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“Give a person a fish; you have fed them for today. Teach a person to fish; and you have fed them for a lifetime.”

Our desire is to have you succeed by following our system. That means that we teach you exactly what you have to do and show you the tools we use to get the job done. What we cannot and will not do however, is the work for you. Creating a successful business online is no different than creating a traditional brick and mortar business… It takes perseverance, money, time and most of all, hard work and commitment from you.

What we are going to show you over the next few weeks is not about “Get Rich Quick” schemes. Instead, we stand strong to the concept that you do it right from the beginning and your rewards will be for the long term. You see, most get rich quick systems are based off of ways to “Cheat” the system. We on the other hand, believe in working with the system to achieve incredible results.

To begin, ask yourself a few questions to better understand the reasons for running a business online:

#1 Why Are You Doing This?

Before you can start into any part of your new business, you need to ask yourself this one extremely important question:

Why are YOU doing this?

You need to stop right now from wanting to rush into just building a blog. Take a step back for a moment to try and understand the big picture. You have probably heard the saying:

“You can not see the forest for the trees.”

What that means is sometimes you can get so caught up in little details that you miss out on the entire big picture. If you want to truly know where you are going then the best bet is to step back, look at the entire picture and then map out what you want. So asking yourself “Why you are doing this” is one of the first steps in being able to truly understand where it is you want to go.

Some examples of “Why” might be:

• to help a current business expand
• to make some extra cash on the side
• to be able to quit your job and work for yourself
• just for fun
• you fill in the blank here

Question to You –> Now it is your turn. What is the number one reason you are doing this?

JohnCow’s Why –> For us the answer to this question is to Prove Market Authority. We want to prove to our readers that we know what we are talking about, it is not about winning, it is about social proof. After 30 days we want the posts and the blog that we built to speak for themselves.

#2. What do You want to Accomplish? What is Your Goal?

You may think this is the same as the first question, but it really is not. Why you are doing something is not the same as what you want to accomplish by doing it. This question takes the first one to a deeper level because it makes you look at it as more than a far off dream but as an attainable goal.

If your answer is “to make some extra cash”, then you probably have a set amount of cash you want to make. Perhaps it is to help pay off a debt or to afford a new vehicle. Whatever the reason, now is the time to figure that out.

Do not shrug this off! It is so incredibly important and so often overlooked. We guarantee you the people that are very successful online all have answered this question. This comes down to work ethic, you need to take the time to build your solid foundation, and then once that is established, everything else will fall into place.

So How Do You Set a Goal?

Let’s say you make a $40,000 a year salary and want to be able to quit that job to work full time online. The first thing you will need to do then is understand exactly how much you need to live on and then double that (this is the formula we used when we started).

So for our example if you make $40,000 but feel you could live on $35,000 then that would be $70,000. Now that you have a goal of $70,000 as a yearly income, the reason you double it is because you will have to pay taxes, health insurance, employees (even if just outsourcing) and so on. 50% is generous but the last thing you want to do here is short change yourself.

Next you need to figure out exactly how much money that is per day. So take $70,000 and divide it by 365 which equals approximately $192 a day.

So now you need to ask yourself, how are you going to do that? Break that value down to smaller goals. So for example, what it might look like for you is:

• $100 - Affiliate income
• $70 - Adsense / Yahoo Pub / Chitika / Pepperjam
• $30 - Advertising on blog

(this is just an example)

Now it is time to pick a time frame that you are going to achieve that goal. You want to be aggressive here, but you also need to be realistic. If you have never built a blog in your life and to say you are going to achieve that goal in 30 days, it is not going to happen.

A realistic example might be to create a time frame such as:

• 1 Months - Earning enough to pay for itself
• 3 Months - Earning $1000 per month
• 6 Months - Earning $3000 per month
• 1 Year - Earning $5800 per month (Your 1-Year goal)

Once you have your first goal accomplished, then focus on your second and third. Once that final goal is reached make another one and this time go bigger!

Make sure you do not create for yourself an unrealistic goal either! We agree full and well with the concept of aiming high, but one of the biggest reasons many people get discouraged with their progress is they start too high. If you are just starting out, set a goal to what you can live on and then once you achieve that you can then focus more time by being able to do this full-time and you can start to reach for the BIG goals.

If you already have a goal, then congratulations! You are already ahead of the majority.

Something important to note is that you need to stick to your plan and not focus on what every other marketer is telling you. Once you have a plan in place and start to see what is working for you, then simply repeat the process. If a new product or strategy comes out and looks good then figure out how to implement it into your current strategy. If it does not fit then leave it alone! If it does fit and makes something easier to do then great! Keep it and keep moving forward!

This is so often the spot that people get hung up on. They have a plan but then Mr. Marketer comes along and says to do it this way instead, so we stop what we are doing and start over again, or even worse, do nothing while we analyze the situation and waste time and money.

Get back to the basics, start with a goal and create yourself a firm foundation first!

Once you have this goal, you will want to print it out and place it somewhere prominent that you will be able to see everyday that you are at your work station. Every morning before you get started, focus on that goal and what you are going to do today to get close to achieving it.

Question to You –> What is your 1month, 3 month, 6 month and 1 year Goal?

John Cow’s Goal –> For us the answer to this question is focused only on a short term goal that in 30 days (because of the cowpetition time line) to have created a blog that when put on the market at sitepoint.com is sold as a complete “Business” solution for the buyer.

#3. Make a Commitment

Now for the hard part. We talked about this in the previous lesson but in our opinion it needs to be repeated again. Writing out why you are doing this and what you want to accomplish is easy. Anyone can take a few minutes and write down a bunch of simple words. What is going to make the difference from making these just a bunch of words to making them an actual goal is that you need to make a commitment to what you wrote down.

As we have said a couple times before, this is going to take hard work on your part and that means that you are going to need to commit time to this every day.

How much time?

That depends on how fast you want to succeed, but we recommend that you spend at least 2 hours a day on this for at least the next 6 months if you want to see any measurable results. So in order to do that you are going to have to clear your schedule to allow for 2 hours a day to be spent on this.

That might mean that you have to drop a favorite pastime for awhile or stop watching a favorite television show. Maybe it means that you will have to stay up a little later every night. Whatever it is, you need to decide now and make a commitment that you are going to dedicate that time to growing your business.

The best way to do this is to map out your week ahead of time. This is one of the reasons we love the Franklin Covey day planner systems, because they are based around the principal of putting first things first. That means you need to look at your schedule and plan ahead of time when you are going to accomplish your important tasks.

By looking at your week, you will start to see a lot of opportunities that you could be doing something more productive. Once you identify your areas, you can then plan those times for working on your business.

Get a timer!

One of the absolute best things we have ever got ourselves to help improve our time management was an electronic egg timer from Wal-Mart. What you can do is if you know you can work one hour in the morning before work and one hour in the evening when you are usually watching TV, then you set the timer for 1 hour and put it in front of you. Once you press start on the timer then all distractions are off. That means you shut your door, unplug the phone, put in ear plugs (or listen to music if it helps) and do not randomly surf the web! Instead, commit yourself to being effective for that time. If you are having a hard time finding time in your schedule for these 2 hours, the last thing you want to do is waste them.

Important Reminder - “Work Ethic”

You see the internet and computers are supposed to make our lives simpler. We can process difficult calculations in milliseconds, create dynamic presentation, find information on just about anything by simply typing in a couple of search terms or talk with people around the world as if they were in the room next door. The problem with this is people often assume that since it makes all these things so much faster and simpler then it should be able to do the same for making money. There has got to be someone out there that has made some program that you simply push a little red button and “POOF” in mere seconds you are generating income.

The answer to that is a resounding.. NO!

Yes, there are great programs and material out there, but none of them, I mean absolutely none of them, are a big red button that allows you to sit back and do nothing.

We are sure you have heard of the 80/20 rule. This rule is incredibly universal in its scope because so many things fall into this. For the MMO market I would dare say it is more of a 90 /10 rule but for the sake of argument we will use the 80 / 20.

What this means is that 80% of those that buy any software or ebook, will never actually use it to its full potential. That means that 8 out of 10 people will either never even open the software or ebook or they open it up and read through it but give up because it looks like it takes too much work.

Then you have the 20%. This is the small group of people that actually are making a living online, they are the people that realize revenue is only generated through hard work, that no software or ebook is the end all be all of solutions and they actually read through everything and use the solutions how they were designed.

Our hope is by the end of this contest to have made you one of the 20% NOT one of the 80%!

Last but not least - Get Rest

Yes, it takes work, yes you are going to have to be a little busier than usual to get your business off the ground but the one thing your body and mind need is rest. We highly recommend that you take off one day a week from all work activity. That does not mean you cannot do work around the house or go fishing, but what it does mean is you completely remove yourself from your job.

This day should be dedicated to getting rest for your body (sleep in and or take an afternoon nap), do what you love (go for a walk, play with your kids outside or go fishing) and just enjoy yourself! More often than not, entrepreneurs who are starting out work themselves into a medication of some sort. They get no rest, no time to unwind and their body starts to react. Stress, depression, obesity are just some of the end results!

Life is your most precious gift, so enjoy it!

In tomorrows post we will walk through the market we selected, why we selected and how we organize our market research for immediate and long term needs.

Talk to you then!

PS - Yes we know by posting this stuff we are helping our cowpetition competitor… but thats fine… hopefully they will learn a few things they can teach to others as well

Oh and PLEASE Let us know your thoughts on this post please… our hoofs are all cramping up from typing so much!

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