It’s been a busy couple of weeks.  Sorry for the absence, but we’ve been working on a couple of promotions in addition to a new product we’re planning on launching in January.  Exciting stuff.  But, combined with the holidays and other business, we’ve been busy.  Anyway, I hope this post finds you happily enjoying your holiday weekend, well fed and keeping your mind off business. 

There are a couple of things I’d like to touch on today…

First of all, I like to highlight good business ideas when I see them, and Luke Knowles over at Virtual Marketing Blog just launched one of note.

Paying shipping charges sucks.  I get a great deal on amazon, feel fantastic, then get killed with shipping fees.  Kinda takes the wind out of my sails.  But, Luke recently launched freeshipping.org which has put an end to my shipping fee woes.  In a nutshell, it’s a massive list of online retailers who are offering coupons for free shipping.  So, instead of going directly to the site and making my purchase, I first go to Luke’s site, grab a coupon and THEN make my purchase, sans the shipping charges.  Then I go blow the money I saved on my unborn child’s college fund.  So, you could say Luke is putting my child through college.  Thanks Luke!

Making Money Can be a Bitch.

 The other thing I wanted to remark on was brought up to me by a friend.  We’ll call him Larry.  Larry’s brief history on the web has been marked by a lot of hard work and small successes.  While his income has been nothing to write home about, he does make a living.

Our conversation though, wasn’t a happy one (though it ended well).  Larry had a few complaints, the most notable that he’s not where he’d like to be, financially.  I heard a lot of - “I see stories every week of someone selling their site for millions of dollars, why not me?!”

Larry’s practically killing himself with self deprecation.

Somewhere amidst his profession of woes, it occurred to me that there’s some seriously poor self-image running rampant among entrepreneurs on the web.  Why?  Because there are SO many stories floating around of millionaires being made overnight, that if you’re not a millionaire in 6 months or less, you start losing hope. 

Generally speaking, the internet has a ‘get-rich-quick’ aura.  An air of being “easy money”.  Personal example:  When I first told friends of mine that I was getting into business on the web, they almost unanimously made exclamations like “Whoa!  You’re going to be the next Bill Gates!”

(To drive home the point, an entire industry lives off the perpetuation of this idea, peddling ebooks and cheap strategies, preying on those that want to make an easy buck … but that’s a rant for another day )

Of course, the reason for this perception is obvious.  The internet’s done a lot of things for commerce and wealth.  Notably, it’s given consumers new things to buy and new ways to buy them.  The success stories have flowed and it’s been a very good thing.

However, there’s been an unhealthy aspect to all this.  Namely, expectations among entrepreneurs have been a little … high.  A bit overzealous, if you will.

If I opened a pub, flower shop or dry cleaner, would I have gotten any Bill Gates style remarks?  Probably not.  So the web, in general, is seen as a place millionaires are made.  Following this thought process to it’s logical conclusion, it’s easy to believe that if you’re not a millionaire, you’re doing something drastically wrong.

So, I’d like to to put an end to this terribly belittling myth.  The fact of the matter is that making a lot of money in ANY business is difficult, no matter what venue your business is in.  Barring a sometimes lower barrier to entry, the web is virtually (no pun intended) no different than business in the ‘real world’.  You still have to:

- Come up with a GREAT idea that people want.
- Put the right team of people together and implement the right plan to execute it.
- Have a KILLER marketing plan that delivers the right message to the right people.

Learning how to do these things doesn’t happen overnight – it can take months or years to master the processes that make a successful business.  So, if you aren’t banking 30k paychecks after your first 6 months, chill.  It’s not the end of the world and it doesn’t mean you’re past hope.  Creating successful businesses is a process.  The REAL key is being persistent.

Scott’s holiday message is to keep two things in mind: 

1. Screw anyone else.  What other people are doing or making should have NO bearing on you.  Concentrate on you.

2. 99 times out of 100, creating a sizeable income won’t be easy.  It takes work, time and ingenuity.  So, if you’re not fabulously wealthy yet, don’t despair.  The keyword is “yet”, so don’t beat yourself up and keep at it. 

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1. Luke Knowles Says:
   December 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 pm

   Hi Scott,
   Thanks for the nice comments, and I’m glad that I can help put your unborn child through college.

2. Terry Says:
   April 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am

   It’s obvious that you are putting in the hard work Scott and it is paying off.

   Most successful people are not overnight successes and have only got there by hard work and persistence. Quitters never become successful.