Did You Get the Latest Gizmo?
I have three questions for ya:
- How long have you been online?
- How much money have you made?
- Have you ever bought a program that promised traffic and/or money at the push of a button?
If you haven’t, you’re in the minority. Either you’re smarter than most or you haven’t been online very long.
It seems like there’s a new product launch every day and everyone’s got the latest, greatest gizmo that magically creates instant financial freedom.
But before you waste your time again, ask yourself this question, “If it’s soooo great, why the heck are they selling it?”
I’ll tell you why…
Because there’s more money to be made selling products than actually using them (even if they do work).
So if you’ve been trying to make money online and you’re not exactly where you want to be (or even close), here’s what you need to do…
First, stop looking for a “magic bullet.” Short of winning the lottery, it doesn’t exist. Just like everything else in life, hard work and determination pay off in the long run.
Second, understand that this is a real business and you need to learn how to run it. You need to learn how to manage your own website, generate consistent traffic, use an autoresponder, and deal with bookkeeping and taxes.
Third, set up a lead generation system. You can create your own lead magnet or borrow one from somebody else. But you need a way to generate consistent leads.
Fourth, focus on building a list of buyers. It doesn’t matter how big your list is if nobody buys anything. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. So make sure you only promote products that you’ve actually used and can stand behind 100%.
Fifth, do as they do, not as the say. Marketers tell you what you want to hear and then they sell it to you. Don’t you wish there were an easy way to make money? Of course you do… and marketers prey on anyone who actually believes that.
Don’t be a victim.
Stop buying stuff and start selling! The product owner is the one with ALL the leverage…
When you have your own product:
- You control the sales process
- You can get other people to send the traffic
- You can get other people to build your list
- You get all the buyer leads
- You make a LOT more money
And you don’t need a ClickBank best seller. You can buy rights to a product and set it up in a day. Selling your own product gives you leverage to get affiliates to promote and set up joint ventures with other product owners.
Even if you give away 100% of your sales to affiliates, you can still make a ton of money. Here’s why…
Let’s say you set up an offer for $7 and pay affiliates 100% instant commissions. You can install an exit opt-in page with a tempting free offer to capture leads. And you can create a customer registration page to collect the buyer leads after the sale.
Affiliates send you traffic and build your list for free. And you can funnel those leads into a continuity program as an affiliate to build a residual income.
That’s just one business model that ANYONE can use to make money online and you don’t have to be a genius to set it up. In fact, you can get someone else to do the tech stuff… IF you know how it works.
Let me rephrase that…
If you fully understand the business model, you can pay someone $20 – $30 to set it up for you. But you have to know how to explain what you want.
Now regarding my original three questions…
If you had set up the business model that I just described when you first started out online instead of looking for a “magic bullet” and buying gizmos that don’t work, how much money do you think you’d be making right now?
Read that question again and then post your answer below…
Thanks,
Derrick
I must admit I’v bought into quite a few products in my time online and i have reached the stage where i’m concentrating hard on trying to set up a solid system instead of buying to much stuff i don’t need.
If I would of started setting this system up from the start instead of waste so much time I deffinatly believe i would be in a better place right now, but let’s not dwel on that instead let’s get things done.
Great little article btw…
I have bought a lot of e-books and software over the years promising to make me money. Lately, I stopped buying all of the promises and started writing more articles and promoting my site. I still haven’t made much money but at least I’m not wasting my money anymore on the next get rich gimmick.
Thank you Derrick. Great post!
its good… i been online for a hour per day
Hey Derrick,
Oh man you hit the nail right on the head with that question, if I had started collecting leads and building a list when I first got online how much money would I have made? Not sure but my guess would be 10x more than I have made thus far.
Everyone say’s the money is in the list but unfortunately most people (me included) do not realize how true it really is at first, some never realize it and are doomed to fail.
2 things I always try to include when I promote now, my picture or a video and a lead capture form…
Good point Troy… pictures and video are a good way to bond with your readers.
I’d probably be where I want to be! Of course I’ve learned a lot along the way, but all the gizmos have distracted me to the point where there is not a good sized list yet.
If you stick to the basic business model that you described above, then there is no stopping the growth of your list, relationships and income. Thanks for the reminder and refresher Derrick
I have been online now for about 6 months. I have only made about $150.00 so far. I have been promised the moon and haven’t even seen the stars yet. Most have told me to drive traffic to my sites-I do have more than one. But the deeper I dig, the more I have been finding out is to build a relationship with the people on the other end, before trying to get them to buy anything. That makes sense to me. I am in the process of setting up blogs and joining forums.
Thank You for your time today and sharing this with me.
Sherri
You got it Sherri, build a list, build a relationship with that list, and then recommend products you truly believe will help them succeed.
I’ve never worked so hard as when chasing easy money. However, like Vlad above, I’m trying to go back to basics and build a better mousetrap!
Thank you for all i want to declare here since many years ago tried to earn some money from internet but earned nothing onely read thousands of advertisments and notifications and promises and in the end get nothing onely indulege the persons to promote thier advertisments and pages i thing its wasting the time and to extort the money that what i deduced from my test with internet deals .
Derrick, I don’t trust traffic, money or anything else “at the push of a button”…. especially on Internet marketing.
I bought all kind of products, only a few of them really delivered what they promise, so I am kind of sceptically and annoyed with the hype which is still the main habit..
regards
Michaela
Hey Derrick,
You know the longer you’re online the more honest Marketers you find, you know why that is? Because it takes time for us to figure out that there is no magic bullet and we start looking to educate ourselves and for opportunities to build our businesess and not just for the fast buck. When that happens people like you show up with this type of post proving that there are honest marketers out there.
It is a business and like any other business it takes planning, time and hey how about knowing your market and customers.
I don’t even see the hype anymore. The sad thing is that some of the hyped up products are actually good – I guess that sales page formula works, but I’m seeing a change or maybe it’s because I understand the business better now.
Great post
Luca, the longer you’re in this business, the easier it is to spot a crappy product. I would say 1 out of 10 JV requests I get every week are for products that I’d even consider promoting. That’s why I say, if you find a good product that you believe will help others, it’s much easier to sell.
Great post Derrick,
When I finish crying I will submit this.
That hit home, thank you.
In answer to your question!
$20,000/month.
It’s so true what you just said in this post Derrick. If I had focused my efforts on my business to disclose ivez to be looking or testing tools that claim to do miracles and that in reality would not fuinciona I already earning some money to envy. However I still can not even cover the internet.
Derrick,,
You are a Gem. Thank you for telling the truth. I’ve been a member of Click Bank for a number of years, and I’m just now getting around to building my website. I have been learning though!
Thanks!
P.S. take a look at it and give me some feed back!
First of all I would like to thank-you for your posting I found it to be quite interesting, and for the first time in a long time I think this will really help .
I’m having problems, and I’m not really sure where to look for help. I’m not really sure just how to start up my own site.
By any chance do you know where I can obtain more information.
Thank-You Good Stuff keep up the good work
\ Darlene Jackson
Darlene, the first thing you need is a squeeze page with a good lead magnet. You can get one here for free and there’s a 40-minute video tutorial that shows you how to set it up. Plus the report shows you how to get traffic to your squeeze page.
I want you here to learn fast under way to make money, thank you
Hi Derrick,
You are right, I have bought more “Magic fix” products than I can remember and as usual I end up doing nothing with them. I cannot afford to buy any more as I am busy repaying the credit card debts while still stuck in the 9 to 5 job. I hope you have a blueprint that I can follow and successfully quit my 9 to 5 job.
Thank you.
Abu, the only thing you need to spend money on is hosting and an autoresponder. If I didn’t have the technical skills, I would spend my money on outsourcing to get my squeeze page set up and a product to sell. Then I would spend what was left over on advertising to get the ball rolling. From there…Joint ventures are FREE!
Thanks for the advice Derrick,
It is refreshing to hear someone speak the truth in place of the constant sales hype we are consistently bombarded with on a daily basis. You are standing head and shoulders above the rest of them as far as I’m concerned.
Well done and keep up the good advice.
Hi Derrick !
1. about 20 years
2. about $ 20.000 lost $60.000
3. havent we all ?
Have wasted and are still wasting to much precious time reading email offers, afraid of deleting some of the good stuff!.
Excellent article and good questions Derrick/
Think many of us are loosing both precoius time and money as long as we stay on this crazy never ending marketing Marrygorond,
Get off this Carrusell, concentrate on one thing, and stick with it !
Well said Karey, I used to collect emails from ALL the gurus thinking I’d use their marketing tactics someday. Now I just follow a handful of people that are genuinely trying to help others succeed.
Hi Troy,
Great article, been there spend lots
of time an money, not anymore.
That brings me to autoresponders,
they wil charge you $100s if you get
over 500 subscribers on your list,
that is insane.
So I want to let you know about FREE PRO autoresponder that I came across.
It has all the usual bells and whistles
you’d expect from a pro system so if
you’ve been looking for a FREE option
to manage your emailing, here’s the link.
http://www.listwire.com/grodkowski
I have been bombarded with e-mails every day from someone promoting the latest gizmo. They are very distracting. I do not spend any more than hour a day skimming through them, otherwise I would not vey much done. Also, I have about 60 gigs on my hard drives with information that I probably never use.
Hey Norm, I recently deleted 20 gigs of junk (most of which I paid for) that I hadn’t touched for a year. Spring cleaning. LOL
its good
Good one Derrick i would have spent 10K in the last 6 months and have make way less. I too have stopped buying all the gizmos and am concentrating on using what I already have hmmm, can be sooo confusing.
Darren Robinsen
There is no doubt in my mind that I would be to the point where I could help a lot of needy people instead of going for the next big thing. All of the Info being sold is not bad and most of it looks real good to a newbie, but your post has all the info necessary to set up a real business. When I first started online I was an easy target since then I’ve learned a lot of what not to do (wrong info cost money to). Don’t try and do everything yourself, and a mentor is priceless.
Thomas, you’re right, there is a lot of great products out there (and a lot of crap too). But people tend to buy a product, skim through it, figure out there’s work involved and go look for an easier way.
The basic marketing principles haven’t changed for 100 years — get leads, convert leads to customers, and sell more stuff to those customers. Anything else you do should only serve to streamline that process and increase conversions and repeat sales.
Some good questions Derrick. I hate to think how much farther along I would be, but I have to be thankful that I am at a point where I realize that I have to take action.
In the past I was paralyzed by the overload of information. I spent more time reading my email messages and looking at the latest shiny new object that left me no time to work on my business.
Donovan
Donavan, I’m guilty of that too. But now I’m studying the marketing process and how I can use it to improve my offers and make more money.
Reading the above, I completely agree, a business must be considered as such and not an easy way to riches. I have not bought any of all the offers I get in emails every day, as I, simply, cannot believe it is as easy as described. I am not in the i-net business, but I intend to be and whenever that will be, I, most certainly, will start with the basics.
Kurt, you are correct that it isn’t easy to make money online, especially when your new to all this. However, and this is a big however, it is a whole lot easier than trying to start an offline business or going to college for 4 or 5 years.
There is no way that I could ever get a job that pays as much as I make working from home.
My biggest problem is Buy-Buy-Buy. I have no money to invest in this and that, I admit I am struggling, but I am getting hits. I know it takes money to make money, and I’m no slouch. You have to have money and a budget…I have neither.
Susan, you don’t need a lot of money to get started. Most people don’t understand that all you need is a squeeze page and a little traffic get going. If you use leverage in everything you do, then your business will grow rapidly.
Thank you. You have highlighted a valid point. I was distracted by product after product without focusing on a system to sell.
Hi Derrick
Your right of course and I’m guilty. I’ve seen the light now and look at how people are selling and not what. I think the major problem is that all the get rich quick schemes offer a business in a box solution which is great but not the right business model for most people. ‘How I made $10,000 in one week’ sure sounds a better model than ‘How I make $100 a month from my website’.
Good point Paul, people buy the “$10,000 a week product” when they REALLY just need to make their first $100.
This is the kind of information that I wish I had known when I first got started almost three years ago. I try not to dwell too much on how much time I wasted buying this and that and try to focus more on doing what I know.
Your affiliate cash secrets course has been instrumental in helping to understand the value of building a subscriber list, because in the beginning…
I just didn’t get it, but now I don’t drive traffic to anything unless there is a squeeze page in front of it.
One other thing I’d like to mention briefly is the destructive philosophy of “subjective selling”. I use to get so caught up in what “I” wanted that I limited the amount of choices I presented to my list in order to generate sales.
I still look for quality products that offer real value but I no longer allow price or my own preferences to rob my subscribers of viable solutions and choices related to their interests in the marketplace.
The old saying goes… “nothing happens until somebody sells something”.
Cheers.
Well said Nando
Wow! Ouch! That hurts! I can’t resist a good gizmo, especially if it has a coupon or discount! Yeah, I do need a consistent lead gen system! Just haven’t found something that works consistently yet!
Hi Derrick
My answers:
1. 11 months
2. A couple hundreds from last 2 months (zero for the first 9 months hehe..)
3. Not once (thanks to my sceptical mind and my limited budget i guess.. )
4. i just passed the second hurdle: built a couple of wordpress websites, setting up my autoresponder, giveaway free ebooks, promoting a few affiliate products,tracking and testing my results (and of course failed a few times in the process.. lol). Currently learning the many ways of driving traffic to my sites and build my list.
And Derrick, i especially like your second point. I think this is why many falls for the hypes and i guess this is why i’m still ’safe’ from all the hypes they’re trying to sell. I own a small offline business and i went through all the hard works, ups and downs, tears and sweats, profit and loses (and yeah taxes and bookeeping..) just to make it sustainable like now. So i guess before i took the internet seriously, i already know there are no such thing as easy, quick, a push button income – offline or online.
So, thanks to your valuable post Derrick
looking forward to your next email or post.
You are outrightly correct on this matter especially the Gurus who claim to sell” the best products online” I have bought these products in the past without even making any money at all. So I do not trust these launches that are mushrooming our in boxes.
I have focused on products I believe in and trusted in.
Thank you for exposing the tricks of these greed marketers!
Thank you Derrick I am learning i guess…
Derrick,
1. About a year.
2. None
3. Guilty as charged. It is so easy to get distracted by the “latest and greatest” wonder program. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told myself that I need to quit buying and studying and buying some more. My background is in engineering and I am a perfectionist. The engineer in me wants to understand how everything works. The perfectionist in me keeps me from putting something out there that isn’t quite right.
“You don’t have to get it right; you just have to get it going.” (then improve as you go) is a quote that I found online. When I catch myself falling back into the engineer or the perfectionist mode, I look up from my computer and read that quote out loud several times. Does it work? Not every time. But it does help to keep me focused.
I have unsubscribed to all except a few people’s E-mails who are helping me move in one direction (you’re included in my select few). My inbox is manageable and I don’t waste a lot of time running around in circles.
I believe that I have accomplished more in the last month than the previous eleven months. Had I focused my efforts for the last year, instead of bouncing from one program to the next to the next, my business would be much different.
Hi Derrick: Great article, I am LOL because I have so much unread stuff on my hard drive I don’t have time for also I unsubscribed to a lot. I just started getting info in January 2010 spend quite a fortune on stuff that I thought I needed or would be hot. The saying is if it is too good to be true it’s not:) Live and learn. I am focused now have a mentor which helps tremendously.
Oh yeah, everyone don’t buy articles or outdated webpages made in 2007, 2008 it’s outdated. 2010 is totally different for IM.
Yes, Derrick I will build my list:) Always grinched of thinking I don’t want a list but learned you do need a list,
I am in content now focused on making my on line business a good start with good products to represent:)
I love your articles keep them coming! Anita
Yeah
I have been there done that and I am so sick of all the promises, and so forth.
bought two sites and am really disapointed to the gills.
I may never make money online, but I am trying as hard as I can to make the dream that many others have come true.
thanks for the ear
JC
Thank you,this makes me want to work that much harder for my own site,rather than working hard for to make money for others.
Anda adalah orang yg jujur…. keep on…. And… stay always praying
I have not spent a lot of money trying to find the right information, but I have sure spent a lot of time. I have downloaded and read articles. I have tried to build large lists. I have joined a dozen sites as an affiliate and I have yet to make more than a few pennies on-line. I am retired but it seems i have not time to spend really selling. I feel I am batting my head against a brick wall because everything I receive seems to be copies of everything else. It is very frustrating.
w.o.w can anybody contest what mr vandyke has just laid out? We all know
that a magic button does not exist so now it is up to our selfs to push that
believe aside work hard and dont give up because we can succeed
to your success
1.3 to 4 months
2.0
3.Not yet,was planning to,lol
Just yesterday I came to realize that in IM world there’s no easy way to instant riches you have to start from below and made your way to the top through perseverance. Of course with the help of a mentor will surely shorten the time to get there.
Now I’m going to force myself to focus on 1 thing and work on it. You know short attention span,lol doing one thing and in the next instant you do other thing,sigh.
Btw nice post,really helpful and will be an eye opener for those who still dont realize the truth.
WELL I JUST DELETED MY ORIGINAL STATEMENT.LETS MAKE THIS SHORT AND SWEET.IM TIRED OF BUYING BULLSHIT AND STILL NOT GETTING ANYWHERE.I WANT TO LEARN THIS BUSINESS AND UJNFORTUNATELY HAVE VERY LITTLE TO FALL BACK ON.IVE SPENT IT ALL TRYING TO LEARN THIS STUFF!!! I KNOW ITS NO PIED IN THE SKY THING AND THE GET RICH QUICK IS A BUNCH OF GARBAGE AS WELL.IM NOT AFRAID TO WORK I JUST DONT KNOW WHAT THE HELL IM DOING. CAN YOU SHOW ME PLEASE!!! I WANT TO SHOW MY BOYS SO WHEN I LEAVE THIS PLACE MY GRANDBABYS WILL BE ALLRIGHT…THANKYOU VERY MUCH FOR ANY HELP YOU CAN GIVE ME!!
Robert, what you should do is search your computer for one of the ebooks you bought that shows you how to build a list and take action on the content. I know it sounds too simple. But it’s the truth.
Wow! This is all that we need to here,internet is sapose to be a simple place where you simple expreses what you like or know best, and can stand behind it ,and grow a list with others that share the same views and passion,at sametime guenienly making the most out that passion,(list).Marketers can be too agrasive and can overload you with the so called best easy and superfast money online business.
Thank you Derrick VanDyke for the information that we already know, but is bombarded by the internate Gurus that are preying on vulnerable people they know are desparete to starte their business on line.
Thanks Again
Derrick
Derrick, this is so very true.
We have all read salesletters and thought, “That’s it” that’s what I need to finally make it. Most of the time we already have that information sitting on our hard drive somewhere and we just haven’t implemented it.
It’s easy to click the order button or to opt-in to someone’s list.
However, to actually download the product and then USE it is a whole other story. I think most every free product I have gotten had something useful in it to put to good use right away, but most people just don’t take the next step.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks,
Marshall
Read what Marshall said, that’s the best advice you’ll ever get.
I think i have turned you viral derrick as i seem to here a lot from you ha ha
Who are you? (mystery man)