This post is my personal story about how I achieved an impossible dream, but it's not to brag or show off it's to show you that you, as an online entrepreneur, or whatever dream you have can achieve the seemingly impossible too. So if you're feeling a little disheartened about your online business, you have to read this….
The Dream
I started my online career in 2006 when I started the blog Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life . I started the blog as I wanted to write and help other people overcome challenges in their life, as I had done years before. At the time I didn't really view it as a business I just wanted to write.
Everything was going great and after 2 years I reached 3,000 subscribers, and I was earning a few hundred dollars per month from advertising on the blog. But, then the lightbulb went off, big time, and I thought I could make a business from my writing and creating personal development products.
The very first thing I did was totally focus on my email subscriber list and learn as much as I could about email marketing, and within a year of focussing I was up to 30,000 subscribers and making $1,000 per month from advertising and selling affiliate products.
So I set myself an impossible goal– To earn enough money online to pay off our mortgage by the time I was 50 (Only 11 years ) which was around £170,000 ($262,000). Bearing in mind I was working full time as an addiction worker and Sharon was working full time at a charity and all our income went on the mortgage and expenses, so there was no way we could save enough money to pay off the mortgage early.
I was earning an extra $1,000 per month, and paying out $500 for online expenses, so the extra income was really around $500 per month working 25 hours per week online and 40 hours per week on my full time job.
Then came the first breakthrough. An ebook I had written called How to Become an Advanced Early Riser took off, and earned me around $10,000. It totally blew my mind that an ebook about rising early could make that much money.
So by now lightbulbs were exploding all over the place. My mind was awash with new ideas, new marketing plans and new products that would help others.
I went on like this for another 4 years, making products, affiliate marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and I was learning a little about everything but not becoming a master of any of them. Earning an extra $10,000 per year, after expenses, was never going to pay off the mortgage, so I upped my game, changed my mindset a little more and really started to believe in myself and my business.
What I really needed was to give up my full time job and work on my online business full time, but it just wasn't feasible.
The day I gave up my full time job
In June 2012 I was speaking to a friend who had some very successful websites bringing in sales of over $500,000 per year. I had two ideas I was working on, one of which was building a multi product site selling Guided Meditations. I had already tested the market with this at a site I set up with a good Friend Angela Artemis at TheRe-Awakening.com
and it had done relatively well.
So, after speaking for a few months and getting some details sorted out I signed a deal to work with my friend who would pay me advanced royalties to write, record and edit guided meditations and I would receive around $3,000 per month – Amazing, I could speak with Sharon about giving up my full time job and doing the business full time.
After long discussions I handed in my notice to my employers and left my full time job in September 2012 and started working on GuidedMind.com
Impossible dream becomes possible
After 18 months working with my business partner on GuidedMind.com we were doing well and I was still working on my own products, one of which was MindAlchemy.net . I did a big launch for Mind Alchemy and was expecting this one to be the one that turned things around for me, but it wasn't as big as I'd hoped and brought in around $30,000 in sales.
So I kept on going, looking to help as many people as possible.
By this time I had built up a lot of different income streams:
- Guidedmind.com
- MindAlchemy.net
- AdvancedEarlyRiser.com
- Selling Solo Ads
- Affiliate Marketing
- Advertising
- Coaching
Facebook changes everything
Having mastered email marketing and product creation, I started to focus my attention on Facebook and building up my small page of around 3,000 likes. By December 2013 I had built it up to 35,000 likes, but I wasn't satisfied, I wanted to really dig in and discover how to get to 1 million likes and that's when it all changed. In the space of 18 months I went from 35,000 likes to 928,000 likes today.
However, I didn't just build up the number of likes I had I built up my email list by sending traffic to my blog, I built up my advertising income on the blog from $500 per month to $5,000 per month.
Pretty soon as I was getting bombarded with questions from others about how to build up their page and so I reluctantly wrote a detailed course on how I was doing it, Your FB Challenge – Solved! hoping I would get no more questions so I could focus on the personal development side of the business.
But life had other plans and brought me a business coach by the name of Jennifer Hines who gave me so many more ideas, more strategies and more insight into business and she suggested I start coaching one on one. Jennifer's ideas and strategies are going to bring in another $50,000 – $100,000 per year for my business
and…..
The option to pay off our mortgage.
The impossible dream I had visualised 8 years ago is actually going to happen. By March 2017 we will have enough money in the bank to pay off our mortgage and reach that impossible dream a whole year earlier than planned.
What I have learned as an online entrepreneur
1. you're going to have a lot of setbacks, you just have to accept that and keep moving forward.
2. If you're going succeed you have to fall a lot of timesbefore you realise what you've done wrong, but you can shortcut that.
3. Shortcut the process of learningby hiring a good business coach.
4. Master only two social media platforms. There's no need to master all of them, focus your time and effort on one, or two at most, and put your energy and time into them.
5. great content is key to everything. Without great content you're not going to get far without spending a lot of money on advertising.
6. You've got to re-invest in yourself. Learn as much as possible from the experts, and by that I mean people who are actually doing what you're doing and not just teaching what you're doing.
7. You've got to re-invest back into your business. 50% of my income get re-invested into the business, but the funny thing is the income is growing year in year out because of that re-investment.
8. Have a great funnel. I'm still in the process of this learning curve, but you need a good funnel to grow your business as much as possible, don't just have a squeeze page and a $27 product. Think about what you can sell that will cost $197, or $497 or $2,000 or even $10,000.
9. Never, ever, ever, ever ever give up on your dream. I don't mean that you keep flogging a dead product if it is not working, but move on and produce another product and keep testing, and keep figuring out ways to grow your product line and when you hit a winner, then grow that product brand, but never give up.
I hope this has helped in some way and hope you don't give up on your dreams of becoming an online entrepreneur. My impossible dream is happening right now and if you were a betting person you'd have bet against me at the beginning, but persistence, belief and determination will get you to realise your impossible dream.
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