Business Lessons

It just occurred to me that it’s been almost 3 weeks since my last blog post. I have received some positive feedback about my blog in my Twitter account, so that has encouraged me to not let the blog lapse into disrepair. Thanks to all those who gave me the wonderful feedback. I appreciate it very much.

I’ve been so busy that I found I got a lot more work done when I didn’t worry about writing my next blog post or Twittering. In fact I hadn’t logged into Twitter for 3 weeks. I did just log in and post an update and respond to those feedback tweets.

For the last 3 weeks I have been working from 9am to 12 midnight, 6 days a week, updating my sites. That is no exaggeration.

Why am I working so hard? Two reasons: First, I want to increase my income to pay off my mortgage as soon as possible and also give my family a comfortable lifestyle. We purchased our first home a few months ago and the mortgage is a bit of a burden. I’m 40 this year and I want to pay it off long before I reach retirement age.

My wife gave up her career as a flight attendent for United Airlines so that we could bring up a family here in Sydney, Australia. Hence, I took up the responsibility of becoming the sole breadwinner so that my wife can spend more time looking after our son (and me).

I know how tough her job is. I looked after our son when he was two, for 4 days a couple of years ago while my wife went skiing with her friends (she needed the break). I quickly realized it is a full-time job. So the last thing I expect is for her to look after us and go out and work a full-time job.

Second, I want to build the business to the point whereby I can live a lifstyle whereby my business fits around my lifestyle, not the other way around. I realized that this should be how it works after I read Yanik Silver’s 34 Rules for Maverick Entrepreneurs from his Maverick Business Insider newsletter.

Don’t get me wrong. Business is good. I’m making more money than I ever dreamt possible. But I don’t feel rich. I don’t live a millionaire lifestyle. I don’t work less than others - in fact I’m working more. I don’t wear designer clothes. I have a big mortgage. I fly economy. I drive a Toyota.

I am grateful for everything that my internet business has given me. I don’t take it for granted for a second. But I don’t feel secure. I feel like I’m not realizing my full potential. Success has made me lazy. But now is time to let my foot off the brake. Maybe it’s mid-life crisis talking. Whatever the reason, I know this is the right way to go.

The problem started because a few weeks ago I realized that that my new AdWords keyword tool at JUMBOKeyword.com is not going as well as I had hoped. Since I switched off the advertising, the site has just attracted 2,761 visitors in the last 30 days. That is extremely disappointing to say the least.

Upon some analysis, I realized that while a few advanced AdWords advertisers find it useful, it offers far too many features and is probably too complicated for most people. I also spent far too long developing it - something like 8 months.

Second, I realized that affiliate marketing is unstable and becoming far too competitive. For example, one of my most profitable campaigns, WebPosition Gold, was earning me as much as $4,500 a month a few years ago. It went downhill after it was acquired by WebTrends. They wrote to me last week telling me that they are shutting down the affiliate program. So it went from $4,500 a month in 2005 to zero in a few short years. That isn’t the only campaign that has crashed and burned. I’ve had bigger losses.

I also don’t like the way affiliate marketing is going. This year has seen a flurry of software tools that allow anyone to spy on AdWords campaigns to steal profitable affiliate campaigns. They help you to copy the ads and keywords of profitable campaigns that you find. So, let’s say affiliate A uses one of these tools and copies a profitable campaign he has found. Then affiliate B stumbles upon affiliate A’s campaign and copies his campaign. The affiliate C finds and copies affiliate B’s campaign. And so on. When will it stop?

Hence, I have decided on a new plan of action. I want to diversify my business away from affiliate marketing and relying on big product ideas.

First, I will bring all my sites together with the same look and feel as my most popular site, Mike’s Marketing Tools. I have interlinked them all, but have blocked most of the links with the ‘rel=nofollow’ tag so as not to upset Google. I will slowly release the links to make it look for natural.

Second, I will update all the sites. I have already updated most of the sites. Mike’s Marketing Tools requires a bit more work but should be done within the next 2-3 weeks. I did a bit of house cleaning with Mike’s Marketing Tools. There were pages that I hadn’t touched since 2002. It’s like the loft you dare not enter because you know it would take a lot of work to tidy up. Do you have old sites like that?

I have to say that it felt good cleaning out all those sites, removing unprofitable products and broken links, and replacing them with new up to date products. I feel the last few weeks have been the most productive I have been since 2002. For the first time in a long time, I feel I have more control over my sites than I ever had.

I also decided to integrate the Mike’s Ecommerce Software site into a new ‘Ecommerce Software‘ category, because Mike’s Marketing Tools has much better link popularity and PageRank than the Mike’s Ecommerce Software site. The Mike’s Ecommerce Software site didn’t attract any top 10 Google rankings and hardly any traffic.

I used 301 redirects to direct Google to the new pages, and my efforts have paid off. The new ‘Ecommerce Software’ category in Mike’s Marketing Tools has been indexed by Google and is already ranked #10 (sometimes #11) for the search query, ‘ecommerce software’.

Third, I’m thinking about integrating my GoDefy.com, Jumbo Keyword .com, and Michael Wong .com sites into the Mike’s Marketing Tools network and give them the same look and feel. I haven’t completely made up my mind about them yet. But I’m leaning towards doing this because I feel it would benefit those sites if they were integrated with the rest of my sites.

I did think about updating the look and feel of the Mike’s Marketing Tools site. I got the idea to use that orange/yellow color scheme back when CNET was using a similar color back in 2002. Being a marketing site, maybe I should use a color scheme that better reflected the nature of the site. i.e. blue for business. After giving it some thought, I decided I didn’t want to change it.

Here’s why: Firstly, the orange/yellow color scheme actually makes it stand out from all the other marketing sites that use a blue color scheme. Second, millions of people have passed through the site over the last 7 years. People like things that are they are familiar with. Changing the site’s color scheme could confuse some people. So why change? Hence, I decided not to. The downside far outweighs the upside from what I can see.

Once I have updated all the sites, I will start work on diversify my business away from affiliate marketing.

Like I said earlier, part of the reason was because of the JUMBO Keyword .com disappointment. I realize now that I spent far too much time developing that site and putting far too much hope into it. I realize now that I should develop products that people want, rather than ones I want and think others would want too. So I’m going to find out what people want based on search queries. Plus I will advertise in AdWords and ask visitors what they want and how much they want to pay for the product.

The basic idea is to develop easy-to-use products, as quickly as possible, that solves a single problem, for an affordable price. I only realized this was a good idea while I was adding all of Armand Morin’s products to his page in my Mike’s Marketing Tools site. I noticed that his products are relatively simple and are designed to solve just one problem, nothing more, quickly and easily. As a result, he has over 20 products to his name and made millions with them.

I also thought about what people really want nowadays. And I came to this conclusion. Most people, including me, are lazy. In this world of instant gratification, they want things done for them, right away. So it makes sense to create products that offers just that, instant gratification. And with the internet offering so much free stuff, people don’t want to pay a lot, if anything. But people are willing to pay a fair price if you make it afforable enough.

So without giving too much away, I have decided on developing a line of internet marketing products, that solves a single problem, quickly and easily, for a low price. The idea is to develop and launch one product a month, on a limited budget, say $1000 to $5000, so that within a couple of years I will have a couple dozen products to my name. Some of those products may not be a success. That’s okay. I would have only wasted a limited amount of time and money on them.

Now instead of putting all my hopes on one product, I spread the risk over dozens of products. This will also help minimize sales fluctuations. Having my own products also helps to attract customers to purchase affiliate products via my affiliate link because they can get my products as bonuses if they sign up via my affiliate links.

I had been using this strategy to promote WebPosition Gold for years, and it worked very well. After all, affiliate products are just commodities. People don’t care if they buy it from you or another affiliate. But if you give them an incentive to purchase the product via your affiliate link, then you will have an edge on those that don’t offer anything.

You might be thinking, hasn’t this product idea been around like forever? Yes, you’re right, it’s nothing new. But it’s taken me 10 years to finally see it! As you can see, I am not that bright. Don’t ask me why I did do this before. I guess part of the fun of building a business and of life is the learning from the mistakes you make.

Thanks for listening to me. Well, you’re now up to date with what I’ve been up to. I hope you found my update interesting. Until next time, I wish you continued success with your internet business.

Tweet This Post