Webmaker's Blog

So, you've signed up with the company I work for, Clickincome. You've paid us to teach you how to set up a website using Clickincome's Clicksite Builder program. You've paid to have someone like me teach you about marketing your website. That's great! You recognize that you don't have the knowledge and skills to create your own online business and you've make an investment with Clickincome to learn those things.

Learning how to build your Clickincome site, or any ecommerce site for that matter, isn't just a matter of skills, though. Just because you know how to do a thing, doesn't mean you've decided how to apply them.

Far too often I mentor Clickincome clients that don't know what they want to do in terms of a web business. They haven't got any idea about what kinds of products they want to sell, or who they want to sell them to. That's okay. I can help them by giving them specific brainstorming exercises to help them decide. I can't, and won't, decide for them, however. It's their business. It's up to them, not me.

The problem comes when they start thinking that the skills are more important than the idea. This is exactly backwards when it comes to most successful entrepreneurs.

You see, there's really two parts to opening up any business, whether it's on the web, through Clickincome, or not. It works the same way for brick-and-mortar stores, too. There are always two parts:

1. The Idea
2. The Execution

All businesses start with an idea. It doesn't even have to be an original idea, just one you can get excited about. What stops so many people from pursuing their idea is they don't feel like they know how to do it. That's where Clickincome can help. We can show you how.

The idea is the most important thing, though. Being passionate about that idea makes it more powerful than any lack of skill in execution you might have.

90% of beginning entrepreneurs don't know how to create, operate, and market their businesses. They haven't got a clue how to do it! But that doesn't stop them. They know they can learn how to do it, along the way. Sure, they'll make mistakes. They don't care. They are so focused on their idea that they just accept that as a part of their current reality and move forward.

A lot of my clients start with an idea, but they've misunderstood the amount of work or effort they will have to put into turning that idea into reality. They hit their first road block and they get scared. "Oh, no! The domain name I wanted is taken. I'm in trouble. I can't do this now." Instead of trying to come up with a different domain name they just stop working. They give up on their idea.

Others run into supplier problems. "Clickclub doesn't carry every item I'll ever want to sell from the brand names I want to sell and so I can't do this now." Instead of continuing to look for other supplier resources, they give up on their idea.

Keep in mind, I've taught them how to do this. I've already shown them places they can go to find suppliers. They've just not checked them because they think it will be hard. In most cases I'll go to the very same resources that I've sent them, do a quick search and presto! In ten seconds I've found a list of suppliers that carry the kinds of things they want to sell. They may not be the exact brand names or who knows what, but they are products they can sell to their niche market customers and make money on. But they won't do it. They've already given up.

Another thing we teach Clickincome mentoring clients is how to write ad copy. Some of them are afraid to write, though. They've not done any serious writing since high school and so they immediately get afraid. "I just don't know how to write and so I can't do this now."

Have you noticed the trend here? "I don't know how so I can't do it." It's so much easier to give up and blame someone else than it is to figure out "how." This is what they paid us for, to teach them "how." Even after teaching them how, they don't go do it because they live in fear.

Part of learning is doing. Successful entrepreneurs know this. They know that the power of their idea is so strong, that if they move forward they will learn how. They'll gain experience and confidence by doing, by executing the plans for their idea.

Every thing we do has a first time. It doesn't matter what it is. Whether it's building a website, writing ad copy, registering a domain name, starting a business and marketing it, it doesn't matter. Every successful entrepreneur has to do it for the first time, sometime. You can't start with your second time.

I can help you get the skills, my dear client. I can't give you the idea that will make you work on it.

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Are you passionate about the kind of business you're building with your Clickincome website? This is an important question. Most people who are successful in any endeavor are passionate about it. They love what they're doing, and they are insanely focused on it.

Having an insane focus with your Clickincome website, or any web business for that matter, is important. Small business people do better when they focus on a particular audience and business. Instead of trying to do everything, and provide everything to everybody, like a department store, you need to specialize.

A lot of my Clickincome clients, and other people I've met, have this problem. They're so afraid of specializing that they try a lot of different things all at once. "I've got a lot of irons in the fire. My idea is to try a whole lot of different things. I'm going to throw a whole lot of different products and business ideas out there and see which one of them sticks." Okay. I can understand that. I used to be that way, too. To a degree, I still am but, I'm desperately trying to retrain myself. I know it's not "right thinking" when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur.

One of the problems with this approach, the "let's throw a lot of ideas against the wall and see what sticks" idea, is that you end up dividing your energies between too many things. If you divide your efforts in too many different ways, you're making your efforts weaker. You're being less effective than you need to be to create a successful business.

When an Army General goes into battle, he doesn't divide his forces across several fronts. He knows that if he does, he's going to fail and his people will die.

This is why Adolf Hitler failed in World War II (thank goodness). He started running into a little trouble with the English and so he divided his front, hoping to find more success with the Russians. It didn't work. His divided forces were too weak to fight against a combined Allied onslaught, and Hitler's forces toppled.

Ancient Rome had the same problem. They spread themselves too thin when they started invading northern Europe. Sure, they did well in the beginning, but in the end it was too much for them to handle all at once.

Believe it or not, diversification, for the small business person, is a recipe for death.

"Waitaminute," some of my Clickincome clients say. "What do you mean diversification is bad? Look at Donald Trump. He's diversified!"

Sure, he is now. Take a look back in time to when he started, though. He was insanely focused on real estate. These multimillionaires, who seem diversified, weren't diversified at all when they started. To be honest, that diversification is an illusion. They've actually handed over these separate companies to other CEOs that are insanely focused on that particular business. The multimillionaire owner is working on his next big idea - again with insane focus.

"Then what's all this stuff about 'multiple streams of income' we've been hearing about from the Clickincome sales people?"

Robert Allen's "Multiple Streams of Income," or more precisely his "Multiple Streams of Internet Income," is one of the most misunderstood ideas around. He's not suggesting that people have multiple businesses in the beginning. He's suggesting they promote and monetize that business in many different ways. Selling your own products, marketing through search engines, creating mailing lists where you can market your products directly, going into joint ventures with others to market your separate businesses to each other's clients, affiliate programs - they are all ways of promoting and making money from the same focused business.

Having an insane focus that you are also passionate about has other benefits as well. I've gotten this same advice from Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, and several other very successful business people. They tell me, "Do what you LOVE!"

Do what you love! Go into a business that has at least something to do with your own desires and passions. It's so much easier to promote what you already love doing. It's a lot more fun, too. Don't you see it? That's a huge secret about the nature of work. If you love what you're doing, it's not work anymore! It's play. Hey, you'd do it anyway, right? It's not work anymore.

On top of that, life is too short to waste time on things we hate. Don't waste your time on trying to sell a product you hate, just because some bozo in a suit told you it was a hot product and you'd make a lot of money on it. Not unless it's already some thing you love doing.

Have a passion about your business. If you're not passionate about your current Clickincome site, tear it down and start over. Create a website you can be passionate about. I've heard some people call it having a "Magnificent Obsession."

Don't you want to have fun and enjoy yourself while you're making money? I sure do.

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Are you teachable? Yeah, this hearkens back a bit to my previous post but, I'm not kidding. As a Clickincome internet business mentor, this is a big deal to me.

At Clickincome, my job is to teach people about how to build a commercial website, and a lot about marketing that site. When I get a client that's teachable, it's amazing. They get it. They remember that they spent a lot of money with Clickincome and they're here to learn something. So they open their ears, and their minds, and they do what we talk about.

Being teachable is a big deal. If you want to be successful, whether it's with a Clickincome website or some other business venture, you've got to be teachable. The most successful people I know, in any business, are teachable.

"So, Clickincome mentor, what you mean by teachable?"

What I mean is that you're willing to learn. You aren't so full of your own knowledge and experience that you can't learn new things.

It's funny. It's kind of like the age old stereotype of teenagers. Teenagers think they know everything. "Dad, you just don't understand. That's not how the world works, anymore. You're such a dinosaur."

Of course, teenagers grow up. When they get out on their own and start trying to live life, it's amazing how smart their parent's suddenly get, isn't it? "Wow. All this time Dad was a dingbat, but now he's so smart! How'd that happen, I wonder?"

You might be surprised at how many people I've met in my line of work that know everything about the Internet. Well, they think they do, anyway. They've never built a website in their life. Some of them barely know how to turn on their computers. I'm not exaggerating. And yet, when I tell them about important things like, writing ad copy, the importance of content in their website, the growing importance of social networking and blogging, they argue with me. "Oh, that'll never work," they say.

It's insane. Didn’t they pay money to let me teach them these things?

Being teachable is only half the story, though. You also have to be willing to change. This is where many of my Clickincome clients fall down. They're not willing to change the way they think, or the way the do things in their lives. Why is that?

I got an email today from a client that was very teachable, but unwilling to change. She and her husband had put up quite a site. They'd built several pages of content but, there were no products to sell. Oh, they knew what kinds of products they wanted. They knew the basic kind of ecommerce store they wanted to build. But, trying to find product suppliers took them out of their comfort zone. And so they complained, “We can't find any dropshippers for the products we want to carry."

Let me explain something. As a Clickincome mentor, I teach people how to find product sources. Clickincome has its own dropshipping solution - the ClickClub - but, because we're not the only game in town and we may not carry all the products that people may want to sell, we teach people how to find other product sources.

Let me explain that one more time. We actually tell people how to find the very suppliers we compete with, just so our clients can find and sell the products they want to sell on their websites.

I had gone over all this months before with this client. So I checked the very resources I taught them to use. I found five dropshippers that carried the kinds of products they wanted to sell in less than a minute. In fact, it was more like 30 seconds.

How come they missed it? I did nothing more than what I teach and yet, this client somehow couldn't find dropshippers. I suspect it's because, like many other unsuccessful clients I've had, they just didn't do what I told them to do. They either didn't believe it, didn't actually try it, or both.

And then they blamed me for their lack of effort.

It's ridiculous, don't you think? How can you expect to make money if you don't have something to sell, even if it’s just your content? How can you expect people to know about your site, let alone visit it, if you don't market it?

"We've really worked this site," they told me. And yet the evidence was clear they hadn't. It wasn't that they weren't teachable. When I was in one-on-one mentoring sessions with them, they were very teachable. They were just unwilling to change their behavior. They were unwilling to give up a few hours a day to build and market an online business. They were unwilling to step out of their comfort zone. They were also unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions.

I've had other clients that are completely different. They're very teachable, and very willing to change. Guess what? They do very well with their websites. Sure, they don't make millions overnight, but they are actually doing it. They are finding success on the web.

Do you want to be successful with your Clickincome Website? Be teachable. Be willing to change. Be willing to work.

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As a mentor working for Clickincome, I've been directly involved in teaching people how to build and market e-commerce websites. Prior to that, I'd been working advertising, business, and marketing. I've been a student of business and finance since I was a teenager. I've had my own businesses, my own websites, and I've found both success and failure. I've not "struck it rich" - not yet anyway - but I've been playing the game of the internet, and business on the 'net, for long enough to have done more than just get my feet wet.

In all my time teaching, studying, observing, and doing, there's one factor that stands out to me as the biggest when it comes to success - attitude. Those with a positive, passionate attitude towards their business, passionate enough to actually do the work, are the ones who succeed. Far too often I see people who hit the first bump in the road and give up.

Can you imagine it? The first time you hit a pothole you decided it was time to quit driving. "Oh, I can't do it! I hit a pot hole and now I'm a failure. I'll just take a cab from now on." How ridiculous is that?

What's even more ridiculous is, even though I've actually been doing the kinds of things I teach, many of my Clickincome clients argue with me about what can and can't be done on the web. Can you believe it? I've got a site that's ranked number one at Yahoo.com and yet, when I talk about SEO tactics, they tell me "that just won't work."

And you know what? They never actually do what I tell them to do. They never launch their Clickincome websites. They never find success because they never risk failure. And yet they know so much more than I do.

It blows my mind. They've paid good money to Clickincome to learn how to do what I do, and yet then when I teach it to them, they don't believe it - even when they can see it working right in front of them.

These kinds of people aren't teachable. They won't risk anything because they are so afraid of failure, and so they never even get off the ground. Then they turn around and blame me and Clickincome for their failures. It's just easier to sit in front of their televisions, eat potato chips, and blame their lives on other people. They would rather be martyrs than make money.

Isn't that so much smarter than actually doing something? It just blows my mind.

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