The 8 Reasons I make a fulltime living online (and you don't)

I've been around this little world of ours for a few years now. And while I don't claim to be the greatest ever expert on internet marketing, I've been full time for a couple of years, so I feel qualified to teach other people how to do it.

And in the few years I've been involved with this stuff, I've seen loads of people come and go. For every person that "makes it", there's another 100+ who never get anywhere. They might start off enthusiastic, but after 6 months and no real results, they give up, never to be seen again.

So, newbies, pay attention. Here are what I consider to be the 8 reasons why I'm making good money online and you aren't.

1. Get your head right

I'm a big believer in getting your head right. I'm not a fan of the airy fairy "manifestation" stuff everyone seems to be spouting though. While everything that you create is a result of your thoughts, it's not that easy.

Sitting on your bed visualising your ferrari won't magically make one appear. But it might get you thinking about things you can do to get that ferrari. And sure, your first 9/10 attempts will probably fail, but eventually you'll get one right and you'll be closer to your ferrari or whatever you're after.

Basically, without getting your head right, you're in trouble. However, I don't know of any magical pill that can get it right for you. It's something that happens over time. For example, I didn't actually believe this stuff was real.

It wasn't until I got my first Clickbank cheque of $161 that my brain suddenly went "Holy shit, this stuff is real. Get your act together so we can make more money". And that's what I did.

I could write an entire book on this stuff (and probably will one day) but basically, focus on the action stuff and your mind will gradually change. Action is way more effective than meditation for this stuff.

If you need a kickstart though, something to overcome that initial inertia, just focus on your goal, whatever that may be. Keep that in mind and you'll slowly work your way towards it. Don't think that you'll magically wake up with your goal though, it doesn't work like that. But thinking about your goal will cause you to feel desire, which should get you off your backside and doing stuff. This isn't new, Napoleon Hill was talking about it a long time ago...

2. Get a real mentor and avoid the parrots

It took me a while to get things off the ground. I floundered around at the start, not really knowing what to do. Meanwhile I was trying a million things at once and I wasn't really doing that well at any of them.

It wasn't until I got a mentor that things really started looking up. As well as giving me a more solid direction to head in, the biggest thing he gave me was hope. I felt that with him on my side, I'd achieve my goals a lot quicker. And I did.

The first time I made more money online than I did at my job (factory worker, not fun) was a few weeks after I started following my mentors advice. It felt pretty awesome walking into work that day knowing I'd already made more in my sleep than I would standing at a conveyor belt for 12 hours...

But how do you find a mentor? Well, it is a bit hit and miss. I think I was pretty lucky to get my mentor. But there are a few things you can do to improve the odds. Firstly, you need to figure out who your mentor should be.

And you should only be looking for someone who has successfully done what you are trying to do. There are way too many people following "mentors" that really have no idea what they're talking about (but more on parrots later).

If you want to make $5000 a month selling info products, find someone who's done that. If you want to make $10000 a month selling supplements, find someone who's done that. And so on.

Once you've figured that out, go and find a whole bunch of people who would qualify as your mentor. Then, be prepared to pay them some money. Sure, successful people love to take on mentees, but the people you want are usually too busy to deal with time wasters.

And until they know otherwise, you are a timewaster. I get emails all the time from people who want to be my apprentice. And while I do work with a few people, I only accept people who can pay me a ton of cash up front.

And it's not because I'm greedy. It's because I don't want to deal with time wasters and neither does anyone who's doing well online. I've tried coaching people for free before and only one person has ever done really well.

Sure, you'll find some people who will take you on for free, but they're rare and you have to prove to them that you're not a time waster. This can be hard when you are starting out.

And I should mention, when I say find a mentor, I'm talking about someone who will work with you one on one. I'm not talking about someone who'll send you a "coaching" video every week.

While information is great, that's not a mentorship.

Also, avoid the parrots. Who are the parrots? They're people who've read an ebook or watched some videos and now think they're ready to start teaching other people how to make money online.

While I have nothing against these people (hey, we've all gotta make an income somehow), they're not the people I'd want mentoring me. I only want to deal with people who've done what I want to do.

So find yourself a mentor and avoid the parrots.

3. Start developing your skills

Unless you were born with internet marketing skills, you've got a lot of stuff to learn. Marketing, sales, business, management and so on. And you'll never stop learning this stuff. So start now.

Get your head around PPC, figure out how SEO works. And I'm not talking about the latest and greatest "PPC System". I'm talking about how PPC works. If you can figure out how to use PPC, you can figure out how to use it for your specific business.

While money making systems are great when you're a newbie, you'll eventually have to create a solid asset. But more on this in a few points time.

Buy books, buy courses, keep browsing forums like this. It doesn't really matter how you go about it, but you've gotta keep learning stuff.

4. Learn from your mistakes

If you're going to do this, you're going to screw up. Lots of times. I've screwed up so many times, but after each screw up, I learn another lesson and just move on. I don't get all upset (well sometimes I do, but I quickly get over it) and quit.

And I still make mistakes. And I always will. And so will you. Don't get too stressed as each mistake is one step closer to your goal. Just keep that goal in mind and you'll be on your way.

Sometimes it will feel like you're going in circles (and if you're not taking notice of the feedback, this could happen) but if you can ask yourself what went wrong and what you could've done to improve things, you'll get closer.

This stuff takes work, anyone who says otherwise is probably selling their "Million Dollars overnight" package. Ok, enough about this point, I think it's pretty common sense.

5. Just do stuff

Far too many people get "paralysis by analysis". And it's easy to get caught in this trap. When you're new and you lack the confidence about what to do, fear can take over and you worry about screwing up.

Get over it and just do something. The best student I've had is a guy who just does stuff. I'd teach him something, then the next day he'd put it into action. Sure, he screwed up. But I corrected him and he went on to the next step.

Most people spend way too long on little things like their hosting company. They research, they go into forums and ask questions and a month later they haven't even got their hosting sorted.

You need to get a lot of things done in this game and if it takes you a month to make a small decision, you're gonna be in trouble. I'm not saying to act without any thought whatsoever, but you need to be decisive.

Remember, you're going to screw up, so don't stress about making mistakes. Just get out there and do stuff and you'll get to where you want to go a lot quicker. The quicker you can get feedback the better.

6. Work towards building a business

One huge problem I see is that people are far too concerned with developing a "money maker", rather than a real business. And while this is fine when you're starting, you have to be thinking that you'll eventually need to build something solid.

When I was getting started, I knew nothing about business. So someone telling me to go and build a salable business would've been useless. I needed to start with some money makers and chances are most of the newbies here do too.

But if you never graduate to building something solid, your success will be limited. You can make money with money makers in the short term, but sooner or later they fall apart. So if you don't know anything about business, that's fine, but at least start thinking about it.

7. Stop caring what others think of you

This is also huge. If you care about the opinions of others too much, you'll be paralysed by fear whenever you go to do something. Your brain will entertain thoughts of people making fun of you and so on.

But if you want to do well, you've gotta try and get over this. I'll admit, it's not easy. And we all care about others opinions of us to a certain degree, just work at making it less and less important to you.

I'm sure most people will have positive things to say about this post, but I'm also sure some people will have something negative to say. But if I got worried about that stuff, I'd never do anything in my business and I'd still be working at that damn factory.

So next time you do something and that fear of embarrassment creeps in, just move on regardless. If you can make a habit of this, you'll be much better off in the long run. You'll also be able to lead a life where you're not constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Go and read Fountainhead by Ayn Rand if you want a good read about this stuff.

8. Deliver Value

Last, but not least is deliver value. If you want to make money, you've gotta understand what money is. It's just a medium of exchange. People exchange money (one form of value) for a good (another form of value) because they value the good more than the money.

So focus on delivering stuff that people value. I've seen a lot of people come out and confuse this with helping people. But I don't really like thinking of it like this because what you think is helping someone might be different to what they think is help.

If you see a drug addict, you might want to help them by getting off drugs. I'm sure most of us would agree this is a good thing. But that probably has less value to them than the drugs they're buying, since they're spending their money on drugs. So if you wanted to tap into the cash of drug addicts, you'd be better off selling them drugs than rehab (from a purely financial point of view, I'm not talking about ethics here).

So it's not about what you think is valuable, it's about what your prospects think is valuable. Figure out what people want (or what they WOULD want) and give it to them. Simple, but it works.

Ok, so I'm done. That's the longest post I've ever written here or any other forum I post on, so let me know what you think. Please don't email me about getting coaching for free. While I'd love to coach every newbie on the planet for free, time just doesn't work like that. That's why I created my free site (see sig).

Have fun and I hope that helps!

Sean Morrissy

 

I also make a full time living on the internet, and I agree with what you say. Your mind set is very important and you have to believe that it is possible to make a living online, otherwise you will be on of the 99% who give up after 6 months.

I think that is the biggest barrier to success, people giving up before they have really given themselves a chance. It took me two years of hard work, and a move to a country that is cheaper to live in than the UK for me to be able to give up my job, but I finally achieved my goal. I was earning virtually nothing after 6, and even 12 months of working very hard, yet I still doggedly continued. Now I have far more time to further build and develop my business.

Whilst I was still in employment I would still spend time almost every day on my websites - one or two hours a day every day can really add up over a couple of years. I like to think about it this way - if it was easy to make money online, then everyone would be doing it, and the competition would be relentless.

People are often too quick to label things 'failure' and success'. I don't believe it's as simple as that. This way of thinking often paralyses people with fear. They fear doing all that hard work for no reward, so don't work as hard as they should, and give up quicker than they ought to.

Instead I consider everything to be a success, even if it doesn't make me money. I have some sites that don't make me any money, but they are still valuable to me though. I can use them for bargaining in deals such as link exchanges, link to my own sites from them, use them to experiment on, or sell them if I need to raise some revenue for something. Also in the future an idea or new strategy might suddenly hit me where I turn it into a little gold mine. You also gain valuable knowledge and insight into learning what doesn't work - all valuable.

So I would say keep working and learning, and be prepared to do this for several years, and you will eventually achieve your dreams.

 

ues you have got good skill. I am also want to be online regularly but i think i am not punctual. I decide to be online full time from today like you and i set up a goal like you. Really you are great and i learn from you.

 

Totally awesome post!!!!!

I have been at it for a year now and sometimes feel like im running in circles.
I am making progress and a little side income, so that motivates me to keep going.

I am prepared for it taking anything from 2-5 years for me to make a full time income from online, but I know this is what I want.

I do not want a boss, I want financial independence and I want to be able to work from anywhere in the world in the time I choose

That is my motivation!

Thanks for your awesome post!

Diggy

 

i really fail to understand how to pick the product to market from clickbank. coz i had tried one forex related product and it turned out to be SCAM! so plzzz give us your input on this, as this would really help a newbie like me as far as affiliate is concerned!

 

Firstly if you are a newbie stay away from over saturated markets like forex and fat loss.

Secondly, many products on clickbank are rather scammy, so before you start to promote a product, do research on it first or send the vendor an email asking for a review copy!

 

if you are newbie would the CB owner care to give you a review copy ?

 

Great post.

For any business branding is key. Businesses that fail to brand themselves doesn't last long, no matter its online or offline.

 

Its simply Excellent and mind blowing sean. Thanks very much for firing up my motivation level.
I need a suggestion. I had setup a education community site and am planning to do it big. Can i do affiliate marketing simultaneously while am working on that site?.
Thanks and am joining in your free affiliate marketing course now and i want to know how far it is differ from your paid coaching and how much your paid coaching costs.

 

Great post, straight out of a text book. I work from home too but without much success. I have a website and several blogs but not earning enough. Now, I am trying to do something different, hope it works.

 

i still focus on real job and make money for my life, making money online is just fun, i do believe some people making good money form their website, take them as career, but only if you are good at online business and have long time experience and internet marketing skill

 

I do agree with getting a mentor, maybe a couple of them. You don't have to email them and ask them to mentor you, just read what they say. Watch what they do, subscribe to their blogs, follow them on twitter. Learn from other people!

You can learn a lot on DP about a huge range of things. But if you're getting into Ecommerce I have quickly learned that there are better things out there. I'm not putting DP down, but it does seem to be tailored more towards those desiring to earn from blogs. So if this is what you would like to do, then DP is great for that. Other markets may lead you in other directions though for your learning. Still, the basic concepts can be learned here. Every website needs real targeted traffic, and that is priority #1 always!

 

well very nice.it's just like a normal days work.After you worked hard just wait for the results.Online and offline have some comparisons and similarities.Just be brave enough to make decisions and do what is best for your online work.anyway DP is an awesome forum.

 

Your one of those people who will give up after 6 months, no probably 3 months. You can't even be bothered to read a GOOD article which could HELP you!

I enjoyed reading this thread and found the 'don't care what other people think' really useful. Recently I came up with a rather different idea for a website and have been lacking the balls to go for it but after reading that I think I might just do it.

Reputation added!

 

Don't you have better way to be a fulltime living online?

 

What an inspiring post! Other than the tips you've given above, what's the #1 thing you think most newbies to fulltime, online money-making endeavors of any sort make?

 

Good informative post for the newbs, except I think it is more like 1 in 1000 that get anywhere....perhaps even less.

I have been consulting for quite a few years and the Biggest factor I see is that people Thought having an online business was going to be easy and bring great wealth quickly. So they choose a niche they know nothing about and are soon bored and discouraged.
I blame a lot of this on television commercials that say how you can start raking in $1000s in a few weeks.
How all you have to do is set up your site and watch the money come rolling in.

There is nothing further from the truth. It takes a lot of work and devotion to succeed in a large niche.
Sorry but there is no magic niche or magic system.

 

Very good post that covers some very important topics. A couple that I would like to touch on is "get your head right" and "get a mentor."

To go anywhere you need direction. If you do not have an idea of "where" you want to go, just gonna be driving around in circles.

Get a mentor - this is like your road map or your navigator. This is the person that is going to tell you where to turn to reach your goals.

Know where you want to go, and know how to get there. Everything else will fall into place.

 

Far too many people get "paralysis by analysis". And it's easy to get caught in this trap. When you're new and you lack the confidence about what to do, fear can take over and you worry about screwing up.

"Get over it and just do something. The best student I've had is a guy who just does stuff. I'd teach him something, then the next day he'd put it into action. Sure, he screwed up. But I corrected him and he went on to the next step.

Most people spend way too long on little things like their hosting company. They research, they go into forums and ask questions and a month later they haven't even got their hosting sorted.

You need to get a lot of things done in this game and if it takes you a month to make a small decision, you're gonna be in trouble. I'm not saying to act without any thought whatsoever, but you need to be decisive.

Remember, you're going to screw up, so don't stress about making mistakes. Just get out there and do stuff and you'll get to where you want to go a lot quicker. The quicker you can get feedback the better."

Absolutely. Somebody once said (paraphrasing) if you're going to fail, fail fast and get it out of the way and learn from it. It's easy to lie to yourself and tell yourself that you're "planing", when it turns out that what you're trying to do is avoid failing (and maybe getting discouraged and giving up). By staying in the planning stage forever, you get to stay in the fantasy land of what it'll be like to succeed in business, without the actual nitty-gritty reality of it.