Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

It’s the paradox of the internet marketing industry.

Thousands of people want to quit their day-jobs using internet marketing… But they end up working twice as hard, trying to get one business running profitably while they’re still stuck in their usual daily grind.

Don’t get fooled by the get-rich-quick hype - internet marketing is hard work.

It’s like any type of success… What you reap is only relative to what you sow.

My most successful clients are at it relentlessly. Most of the more successful ones worked on their online businesses for years before they started to reap any significant returns.

One former mentor used to have a saying about achieving success: “You have to pay the price daily.”

Unfortunately, most internet marketers will give up after a month, 6 months, 12 months - in what Seth Godin calls “The Dip” - the steepest uphill climb before things start to get easy.

The good news is, if you can make it past this point, you start to experience real leverage.

That’s when things start to snowball.

One project I worked on, it took us over 3 years to build a database of around 7,000 people…

And then just 3 months to quadruple that database (that’s x4) from 7,000 to 28,000 people!

How?

1. The revenue those 7,000 people generated for the business “funded” the writing and publication of a book.
2. 7,000 people bought the book, turning it into a bestseller.
3. The bestseller gained the attention of the media, with nationwide prime time T.V. coverage.
4. The nationwide T.V. coverage helped to sell tens-of-thousands of copies of the book (eventually over 100,000) - which promoted the website, which grew in membership from 7,000 to 28,000 in a matter of months!

This leverage is constant with other internet marketing models too.

Like if you’re building an online business reliant on outsourcing.

It takes time to build the systems around outsourcing - to develop systems for providers to follow, manage those providers while they seem to screw every task up (as they will invariably do at the start) and while you refine the processes until they “work”, develop methods of testing and measuring processes, and doing it all until it becomes a profitable and largely passive business system.

That’s when you get leverage.

Suddenly the system pays for itself - and the more often you repeat the system, the more profit you make.

That’s when things start to snowball.

It’s a hard slog getting to this point (I know - I’m working on this myself right now)

But there are a couple of steps I’m taking to make things easier:

#1 Begin with an End in Mind:

How can you ever get to where you’re going if you don’t know where it is?

I know what I want to achieve. I just have to (consistently) walk the best path I’ve found to get there. If I didn’t, I’d end up going in circles.

So how do you stay to the path?

#2 Keep a Single List of Things To Do:

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

Yeah, corny joke.. but you’re never going to achieve success overnight (if it was that easy, it wouldn’t be called “success” - it would be called “mediocrity”).

I’m constantly working through lists of tasks to get things done in order, maintain focus, and so that I don’t get overwhelmed at the elephant on my plate.

#3 Use Leverage to achieve Leverage Faster:

Where I don’t have to reinvent the wheel, I don’t.

Several processes I want in my business have already been refined and developed - by people like James Brausch. When they become available, I buy them and add them to my systems.

My charge out rate is $99 per hour in my day-job… I take home a large percentage of that (after tax and management). It costs me $35 to buy the processes… And it takes much longer than 20 minutes for me to create a process myself (depending on the process, more like 3 hours - before the process is tested)…

You do the math!

#4 Celebrate the Little Wins:

Forget about the million-dollar launches of the gurus…

You’re not a guru - and neither am I.

There’s no point pretending like we are - it just make achieving success harder for us.

Celebrate the $100 revenue targets to begin with - and graduate to $1,000, $10,000, then $100,000 targets.

I don’t have 100’s of new subscribers per day - but you can bet your bottom dollar I’m celebrating the fact I’ve received 26 new subscribers since Sunday as a result of my videos!

Melbourne internet marketing guru Ed Dale has mentioned this recently in the lead-up to his 30-Day Challenge. Paraphrasing him, he also said “forget about the million dollar launches - when you don’t get it, you’ll only end up discouraged when you shouldn’t be”.

Keep in mind that Ed took *dozens* of tries [37?] to get his first niche site running profitably.

That’s some serious dogged determination!

Which brings me to my final point…

#5 Pay the Price - Every Day:

Success isn’t about the million-dollar salesletter, or the 26% Conversion Rate you’re getting… (Yeah, I know… I use them in my own marketing because they *sell* well - it’s because this is what everyone focusses on!)

Success means getting up every day and doing what it takes to move closer to your goal.

Success means doing the hard things - working the late nights, having the tough talks, and facing the hard truths.

Success means losing 36 times… and still choosing to brush yourself, get over the failure, focussing on the success, and getting back on that bike for another try - even when it still hurts.

(Why is it that kids can do this, and we can’t?)

I’m not where I want to be yet… And I’m not going to say I’ll make it.

But I’m paying the price, chewing that elephant, and celebrating each mouthful.

Will that be enough?

Brent

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