I get a lot of emails from Internet Marketers. I have become a fan of some of them because over the years these gurus have proven that guarantee their products. They support you and respond to your difficulties in using their product. Over the years I have purchased products from some of these marketers and as soon as I buy their product they disappear and left you with a product that doesn’t work. Worst of al they give you a hard time getting a refund. Michael Rasmussen is one of those gurus that I trust so I am sharing with you the email I got from him about habits that are critical to succeed in Internet Marketing.
by Michael Rasmussen
HABIT #1: Take Action…With A Plan
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Taking action is good advice, if you have a plan first. If you don’t have a plan, your actions will be more like shots in
the dark. It won’t do you much good.
I can remember a few years ago when I got stuck in a rut trying to help out lots of my marketing friends. My calendar was so full that I didn’t have room to breathe.
Bottom line, I had essentially set aside my plan and I was paying the price for it. My stress level was insane, and my
business results were suffering too.
I was taking lots of action without a plan, so I started focusing on my plan again. When I did that, everything took
off. My profits went up, and my stress went down. It felt almost like magic.
If you want to succeed, you MUST take action toward your goals. But you need to know what your goals are, and what steps you need to take to achieve them. That’s what your plan tells you.
Your plan is your road map. If you aren’t following it, it’s useless, and you’ll probably get lost.
Every single successful marketer I know has a plan and takes action on it EVERY DAY.
That’s really the key. Acting becomes a habit, and that habit can build your productivity to levels that will shock most people.
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HABIT #2: Use A Repeatable System
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Lots of people jump from one thing to the next.
They might sell an ebook, or promote some affiliate products, or do something else for a while. They don’t stick with anything long enough to make a system out of it.
That can kill your results in the long run.
You should concentrate on creating repeatable income systems in your business. They don’t have to be fancy, just profitable.
For example, one of the early systems I came up with (and I wasn’t the first) was to build small, tightly focused mini-sites
to sell single products.
In my case, I sold an ebook first. The site was really small, and even somebody without a lot of technical skills (like
me) could create it.
When I did that once, I could see immediately how to do it again…and again, and again. I still do it today.
Your systems could be anything that works.
For example:
* You can sell individual ebooks with mini-sites
* You can promote products in marketing forums
* You can create your own “how-to” video courses
Just about anything can qualify, as long as it’s something you can do over and over again.
I’m not saying that you can’t ever do a “one-off” experiment, or that you HAVE to repeat everything you do forever.
What I’m saying is that if you develop repeatable ways to make cash, you’ll end up with an arsenal of tools to build your
business.
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HABIT #3: Always Build Your List
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When I got my start online, I made a horrible mistake. I still cringe when I think about it.
Back then, I didn’t focus on building my list at all.
That means I was selling stuff and making good profits, but my list was pretty much stuck at zero.
Sometimes I wonder how my life would be different today if I hadn’t wasted so much time!
Once I figured out that mistake, I started to do things differently. Now I NEVER create anything for my business that
doesn’t have a list-building component.
Always ask yourself how you can capture email addresses whenever you create a product, or put up a website, or promote something for somebody else.
Honestly, the fastest and easiest way to do this is to offer something at no cost.
That can be anything you want. It could be a short report for people in your niche, or a quick video, or a checklist for a
particular task, or some helpful resources.
Anything that will entice somebody to sign up for your list could qualify.
You don’t need to add hundreds to your list every day (although that’s perfectly doable), but you DO need to figure out how to add some.
If you’ll do this, you’ll notice that your list is pretty much growing all the time. That’s the single best way to build your
cash flow in the long run.
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HABIT #4: Focus On Competitive Niches
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This sounds crazy, I admit, but it’s true…
You should be focused on building your business in the most competitive markets out there.
The more competitive a market is, the better it is for you. That’s because competition means there’s lots of profit
to be made in that market.
Even today, a good bit of my business success is in the Internet marketing (IM) niche. It’s huge, and the competition is
ridiculous.
That’s exactly what you’re looking for. I’m not saying IM is necessarily where you want to be, but you should NEVER be scared of a highly competitive market.
Way back in the day, I was just getting into niche marketing, and I didn’t want to go up against major competition. So I
stayed in small micro-niche markets where nobody else was.
Then I figured out WHY nobody else was there…because nobody was buying in those niches.
Competition reveals where the buyers are. If big marketers are spending in a niche, you can sure there’s a profit to be made.
All you have to do is figure out how to grab a small slice of that pie (see Habit #1).
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HABIT #5: Automate Whatever You Can
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You’ll never be able to automate your entire business. Read that again. I don’t think people quite understand it.
What you CAN do is automate most of your business. You can do that in two ways:
1) Invest in tools (software, etc.) to truly automate some of what you do
2) Outsource some of the tasks that normally take a lot of your time
That second one might not sound like “automation” but it really is from your perspective. If somebody else is doing the
work, it’s automated for YOU, and that’s what counts.
Obviously, when you’re just starting out you might not have a ton to spend on automation tools. That’s okay. Do stuff
manually until you can afford to automate.
But when you finally reach the point when you have more cash than time, you MUST figure out how to clear your plate a
little bit.
I used to work myself to death because I did pretty much everything by hand. I didn’t even know tools were available to
automate a lot of what I was doing!
One way to avoid that problem is to be always on the lookout for good tools to automate your business. Make a list of the
ones you want. When you build up the funds, you can buy one.
For example, a friend of mine offered a product that would set up simple little websites with a few mouse clicks, and run
them autopilot for me. Now I use that every single day to build my cash flow a little bit at a time.
Automation is the ONLY way you’ll be able to grow your business beyond what you can make in 24 hours a day.
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HABIT #6: Master Getting Visitors
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Lots of things might qualify as “the” big skill for an online business, but this is definitely in the top three.
Visitors are the lifeblood of your business. If nobody sees what you’re offering, you won’t ever sell anything.
Like most people, I used to struggle with this, but it’s easier than you think.
Here’s a simple plan:
* Focus on getting no-cost visitors first (start with article marketing)
* Always include ways to get more visitors into every single offer you make, whether that’s something you sell (like an ebook) or an affiliate product you promote
* Always experiment with new ways to get visitors
For example, in my early days I found it tough to get visitors. But I saw somebody on a marketing forum talking about
offering a no-cost report to build a list, and I had an idea…
I thought if a free report could build a list, a killer video course could build a HUGE list. So I created my first video
course and it added literally thousands to my list almost overnight.
If you have a few different reliable methods for getting visitors, and you’re always looking for more, your business
will never go stale.
And when you combine that with the five other habits, your business will succeed in ways you can’t even imagine right now.
