Last Friday, a friend and I hit the links. The day began as a conscious decision to peel myself away from the computer to enjoy a beautiful day outdoors, one of our first sub-100 degree days in months. As we hacked our way around the course (and I do mean hacked), I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between a successful golf game and online business success. Just as these 3 attributes are paramount for anybody looking to improve their golf game, the same attributes will also help anyone looking to build their online businesses:

(1) Patience is a Virtue –

You cannot dramatically improve your golf game overnight and there are no quick fixes. Despite all the gadgets, gimmicks, and infomercials that claim the contrary, improving your golf game is a process that takes time, effort, dedication, practice, and lots of PATIENCE! Likewise, online business success does not happen in a flash. Though we are continuously bombarded with the “I made $27,946 in 3 weeks following this system” squeeze pages, we know there really are no legitimate get-rich quick systems and that online success takes the same time, effort, dedication, practice, and patience that golfers use to improve their scores.

(2) Visualization is a Necessity -

The visualization techniques practiced by professional golfers are well documented. In fact, the two greatest golfers of our time, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, attribute a lot of their success to their unparalleled abilities to visualize every shot they take BEFORE they take it. They both “see” their next shot play out like it was a movie in their head – but they are the directors and they focus intently on imagining what the perfect shot would look like before they swing. Likewise, nearly EVERY successful person in the online business industry will tell you the visualizing techniques they practice, or the continuous effort they dedicate to imagining their goals already accomplished before they embark, are tantamount to them actually achieving those goals.

(3) Ability to Celebrate the Small Successes -

All golfers, good and bad, will agree that you can have a horrible day on the course but all it takes is ONE good swing or ONE great shot that keeps you coming back for more. The same can be said for our online businesses – it’s the “small successes” that keep us motivated and continuously striving for more, regardless of the roadblocks and barriers that we face on a daily basis. And, as in golf, if we learn to leverage these small successes over time than our confidence soars and we can’t help but create a snowball effect towards improvement.

So, do me a favor this weekend. Whether you’re on the golf course or working on (not in) your business, be patient, visualize the outcome, and celebrate the small successes. And remember, “the most important shot in golf [and in business] is the next one.” Have a great weekend, everybody!

Paul

BTW, I’d be interested in hearing any other metaphors you may have that tie in golf and online business so please leave a comment!

I have “officially” been playing this online business game for a little under two months now. I know what you are thinking – “two months is almost an eternity, Paul. By now, you should have made enough money online to purchase your own island!” Alas, I am here to confess I have yet to make my millions. Actually, I have yet to even make my thousands. Truth be told, I have yet to even make my FIRST thousand.

I’ve heard it said there are a million ways to make a million dollars online. While there may be some truth to this statement, the vast majority of us are just starting out and are primarily concerned with finding ways to make our FIRST dollar online. And though it may seem virtually impossible to jump over that initial hurdle, I’m telling you it’s not only possible, but it’s easier than you think. That’s because I have actually made my first $100 online…

Most of you have at least a vague idea about what Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is all about. At it’s most basic level, PPC advertising involves an individual or company creating a sponsored ad that will appear on the results page of a search engine query. The advertiser hopes that the ad is sufficiently attractive (and targeted) enough for a user to click on the ad in order to be re-directed to a website of the advertiser’s choosing. Every time a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser is charged a certain amount of money. Hence, pay per click.

I made my first $100 online promoting a clickbank product via direct linking and a PPC campaign. Before I delve further into the discussion, however, I want to add a mini-disclaimer. I am not an expert regarding PPC advertising – in fact, I would say I am only slightly more knowledgeable about PPC than my 18-month old puppy, Chloe (she is a pretty smart dog, though). Nor do I believe PPC will be prominent during my path to financial freedom. As a result, I am NOT recommending anyone stop what they are doing to jump on the PPC boat (which may be sinking if you listen to some “gurus” out there). I am merely presenting one tactical method that HAS pulled in a little cash to show that there’s hope – it IS possible to make money online, even if you don’t really know what you are doing.

With that being said, here’s a quick list of the pros and cons of affiliate marketing via direct linking PPC campaigns.

Pros:

(1) Quick Money Making Opportunity –

Once you have identified an affiliate product you want to promote, you can sign up for a Google Adwords account for $5 and, in a matter of minutes, you can design and place your first ads. You now have a legitimate opportunity to bring in affiliate commissions.

(2) No Landing / Squeeze Page -

Normally, you have to send prospects who click on your PPC ad to a “soft-sell” landing page that you developed yourself. Creating your own landing / squeeze pages obviously take precious time and effort, not to mention money for your domain name and hosting. But, with direct linking, you can cut out the middleman (aka, your landing page) and send prospects directly to your affiliate’s sales page. This can be very beneficial, especially when you are promoting a product that has a high-converting squeeze page.

(3) Automate the Process –

Once you have tweaked and tested your PPC campaign, you can let it go virtually untouched while it continues to convert commissions for you. In other words, it becomes a source of passive income!

Cons:

But though I’ve made it sound easy above, direct linking PPC campaigns have a “dirty underbelly” so here are the flip-sides of that coin.

(1) Keyword Competition Can Be Fierce -

Affiliate marketing via PPC has been around a long time. As such, there are a large number of competitors who not only have the experience and expertise, but the budget to outbid unsuspecting rookies. For you to become a profitable direct linker, you need to do your homework and low bid on high-volume and high-converting keywords. Finding these “gems” can be very tough, especially when you are first starting out.

(2) Issues Directly Linking to an Affiliate Site -

There are actually three glaring reasons off the top of my head why direct linking to an affiliate site may NOT be ideal. Firstly, some affiliates and / or affiliate networks do not allow direct linking. I won’t go into all the reasons why – suffice it to say you must check with your merchant and affiliate network before you promote a product via direct linking. Secondly, Google rotates ads that point to the same destination URL. This means that if there are other competitors promoting the same product, their ads may show more often, especially if they have higher quality scores and / or higher bids. Lastly, there have been some tests that have shown higher conversions if you send prospects to a pre-qualifying, soft-sell landing page BEFORE sending them on to the affiliate’s site. This means you may actually miss out on quite a few conversions.

(3) Automation Doesn’t Mean “Set and Forget” -

Just because you have a high-converting commission campaign doesn’t mean you can set it and forget it. I have learned this the hard way – I had originally identified a set of keywords that had almost no competition. I set my daily budget and click bids way higher than they should have been but monitored it every day for two weeks. I converted a few sales and was making a nice little profit. I figured it was cash on auto-pilot and I stopped checking the account for two weeks. I figured wrong. Not only did I stop converting sales, competitors had flooded the particular keyword market I was in and bids went through the roof. Instead of paying $0.10 a bid, I was paying over $1 per click. That quickly added up and almost erased all the profit I had previously generated. Needless to say, I have since lowered my daily budget and bids…and I check the campaign every day or two to make sure there aren’t any crazy things happening.

My foray into PPC direct linking has been a learning process – and what I have learned won’t fit into one blog post. Which is probably a good thing because I do not see myself wasting too much more time and energy on them. Again, the purpose of this post was not to give you a “how-to” but to show those of you who haven’t made a penny online yet that it’s not as hard as we are all making it. Sure, it’s kind of like a treasure hunt…but hopefully this post shows you there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe there really ARE a million ways to make a million dollars online.

Paul

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The Moronic Graduate

Okay, quick story about this picture. This is me on graduation day from the University of Texas (Master’s Sport Management) in 2006. After let’s just say a bit of a rough night (finally stumbled home as the sun was coming up), I shot out of bed at 8:35am realizing that I was supposed to be graduating…in 25 MINUTES! I grabbed my graduation gown which was still in the bag and I was just coherent enough to get it out of said bag when I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to put my arms through the sleeves. Seriously. I slipped my arms through the sleeves only to find them sewn shut at the ends.

So, like any enterprising individual who is so hung over it doesn’t yet hurt, I grabbed the scissors and began to cut open some hand holes. It wasn’t until after I caused a mini-uproar on stage in front of my closest 3,000 friends and their families that I realized the arm slots were already cut…in the SIDES of the gown. Everybody else had nice, flowing sleeves and I looked like I was wearing Larry the Cable Guy’s graduation gown. To this day, my family likes to call me the “dumbest grad school graduate of all-time” (all in good fun, of course). Okay, now back to the review.

It has been a little over a month since my first ever blog post, “I Have Yet to Make a Single Dollar Online and I Just Quit My Job.” Over the course of this last month, I have…moved to a different city (again), moved in with a girl for the first time (it’s okay, she has a ring. It’s not my ring but…just kidding), left a job most people would kill for, and started my own online business with absolutely no past experience or realistic expectations of success. I have also been planning a destination wedding in Jamaica, a co-bachelor party in Vegas, and have been enrolled in two separate mentor / coaching programs. To say the last month has been a whirlwind is a bit of an understatement…

Sometimes, especially in the midst of turbulent change, we get lost in the minutiae of the day-to-day grind without acknowledging our successes and just how far we have really come. Taking a step back to reflect on and gauge my progression has always been a helpful tool for me to (1) acknowledge I am further along than I had given myself credit for (usually) and (2) to re-evaluate, recharge, and re-focus from a different perspective. With that in mind, I wanted to share my first month’s experiences as a full-time blogger with all of you. So, without further ado…here’s the progression of PaulNorwine.com over the last month:

Posts / Videos:
Not including this post today, I have written six articles and have even posted one cheesy 30-second video in the “About Paul” section. My posts have ranged from 122 words (I included a movie clip) to 1775 words (average of 1100) and I have touched on topics ranging from simplifying goal-setting methods and online business strategies to football, heat-seeking missiles, and even guys puking on my garage floor. I used to hate writing…but now it’s almost cathartic and I have come to realize I DO have a voice that I want to share (though you may wish I’d go back to being silent ).

Visitors:
Since my first post on August 10th, I have had 481 visits, 275 unique visitors, and 1282 page views of my blog. Considering I haven’t truly dedicated myself to driving traffic yet, I am relatively excited by these numbers. Last week alone I had 162 visitors (109 of which were unique) with over 371 page views. I have just recently begun to play around with twitter, StumbleUpon, and other traffic driving techniques so I am definitely looking to continue the upward swing.

Comments:
With 80+ comments spread over my first six posts I am definitely feeling the love. I know a ton of people struggle with getting comments in the beginning so I feel pretty blessed that people seem to be resonating with my articles (my first post alone has 30+). I have even started to get a few pingbacks with each of my posts (I didn’t even know what these were a couple of weeks ago). But I also know a lot of this has to do with the comments I have been leaving on others’ blogs. I always strive to provide relevant comments that add value when I write on others’ posts. I will never become “THAT GUY” who just copies and pastes generic comments on every blog he comes across in order to get backlinks to his site…those guys suck – the copy and paste comment method is not only shady, but it’s also easily identifiable and these people will not get very far in the long-run. But I digress, back to the review.

Subscribers:
I currently have 11 people on my mailing list and about 5-8 feedburner subscribers depending on what day it is. Not as high as I would like but it is still early, after all. And, I didn’t even have feedburner set up until last week so I can’t be too disappointed (but if  you would like to help out then by all means click here to receive my updated posts via email – yes, it’s a shameless plug but what the hell, we’re all friends). I have a few ideas that will hopefully increase my numbers in this regard and they all involve offering the best free stuff I can find so keep an eye out!

SEO / Google Rankings / Alexa Rankings:
It took me a while to figure out (aka, last Wednesday) that I not only needed to learn HOW to use the All-in-One SEO Pack on Wordpress but that I also needed to ACTIVATE the damn plugin. In fact, my pages have yet to be indexed correctly but they ARE starting to return organic results – I’m even getting a little bit of traffic from Google which is surprising considering (1) I only have 6 posts and (2) none of my pages have made it to page one yet (at least not that I am aware of).

But, despite not ranking too high yet, I have seen a dramatic jump in my Alexa ranking. After previously being unranked, last week I made it to the 2.43 millionth “most important” website only to LEAPFROG ALL THE WAY TO…1,896,583. Talk about ballin’! Okay, okay – this is nothing to get excited over but it’s still fun to think I increased my ranking by 500,000+ spots in one week. I have a ways to go to make it into the coveted top 100,000 but my Alexa ranking is something tangible that will always help me to track and evaluate my progression over time.

Alright, I have turned an 800-word post into a post of 1,300+ (what’s new?) so I am going to stop right NOW…or after this:

This exercise of looking back and evaluating my progress has shown that even though it has been crazy month, I have come further along than I had given myself credit for and it motivates me to push ahead even further this next month. I hope you will continue to follow me on my journey and I sincerely appreciate all the support and advice you have showered me with from day one. As always, I would love to hear your feedback – either on this post or my blog in general – so please leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter (paulnorwine). I also urge you (seriously, this time) to subscribe to receive post updates via email. I know that I will only reach my goals if I help enough people reach their own…and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Until next time…

Paul

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” -Rabindranath Tagore

If you are reading this, chances are you are either already running your own online business and are looking to take it to the next level or you haven’t yet started a business but are very much interested in doing so. Either way, we all struggle from time to time trying to figure out exactly how to get the ball rolling. So what’s the absolute FIRST step you need to take to start a successful online business?

Just jump off the cliff and get started…Listen, we all want to improve our current life situations. We all have aspirations and goals, values and dreams. We all have “big ideas” as to where we would like to see ourselves in the future. But most of us continually struggle with actually turning those dreams into reality. Building a successful online business is no different.

Maybe you have an idea that you are excited and passionate about but you don’t have a clue as to where to start. Maybe you have experienced some minor success in adding people to your list but are unclear as to how to monetize that list. Maybe you have studied and learned some great concepts that are sure to take your business to the next level but haven’t yet implemented them because you’re not sure which tips and strategies will be the most conducive to your success. Or maybe you are merely waiting for the “perfect time.” If any of this sounds familiar than you’re not alone; but if you don’t stop procrastinating and don’t get off your ass to do something about your current situation your dreams will be just that for the rest of your life…dreams.

So how do you begin to transform your dreams into reality? How do you go about building a successful online business? It’s as easy as (but a lot safer than) jumping off a cliff. You JUST DO IT! Yes, Nike’s slogan has become a bit played out over the years…but that certainly doesn’t mean the message is not applicable to your current situation. Every successful person, regardless of the industry, will tell whoever is listening that the reason they are more successful than the average Joe is because they TOOK ACTION. They visualized what they wanted and then they got STARTED.

I can already picture some of you saying, “No shit, Paul. Get started?…great advice, asshole. How about you give me something tangible that I can actually apply? How about you lay out exactly what steps I need in order to get started.”

I can’t. I won’t. Everybody’s situation is different. Everybody’s path is different. But the point is, picture exactly what you want and GO GET IT. Make it happen.

Who gives a shit that you don’t know the first thing about developing a loyal list of followers who will eagerly pay you money for information and content that you develop? None of the gurus knew how to either when they got started. BUT THEY GOT STARTED. They visualized the end-game and started to move their feet. Sure, they spent time developing a plan. But, unlike most people, they had the discipline to APPLY what they planned and they learned from their mistakes. They failed time and time again…but they failed FORWARD and kept moving. Each dream, each project started as an idea. And they didn’t KNOW how to make it a reality until they put one foot in front of the other and made it happen.

My mentor, Alex Jeffreys, has beaten me over the head with the statement, “don’t worry about getting it perfect, just get it going.” And I am glad he beats me over the head with this advice. Because sometimes I get too involved with the planning stage. Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I get wrapped up in the HOW to do something as opposed to actually DOING that something. But when I focus on the end-game, when I picture in my mind the exact outcome I desire, and then I actually go out and do something about it, I stop worrying about HOW I am going to do it and I JUST DO IT. Not knowing what I am doing at the time is just a minor obstacle that I have to get through. I don’t stress over the hurdles I know I will have to jump over – I just get off my ass and start moving forward. There is always time to cost-correct or modify and change any errors you make along the way. It’s better to fail forward than to succeed at a standstill.

It’s mind boggling how much I accomplish when I have this mindset of just getting it going. And it’s equally amazing to me to notice how stressed out, worthless, and ineffective I become when I let go of this mindset and get bogged down with the “HOW am I going to do it?”

So let’s do a little exercise. You are going to tell me what you want and I am going to tell you how to get it. Here we go:

YOU: “Paul, I can tell by your blog posts that you are an incredibly wise and sage man. If Buddha and Confucius were to mate and have offspring I think you would be the result. I want to buy a boat but I want to pay cash for it and not use credit. How can I do this?”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

YOU: “But I make minimum wage, work 14 hour days, and have $10,000 in credit card debt. How can I possibly afford a boat you jerk?”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

YOU: “I hate you. You suck donkey-balls.”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

Okay, you get the point. We don’t always need to know exactly how we are going to get where we want to go, we just need to know where we want to end up and then get going. And though I mentioned above that I cannot and will not lay out the exact steps needed to build a successful online business, I will help point you in the right direction.

First, become completely clear about what you want to accomplish. Not just in terms of money but in terms of what that money will afford you. For those of you who read my last post, “Rich Schefren Called Me Out…but I Stepped Up to the Challenge,” you will know how important this part of the process is. If you aren’t clear on what you want (and I mean dead-clear), you will continue to float like a ship that has set sail with no destination. How can you GET what you want if you don’t KNOW what you want?

The method I used to “get clear” was simple. I pictured what my “ideal life” in five years would be like. I pretended I was watching a movie in which I was the main character and the plot was my ideal life in five years. When you do this exercise (at least when I did it), you may think it a little lame. But then I got into it. I started to picture, down to every last detail, exactly what I wanted in five years. From the view and location of my dream home, to my cars, to my golf game, to my relationship with my soon-to-be-wife and kids. Picture it all. And write down what you see. Once you have it down on paper, turn it into a story. It doesn’t have to be a long story. Just long enough and detailed enough that if anyone else were to read it, they would (1) know exactly what you wanted in five years and (2) be intrigued enough to want to read more. Once you have the story, read it at least once a week. Imagine your life in 5 years but view it as an outsider…like it’s someone else’s life. Because, in five years, it WILL be someone else’s life…it will be the new you.

Secondly, if you haven’t already started a blog, do so now. Right now, right this minute. Get it going. It doesn’t have to be perfect. A blog is not the only (or even the best) way to make money online. But it’s a start and gets you headed in the right direction. Everything else will fall into place and you will follow suit. Don’t stress if you don’t know the first thing about setting up a blog. Neither did I…but I made the decision to get a blog up and running and made it happen.

Getting started and taking action for me was seeking out the help of a blogging expert who is a fellow Alex Jeffreys’ student by the name of Matt Wolfe (http://www.matthewwolfe.com/). Not only was he able to get my blog up and running in a matter of days, Matt was able to set it up to my exact design specifications. Now, some of you may think this blog design needs work…and it does. But it was my first go at a blog and Matt Wolfe was able to whip up exactly what I wanted and I can’t thank him enough.

If you need to get your blog up online, or if you need to learn more about the coolest widgets or how to do something specific with your blog, Matt is the guy who can help you. Lucky for us, he has a series of videos (Wordpress Classroom) that explain in great detail how to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING with your wordpress blog. Best of all, as I can attest, the videos are extremely easy to follow and are even short in duration (each video ranges between two and ten minutes). Even if you are a techno-phobe or code-phobe, Matt’s videos do an amazing job of walking you through each process step-by-step and you will have the know-how and tools to blog like the best.

So GO! Get going. It doesn’t need to be perfect…it just needs to get started. Whatever you are looking to do, get off your ass and get moving!

And I would love to know how it goes – drop me a comment if this post has helped you get those feet moving. Or, considering the extreme length of this post, if you started to nod off, drop a comment and let me know how I was able to help you have a great nap Until next time….

Paul

]]> http://www.paulnorwine.com/2009/how-in-the-hell-do-you-start-a-successful-online-business/feed/ 13 http://www.paulnorwine.com/2009/rich-schefren-called-me-out-and-i-rose-to-the-challenge/ http://www.paulnorwine.com/2009/rich-schefren-called-me-out-and-i-rose-to-the-challenge/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:30:04 +0000 Paul http://paulnorwine.com/?p=19 “If you don’t know where you are going, how do you expect to get there?” -Basil S. Walsh

Last night, Rich Schefren called me out. He straight up embarrassed me in front of one hundred other students. I tried shrugging off what he said. I tried pretending he had no idea what he was talking about or who he was talking to. But the pit in my stomach told me that what he was telling me was true – success in this industry will continue to elude me and I am doomed to fail…

Okay, okay – Rich Schefren didn’t single me out personally. Instead, he called attention to the FACT that if you aren’t 100% clear about where you want to end up, you are destined to drift down the river of mediocrity. And, deep-down, I knew I was currently one of those people on that river.

For those of you who don’t know Rich Schefren, he is known as “the guru to the gurus” and is responsible for mentoring more online millionaires than any other person on the internet. Oh yeah, he is also the proud proprietor of an 8-figure online business. So when Rich Schefren speaks, you LISTEN – and last night, he spoke to us.

One of the (many) bonuses of being enrolled in the Alex Jeffreys’ 2.0 Coaching Program is the dynamic list of guest speakers that we are treated to. Last night, 130 fellow Alex Jeffreys students listened to Rich Schefren speak for over two hours about the “six crucial factors to online success.” The information he presented was invaluable to say the least. It’s not very often where you get to listen (for free) to a man who charges $2500 an hour to speak. But the idea that stuck out to me the most was his first topic of discussion, “business by design” and getting clear on what you REALLY want.

We all have heard the importance of setting goals and benchmarks on our “journey to success.” Many of us even write out our goals or at least have a vague sense of what we want to accomplish with our online businesses. But Rich says that a vague idea or a partial list of goals is not enough – for your online business to be truly successful, you need an established blueprint for success which requires you to map out EXACTLY what you want to accomplish with your business. In other words, you need a “business by design.”

What does that mean? We all want to make a lot of money (obviously). We all want to get to a point where we make enough money in our online businesses where we never have to worry about a J.O.B., or money, ever again. But money is really just a means to an end. So what, exactly, do you want the money FOR? Rich was adamant that you can’t just jump into your business and cross your fingers hoping for success. You need an end-game in mind. You need a clear destination. You need a plan.

And it makes sense, right? How can you possibly get to where you want to be if you don’t know where exactly it is you want to go?

This was Rich Schefren’s challenge to us. And it was a challenge I knew I needed to take up.

Like most of you, I have worked on “visualizing” a successful future. I have used the process of writing out specific goals, objectives, and benchmarks. I have read business motivation and self-help books by the score. And all this helps…for a little while. But somewhere along the line, I lose track of the “big picture.” I get so wrapped up in the day-to-day minutiae that I temporarily forget what it is I am working towards. I become so bogged down and enveloped in my to-do list without remembering the reason WHY I am working on those tasks to begin with. Or I write out goals and objectives that seem like good benchmarks without really thinking how they align with my overall (and vague) definitions of personal success. After hearing Rich speak, I realized I needed to go back to square one and “get clear.”

So this morning, I developed a quick mental exercise that would help me visualize my ideal end-game and get me back on track. The exercise took about 45 minutes to complete but was worth every second spent. I now know EXACTLY what it is I am trying to accomplish with my business. No longer do I have a vague sense of what success means to me. And though the action steps needed to arrive at my objective are still murky, I finally have a “clear” destination in mind. And with it, I have a peace of mind that has eluded me for a long, long time.

Rich Schefren called me out…and I rose to the challenge.

Check back next week as I outline the exact process I followed to finally “get clear.” I love feedback so please drop a comment if you liked (or didn’t like) this post!