Tomorrow’s Big Win Starts Yesterday

One of these days, you’re going to be the head of one of those newsworthy Internet startups that eventually goes IPO or gets bought up by Facebook, Apple or Google. One of these days, you’re going to be one of those big, successful online influencers who rakes in thousands of dollars for a single tweet or Instagram post. One of these days, you’ll be sipping on umbrella drinks on some tropical beach somewhere, as your autopilot online business generates consistent passive income to sustain your elaborate lifestyle.

One of these days. But you can’t today, because you’ve got to go and pick up the kids from band practice or you need to go to the grocery store to pick up some oranges or you need to catch up on the latest season of Black Mirror on Netflix. Seriously, Black Mirror is such a great show.

And then the next day rolls around and you discover another YouTube series you want to watch, another game you want to play, another cafe you want to relax at for hours at a time. Or maybe you have a goal of saving up to buy your first home or you want to launch that big blog or any number of other objectives. And yet, you never get around to getting started, because it seems like such a daunting task.

That’s the problem. And it’s a big problem, because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of putting off to tomorrow what you can do today. You put it off because it seems to scary and intimidating, so you decide that you’ll want for a better opportunity. You’ll wait until the circumstances are better. You wait until you have all your ducks in a row, so to speak.

But that will never happen. You will never encounter a situation wherein all the circumstances are perfectly aligned in your favor. There will never be a time when everything will be coming up Milhouse, as it were.

If you decide that you’ll get around to tackling these bold ambitions and these big dreams some day, then you will have to face the harsh reality that someday never comes. Put another way, there are seven days in the week and none of them are called someday. This is true regardless of the goal that you have in mind.

You might look upon people who have achieved great things, both online and off, and you might look upon them with a tremendous sense of envy. The thing is that this great success you see is only the tip of the iceberg. You see the big win, but you don’t see everything hidden beneath the surface. You don’t see the years of sacrifice and hard work that let to that “breakthrough moment.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was recently named as the richest man on the planet with an estimated net worth of $106 billion. The company has seen a lot of huge successes over the years, growing to become the biggest name in online commerce. But it also has not been without its share of failures and shortcomings.

Remember the Fire Phone? That was a pretty big flop. And while Amazon Prime Music and Amazon Prime Video have made positive strides, they’re still easily overshadowed by competitors like Spotify and Netflix. What we need to realize, on a more humble scale, is that the big wins are not things that will happen overnight.

It’s only when you chip away at these big goals over an extended period of time with a number of different tactics. It’s only when you endure a number of false starts, stumbly steps, innumerable setbacks, and tiny pick-me-ups that you move toward the grander vision. And at the end of the day, “lucky breaks” much more readily come to those who are prepared to meet such opportunities halfway.

Are you ready to win tomorrow?

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MOST Important Questions to Ask Before Starting a Blog – Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my series, where I’m exploring the important questions to ask before starting a blog. These questions will help you get a better idea of what you are trying to achieve with your business and audience. By creating an outline of your objective, you will have clear focus and this will help guide your content writing. I believe a successful business has everything to do with the ability for you to resonate with your readers. If this is clear, then you will have no problems achieving your bottom line. In part 1, we discussed the following:

• Importance of audience
• The purpose
• Why You’re Unique
• Different Content Types

Let’s jump into Part 2 and look at some other important questions to ask before getting started.

What are My Deadlines?

Blogging is very time consuming and requires enormous dedication. That’s why, before you start, it’s important to find out the type of deadlines you are working with so you can organize accordingly. From my experience, here are a few things to consider:

• How often you have to write content
• How often you should be publishing content
• How often you should research

Having a solid posting schedule and focused deadlines will ensure you keep a consistent flow of content, which is important to build momentum and brand awareness.

Do I Need to Hire Anyone?

Depending on the type of niche you are involved with, it’s important to explore your options. For example, you might be in a niche that you’re passionate about, but need to explore topics that require professional feedback. If you are writing about nutrition and dieting, then you might need to hire someone with a Ph.D. in nutrition to write content. I usually recommend people get involved in a niche they have experience, but it’s not uncommon for you to hire someone to write based on previous case studies, etc.

Whatever avenue you take, it’s important you do two things:

First, budget yourself so you’ll know exactly how much you’ll be spending on hiring people. By doing this, you are making sure you have a dedicated budget for your writing. Secondly, you can do research, making sure you hire the right people for the job. The most important thing is to find people who are experienced and actually provide value so your readers can pull substance out of your content. Once you have a handful of people right for the job, then you can continue to pay them to write content, but the hardest part is pretty much out of the way.

How Will I Market My Blog?

Before you start blogging, it’s important to explore ways to market your blog going forward. These days, you have so many options available to you so you need to find what works the best and will drive relevant traffic to your blog. For example, here are some options you might want to consider going forward:

• Social media
• PPC
• Forums
• Relevant blogs
• Banner ads
• Email marketing

Some methods will work better than others so it’s important to split test until you find the ones that work best. The methods you choose will also depend on your budget but the good news is you have free methods available like social media, forums, and blogs. Here’s the point I’m trying to make:

Before you start your blog, become familiar with as many marketing strategies so you can start implementing them right away. The more you know about them and their interface, the better you can apply them to your blog. Don’t forget to have a system in place to track results so you can optimize at a later time going forward.

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How to Think About Productivity as a Dot Com Pro

The basic concept of productivity likely rose to prominence some time during the Industrial Revolution. Sure, people who worked on farms up until that point were probably interested in how much their fields could yield each season or how many eggs they could get their chickens to lay, but the rise of manufacturing really got the bosses interested in how much they could produce each day.

Remember that the root of the word “productivity” is “product.”

In the context of manufacturing, the number of units a factory worker can output in any given shift is instrumental to how much money that company can make. If every widget you sell brings in five bucks, you’d certainly be making more money if the factory worker manufactured 100 widgets in a shift as opposed to 10 widgets. Let’s just set the complications of supply and demand aside for the sake of simplicity.

Today, this manner of conceptualizing productivity still rings through how most people approach the world of work. If you are in the business of making physical things, maybe it’s still relevant, but so many of us work in industries that deliver far more intangible value. Just getting things done isn’t enough and this is especially true if you want to make money online.

The way that we think about productivity has to change, because it’s not just about how many hours you put in each day or how many “units” you’re able to produce. It’s far more complicated than that.

One guy might be able to bust out ten different logo designs in one day, because they’re all from templates that he only alters slightly for each client. He delivers these logos to his customers on Fiverr for five bucks a piece, putting $50 in his pocket (before fees and such). That’s ten logos.

Meanwhile, someone else came up with a new logo for the City of Vancouver in 2017 and got paid $8,000 for it. Some people might think that rate is atrocious, given the similarity to the logo it replaces, but at the end of the day, that’s how much was paid.

Let’s assume the new Vancouver logo took more than a day. Let’s say it took 20 business days (one month). Even at that pace, the rate works out to $400 a day, eight times what the Fiverr logo designer is making. The Fiverr guy may be more productive in the traditional sense, coming up with 200 logos a month (if he keeps up the 10/day pace) for $1,000, but just a single City of Vancouver logo netted $8,000. Who’s more productive?

There is a reason why John focuses most of his energy on higher ticket value items for affiliate marketing. Convincing one person to spend a few thousand dollars on a training program is arguably just as much work as convincing someone to spend $5 on a widget, but the former results in a much heftier commission. If you’re going to put in the same amount of work, you want to maximize your earnings from that work.

That’s one point.

The second point that you need to understand as a self-employed online professional is that you cannot assign a dollar value to everything that you do. This is not an hourly job where you get paid simply for showing up to work (and that is arguably the greatest advantage to the dot com lifestyle, as your earning potential is literally limitless even if your time isn’t).

A great example of this might be if you are writing an ebook or developing a membership site.

A great example of this might be if you are writing a book or developing a membership site. You could spend days, weeks or even months (or years!) toiling away at this project without bringing in a single penny for your efforts. You may have written 200 pages, but can you really measure your productivity based on raw word count?

It won’t be until you actually publish the book or launch the membership site that you will have any idea how “productive” you really were. And even then, there are so many side benefits that extend far beyond the number of copies you sell or the number of paid memberships you’re able to get. Putting your name on the cover of a book adds credibility and developing that membership site adds to your skill set.

When you take on a longer term perspective, you may reconsider just how “productive” you were for those days, weeks or months you were working on the book or membership site. If the project is a total bust, maybe you weren’t being especially productive and your time could have been better spent. If the project is a huge hit, then maybe you were being way more productive than you could have imagined. You just never know.

Don’t worry too much about how “productive” you are each day. Don’t dwell on your daily earnings too much. Instead, look further down the horizon and think about how you can do better rather than simply doing more. Being busy is not the same as being productive.

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MOST Important Questions to Ask Before Starting a Blog – Part 1

Blogging is a tough business and it becomes tougher if you don’t know your objective and mission. However, over the years, I’ve found there are certain questions I can ask that will help me outline my purpose so I’m better in charge of the questions I’d like to answer through my blog. I’ve been a true believer that if you want to succeed, then you should have a clear purpose that solves a common problem within your niche. Only then will you be able to attract the right type of audience and keep pushing forward. If you can attract traffic and build loyalty, then it just makes it easier for you to prosper in the world of blogging. If you don’t believe me, then simply ask some of the MOST success bloggers within the industry. With this said,

I’d like to start this “2” part series, where I go over some of the MOST common questions to ask before you sit down and outline your blog’s purpose. These are very simple questions, but they will have a huge affect on your success.

Let’s get started…

The Audience

Once you’ve established your audience, you’ll have a better idea of your purpose, which we’ll discuss in the next section. However, you need a great outline of your audience so you know which way to aim your focus. By doing some research beforehand, you’ll be able to find out who your audience is and then create content to stir their interest, which is very important for your success. Keep in mind, blogging is very competitive and the ones that survive are those that attract a wide enough audience. Here are a few things you can do to research your audience…

• Research “target” keywords
• Visit competitors and see what they are doing
• Use Alexa.com because they provide a good breakdown.
• Test of Facebook ads because they have a great filter system.

The Purpose

It’s one thing to know your audience, but a completely different thing to have a clear idea of what you are trying to do. For example,

• Are you trying to solve a problem?
• Are you creating a debate?
• Are you trying to make money?
• Are you selling products and/or services?

All these questions will allow you to guide your content writing and create something engaging. This is important if you want to build momentum and have a successful blog. However, purpose comes after knowing your audience because it’s only when you know who you are writing for that you can create what they are looking for.

Why am I Unique?

It’s no secret you’re going to have competition so you have to ask yourself: Why am I Unique? This will make you think long and hard about the things you can do to stand out compared to others within your niche. Some blogs will focus on “expert interviews” while others will focus on “infographics” so think of ways you can stand out. I know many bloggers who have done very well by doing live case studies.

If you can find ways to stand out then you’ll have a way to build momentum against your competition and this will help spurt your growth quickly. It’s a simple question to ask yourself and something you should think about before you start blogging so you don’t hit a roadblock afterward.

The Content Types

If you decided you’re going to be unique because you’ll be a tutorial blog, then you have to figure out the ways you will present your content. For example, you will solve common problems within your niche so now write down ways you’ll achieve this. At this point, you have many content types available, all proven to be very effective, like:

• Video posts
• Infographics
• Images
• Text content

These are all great ways to present content and some will work better than others. I encourage all of you to try different things and find out how your audience engages with each. By doing this simple trial and error, you’ll be able to find what works well and increase engagement on your blog. With higher engagement comes a better chance of building more social shares and conversions. Here’s a quick tip:

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing online because you have to split test to find out what works compared to others. After, it’s time to simply optimize and push forward.

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Exploring ROI Beyond the Numbers

If there is at least one thing you can learn from television shows like Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank, it’s that you should always have a great handle on your numbers. Whether your business is online or offline, physical or digital, you need to know your numbers. How much revenue did you pull in last year? How many units were you able to push last quarter? What is your profit margin on a per-unit basis? Can you get a better wholesale price?

These are all important figures to keep in mind as you determine the overall profitability of your business, because you need to know where you have opportunities to grow your revenue and reduce your expenses. You need to know what ventures or projects are worth investing your time and money into, and what opportunities are better off being pushed aside. What does your year-over-year growth look like?

Now, there are all sorts of different systems, software and programs you can use to track all of this kind of data. You’ve got plenty of spreadsheets and accounting software to help you stay on top of this sort of thing. If you’re into affiliate marketing and other similar avenues, you’re likely already using a number of built-in and third-party tools for tracking such key metrics as CTR, CPC, eCPM, and so on.

These all lead back to perhaps one of the most important metrics of them all: ROI. At the end of the day, return on investment is the number that really matters the most. If you bring in $10 million in revenue, but it cost you $100 million to get it, then you’ve probably got some pretty big problems. The kind of ROI you can expect will vary wildly based on a number of factors, but it is definitely something you need to keep an keen eye on.

But here’s the thing. Not everything can be summed up using raw numbers alone and return on investment (ROI) is no exception. Allow me to illustrate with a couple of key examples.

Several years ago, I agreed to co-author a book with John called Make Money Online. The book is largely from the perspective of John and his online journey up until that point, offering insights and advice into how to make a full-time income from part-time blogging. At the time, John basically offered me two main options.

First, he could pay me a flat rate (or a per page rate) to ghostwrite the book for him. I’d do the work, he’d publish the book, and my name would have never been attached to the project in any official capacity whatsoever. You’ll find that this is oftentimes the case with a lot of celebrity memoirs and other similar kinds of autobiographies. No one really cares about the ghostwriter. They want to know about the celebrity. Fair enough.

Alternatively, he could provide me with zero up-front payment whatsoever and I’d get a cut of the resulting royalties from book sales. Now, it would be easy enough to compare how much I’ve earned from my share of the royalties against how much the up-front payment would have been in a pure ghostwriting arrangement, but that’s only part of the picture. With this second option, which I chose, I would share the byline with John.

Instead of having just “John Chow” on the cover, the cover to Make Money Online reads “John Chow with Michael Kwan.” That’s huge. I cannot say with any real certainty how much work I’ve received as a freelance writer as a result of this shared byline or how “better known” I am as a result, but there is a definite intangible value to it, just like having my own byline for this blog post. The ROI goes beyond the raw numbers.

Here’s another example. In 2017, I set out to vlog each and every week. My YouTube channel has been around for years, but this was the first time I was sticking to a set publication channel. The content of the videos range from travel to fatherhood to local events, but the goal was to have a new personal video up every Monday morning. And I accomplished that goal.

When I first set out, I had hopes that this would help to grow my YouTube channel significantly and, by extension, grow my online reach and exposure in general. It helped, to some degree, but in all honesty, I haven’t exactly been getting as many views as I had hoped. Does this mean the vlog experiment was a waste of time and energy and effort? Not at all.

The intangible ROI goes far beyond view and subscriber counts. Through the vlog, I was able to connect with some other local YouTubers in Vancouver. Through the vlog, I was able to exercise a different set of creative muscles and learn so much more about video production, as well as video editing and the whole YouTube ecosystem. I learned a lot and these lessons can be applied to other endeavors I may have in the future. The ROI goes beyond the numbers.

Many people have the misconception that success is a straight road paved only by success after success. The truth of the matter is that the road to success is littered with innumerable failures and shortcomings, and it is through these experiences that you learn how to keep moving forward, taking the lessons with you to the next project or opportunity. That’s the real ROI.

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These Email Marketing Statistics To Watch

I’ve always stated that email marketing is the best form of engagement. Many will agree, however, some will say with the introduction of social media, the conversion rate has been lowered. Every now and then, I like to set out to find some statistics to help prove and reiterate the power of email marketing. By understanding the power of social media, you can embrace for the future and make sure it is part of your marketing campaign. Let’s get started and explore some cool email marketing statistics that I uncovered over the weeks. If you have a solid email marketing program, then you can apply these into your next campaign.

Let’s get started and feedback will be greatly appreciated going forward.

Highest ROI

Did you know email marketing has the highest ROI in marketing?

If you didn’t, now you do, and much of the success can be attributed to the personal connection you have with the people on your list. You have built this list over time and many of the subscribers trust your judgement and this increases CTR. With social media, you are going head to head with competitors so you really need to do things to stand out. However, with email marketing, you know your readers and understand what they like. You can adjust your content to provide EXACTLY what they are looking for and this will increase ROI going forward.

Give it a try and see what happens by scheduling an email campaign and social media for the same date and time.

Email has 44% Customer Conversion

Did you know email marketing converts visitors to customers 44% better than social?

Remember, people on your list might not be customers but a solid email marketing campaign can convert them more quickly than simply going through a social campaign. Why? First, they trust your brand, which is why they opted into your list in the first place. Secondly, they trust your value and will MOST likely purchase any product you recommend going forward, which is important when converting visitors to customers. Here’s the problem with social media…

You have a lot of competitors all within your niche who could be promoting the same type of content. This gives people enormous options on content, products, and services. Next, you have NOT built credibility with many of them so the likelihood of them converting in a short period of time is very slim.

It’s been proven time and time again that email builds loyalty and converts visitors better compared to any other type of marketing strategies.

Email = Mobile Conversions

People are using mobile phones much more and this means people are reading, skimming, and clicking on emails on smart phones. Statistics show email opens have grown on mobile phones by 30%, which is awesome for people who have a huge email following. Now you don’t have to wait for subscribers to hop onto their PC to read your emails because this can be done through their phones. What does this mean? Simple…

• More conversions on products and content
• Increased traffic
• Increased engagement
• More brand awareness

All of this will be done more quickly compared to years back when everything had to be done through desktop PC’s.

Dynamic ESP’s

ESP stands for email service providers and we are now in a time where almost everything can be automated. This means NOT only will you be able to increase ROI, but you can automate the entire process, which is perfect for you. You can split test forms, landing pages, and create an optimized follow-up sequence, all with the click of a button.

In the end, email still provides more automation options than social media, which is why bloggers prefer to use it to build momentum to their blog. I’m not saying social media is NO good, but if you want to build true engagement, then consider using email as your first option before trying any other.

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Stop Trying to Be More Efficient

Technology continues to get more advanced and more tasks continue to get automated. I don’t have to boot up my computer, wait for it to the connect to the Wi-Fi, open up a web browser, type in the URL, enter my username and password, search for the item I want, add it to the shopping cart, and go through the checkout process entering my mailing address and payment information just to buy some more dish soap.

Instead, I can just say, “Alexa, reorder some dish soap,” and the magical smart speaker in the corner of my living room takes care of the rest. We’re living in the future, folks!

And yet, despite all these modern conveniences and seemingly miraculous developments, we find ourselves even more pressed for time than ever before. How is that possible? Because we have all these things we need (and want) to do, we are oftentimes tempted to be as efficient as possible. We’re constantly looking for so-called “life hacks” that can help us get more things done more efficiently.

That’s precisely why we are drawn in by the purported appeal of multitasking. We delude ourselves into thinking that we can totally check our email, write a blog post, listen to the latest podcast, and eat lunch at our desk, all at the same time. But of course that isn’t true. We can’t focus on more than one thing at a time, so when we divide our attention between multiple tasks, the net result of any and all of them will suffer.

But there’s so much to do! You want to update your blog. You want to post a new video on your YouTube channel. You want to work on your email marketing. You want to post on social media. You want to research new affiliate marketing opportunities. You want to do this. You want to do that. So you try to be as efficient as possible to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible.

Stop that. Stop it.

I’ve written on my blog on several occasions how I feel like there is never enough time to do all the things that I want to do, especially since become a dad. Balancing my professional responsibilities with my responsibilities as a father isn’t easy, not to mention that I still want to have some room for leisure activities and downtime, of course.

All this being said, lack of time is not the problem. It was never the problem. If you look around at all of the most successful people in the history of the world, they all had the same 24 hours to work with each day, the same 365 days to work with each year. They had just as much time as the least successful people in the history of the world too. Lack of time is not the problem.

So, what is it then? It really boils down to two main concepts.

First, we all need to stop trying to do as many things as we can as efficiently as we can, because that is ultimately self-defeating. Instead, you should try to do fewer things, but do them better. Instead of trying to score a 5 across the board, understand that life is a game of tradeoffs. Zero in on the small handful of things where you want to score a 10 and don’t worry too much about the zeroes you may be scoring on the other items. The 10s are where you’ll find success, not in a seas of 5s.

Second, when you have to work on something, actually work on that something. Don’t mindlessly scroll through Facebook. Don’t fall into the bottomless pit of YouTube. Don’t walk to the kitchen to grab yourself a snack. Focus on the task at hand and get it done, remembering that done is always better than perfect.

When you work a more traditional job, especially one that pays hourly, you get paid just the same no matter how much actual work you do. (Yes, you’ll probably get fired eventually if you slack off too often, but the general point here holds true.) When you work for yourself as an Internet entrepreneur, there’s no such thing as an hourly wage or a salary. You need to earn every dollar, even if that means putting in the hours to develop a passive income stream. Sitting for 40 hours in front of your computer isn’t going to do you any good unless those 40 hours are actually productive.

Efficiency is not the objective. It doesn’t matter if you tick 100 items off your to-do list if none of those items really moves the needle forward. Instead, strive to be effective. Do the things that matter and do them well.

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