having more time off and other goals can put more obstacles in front of you as you try to achieve them, testing your will to persist and succeed. There is also a ton of negativity out there, not just in today’s tough economy but often with friends and family. You might also experience setbacks in your attempts to succeed which you brain conjures up to remind you of, in order to keep you where you are.
The energy we need to persist during the rough times comes from setting goals. One of the main benefits to setting goals is that we then become proactive in designing our life, rather than reactive.
If you’re familiar with ‘The Secret’ you will know that the main premise is that there is a ‘Law of Attraction’. While many unsuccessful people dismiss this as BS, successful people know that when you focus on what you want, it tends to materialize. This is not wishful thinking, but a visualization technique that is followed by ACTION. Many successful sport figures use visualization improve their game. It’s this visualization of success that gives you the ‘juice’ to keep taking action during difficult times. In other words, the thinking that got you where you are won’t get you where you want to be.
To help with this visualization technique, and to make it more fun and truly visual, Ryan Higgins has come up with the concept of ‘Mind Movies‘. Using his program you can create your own movie, filling it with images and sounds of things you want, things you are currently grateful for and so on. These images and sounds create and feed the desire, which will in turn keep you taking action to achieve your dreams. While you should watch your movie on a regular basis, it can really be helpful to watch it when the fear and doubt start to creep back in.
Okay the self-doubt is kicking in as I see the daily doom and gloom out there. However, one of my ideas has shown a little bit of success. I started posting daily guitar lessons and provide a link to a related Amazon book/DVD. I’ve started to see a bit of success as I got 2 immediate sales of those specific products yesterday. And if I get one more sale, my commission will go from 4% to 6%.
Other things Amazon offers is mp3 sales and putting links in videos. So I’ve added some product links right in my video (that talks about the guitar product) and a few cds/mp3s that are my current favorites. Some of the guitar products are bigger ticket items providing larger commissions. I will have to get a lot more traffic to get the numbers I was hoping for.
No luck on the Overnight Membership site or Continuity Blueprint although I haven’t done much to market it yet. Those bigger ticket items would provide much more revenue than the Amazon sales. But the Amazon sales have actually occurred which is a crucial point to note.
One of my members asked for a refund of his annual membership on my guitar coaching site - ouch that hurt!
I just saw on the news that because of the 2010 Winter Olympics games being held in Vancouver, BC, there are a ton of jobs there in various industries - trades, public relations, etc. So it’s not all bad news! I prefer to think of the positive - will all the layoffs, maybe some of those people will try to get an online business going!
Every once in a while I set up a Google Adwords campaign. I bid on some keywords, set up some ads and the campaign starts. Recently I’ve noticed how expensive the keywords are to get anywhere near the first page. So after awhile, the dollars are adding up, I’m not getting any sales and then I start to panic and pause the campaign. But I definitely can get clicks and increased traffic going to my site much quicker than the usual search engine optimization methods.
I’ve done this a few times over the past few years, and have never been comfortable spending money on ads. I’ve recently come across a couple guys who seem to be having real success selling online. One of them is Perry Belcher who’s doing some great videos on social media. But he also sells a program called “Get Money from Google” which you might want to check out. He spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on google ads and make even more in sales. He’s offering a ton of content for only $27.
One concept I’ve recently come across is the idea that general keywords are most likely searched for in the research/discovery/learning phase of searching. Specific keywords, also known as long-tail keywords are more likely to be used closer to the purchase. For example, if you type in ‘membership sites’ you might be looking at what’s out there, learning more about them, etc. But if you type ‘Continuity Blueprint’ you’re likely checking out Ryan Deiss’ program and you might be in more of a buying mode. This can come in handy when trying to find keywords to use to get sales. Or you can use broader terms to get people to sign up for your email opt-in list.
