Webmaker's Blog

When dealing with my clients at Clickincome, I often run into the problem of a presumed “status quo” for websites. Sure, there are guidelines and such for building websites, whether you’re a customer with Clickincome or not. Many of them assume that there are rules for building sites. Certainly there are laws that govern the way businesses are run in our country. You need to follow those rules or you pay inordinate amounts of money in fines or, worse, you go to jail.

When it comes to building websites, though, the rules are more flexible. To quote Captain Barbosa in Pirates of the Caribbean, “They’re more like guidelines.”

Yes, there are certain practices that work better than others, and I try to teach my Clickincome clients about best practices. Knowing what the “rules” are, though, means learning when to break them. That what “being different” means and being different can get your site noticed.

I don’t want you to get stupid for the sake of being different, mind you. Just because everyone else wears their shoes on their feet doesn’t mean I want to start tying them to my ears. Wearing shoes on my feet instead of tied to my ears has worked for me pretty well so far. Why change that around if it’s working for me? Being smart is definitely better than being stupid. Then again, a lot of people I’ve met are pretty stupid so, instead of falling in with that lot I think I’ll stay over her in smart land, thank you very much.

Being different is great, as long as it also means you’re more effective, and having more fun.

Let me give you an example of challenging the status quo. For years and years cooking eggs “over easy” has meant firing up a skillet on medium heat, melting butter in the pan, adding the egg and cooking on one side for a couple of minutes, and then gently turning the egg over to cook the other side. The trick, of course, is to not cook it so long on the other side that the yolk cooks solid. With eggs over easy, you want nice runny yolks.

When I do it this way, according to the “rules,” I’m lucky if the eggs turn out right. Usually I get a broken or overcooked yolk. You might have the same problem. Instead of doing it that way, the way “everyone else” does it, what if you turned off the heat after you added the egg, and then put a lid over the skillet? Then you could let the steam cook the top of the egg for a couple of minutes, just until the whites were done. Hey, this just might work (trust me, it does). Not only does it work but it works every time. Not only do you get better results but you avoid the problems inherent in flipping the egg over. Better results, less work.

When looking at successful web entrepreneurs the world over, the basic rule are pretty well uniform. Surprisingly so, and yet they are different from what the rest of the world is doing, or thinks it should do.

1. Retirement is not the goal.

Retirement planning is like life insurance. It’s preparation for a worst case scenario and is built on the idea that you hate what you’re doing. Retirement means being bored for the rest of your life.

2. Alternate periods of activity with periods of rest.

You can’t be “turned on” 100% of the time. Doing the same thing, day in and day out, for eight or more hours a day until you break or have enough cash to stop isn’t sustainable. Taking time for breaks and vacation isn’t being lazy, it’s survival.

3.Being busy is not the same as being productive.

Doing meaningless work is the same as not working at all. Acting on less important activities means you’re dedicating time to more important, and effective, ones. Don’t invent things to do just to keep busy. It just means you’re avoiding the important things.

4. The perfect time never comes.

It’s never the right time to have get married, or have children, or start a business. Never. Waiting until “someday” is a disease. If you want to do something, do it now or you never will.

5. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

As long as it won’t hurt someone around you, try it, and then justify it. Most obstacles in life try to stop you before you get started, not after you start moving.

6. Leverage your strengths.

If something is working for you, do it more and do it better. Focus more on the things you do well than trying to fix all the things you don’t do well.

7. Taken to excess, endeavors become their opposites.

Having too much of what you want often becomes what you don’t want. We are not interested in creating and excess of idle time. We are interested in increasing free time to do what you want to do, instead of what you have to do.

8. More money isn’t always the answer.

Money can be powerful, but it’s not the only answer to a problem. Using money as an excuse for everything distracts you from important self-examination and decision making.

9. Income is relative.

Having enough money to do what you want is not the same as having a lot of money. Making money always costs time, but time is more valuable.

10. Not all stress is bad.

There are two kinds of stress, that which harms you, and that which strengthens you. Jumping off your roof may kill you. Exercising may feel likes it’s killing you, but it’s actually strengthening you. If you avoid all stress, by staying on the couch in front of the TV instead of exercising, for example, it still weakens you. Doing the important, even if it’s uncomfortable, makes it easier for you to do it again.

 

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Many Clickincome clients come to us with dreams of creating a wealth generating website. Clickincome wants to help them. That’s why we’re in business. Usually, a business is just a means to an end, though. This is where the nature of your life dreams comes into play.

When you started planning your Clickincome website, or any website for that matter, what dreams did you have? Was it a million dollars in the bank? Was it freedom from a boss? What about the ability to travel the world and enjoy exotic locals? Maybe you wanted to drive a fancy new Austin Martin sport car. What about a big new house? That would be cool.

Then again, maybe your dreams were more modest. Maybe you wanted to get out from under a mountain of credit card debt. Maybe you just wanted to pay off your mortgage. Many of my clients just want to make a little more money to help ease their retirement.

Whatever that reason was, it was something you wanted. You had a dream that you wanted to pursue, and you saw building a site with Clickincome as a way to achieve it. Having big goals is great. I’ve got a few of my own. But, have you ever sat down and wondered how much your dreams are going to cost you?

I’m serious, here. How much will it cost you to live the life you want to live? Most people don’t even get this far. They think, “Oh, that’s just way too expensive. I’ll never have it for real. I’ll just sit here in front of my television and dream. Living the good life is for other people. Not me.”

How ridiculous is that? What makes you think it’s for “someone else?” What makes you think you’re not worthy? What makes you so special that you can sit an mope and moan and be so “beneath it all.” It’s ridiculous!

Guess what? It’s not as expensive as you may think. I know, I know. I’ve heard it all before. “Oh, it’s easy for you. You know all this stuff and you just do it naturally.” Sure, I do NOW. When I began it was hard. I had to do things that were uncomfortable for me. I had to break out of my comfort zone. I had to learn.

Part of that learning is doing. In other words, before you do it for the tenth time you’ve got to do it for the first time. Don’t you think the first time I tried to build a website that it was difficult? You bet your bippy it was difficult. A lot of things are still difficult. The hardest thing was to just get up off the couch and take those first few steps.

I’m digressing, here. Let’s get back to the subject at hand.

Figuring out how much money your dreams will cost you is actually pretty simple. Let’s do it together, right now. Grab a piece of paper and a pencil and write down four things you’d really like to have, do, or be, within the next six months to a year. If the dream is longer term, like becoming a doctor or lawyer, that’s fine. Figure out just one thing that will help you achieve it that you can accomplish within six months to a year and write it down.

Got your four dreams? Why not? Either you already have everything you’d every want in your life or you’ve beaten yourself silly with the notion that you can’t have it. Let me give you a thinking check, here. Don’t think you can’t have it. It’s like Oprah Winfrey said, “You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” So write it down. Just four dreams.

What? You still can’t think of four. Okay. Think about what you don’t want and write down the opposite.

Finally got four dreams? Great. No, go out and figure out how much it will cost to achieve them. Hard cash number, here, please. Take the costs you find, total them up, and divide the total by the number of months you’re planning on. You want to come up with a monthly total.

Did the number surprise you? Now divide that number by thirty. This is the cost per day of your dreams. That’s all the money it will take, per day.

Now, put that aside and go look at your monthly finances. How much is your current lifestyle costing you? Include rent or mortgage, credit card payments, loan payments, grocery bills, transportation costs – everything you spend money on month to month. This, in itself, is a scary thing for most people. Knowing the numbers makes you accountable for your spending.

Next, multiply this figure by 1.25 or so. That will build in a 25% buffer for you. I’ve discovered we all spend a little more than we think we do.

Now, divide this total by 30 to come up with the cost per day of your current lifestyle. Add that to the daily cost of your dreams. Now you know how much money you need to make each day, to live your dreams.

Go compare that with your current earnings. Yep! Dig out your pay stubs or whatever else you use to track your income and figure out your monthly income, and then your average daily income, just like you did with your costs and dreams.

Let’s compare the totals. Hmm. Do you make enough money already? Probably not, but I’ll bet it’s close. Subtract the daily cost of your dream lifestyle from your daily income. This is how much more money you need to make each day to live your dreams. Don’t you think you’re smart enough to figure out a way to do that? I’d bet you are. Maybe building an ecommerce website with Clickincome will be one of those steps.

 

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Believe it or not, you're a salesperson. Whether you're an entrepreneur with a Clickincome website or you're using some other hosting service, you're a salesperson. Even if you've never opened a business in your life, and never plan to, you're still a salesperson.

That's right. At some point in your life, like it or not, you will have to act like a salesperson. Oh, I know. Some of you are saying, "Are you kidding? I hate salespeople. They drive me nuts. I'll never work as a salesperson. I just can't do it. I can't lie. I don't have enough bull-* in me."

Maybe, but guess what? You're still a salesperson. The moment you submitted a resume to a company to get a job, you became a salesperson. No, you weren't trying to hock brushes or trying to sell cleaning products door to door, you were trying to sell yourself. That's right. You were selling yourself to that HR director in order to get the job.

This is a critical epiphany for many Clickincome clients, and other web entrepreneurs. There are so many times, Clickincome client or not, that we act as a salesperson. Because of that simple fact, if you want to be successful, you must develop the mindset of a marketer.

The problem many of us face is that we think of a salesperson as slimy, greedy, money grubbing lowlife willing to sell his Grandmother into slavery for a buck. Granted, I've met a few people like that. They do well in the beginning but, once the lies are revealed, they don't last much longer on the sales floor.

Real sales, and I'm talking sales that create the longest lasting customer loyalty, isn't like that. It still deals with convincing a client that your product is so good they want to buy it, but it doesn't have to involve slimy, black hat, tactics.

My first sales job was a joke. I worked in a call center selling season tickets for the local symphony orchestra. I stank at it. I was so bad that, after three months with only one sale, I was fired. I can't blame them. I didn't have the sales mentality.

My next sales job was still a joke, I just quit being quite so funny. I learned a few things about people. I learned how to push through excuses NOT to buy. But I didn't believe in the product. I had some other problems with the company, as well. This time, instead of getting fired, I quit. Working there just wasn't working for me.

Even though that experience was, ultimately, a negative one, I learned a lot. I'm actually grateful to the people I worked with, and the company itself, for that. Even though I just felt like I couldn't stay there, the experience helped me grow.

Over the years I've learned a few more things about sales. Interestingly enough, I still don't think I'd make a good sales-floor type salesperson. I just don't enjoy that kind of work enough to really be good at it. But I've learned to respect those folks who do. A good salesperson is really worth their weight in gold.

Instead, I've developed into a special class of salesperson knows as a "marketer." Being a marketer, I've learned to develop a "marketing mindset" that has helped me with my own businesses, as well as in my work teaching Clickincome clients. Here are some of the things I've learned:

Advertising is not dishonest. The act of selling a product is not a dishonest act. Yes, some ad copy can exaggerate things a bit, but I try not to. At the same time, I don't step away from the truth. Too many people, in attempts of mock humility, forget that the products they sell actually add value to people's lives. I'm not lying if I tell people that.

Preach to the converted. If you're not preaching to the converted, you're targeting the wrong people. Another aspect of sales, that many people hate, is the idea of it being pushy. I've met pushy salespeople, believe me. I've also learned why some of them act that way. The idea of pushy sales is in trying to convince someone that doesn't want your product that they actually want it. Inexperienced salespeople will sometimes do that. Experienced salespeople know it's a waste of time and effort. The right audience is the people who need your product, and are used to spending money for it.

Writing ad copy is just writing. I used to think there was some special trick to writing ad copy. I thought there must be some formula for success that was only talked about in the inner circles of the Secret Brotherhood of Marketers. It turned out not to be true, of course. Yes, there are certainly principles that can help you. It turns out that those principles apply to all good writing, though, not just ad copy.

By letting potential customers know about your products, you're doing them a favor. If you don't advertise, how will they know about it in the first place? Do you honestly think your clients will spontaneously come to know that if they use Product X they'll get Y result in their lives? It just doesn't happen that way in real life. You're advertising actually helps people by educating them about the potential positive impact your products will have on their lives.

 

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One of the problems I'll admit that Clickincome has had in the past is in directly addressing the basic business model our product is based around. As Clickincome Internet Mentors, we tend to leave a lot of that to the customer. It's their business. They should do what they want, with it. Sure, we offer advice and critiques. I've always felt, though, that Clickincome clients, and any entrepreneur for that matter, should know when to follow there instincts, even if it breaks the "rules" of business that others have set. That's how great businesses become great. They offer something unique in a powerful and new way.

Still, the Clickincome products do lend themselves to particular business models better than others. Sure, you can use Clicksite Builder to do a lot of interesting and unique things but, because of it's built in limitations (all programs do some things better than others), some things are going to be easier. This lends itself to certain web business models, over others.

Our mentoring curriculum does the same thing. We've prided ourselves, in the past, over the curriculum's flexibility but, just like the Clicksite Builder program, the Clickincome mentoring program favors some business models over others.

If we were to identify the one "standard" business model that fits both the Clicksite Builder website building tool, and the Clickincome mentoring program, it would have to be a products based model. The basic idea of a products based model is an online store, much like a retail store, where people can peruse different products and then buy them, using their credit or debit cards.

Thinking of your Clickincome website as a physical store helps some of my clients to grasp the basic elements of a product based model. The home page, for example, is like the lobby, or entrance way, of the store. When you walk in to a regular brick-and-mortar store, the first thing you see are signs showing all the specials they're running. You see featured products that they're currently trying to promote above their other products. If you look around, you can see the customer service counter, beckoning you to go and ask questions. You also see the signs above each aisle that direct you to the place in the store where you can get the things you want.

On the web, a "Contact Us" page is just like the customer service counter. It's the place in your website where people go to get their questions answered, or provide feedback about the rest of your store. Don't forget to ask the visitor if they want to sign up for your newsletter. That way, you can market to them directly through email, later on.

A "Catalog Page" is just like the aisles in your store. Retail stores don't just throw everything into the middle of the floor and expect you to find what you want. Your website should be the same way. Sort your products into categories. Create a separate "Our Catalog" page for each category. For example, if you're selling watches you could create catalog pages for men's watches, women's watches, sports watches, and so on. You could even separate it by brand: Seiko, Citizen, Luminox, Invicta, whatever you've got.

Your "Home Page" is the entranceway to your store. It's the place where you'll introduce your business, what kinds of things you sell, and invite people to check out the rest of your site. It's also the page where you would feature sales you might be having. Maybe you've got a featured product of the month, or something. The home page is where you'd talk about it. If you want to give visitors more detail about one of those specials, you may even want to create a special page just for it, and then refer people to that page from your home page.

Of course, some questions are going to get asked all the time. Most of them will have to do with the way you do business. To solve that problem, you'll want to build an "About Us" page and a "Business Polices" or FAQ page. A business policies page will include things like a privacy policy (we're not going to share your contact info with anyone), a return policy (in case they have a problem with the product), and a security policy (Clicksite Builder uses SSL encryption to keep credit card info safe).

These pages will be expanded on, over time. Every week you'll add more information, more products, create sales, you name it. This way, your site builds over time, step by step. This is how large companies get they way. They start small, and get larger, building large successes, on small successes.

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Many of my Clickincome clients are familiar with a book (and movie) that came out in 2006 called "The Secret." Not because I told them about, mind you. It was just a popular topic a year or so ago. You might have heard about it, too. I've read the book. It's not bad.

What they describe is a phenomenon called the "Law of Attraction." Rhonda Byrne, who wrote and produced "The Secret," isn't the first person to describe this phenomenon. The concept can be found in Hinduism and, by its influence, in Theosophy. The term "Law of Attraction" was first used by Helen Blavatsky in her 1877 book, "Isis Unveiled: Secrets of the Ancient Wisdom Tradition." In 1906, William Walker Atkinson described it in his book "Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World." This book forever linked the Law of Attraction with the New Thought movement.

"What has all this got to do with my Clickincome website?" you may be wondering. I can't blame you. To me, the Law of Attraction has more to do with the way you think, and the way that thinking makes you act, than it does with anything else. The way you think about your Clickincome website, or any ecommerce venture, is going to affect the outcome of your endeavors.

Simple put, the Law of Attraction applies the principle of "like attracts like" to the level of thought and conscious desire. The idea is that person's thoughts - conscious or unconscious - emotions, and beliefs can create a change in the physical world around them. This effect creates, or attracts, positive or negative, experiences based on whatever those thoughts are. Positive thoughts attract positive results. Negative thoughts attract negative results.

Let's put it another way. If you want something, I mean REALLY want something, you'll get it. If you don't want something, and again I mean that you REALLY don't want it, guess what? You'll get that, too. Whatever you think about, is what you attract into your life. In other words, your thoughts determine your experience.

There's no scientific evidence to support this, of course. The scientific community has criticized the misuse of the term "law" and rightly so. There's simply no scientific evidence to support the claims made by zealous proponents of the Law of Attraction, or within the New Thought and spirituality movements in general.

But, something is going on here. I've tried it, under various guises, and to some degree it seems to work. This does nothing for the scientific argument, though. All such "evidence" is anecdotal, self-selecting, and very subjective, including my own experiences. I suspect it has more to do with "thoughts determining action" than something more esoteric but, I've experienced weirder things in my life. I just can't dismiss it out of hand.

How we think about things seems to determine the results we will get, if they are coupled with action. I believe that if we think about things in a positive way, we will naturally take action that will lead to a positive result. If we think about things in a negative way, we will naturally lead ourselves to that negative result. Our thoughts seem to create self-fulfilling prophecies. This includes building a web site, though Clickincome or some other service.

Some of you might be thinking, "Oh no! What can I do? Now I'm afraid of my own thoughts!" You don't have to be. The nice part about our psyche is that we have the ability to monitor our thoughts through feelings. It's not a perfect system, but it's a pretty good one.

Whenever you're doing something that is in line with a positive thought, you feel good. Whenever you're doing something that's in line with a negative thought, you feel unhappy. All you've got to do, then, is pay attention to what you're feeling.

If you feel good about what you're doing, then your thoughts and actions are in line with what you want. If you feel bad about what you're doing, your thoughts and actions are in line with what you don't want. It really is that simple.

Sometimes it's hard to keep our thoughts positive. We are inundated day after day by negative messages. The news media thrives on negative stories because, for some reason, negative stories attract the most attention, and sell the most advertising (making that news outlet more money).

To make things worse, there's a group of people that seem to want us to fail. Consciously or unconsciously, they want us to fail. They act like crabs.

Crab fisherman dump their crabs into holding 'pots.' Most of the crabs will fight and even kill each other to get to the top of the heap. Other, smarter crabs, try to scale the walls to get out. The other crabs notice these climbing crabs, come to the wall, and grab the climber, and hauling them back down to the bottom where the crabs are 'supposed' to be.

Psychologists call this the "crab pot mentality." When one member of a group tries to find something better, and starts working to get out, the other members of the group fell threatened and pull them back down.

The bottom line is, don't let these crabs get to you. Don't give in to negative peer pressure and start basking in fear. Don't be a crab.

Remember. Thinking and, ultimately, acting in positive, powerful ways will get you what you want. Giving in to the crabs will keep you at the bottom of the pot.

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